Biography: writers Books

Book SynopsisMarston LaFrance (1927-75) was a stoic for most of his life, although the basic humanitas of the man softened what otherwise might have been mere grim endurance. This tribute to him is a new kind of festschrift: the papers in it are unified by their strict critical focus on stoicism in American literature. The strain is evident in both the tension in the works of various important American writers and in the philosophical vein of stoicism which runs through several genres, over long periods of time.Of Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience (1849), LaFrance said: ‘It seems to me to be the best available statement of a distinctive philosophical position – the assertion of a moral self reliance – which is found throughout American literature … a peculiar strain of cussedness which seems to me to be an essential property of the American mind.’ That ‘strain of cussedness’ is explored in various ways in this book. These are

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Book SynopsisFrom 1925 to 1950, Arthur Irwin was the driving force behind the success of Maclean's Magazine, first as an associate editor, then managing editor, and, finally, as an editor. He had strong views on what it meant to be Canadian, and under his direction Maclean's was moulded into 'Canada's National Magazine,' mirroring the development of Canada as an independent nation in the twentieth century. In the years before the outbreak of the Second World War, he was at the centre of the Maclean Company’s investigation of the Department of National Defence's system of defence contracting, or what has become known as the 'Bren Gun Scandal.' In the 1940s Irwin actively sought out writers of talent and potential and gradually added to the magazine's staff many Canadian writers who went on to distinguished careers, including Ralph Allen, Pierre Berton, Blair Fraser, and Scott Young. After leaving Maclean's in 1950, Irwin was appointed film commissioner at the

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Book SynopsisMany books have been published on Charles Dickens; there are, however, surprisingly few that have made more than passing comment on Dickens's treatment of schools and education. This is the more striking in view of the significance education had for Dickens, the forcefulness of the criticisms he made, and the influence of his opinions on the public. This account of Dickens's interest in education covers his life and times, and his fiction, speeches, articles, and letters, Since our knowledge of Dickens's own schooling in not very extensive, and minor errors are to be found even in Forster's account of his early years, the author has made a careful analysis of Dickens's formal schooling and other experiences that informed his mind. In the novels and short stories, Dickens discussed some fifty schools and more than that number of teachers. These portrayals of teachers, schools, and school life have been group by Professor Manning under various heads: education through church and c

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Book SynopsisThomas Hood, 1799-1845, is one of the most notable minor authors of the late Romantic and early Victorian period. He began life as an engraver, and went on to write poetry and prose and to edit comic periodicals and annuals including Hood’s Magazine and New Monthly Magazine. His friends included Charles Lamb, Charles Wentworth Dilke, and Charles Dickens; his concerns, the provision of adequate copyright legislation and the plight of the downtrodden. Plagued by ill health and heavy debts, Hood managed to maintain his sense of humour and an affectionate warmth in his personal relations. Between 1835 and 1840 he lived in Koblenz and Ostende in an attempt to save money to pay his creditors in England. The letters he wrote at that time to his friends in London and to his family paint a vivid picture of the life of the English émigré. This is the only edition of Hood’s letters; it is definitive and thoroughly annotated. It presents more basic biographical information than t

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Book SynopsisWilliam Arthur Deacon was an intellectual patron and prophet in Canadian writing. For forty years, as literary editor of Saturday Night (1922-8), The Mail and Empire (1928-36), and The Globe and Mail (1936-60) he contributed vast amounts of time and energy to building a readership and a sympathetic climate for Canadian writers and writing. His correspondence put him in touch, as no other reviewer before him, with virtually every English- and French-Canadian author of his time. Based on his correspondence, books, and review columns, the biography views Deacon’s life in terms of this involvement and in the context of the cultural and political forces of his time. Deacon’s early years as a lawyer, his self-imposed literary apprenticeship, and his break with the law as a profession concurred with the sense of mission and destiny that were part of his Methodist family background and his personal theosophical beliefs. Coming to Toronto in 1922, he quickly established

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Book SynopsisIt is for his poetry that A.M. Klein is best known and most warmly remembered. This collection includes all Klein's poetry, both original works and translations from Hebrew, Yiddish, Aramaic, and Latin. Many of them, coming from all periods of his careers, have never been published.The poems are arranged chronologically according to date of composition. This makes possible, for the first time, an appreciation of Klein's poetic development. The editor's introduction places this development in the perspective of Klein's life and time, and in particular explores Klein's lifelong struggle to reconcile his dual vocations as both a Jewish and a modernist writer.The textual apparatus identifies all authoritative versions for each poem and lists all emendations and all substative variants in both published and mauscript versions. The explanatory notes gloss obscure terms and references. They also provide a rich context for appreciation and interpretation by drawing connections

