Born Alan Mark Sheridan-Smith, Sheridan read English at St Catharine's College, Cambridge before spending 5 years in Paris as English assistant at Lycée Henri IV and Lycée Condorcet. Returning to London, he briefly worked in publishing before becoming a freelance translator. He has translated works of fiction, history, philosophy, literary criticism, biography and psychoanalysis by Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Robert Pinget and many others. He was the first to publish a book in English on Foucault's work, and has also written a biography of André Gide.

Translations

(incomplete list)

• Robert Pinget, Mahu or the material, 1966
• Raymond Radiguet, a novel, 1968
• Philippe Sollers, The park : a novel, 1968
• Alain Robbe-Grillet, The immortal one. London: Calder & Boyars, 1971
• Georges Balandier, Political anthropology, 1972
• Michel Foucault, The birth of the clinic, 1973
• Lucien Goldmann, Towards a sociology of the novel. New York: Tavistock Publications, 1974
• Michel Foucault, Mental illness and psychology. New York: Harper and Row, 1976
• Michel Foucault, The archaeology of knowledge, 1976
• Michel Foucault, the birth of the prison, 1976
• Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of dialectical reason, 1976
• Manuel Castells, The urban question: a Marxist approach. London: Edward Arnold, 1977
• Jacques Lacan, Écrits: a selection, 1977
• Sébastien Japrisot, One deadly summer. New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, c1980. ISBN 0151693811
• Pierre Petitfils, Rimbaud, 1987
• Michel Foucault, Politics, philosophy, culture: interviews and other writings, 1977-1984, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzmann, 1988
• Tahar Ben Jelloun, The sand child, 1989
• Michel Tournier, Gilles & Jeanne, 1990
• Tahar Ben Jelloun, The sacred night, 1991
• Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle: the ruler, 1945-1970, New York: 1991. ISBN 0-393-03084-9
• Agota Kristof, The notebook; The proof; The third lie: three novels, 1997
• Abdelwahab Bouhdiba, Sexuality in Islam, 1998

Novels

• Vacation, 1972
• Time and Place, 2003

Other

• Michel Foucault: The Will to Truth, 1980
• André Gide: A Life in the Present, 2000