Nathaniel Tarn is an American poet, essayist, anthropologist, and translator. Tarn was educated at Clifton College, UK and graduated in history and English from King's College, Cambridge. He returned to Paris and, after some journalism and radio work, discovered anthropology at the Musée de l’Homme, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes and the Collège de France. A Fulbright a grant took him to Yale and the University of Chicago where Robert Redfield sent him to Guatemala for his doctoral fieldwork (1951-2) at the University of Chicago. He completed this work as a graduate student at the London School of Economics (1953-8). Tarn was a professor at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies. He emigrated to the United States in 1970 and taught at American universities.