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Book SynopsisGod only knows how many diverse, captivating impressions and thoughts evoked by these impressions... pass in a single day. If it were only possible to render them in such a way that I could easily read myself and that others could read me as I do... Such was the desire of the young Tolstoy. Although he knew that this narrative utopiaturning the totality of his life into a bookwould remain unfulfilled, Tolstoy would spend the rest of his life attempting to achieve it. Who, What Am I? is an account of Tolstoy''s lifelong attempt to find adequate ways to represent the self, to probe its limits and, ultimately, to arrive at an identity not based on the bodily self and its accumulated life experience.This book guides readers through the voluminous, highly personal nonfiction writings that Tolstoy produced from the 1850s until his death in 1910. The variety of these texts is enormous, including diaries, religious tracts, personal confessions, letters, autobiographical fragments, anTrade ReviewOffers a rare exploration into the internal world of Tolstoy by examining his nonfictional, first-person writings, including diaries, letters, reminiscences, autobiographical and confessional statements, and essays.... Paperno makes an invaluable contribution to Tolstoy scholarship. -- R. A. Erb * CHOICE *Paperno reads all his [Tolstoy’s] writings in relation to the central project of his life: the transformation of his life into a book that would teach others how to live.... ‘Who, What Am I?’ is an important book that will become a standard source for students, general readers and scholars alike. * SLAVONIC AND EAST EUROPEAN REVIEW *Paperno deftly shows how Tolstoi's attempt to write an autobiography failed, but his perceived failure at capturing the moral, philosophical, and technical issues accurately becomes a testament to his literary honesty (102). "Who, What Am I?" is highly important for any Tolstoi researcher, as it brings together the whole of his writings dealing with the exploration of the self. -- Radha Balasubramanian * Slavic Review *This is a relatively short book, yet it is rich in content, taking on some of the most important and challenging problems Tolstoy faced as a writer and thinker. [Irina Paperno] draws on a full range of Tolstoy's nonfiction writings from the 1850s until his death in 1910: diaries, letters, reminiscences, autobiographical and confessional statements, essays, and religious tracts. In addition, her book is informed by vast reading in other sources, primary and secondary. -- Randall A. Poole * The Russian Review *Table of ContentsIntroductionChapter 1. "So That I Could Easily Read Myself": Tolstoy's Early DiariesTolstoy Starts a Diary—The Moral Vision of Self and the Temporal Order of Narrative—What Is Time? Cultural Precedents—“A History of Yesterday”— Time and Narrative—The Dream: The Hidden Recesses of Time—What Am I? The Young Tolstoy Defines Himself—What Am I? Cultural PrecedentsInterlude: Between Personal Documents and FictionFrom Diaries to Childhood: Tolstoy Becomes a Writer (1852)—“I Think I Will Never Write Again”: Tolstoy Attempts to Renounce Literature (1859)—“I . . . Don’t Even Think about the Accursed Lit-t-terature and Lit-t-terateurs”: Tolstoy Renounces Literature Again (1870); and Again (1874–75)Chapter 2. “To Tell One’s Faith Is Impossible. . . . How to Tell That Which I Live By. I’ll Tell You, All the Same. . . .” Tolstoy in His Correspondence“What Is My Life? What Am I?”: Tolstoy’s Philosophical Dialogue with Nikolai Strakhov—“I Wish that You, Instead of Reading Anna Kar [ enina ], Would Finish It. . . .”—“In the Form of Catechism,” “In the Form of a Dialogue”—To Tell One’s Life—Rousseau and His Profession/Confession—The Parting of Ways: Tolstoy Writes His Confession, and Strakhov Continues to Confess in His Letters to TolstoyChapter 3. Tolstoy’s Confession : What Am I?Tolstoy Publishes his Confession—The Conversion Narrative: Excursus on the Genre—Tolstoy’s Confession : Step by Step—Tolstoy’s Confession Related to Rousseau’s and Augustine’s—After Confession: “Presenting Christ’s Teaching as Something New after 1,800 Years of Christianity”—Coda: Tolstoy’s InfluenceChapter 4. “To Write My Life ”: Tolstoy Tries, and Fails, to Produce a Memoir or AutobiographyThe Author Biography—“My Life”: “On the Basis of My Own Memories”—“Reminiscences”: “More Useful Than All That Artistic Prattle with Which the Twelve Volumes of My Works Are Filled”—“Reminiscences”: “I Cannot Provide a Coherent Description of Events and States of Mind”—“The Green Stick”: “Où Suis-Je? Pourquoi Suis-Je? Que Suis-Je?”—Tolstoy and the Autobiographical TraditionChapter 5. “What Should We Do Then?”: Tolstoy on Self and Other“Why Have You, a Man from a Different World, Stopped near Us? Who Are You?”—Master and Slave: Tolstoy Rewrites Hegel—Tolstoy and the Washerwoman—The Order of Things: The Church, the State, the Arts and Sciences—“Master and Man”—Coda: Nonparticipation in EvilChapter 6. “I Felt a Completely New Liberation from Personality”: Tolstoy’s Late DiariesTolstoy Resumes his Diary—The Temporal Order of Narrative: The Last Day—“On Life and Death ”—The Diary as a Spiritual Exercise—“I, the Body, Is Such a Disgusting Chamber Pot”—“I Am Conscious of Myself Being Conscious of Myself Being Conscious of Myself. . . .”—“I Have Lost the Memory of Everything, Almost Everything. . . . How Can One Not Rejoice at the Loss of Memory?”—Sleeping, Dreaming, and Awakening—Tolstoy’s Dreams—Dreams: The World beyond Time and Representation—The Book of life: “It Is Written on Time”—The Circle of Reading: “To Replace the Consciousness of Leo Tolstoy with the Consciousness of All Humankind”—“The Death of Socrates”—Tolstoy’s DeathAppendix: Russian QuotationsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisIn The One, Other, and Only Dickens, Garrett Stewart casts new light on those delirious wrinkles of wording that are one of the chief pleasures of Dickens's novels but that go regularly unnoticed in Dickensian criticism: the linguistic infrastructure of his textured prose. Stewart, in effect, looks over the reader's shoulder in shared fascination with the local surprises of Dickensian phrasing and the restless undertext of his storytelling. For Stewart, this phrasal undercurrent attests both to Dickens's early immersion in Shakespearean sonority and, at the same time, to the effect of Victorian stenography, with the repressed phonetics of its elided vowels, on the young author's verbal habits long after his stint as a shorthand Parliamentary reporter.To demonstrate the interplay and tension between narrative and literary style, Stewart draws out two personas within Dickens: the Inimitable Boz, master of plot, social panorama, and set-piece rhetorical cadences, and a veTrade ReviewThe One, Other, and Only Dickens is sui generis... Stewart offers an exuberant appreciation of Dickens's language, a celebration of craft.... Stewart points toward a return to the pleasurable, slow reading of both criticism and primary texts, but Stewart champions sustained and passionate attentiveness as integral to that process. Stewart's lovely reading, and writing, will be a pleasure to readers who agree with Thackeray's 1847 appraisal of Dickens that 'There's no writing against such power as this-one has no chance!' * SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 *A series of compelling readings from the inklings of nebulous popular consensus. * Dickens Quarterly *Passage after passage of this kind not only leave you feeling as if you have consistently under-read Dickens, but also, retracing Stewart's granular detail, that Dickens is the unequaled master of English prose, the only peer in prose to Shakespeare in verse. * Victorian Studies *Table of ContentsForeword: Preparing the Way Introduction: Some "Reagions" for Reading 1. Shorthand Speech / Longhand Sound 2. Secret Prose / Sequestered Poetics 3. Phrasing Astraddle 4. Reading Lessens Afterword: "That Very Word, Reading" Endpiece: The One and T'Otherest Notes Index

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Book SynopsisIn Thomas Mann''s War, Tobias Boes traces how the acclaimed and bestselling author became one of America''s most prominent anti-fascists and the spokesperson for a German cultural ideal that Nazism had perverted.Thomas Mann, winner of the 1929 Nobel Prize in literature and author of such world-renowned novels as Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain, began his self-imposed exile in the United States in 1938, having fled his native Germany in the wake of Nazi persecution and public burnings of his books. Mann embraced his role as a public intellectual, deftly using his literary reputation and his connections in an increasingly global publishing industry to refute Nazi propaganda. As Boes shows, Mann undertook successful lecture tours of the country and penned widely-read articles that alerted US audiences and readers to the dangers of complacency in the face of Nazism''s existential threat. Spanning four decades, from the eve of World WaTrade ReviewBoes's exhaustive, meticulous survey should come to represent an exemplar for scholarship seeking to document the lasting significance of an author's work. * Publishers Weekly *Boes's superb account is based on extensive archival research, including Mann's personal letters, as well as keen assessments of his novels. * The National Interest *Thomas Mann's War is important and timely. It is a reminder that literature is one of the first things to come under attack when authoritarianism takes hold, something for which there is ample evidence in our present moment, from China to Russia, from Turkey to Saudi Arabia. * The Wall Street Journal *Table of ContentsIntroduction: For the Sake of Survival 1. Luddism 2. Communion 3. Cyberculture 4. Distortion 5. Revolutionary Suicide 6. Liberation Technology 7. Thanatopography Conclusion: American Carnage and Technologies of Tomorrow Acknowledgments Notes Works Cited Permissions Index

