David Ellis (born 23 June 1939) is an English academic and writer. He went from a local grammar school to study English at Downing College, Cambridge under F. R. Leavis and then spent three years teaching at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. The rest of his academic career was at the University of Kent in Canterbury, apart from two years as a visiting professor in two separate universities in the United States and another as an at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. In 1998 he took early retirement in order to write more and has since published over a dozen books. He remains an Emeritus Professor at the University of Kent. Married with two daughters and three grandchildren he lives in Faversham, Kent.