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Archive for the 'A Week in Literary History' Category

This Week in Literary History

August 1st, 2010

Hungarian-born novelist Arthur Koestler (Darkness at Noon, 1940) is born in Budapest in 1905.

Arthur Koestler, b. September 5, 1905, d. 1983

koestlerwithdog.pngKoestler’s 1940 novel Darkness at Noon made him internationally famous and began the slow process of disabusing American, British, and European intellectuals of their admiration for Stalin’s disgusting Soviet regime. His other books of fiction are forgettable, but he went on to publish many volumes of autobiography and non-fiction espousing a variety of causes, all of them provocative and some of them groundbreaking.

Suggested Reading Novel Darkness at Noon, 1940. Autobiography Spanish Testament, 1937. Scum of the Earth, 1941. Dialogue with Death, 1942. Arrow in the Blue, 1952. The Invisible Writing, 1954. Non-fiction The Yogi and the Commissar and other essays, 1945. The Challenge of Our Time, 1949. Promise and Fulfillment: Palestine 1917-1949, 1949. Insight and Outlook, 1949. The Trail of the Dinosaur and other essays, 1955. Reflections on Hanging, 1956. Suicide of a Nation, 1963. The Ghost in the Machine, 1967. The Heel of Achilles, 1974.

Posted by: The Editors
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Last Week in Literary History

August 1st, 2010

English biographer Michael Holroyd (Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography, 1967) is born in London in 1935.

Michael Holroyd, b. August 27, 1935

holroydbw.jpgThis English biographer was instrumental in the revival of interest in the Bloomsberries; his life of Lytton Strachey helped get the whole thing going. Then he went on to write an authoritative life of Augustus John and a compendious biography of Shaw. In his seventies, he continues to produce valuable work.

Suggested Reading Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography, 1967-68. Augustus John: A Biography, 1974-75. Bernard Shaw, 1988-92. A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and Their Remarkable Families, 2008.

Posted by: The Editors
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A Week in Literary History

December 30th, 2002

In 1869, Anglo-Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock (The Garden of Folly, 1924) is born in Swanmore, Hampshire.

Stephen Leacock, b. December 30, 1869, d. 1944

leacock.jpgJudging from book sales, from 1910 to 1925 Leacock was the most widely read English-speaking author in the world. But humorous writing is the most fragile, the most liable not to age well, and now one has to pick and choose from his vast output. It’s worth the effort, though, because, at his best, he is drop-dead hilarious. Get the anthology called Laugh with Leacock and be ready to howl out loud.

Suggested Reading Humor Literary Lapses, 1910. Nonsense Novels, 1911. Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, 1912. Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich, 1914. Further Foolishness, 1916. The Garden of Folly, 1924. Literary Studies Essays and Literary Studies, 1916. Mark Twain, 1932. Charles Dickens: His Life and Work, 1933.

Posted by: The Editors
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A Week in Literary History

December 26th, 2002

In 1891, American novelist Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer, 1934) is born in New York City.

millerhenry1934.pngHenry Miller, b. December 26, 1891, d. 1980

Miller settled happily into his role as aging satyr during the Sixties and Seventies, but before that he had helped open the floodgates in literature with his sexually explicit (and sexually fixated) novels. His penis (and his novels) aside, he is an amusing, likeable, and vivid writer who left some memorable books behind, and who spoke the plain truth far more often than not.

Suggested Reading Novels Tropic of Cancer, 1934. Black Spring, 1936. Tropic of Capricorn, 1939. The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, 1949-60. Other writings The Colossus of Maroussi, 1941. The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, 1945. The Books in My Life, 1952. Quiet Days in Clichy, 1956. Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, 1957.

Posted by: The Editors
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A Week in Literary History

December 22nd, 2002

In 1869, American poet Edwin Arlington Robinson (The Man Against the Sky, 1916) is born in Head Tide, Me.

robinson.jpgEdwin Arlington Robinson, b. December 22, 1869, d. 1935

Robinson is the most old-fashioned of famous twentieth-century poets, and unique in the sense that from his forties on, he was a professional poet, spending his summers at the MacDowell Colony and the rest of the year in New York City. Amidst his longer poems, it’s easy to forget the secure and often audacious mastery of his short ones.

Suggested Reading Poems The Children of the Night, 1897. The Man Against the Sky, 1916. Tristram, 1927. Collected Poems, 1937.

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A Week in Literary History

December 21st, 2002

In 1892, English author Rebecca West (Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, 1942) is born Cicily Isabel Fairfield in Streathem.

Rebecca West, b. December 21, 1892, d. 1983

westrebecca.jpgA vivacious, politically-committed woman, West began writing in radical periodicals while still a student at George Watson’s Ladies’ College in Edinburgh and took her pen name from one of Ibsen’s emancipated heroines. Her early novels and critical studies, excellent in themselves, nevertheless seem preludes to her masterwork Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, in which she shows a mastery of description and fluency of style that put her in very select company. Even more rare, she’s a writer’s writer but also a reader’s writer.