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Book SynopsisThis second book in a three-volume work on the young Fyodor Dostoevsky is a diary-portrait of his early years drawn from letters, memoirs, and criticism of the writer, as well as from the testimony and witness of family and friends, readers and reviewers, and observers and participants in his life. The result of an exhaustive search of published materials on Dostoevsky, this volume sheds crucial light on the many unexplored corners of Dostoevsky''s life in the time between the success of his first novel, Poor Folk, and the failure of his next four works. Thomas Gaiton Marullo lets the original writers speak for themselvesthe good and the bad, the truth and the liesand adds extensive notes with correctives, counterarguments, and other pertinent information.Marullo looks closely at Dostoevsky''s increasingly tense ties with Vissarion Belinsky, Nikolai Nekrasov, Ivan Turgenev, and other figures of the Russian literary world. He then turns to the individuals Table of ContentsIntroduction I. Pride before the Fall: Belinsky and the Aftermath of Poor Folk II. Havens from the Storms: The Vielgorskys, Beketovs, and Maykovs III. The Psycho-Spiritual Turn: The Double, "Mr. Prokharchin," "The Landlady," and "A Novel in Nine Letters" Conclusion

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Book SynopsisMaking No Compromise is the first book-length account of the lives and editorial careers of Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, the women who founded the avant-garde journal the Little Review in Chicago in 1914. Born in the nineteenth-century Midwest, Anderson and Heap grew up to be iconoclastic rebels, living openly as lesbians, and advocating causes from anarchy to feminism and free love. Their lives and work shattered cultural, social, and sexual norms. As their paths crisscrossed Chicago, New York, Paris, and Europe; two World Wars; and a parade of the most celebrated artists of their time, they transformed themselves and their journal into major forces for shifting perspectives on literature and art. Imagism, Dada, surrealism, and Machine Age aesthetics were among the radical trends the Little Review promoted and introduced to US audiences. Anderson and Heap published the early work of the "men of 1914"Ezra Pound, James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, and T. S. Eliotand promoted women writers such as Djuna Barnes, May Sinclair, Dorothy Richardson, Mina Loy, Mary Butts, and the inimitable Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. In the mid-1920s Anderson and Heap became adherents of George I. Gurdjieff, a Russian mystic, and in 1929 ceased publication of the Little Review. Holly A. Baggett examines the roles of radical politics, sexuality, modernism, and spirituality and suggests that Anderson and Heap's interest in esoteric questions was evident from the early days of the Little Review. Making No Compromise tells the story of two women who played an important role in shaping modernism.Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Buzz and the Sting 2. Temples of Tomorrow: Anderson and the Little Review, 1914–1916 3. Political and Literary Radicals 4. Interregnum: Chicago, San Francisco, New York 5. Pound, Yeats, Eliot, and Joyce 6. Lesbian Literature, Women Writers, and Modernist Mysticism 7. George Ivanovich Gurdjieff: A Messenger BetweenTwo Worlds 8. The Heap Era Epilogue: Post–Little Review Years

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Book SynopsisA captivating biography that celebrates the audacious, inspiring life and works of John Milton, revealing how he speaks to our times. John Milton is unrivalled—for the music of his verse and the breadth of his learning. In this brisk, topical, and engaging biography, Stephen B. Dobranski brushes the scholarly dust from the portrait of the artist to reveal Milton's essential humanity and his unwavering commitment to ideals—freedom of religion and the right and responsibility of all persons to think for themselves—that are still relevant and necessary in our times. Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost, is considered by many to be English poetry's masterpiece. Samuel Johnson, not one for effusive praise, claimed that from Milton's "books alone the Art of English Poetry might be learned." But Milton's renown rests on more than his artistic achievements. In a time of convulsive political turmoil, he justified the killing of a king, pioneered free speech, and publicly defended divorce. He was, in short, an iconoclast, an independent, even revolutionary, thinker. He was also an imperfect man—acrimonious, sometimes mean. Above all, he understood adversity. Afflicted by blindness, illness, and political imprisonment, Milton always sought to "bear up and steer right onward" through life's hardships. Dobranski looks beyond Milton's academic standing, beyond his reputation as a dour and devout purist, to reveal the ongoing power of his works and the dauntless courage that he both wrote about and exemplified. Trade Review"Reading John Milton is an erudite and lively guide both to Milton's turbulent life and his riveting writings, and makes a powerful case for the excitement of engaging with him in our contemporary moment."—Joe Moshenska, author of Making Darkness Light: A Life of John Milton"Milton may have had the most tumultuous life of any major English poet. This lavishly illustrated study revitalizes our image of him by showing his deep immersion in—and resilience to—the catastrophes of his times."—Leah S. Marcus, author of How Shakespeare Became Colonial"This contemporary, informed, accessible introduction to Milton's life is the one book I might share with literally anyone who cares about language and literature. Dobranski reminds us that Milton was a public intellectual, and offers him back to us."—Wendy Furman-Adams, coeditor of Riven Unities: Authority and Experience, Self and Other in Milton's Poetry"Ingeniously organized around a biographical core, this full-throated celebration of the work and thought of John Milton heartily commends him to readers of our own age."—Thomas N. Corns, coauthor of John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought"This book provides an accessible, approachable, introduction to the life and writings of John Milton. Thoughtfully and beautifully illustrated, it seeks to open up one of the greatest poets in literary history to a contemporary audience."—Blaine Greteman, author of Networking Print in Shakespeare's England"Dobranski does a marvelous job of revealing just as much about Milton himself as he does about the man's work through close readings that create an illuminating portrait of an artist who 'aspired to transcend his own limitations, defeats, and prejudices, continuing to work tirelessly and trying to... help his readers to live freely and righteously.' This puts to rest the notion that Milton is just for academics."—Publishers WeeklyTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Power of Language: "These defenseless doors" 2. Personal Loss: "Weep no more" 3. Combating Injustice: "Need not kings to make them happy" 4. Physical Suffering: "Only stand and wait" 5. Free Speech: "Precious lifeblood" 6. Arrogance: "Pride and worse ambition" 7. Forgiveness: "Hand in hand with wand'ring steps" 8. Resisting Temptation: "He who reigns within himself" 9. Doubt: "Strenuous liberty" 10. Surviving Disaster: "By small / Accomplishing great things" Epilogue

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Book SynopsisAn incisive demonstration of how Orwell's body of work was defined by the four major conflicts that punctuated his life: World War I, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War. Few English writers wielded a pen so sharply as George Orwell, the quintessential political writer of the twentieth century. His literary output at once responded to and sought to influence the tumultuous times in which he lived—decades during which Europe and eventually the entire world would be torn apart by war, while ideologies like fascism, socialism, and communism changed the stakes of global politics. In this study, Stanford historian and lifelong Orwell scholar Peter Stansky incisively demonstrates how Orwell's body of work was defined by the four major conflicts that punctuated his life: World War I, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War. Young Orwell came of age against the backdrop of the First World War, and published his final book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, nearly half a century later, at the outset of the Cold War. The intervening three decades of Orwell's life were marked by radical shifts in his personal politics: briefly a staunch pacifist, he was finally a fully committed socialist following his involvement in the Spanish Civil War. But just before the outbreak of World War II, he had adopted a strong anti-pacifist position, stating that to be a pacifist was equivalent to being pro-Fascist. By carefully combing through Orwell's published works, notably "My Country Right or Left," The Lion and the Unicorn, Animal Farm, and his most dystopian and prescient novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Stansky teases apart Orwell's often paradoxical views on patriotism and socialism. The Socialist Patriot is ultimately an attempt to reconcile the apparent contradictions between Orwell's commitment to socialist ideals and his sharp critique of totalitarianism by demonstrating the centrality of his wartime experiences, giving twenty-first century readers greater insight into the inner world of one of the most influential writers of the modern age.Trade Review"A veteran Orwell scholar, Stansky provides a sketch of his subject's formative experiences before, during, and after some of the most seismic convulsions of the past century.... He makes an admirable attempt to present the real Orwell in all his seeming contradictions, a socialist who loved his capitalist homeland, a decent man who came to see the necessity of war, and a leftist who reviled communist tyranny."—Michael Washburn, The National Review"The evolution of the English writer George Orwell's thinking about war is instructive. In this slim and readable volume, Stansky considers how four wars transformed Orwell's worldview."—Andrew Moravcsik, Foreign Affairs"The Socialist Patriot is a considered analysis of the role of war in the development of Orwell's thinking, notably his sudden shifts from one ideological position to its polar opposite. In its text, as in its title, it captures what would be the two constants informing Orwell's engagement with the momentous events of his time."—Martin Tyrell, Dublin Review of BooksTable of Contents0. Preface: Writing about George Orwell: An Autobiographical Introduction 1. Before the First World War 2. The First World War 3. The Spanish Civil War 4. The Second World War 5. The Cold War

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Book SynopsisAt the start of 1987, Primo Levi took part in a remarkable series of conversations about his early life with a friend and fellow writer, Giovanni Tesio. This book is the result of those meetings, originally intended to be the basis for an authorized biography and published here in English for the first time. In a densely packed dialogue, Levi responds to Tesio’s tactful and never too insistent questions with a watchful readiness and candour, breaking through the reserve of his public persona to allow a more intimate self to emerge. Following the thread of memory, he lucidly discusses his family, his childhood, his education during the Fascist period, his adolescent friendships, his reading, his shyness and his passion for mountaineering, and recounts his wartime experience as a partisan and the terrible price it exacted from him and his comrades. Though we glimpse his later life as a writer, the story breaks off just before his deportation to Auschwitz owing to his sudden death. In The Last Interview, Levi the man, the witness, the chemist and the writer all unite to offer us a story which is also a window onto history. These conversations shed new light on Levi’s life and will appeal to the many readers of this most eloquent witness to the horrors of the Holocaust.Trade Review"With the moral stamina and intellectual poise of a 20th-century titan, this slightly built, dutiful, unassuming chemist set out systematically to remember the German hell on earth, steadfastly to think it through, and then to render it comprehensible in lucid, unpretentious prose."Philip Roth"Whether as witness or imaginative artist, Levi stands high among the truly essential European writers of the past century."Michael Dirda, The Washington Post"The triumph of human identity and worth over the pathology of human destruction glows virtually everywhere in Levi's writing. … Time and time again we are moved by his narratives of how men refuse erasure."Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelistTable of Contents Introduction: Judith Woolf I knew Primo Levi: Giovanni Tesio Acknowledgements Monday, 17 January Monday, 26 January Sunday, 8 February

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Book SynopsisAt the start of 1987, Primo Levi took part in a remarkable series of conversations about his early life with a friend and fellow writer, Giovanni Tesio. This book is the result of those meetings, originally intended to be the basis for an authorized biography and published here in English for the first time. In a densely packed dialogue, Levi responds to Tesio’s tactful and never too insistent questions with a watchful readiness and candour, breaking through the reserve of his public persona to allow a more intimate self to emerge. Following the thread of memory, he lucidly discusses his family, his childhood, his education during the Fascist period, his adolescent friendships, his reading, his shyness and his passion for mountaineering, and recounts his wartime experience as a partisan and the terrible price it exacted from him and his comrades. Though we glimpse his later life as a writer, the story breaks off just before his deportation to Auschwitz owing to his sudden death. In The Last Interview, Levi the man, the witness, the chemist and the writer all unite to offer us a story which is also a window onto history. These conversations shed new light on Levi’s life and will appeal to the many readers of this most eloquent witness to the horrors of the Holocaust.Trade Review"With the moral stamina and intellectual poise of a 20th-century titan, this slightly built, dutiful, unassuming chemist set out systematically to remember the German hell on earth, steadfastly to think it through, and then to render it comprehensible in lucid, unpretentious prose."Philip Roth"Whether as witness or imaginative artist, Levi stands high among the truly essential European writers of the past century."Michael Dirda, The Washington Post"The triumph of human identity and worth over the pathology of human destruction glows virtually everywhere in Levi's writing. … Time and time again we are moved by his narratives of how men refuse erasure."Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelistTable of Contents Introduction: Judith Woolf I knew Primo Levi: Giovanni Tesio Acknowledgements Monday, 17 January Monday, 26 January Sunday, 8 February

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Book SynopsisCarol Loeb Shloss creates a compelling portrait of a complex relationship of a daughter and her literary-giant father: Ezra Pound and Mary de Rachewiltz, Pound’s child by his long-time mistress, the violinist Olga Rudge. Brought into the world in secret and hidden in the Italian Alps at birth, Mary was raised by German peasant farmers, had Italian identity papers, a German-speaking upbringing, Austrian loyalties common to the area and, perforce, a fascist education. For years, de Rachewiltz had no idea that Pound and Rudge, the benefactors who would sporadically appear, were her father and mother. Gradually the truth of her parentage was revealed, and with it the knowledge that Dorothy Shakespear, and not Olga, was Pound’s actual wife. Dorothy, in turn, kept her own secrets: while Pound signed the birth certificate of her son, Omar, and claimed legal paternity, he was not the boy’s biological father. Two lies, established at the birth of these children, created a dynamic antagonism that lasted for generations. Pound maneuvered through it until he was arrested for treason after World War II and shipped back from Italy to the United States, where he was institutionalized rather than imprisoned. As an adult, de Rachewiltz took on the task of claiming a contested heritage and securing her father’s literary legacy in the face of a legal system that failed to recognize her legitimacy. Born on different continents, separated by nationality, related by natural birth, and torn apart by conflict between Italy and America, Mary and Ezra Pound found a way to live out their deep and abiding love for one another. Let the Wind Speak is both a history of modern writers who were forced to negotiate allegiances to one another and to their adopted countries in a time of mortal conflict, and the story of Mary de Rachewiltz’s navigation through issues of personal identity amid the shifting politics of western nations in peace and war. It is a masterful biography that asks us to consider cultures of secrecy, frayed allegiances, and the boundaries that define nations, families, and politics.Trade Review"[A] meticulous literary biography...Shloss illuminates the complexities of Mary’s life [and]...captures her 'fiercely principled' subject and the times in which she lived, using impressive research to highlight the obstacles she navigated to secure her father’s literary legacy. Pound scholars will appreciate new insights into his personal life." * Publishers Weekly *"In this deeply researched biography of an extraordinary and fascinating living person, Carol Loeb Shloss uncovers web upon web of the lies, secrets, and silences that entangled Mary de Rachewiltz even before her birth as Mary Rudge in 1925 in Bressanone, Italy (formerly Austria). What other major writer’s child has a life story that intersects at all points with both international geopolitics and her father’s boundary-crossing, world-making poetry and poetics; with the after-effects of one world war and the lived experience of another; with the hidden causes and devastating effects of Italian and Allied spy networks, including Hoover’s FBI, whose abuse of the law came to daylight in the Watergate investigation; with the contending by lawyers, scholars, and libraries over a valuable international literary estate? Let the Wind Speak casts new light on Ezra Pound’s controversial yet indispensable life and work through the lens of his daughter’s life, full of twists, turns, surprises, and mysteries, some of them still unsolved. As a portrait of Mary de Rachewiltz, it captures a moving image of its courageous subject—an eloquent poet, writer, and translator in her own right—as she navigates formidable familial, political, literary, and legal terrains over a turbulent century with forbearance, grace, and creative love." * Christine Froula, Northwestern University *