Suggested Reading Novels The Judge, 1922. Harriet Hume, 1929. The Thinking Reed, 1936. Critical Studies Henry James, 1916. D.H. Lawrence: An Elegy, 1930. Arnold Bennett Himself, 1931. Other Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, 1941. The Meaning of Treason, 1947.

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A Week in Literary History

December 20th, 2002

American novelist David Markson (Wittgenstein’s Mistress, 1988) is born in Albany, N.Y.

David Markson, b. December 20, 1927

markson.jpgFor fifty years David Markson has been writing challenging, innovative fiction, avant garde in style and method. At his best, his works rise well above their preoccupation with form and assume all the best attributes of “traditional” fiction. Wittgenstein’s Mistress is a very moving book, and Markson always repays the reader’s attention with a wide, wise, and amusing array of literary allusions. A real reader’s writer, and an American treasure.

Suggested Reading Novels Epitaph for a Tramp, 1959. Epitaph for a Dead Beat, 1961. Miss Doll, Go Home, 1965. The Ballad of Dingus Magee, 1966. Going Down, 1970. Springer’s Progress, 1977. Wittgenstein’s Mistress, 1988. Reader’s Block, 1996. This Is Not a Novel, 2001. Vanishing Point, 2004. The Last Novel, 2007. Poems Collected Poems, 1993. Other Malcolm Lowry’s Volcano: Myth, Symbol, Meaning, 1978.

Posted by: The Editors
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A Week in Literary History

December 17th, 2002

English novelist Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier, 1915) is born in Merton, Surrey, 1873.

Ford Madox Ford, b. December 17, 1873, d. 1939

fordmadoxford.jpgFord was an immensely prolific writer of novels, travelogues, history tales, poems, and art criticism, and in each genre he excelled. Throughout his life he was constantly at work on one book or another; he represents a career devoted to his art. The Good Soldier is one of the finest novels of the twentieth century, and Ford’s World War I tetralogy Parade’s End is the best writing we have on that conflict and its aftermath in Britain. A master. The list below is very selective.

Suggested Reading Novels The Fifth Queen, 1906. An English Girl, 1907. Ladies Whose Bright Eyes, 1911. The Good Soldier, 1915. The Parade’s End novels Some Do Not, 1924. No More Parades, 1925. A Man Could Stand Up, 1926. The Last Post, 1928. Poetry Collected Poems, 1913. Collected Poems, 1936. Reminiscences Thus to Revisit, 1921. Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance, 1924. No Enemy, 1929. Return to Yesterday, 1931. It Was the Nightingale, 1933. Criticism, Studies, & Travel Ford Madox Brown, 1896. The Cinque Ports, 1900. Rossetti, 1902. Hans Holbein, the Younger, 1905. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 1907. Henry James, 1913. Between St. Denis and St. George, 1915. A Mirror to France, 1926. The English Novel, 1926. Provence: from Minstrels to the Machine, 1935.

Posted by: The Editors
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A Week in Literary History

December 16th, 2002

In 1900, English critic and short story writer V.S. (Victor Sawdon) Pritchett (Blind Love, 1969) is born in Ipswich, Suffolk.

V.S. Pritchett, b. December 16, 1900, d. 1997

pritchett47.pngPritchett began his long career writing stories, but he will be remembered more for his essays on literature, which range far and wide, and for his memoirs and travel books. In all he published about sixty books, including ten in his sixties, nine in his seventies, and nine in his eighties!

Suggested Reading Stories The Spanish Virgin and Other Stories, 1930. You Make Your Own Life, 1938. It May Never Happen, 1945. When My Girl Comes Home, 1961. Complete Short Stories, 1990. Memoirs A Cab at the Door, 1968. Midnight Oil, 1971. Literary Criticism Complete Collected Essays, 1991. Travel The Spanish Temper, 1954. London Perceived, 1962. New York Proclaimed, 1965. Dublin: A Portrait, 1967.

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A Week in Literary History

December 11th, 2002

In 1922, American short story writer Grace Paley (Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, 1974) is born in New York City.

paley.jpgGrace Paley, b. December 11, 1922

Grace Paley will perhaps not loom large in histories of late-twentieth-century American literature, because she wrote only in the short story genre, and wrote slowly. But what stories! Like Hemingway and Raymond Carver, she taught a generation how to make a piece of short fiction memorable, and her stories can be returned to time and again for the sheer delight they give in exuberant, witty, and wise writing.

Suggested Reading Short stories The Little Disturbances of Man, 1959. Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, 1974. Later the Same Day, 1985. Essays Just As I Thought, 1998.

Posted by: The Editors
Category: Books and Authors, A Week in Literary History | Link to this Entry

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