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Book SynopsisNobel Prize winner Sigrid Undset’s life at Bjerkebæk, her retreat in Lillehammer, NorwayInside the Gate offers readers a rare glimpse into Sigrid Undset’s life at her home, Bjerkebæk, now a museum and national landmark in Lillehammer, Norway. Immensely protective of her privacy, Undset filled the timbered house with books and created a writing space where she authored many of her famous works, including Kristin Lavransdatter. There she also raised her three children, tended to her beloved garden, and welcomed close friends and family members during three decades of personal joys, sorrows, and hard work.Drawing on a wealth of historical documents, Nan Bentzen Skille’s lively narrative presents an intimate portrait of Sigrid Undset’s intense emotional life and creative endeavors, with Bjerkebæk at the center of it all. Many photographs vividly illustrate the text. For readers who have long admired Undset’s literature, Inside the Gate provides new insight into the life and work of the Nobel Prize winner.Trade Review"A refreshing new look at the personal side of Sigrid Undset."—Bergens Tidende"Easy to read, richly illustrated, and at the same time written with great professional expertise."—Aftenposten"A lavish edition in every sense of the word, brimming with materials that have never been seen before."—VG"One of the joys of Inside the Gate is the many photographs and drawings of Undset, her children, the property at Bjerkebæk, and various memorabilia. The author reconstructs several key events in Undset’s life, such as a child’s confirmation party, detailing who likely attended, what they ate, and what Undset was writing about at the time."—Scandinavian HourTable of ContentsContents Foreword Lillehammer Station – Disembark on the right Sigrid Undset makes herself a home With an office in “Norway’s most beautiful home” The “guesthouse” that became the “priest’s house” The garden – “the third loveliest” in the world The children at Bjerkebæk Mathea Mortenstuen Miniature theaters and other sorts of drama The Nobel Prize comes to Lillehammer The difficult thirties “Fight for all that you hold dear” The curtain falls Epilogue Notes Chronology Photo credits

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Book SynopsisA wry, unvarnished chronicle of a career in the rare book trade—now in paperback When Gary Goodman wandered into a run-down, used-book shop that was going out of business in East St. Paul in 1982, he had no idea the visit would change his life. He walked in as a psychiatric counselor and walked out as the store’s new owner. In The Last Bookseller Goodman describes his sometimes desperate, sometimes hilarious career as a used and rare book dealer in Minnesota—the early struggles, the travels to estate sales and book fairs, the remarkable finds, and the bibliophiles, forgers, book thieves, and book hoarders he met along the way. Here we meet the infamous St. Paul Book Bandit, Stephen Blumberg, who stole 24,000 rare books worth more than fifty million dollars; John Jenkins, the Texas rare book dealer who (probably) was murdered while standing in the middle of the Colorado River; and the eccentric Melvin McCosh, who filled his dilapidated Lake Minnetonka mansion with half a million books. In 1990, with a couple of partners, Goodman opened St. Croix Antiquarian Books in Stillwater, one of the Twin Cities region’s most venerable bookshops until it closed in 2017. This store became so successful and inspired so many other booksellers to move to town that Richard Booth, founder of the “book town” movement in Hay-on-Wye in Wales, declared Stillwater the First Book Town in North America. The internet changed the book business forever, and Goodman details how, after 2000, the internet made stores like his obsolete. In the 1990s, the Twin Cities had nearly fifty secondhand bookshops; today, there are fewer than ten. As both a memoir and a history of booksellers and book scouts, criminals and collectors, The Last Bookseller offers an ultimately poignant account of the used and rare book business during its final Golden Age. Trade Review "The Last Bookseller is a readable and witty book that offers an insider’s account of a vital, disappearing trade. Packed with wry observations of colorful personalities, Gary Goodman not only captures an important moment in antiquarian book history—when a small river town in Minnesota becomes North America’s first ‘Book Town’—but also asks hard questions about what has been lost in the wake of new technology. At turns poignant, sharp, and laugh-out-loud funny, this memoir walks the fine line between being informative and wildly entertaining. Goodman offers a historical record of the book trade as well as preserving the untold stories of the men and women who made a living by selling words. Opening this book is like stepping into an old bookstore: wonders are around every corner."—Patrick Hicks, author of The Commandant of Lubizec and In the Shadow of Dora "The Last Bookseller is an extraordinary new book, a beautifully written firsthand account of the adventures of a man who was a mover and shaker in the book business for nearly half a century . . . a sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant portrait of the larger-than-life characters, including the author himself, who dominated the world of books when books were sold by warm-blooded human beings instead of by soulless robots and a few mouse clicks. The Last Bookseller will be high on the must-read list of book lovers everywhere."—Mark Ziegler, author of Wordsongs "The Last Bookseller is the story of a dying breed—the traveling rare book dealers who roamed the earth at the end of the twentieth century. I knew Gary Goodman when he was selling books from a hole-in-the-wall bookstore in East St. Paul in the early 1980s. He went on to become one of the premier booksellers in the Midwest. In witty, unvarnished prose he describes what the book business was like before the internet drove the last booksellers to near extinction. This is a story that needed to be told."—Paul “The General” Kisselburg, Kisselburg Military Books "A well-written, engaging, educational inside account by an experienced bookseller of the contemporary antiquarian book business. Told with insight, analysis, and humor by one who survived the experience."—Steve Anderson, Ross & Haines Old Books "Luckily for readers, Gary Goodman tells his story with sardonic wit and good humor. The Dickensian parade of characters in this book world makes for delightful reading. Goodman’s journey from his Arcade Street shop in 1982 to the Stillwater Book Town several decades later traverses continents and centuries of a living (and dying) book trade. A great read!"—Lynne Murphy, Valley Bookseller "Gary Goodman, a true bookman in every sense, offers us a long-awaited memoir of the rich antiquarian bookselling tradition in the Midwest. The Last Bookseller is a delightful, behind-the-scenes account of his resolute pursuit of rare books and the building of one of the great bookstores in the region. And while there is much to lament about the decline of fine secondhand bookshops, Goodman’s influence can still be found in those booksellers who strive to emulate his passion, integrity, and professionalism. Essential reading for anyone who has enjoyed the pleasures of a fine secondhand bookshop!"—Judith Kissner, Scout & Morgan Books "A memoir from one of the last ‘hunter-gatherers in the book business.’ Goodman has all the requisite irascibility for a bookseller . . . lots of fun anecdotes about book thieves, bibliomaniacs, and other familiars of the book business."—Kirkus Reviews "Highly recommended, partly for Goodman's portrait of a lost world, but also for its colorful dramatis personae."—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post "His wry and relatable chronicle of the trials and tribulations of an antiquarian bookseller in the Midwest as he builds an empire—or close enough, North America’s first book town—in Stillwater, Minnesota, is a worthy addition to the genre of ‘Golden Age’ booksellers’ memoirs. "—Fine Books Magazine "A swashbuckling tale of thieves and forgers, a man who would be king, celebrities and the never-ending search for gold—in this case, books, rare ones, and the lengths some will go to acquire them. He tells his tale like a man who has seen a thing or two and lived to tell about it, a story best unwound over a beer in the corner of a dive bar. . . [a] treasure trove of a memoir."—Star Tribune "For a chronicle of one of the late, great used book dealers, look no further than Gary Goodman's The Last Bookseller: A Life in the Rare Book Trade"—Minnesota Alumni "A wry, unvarnished chronicle of a career in the rare book trade during its last Golden Age."—Access Press "A desperate yet hilarious account of a career as a used and rare book dealer in Minnesota."—The New Indian Express "Poignant on the slow death of the independent bookshop, genially bemused by customers’ foibles, excited by rare finds and understandably grumpy about the depredations of the internet."—Times Literary Supplement Table of Contents Contents Introduction 1. Four Thousand Bad Books 2. Book Scouts and Dead Booksellers 3. Billions of Books 4. All for the Want of a Book 5. A Book Fair with the General 6. Bookman’s Alley and McCosh’s Mansion 7. Beating the Bushes 8. A Bookstore in Stillwater 9. Hoarding and Horse Barns 10. Travels to Book Towns 11. The King of Hay-on-Wye 12. The Mormon and the Map Thief 13. North America’s First Book Town 14. The Book Collectors 15. The Stillwater Booktown Times 16. The Beginning of the End 17. Survival Tactics Epilogue Appendix: Travel Journal Acknowledgments Bibliography

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Book SynopsisA wry, unvarnished chronicle of a career in the rare book trade—now in paperback When Gary Goodman wandered into a run-down, used-book shop that was going out of business in East St. Paul in 1982, he had no idea the visit would change his life. He walked in as a psychiatric counselor and walked out as the store’s new owner. In The Last Bookseller Goodman describes his sometimes desperate, sometimes hilarious career as a used and rare book dealer in Minnesota—the early struggles, the travels to estate sales and book fairs, the remarkable finds, and the bibliophiles, forgers, book thieves, and book hoarders he met along the way. Here we meet the infamous St. Paul Book Bandit, Stephen Blumberg, who stole 24,000 rare books worth more than fifty million dollars; John Jenkins, the Texas rare book dealer who (probably) was murdered while standing in the middle of the Colorado River; and the eccentric Melvin McCosh, who filled his dilapidated Lake Minnetonka mansion with half a million books. In 1990, with a couple of partners, Goodman opened St. Croix Antiquarian Books in Stillwater, one of the Twin Cities region’s most venerable bookshops until it closed in 2017. This store became so successful and inspired so many other booksellers to move to town that Richard Booth, founder of the “book town” movement in Hay-on-Wye in Wales, declared Stillwater the First Book Town in North America. The internet changed the book business forever, and Goodman details how, after 2000, the internet made stores like his obsolete. In the 1990s, the Twin Cities had nearly fifty secondhand bookshops; today, there are fewer than ten. As both a memoir and a history of booksellers and book scouts, criminals and collectors, The Last Bookseller offers an ultimately poignant account of the used and rare book business during its final Golden Age. Trade Review "The Last Bookseller is a readable and witty book that offers an insider’s account of a vital, disappearing trade. Packed with wry observations of colorful personalities, Gary Goodman not only captures an important moment in antiquarian book history—when a small river town in Minnesota becomes North America’s first ‘Book Town’—but also asks hard questions about what has been lost in the wake of new technology. At turns poignant, sharp, and laugh-out-loud funny, this memoir walks the fine line between being informative and wildly entertaining. Goodman offers a historical record of the book trade as well as preserving the untold stories of the men and women who made a living by selling words. Opening this book is like stepping into an old bookstore: wonders are around every corner."—Patrick Hicks, author of The Commandant of Lubizec and In the Shadow of Dora "The Last Bookseller is an extraordinary new book, a beautifully written firsthand account of the adventures of a man who was a mover and shaker in the book business for nearly half a century . . . a sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant portrait of the larger-than-life characters, including the author himself, who dominated the world of books when books were sold by warm-blooded human beings instead of by soulless robots and a few mouse clicks. The Last Bookseller will be high on the must-read list of book lovers everywhere."—Mark Ziegler, author of Wordsongs "The Last Bookseller is the story of a dying breed—the traveling rare book dealers who roamed the earth at the end of the twentieth century. I knew Gary Goodman when he was selling books from a hole-in-the-wall bookstore in East St. Paul in the early 1980s. He went on to become one of the premier booksellers in the Midwest. In witty, unvarnished prose he describes what the book business was like before the internet drove the last booksellers to near extinction. This is a story that needed to be told."—Paul “The General” Kisselburg, Kisselburg Military Books "A well-written, engaging, educational inside account by an experienced bookseller of the contemporary antiquarian book business. Told with insight, analysis, and humor by one who survived the experience."—Steve Anderson, Ross & Haines Old Books "Luckily for readers, Gary Goodman tells his story with sardonic wit and good humor. The Dickensian parade of characters in this book world makes for delightful reading. Goodman’s journey from his Arcade Street shop in 1982 to the Stillwater Book Town several decades later traverses continents and centuries of a living (and dying) book trade. A great read!"—Lynne Murphy, Valley Bookseller "Gary Goodman, a true bookman in every sense, offers us a long-awaited memoir of the rich antiquarian bookselling tradition in the Midwest. The Last Bookseller is a delightful, behind-the-scenes account of his resolute pursuit of rare books and the building of one of the great bookstores in the region. And while there is much to lament about the decline of fine secondhand bookshops, Goodman’s influence can still be found in those booksellers who strive to emulate his passion, integrity, and professionalism. Essential reading for anyone who has enjoyed the pleasures of a fine secondhand bookshop!"—Judith Kissner, Scout & Morgan Books "A memoir from one of the last ‘hunter-gatherers in the book business.’ Goodman has all the requisite irascibility for a bookseller . . . lots of fun anecdotes about book thieves, bibliomaniacs, and other familiars of the book business."—Kirkus Reviews "Highly recommended, partly for Goodman's portrait of a lost world, but also for its colorful dramatis personae."—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post "His wry and relatable chronicle of the trials and tribulations of an antiquarian bookseller in the Midwest as he builds an empire—or close enough, North America’s first book town—in Stillwater, Minnesota, is a worthy addition to the genre of ‘Golden Age’ booksellers’ memoirs. "—Fine Books Magazine "A swashbuckling tale of thieves and forgers, a man who would be king, celebrities and the never-ending search for gold—in this case, books, rare ones, and the lengths some will go to acquire them. He tells his tale like a man who has seen a thing or two and lived to tell about it, a story best unwound over a beer in the corner of a dive bar. . . [a] treasure trove of a memoir."—Star Tribune "For a chronicle of one of the late, great used book dealers, look no further than Gary Goodman's The Last Bookseller: A Life in the Rare Book Trade"—Minnesota Alumni "A wry, unvarnished chronicle of a career in the rare book trade during its last Golden Age."—Access Press "A desperate yet hilarious account of a career as a used and rare book dealer in Minnesota."—The New Indian Express "Poignant on the slow death of the independent bookshop, genially bemused by customers’ foibles, excited by rare finds and understandably grumpy about the depredations of the internet."—Times Literary Supplement Table of Contents Contents Introduction 1. Four Thousand Bad Books 2. Book Scouts and Dead Booksellers 3. Billions of Books 4. All for the Want of a Book 5. A Book Fair with the General 6. Bookman’s Alley and McCosh’s Mansion 7. Beating the Bushes 8. A Bookstore in Stillwater 9. Hoarding and Horse Barns 10. Travels to Book Towns 11. The King of Hay-on-Wye 12. The Mormon and the Map Thief 13. North America’s First Book Town 14. The Book Collectors 15. The Stillwater Booktown Times 16. The Beginning of the End 17. Survival Tactics Epilogue Appendix: Travel Journal Acknowledgments Bibliography

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Book SynopsisA micro-biography of horror fiction’s most influential author and his love–hate relationship with New York City. By the end of his life and near financial ruin, pulp horror writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft resigned himself to the likelihood that his writing would be forgotten. Today, Lovecraft stands alongside J. R. R. Tolkien as the most influential genre writer of the twentieth century. His reputation as an unreformed racist and bigot, however, leaves readers to grapple with his legacy. Midnight Rambles explores Lovecraft’s time in New York City, a crucial yet often overlooked chapter in his life that shaped his literary career and the inextricable racism in his work. Initially, New York stood as a place of liberation for Lovecraft. During the brief period between 1924 and 1926 when he lived there, Lovecraft joined a creative community and experimented with bohemian living in the publishing and cultural capital of the United States. He also married fellow writer Sonia H. Greene, a Ukrainian-Jewish émigré in the fashion industry. However, cascading personal setbacks and his own professional ineptitude soured him on New York. As Lovecraft became more frustrated, his xenophobia and racism became more pronounced. New York’s large immigrant population and minority communities disgusted him, and this mindset soon became evident in his writing. Many of his stories from this era are infused with racial and ethnic stereotypes and nativist themes, most notably his overtly racist short story, “The Horror at Red Hook,” set in Red Hook, Brooklyn. His personal letters reveal an even darker bigotry. Author David J. Goodwin presents a chronological micro-biography of Lovecraft’s New York years, emphasizing Lovecraft’s exploration of the city environment, the greater metropolitan region, and other locales and how they molded him as a writer and as an individual. Drawing from primary sources (letters, memoirs, and published personal reflections) and secondary sources (biographies and scholarship), Midnight Rambles develops a portrait of a talented and troubled author and offers insights into his unsettling beliefs on race, ethnicity, and immigration.Table of ContentsIntroduction: “Age Brings Reminiscences” | 1 1 “A Person of the Most Admirable Qualities” | 17 2 “An Eastern City of Wonder” | 32 3 “It Is a Myth; A Dream” | 51 4 “Brigham Young Annexing His 27th” | 67 5 “The Somewhat Disastrous Collapse” | 80 6 “A Maze of Poverty & Uncertainty” | 96 7 “A Pleasing Hermitage” | 114 8 “Circle of Aesthetic Dilettante” | 131 9 “Long Live the State of Rhode- Island” | 154 Conclusion: “The Merest Vague Dream” | 169 Acknowledgments | 181 Notes | 185 Bibliography | 251 Index | 269

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Book SynopsisThis book offers a unique twist to the Who's Who of midcentury writers, editors, and artistsMuch is made of Flannery O'Connor's life on the Georgia dairy farm, Andalusiaa rural setting that clearly influenced her writing. But before she lived on that farm, before she showed signs of having lupus, before she became dependent on her mother and then succumbed to the disease at thirty-nine, O'Connor lived in the northeast. She stayed at the artists' colony Yaddo in 1948 and early 1949 and lived in Connecticut with good friends from fall of 1949 through all of 1950. But in between those experiences, and perhaps more importantly, O'Connor lived in Manhattan.In her biographies, little is said of her time in Gotham; in some sources, this period gets no more than one sentence. But little is said because little has been known. In Flannery O'Connor's Manhattan, the author's goal is to explore New York City from O'Connor's point of view. To do this, the author consults

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Book SynopsisThis book offers a unique twist to the Who's Who of midcentury writers, editors, and artistsMuch is made of Flannery O'Connor's life on the Georgia dairy farm, Andalusiaa rural setting that clearly influenced her writing. But before she lived on that farm, before she showed signs of having lupus, before she became dependent on her mother and then succumbed to the disease at thirty-nine, O'Connor lived in the northeast. She stayed at the artists' colony Yaddo in 1948 and early 1949 and lived in Connecticut with good friends from fall of 1949 through all of 1950. But in between those experiences, and perhaps more importantly, O'Connor lived in Manhattan.In her biographies, little is said of her time in Gotham; in some sources, this period gets no more than one sentence. But little is said because little has been known. In Flannery O'Connor's Manhattan, the author's goal is to explore New York City from O'Connor's point of view. To do this, the author consults

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Book SynopsisIn Reading Alice Munro, 1973-2013, the world's leading Munro scholar offers a critical overview of Alice Munro and her writing spanning forty years. Beginning with a newly written overarching introduction, featuring directive interleaved commentaries addressing chronology and contexts, ending with encompassing afterword, this collection provides a selection of essays and reviews that reflect their times and tell the story of Munro's emergence and recognition as an internationally acclaimed writer since the 1970s.Acknowledging her beginnings and her persistence as a writer of increasingly exceptional short stories, and just short stories, it treats her career through Thacker's criticism up to her fourteenth collection, Dear Life (2012), and to the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. Altogether, this book encompasses the whole trajectory of Munro's critical presence while offering a singularly informed retrospective perspective.Trade Review"Reading Alice Munro, 19732013 brings together 16 essays written over four decades and it aims to track a perpetually deepening fascination with Munros writing, and because of that writing and its effects, with her life and the trajectory of her writing career (p. 4). Thacker introduces us to Munro and to Munro criticism and, in so doing, define[s] her emergence and contextualise[s] that emergence within Canadian literature during the last decades of the previous century and the first years of the current one (p. 18). Reading Alice Munro, 19732013 epitomizes the value of scholarly dedication and of single-author studies: Thackers own is a source of considerable inspiration and it is doubly refreshing to see how his voice grew even as Munros did. The critical reflection, a mode that Thacker employed to great effect in both the books introduction and afterword, makesan especially strong case for archival research." - Tom Ue, University of Toronto Scarborough, British Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 30, Issue 2.We have here a retrospective not only of a critical writer but also of a reader - perhaps Munroeâs most public readerâ| Throughout forty years and more, Thacker has devoted the greater share of his career to the study of Munroeâs writingâ| [This] is, in effect, a reassessment of a scholarly life - a professional autobiography in critical essays and reviews - devoted to a writer whose persistent concern was the act of reassessment. - Lorraine York, Canadian LiteratureThacker is distinguished among Munroe critics . . . a valuable scholarly resource. - Sara Jamieson, University of Toronto Quarterly

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Book SynopsisMany Canadian women fiction writers have become justifiably famous. But what about women who have written non-fiction? When Anne Innis Dagg set out on a personal quest to make such non-fiction authors better known, she expected to find just a few dozen. To her delight, she unearthed 473 writers who have produced over 674 books. These women describe not only their country and its inhabitants, but a remarkable variety of other subjects: from the story of transportation to the legacy of Canadian missionary activity around the world. While most of the writers lived in what is now Canada, other authors were British or American travellers who visited Canada throughout the years and reported on what they found here. This compendium has brief biographies of all these women, short descriptions of their books, and a comprehensive index of their books' subject matters. The Feminine Gaze: A Canadian Compendium of Non-Fiction Women Authors and Their Books, 1836-1945 will be an invaluable research tool for women's studies and for all who wish to supplement the male gaze on Canada's past.

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Book SynopsisAn examination of the most significant literary criticism on Wilde at the turn of the century. In 1891, Oscar Wilde defined 'the highest criticism' as 'the record of one's own soul, and insisted that only by 'intensifying his own personality' could the critic interpret the personality and work of others. This book exploreswhat Wilde meant by that statement, arguing that it provides the best standard for judging literary criticism about Wilde a century after his death. Melissa Knox examines a range of Wilde criticism in English -- including the work of Lawrence Danson, Michael Patrick Gillespie, Ed Cohen, and Julia Prewitt Brown. Applying Wilde's standards to his critics, Knox discovers that the best of them take to heart Wilde's idea of the aim of criticism -- 'to see theobject as in itself it really is not.' By this, Wilde appreciates Walter Pater's profound observation that everyone sees through a 'thick wall of personality' and that, therefore, objectivity as conceived by Matthew Arnold does not exist. Admiring Pater, Wilde became a prophet for Freud, his exact contemporary. Their intellectual sympathies, made obvious in Knox's exegesis, help to make the case for Wilde as a modern, not a Victorian. Melissa Knox's book Oscar Wilde: A Long and Lovely Suicide was published in 1994. She teaches at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany.Trade ReviewUseful as a starting-point for the curious reader. * THE WILDEAN *Table of ContentsIntroduction Geistesgeschichte New Historicism Gay, Queer, and Gender Criticism Reader Response Criticism Irish Ethnic Studies and Cultural Criticism Biographic Studies Summary and Future Trends Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisThe first detailed study of a major but neglected work by Thoreau. Until very recently, only a handful of Thoreau specialists knew of the existence of 'The Dispersion of Seeds', an ecological treatise written during the last years of Thoreau's life, which has been reconstructed and edited, and was published for the first time in 1993. Thoreau's Late Career and the Dispersion of Seeds, the first full-length study of this important late work by Thoreau, analyzes literary features of 'The Dispersion of Seeds' that make it an accomplished work of the imagination, and applies interdisciplinary scholarship in order to relate Thoreau's prescient ecology to scientific issues of his day and ours. Thus it demonstrates that in his late career Thoreauwas working as scientist and poet simultaneously. Berger further explores how Thoreau managed the philosophical and rhetorical tensions involved in bridging the supposed gap between science and poetry, and how, in his later career, he embraced the empirical method of scientific discovery while challenging the reductive assumptions of scientific materialism. In these specific ways Berger's study advances new understandings of Thoreau's purposes and accomplishments during his post-Walden career. Michael Berger, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English and Communications at The Christ College of Nursing and Health Sciences in Cincinnati. He is on the Board of Directors ofThe Thoreau Society.Trade ReviewHis is the first full-length study of [Thoreau's] little known work, The Dispersion of Seeds. * INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND ENVIRONMENT *Berger has helped further our understanding of the ways in which Thoreau's turn to science gave him a renewed literary vitality. Moreover, he makes an especially important contribution in the precision with which he connects Thoreau's protoecological concepts to the science of ecology as it developed in the 140 years after Thoreau's death. * ISIS *Table of ContentsFrom Walden Pond to Main Street The Saunterer's Vision: Thoreau's Epiphany of Forest Dynamics in The Dispersion of Seeds Seed Dispersal Ecology: Thoreau's Science in The Dispersion of Seeds The Sign of the Scarlet Oak Leaf: Thoreau's Epistemological Meditations in the Late Writings Appendices Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisA collection of new essays on the multi-talented Canadian writerMargaret Atwood. Novelist, poet, cultural critic, Margaret Atwood is one of the most fascinating, versatile, and productive authors of our time, a superb writer in any genre she chooses to tackle. This book was prepared on the occasion of Atwood's sixtieth birthday in November 1999. Its first aim is therefore to take stock of Atwood's multifarious works and international impact at the height of her creative powers. Secondly, the book serves as a wide-ranging introduction to the writer and her works. Fifteen informative articles written specifically for this volume by Atwood specialists from Canada, the USA, the UK, Germany, and France treat her life and status, her works (up-to-date surveyarticles on Atwood's novels, short fiction, poetry, and literary and cultural criticism), and important approaches to her works (from the standpoints of gender politics, mythology, ecology, popular culture, constructivism, and Canadian nationalism). A final section on creativity, transmission, and reception includes an interview with Atwood on creativity, statements by some of Atwood's important transmitters, including publishers, editors, literaryagents, and translators, and some 15 statements by Atwood's fellow writers, in which they explore her importance for them. A number of photographs of Atwood, several cartoonsdrawn by and about her, an up-to-date bibliography ofworks by and about her, and an index round out the volume. Reingard M. Nischik is Professor of American literature at the University of Konstanz, Germany.Trade ReviewWinner of the Best Book Award of the Margaret Atwood Society, 1999/2000. * . *Represents the best collective Atwood criticism that I have seen for years. * NEWSLETTER OF THE MARGARET ATWOOD SOCIETY *Presents a superb overview of Canada's most famous living author. * CHOICE *An impressive international list of contributors... * STUDIES IN THE NOVEL *Provides a positive example of cross-national scholarly collaboration and includes the perspective of the literary publishing world. * ZEITSCHRIFT FUER KANADA-STUDIEN *Succeeds in presenting an accessible and comprehensive introduction to Atwood's works and her critical contexts. * CANADIAN LITERATURE *An extremely valuable research tool and a magnificent hommage to an equally magnificent writer. * ETUDES CANADIENNES/CANADIAN STUDIES *An excellent volume...an important enrichment of Atwood scholarship. * ANGLISTIK *... serious critical work from some of the most substantial contemporary Atwood scholars. * EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES *An invaluable resource, well organised and beautifully presented. * BRITISH JOURNAL OF CANADIAN STUDIES *[T]he volume [has] that special something, not least in the particular and in this context exclusively positive kind of hybridity that makes it the ideal medium for the representation of Margaret Atwood in all her facets. The unique structure of the volume and its high scholarly standards along with the simultaneous inclusion of very personal glimpses at the life and work of the author make [it] a book with enough breadth and depth to stand out among the countless books on Atwood. * GERMANISCH-ROMANISCHE MONATSSCHRIFT *Table of ContentsPart I Life and status. Part II Works. Part III Approaches. Part IV Creativity, transmission, reception. Cartoons by and on Margaret Atwood.

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Book SynopsisNew, interdisciplinary essays on an array of topics ranging from Goethe and mineralogy to theories of masculinity around 1800. The Goethe Yearbook, first published in 1982, is a publication of the Goethe Society of North America and is dedicated to North American Goethe Scholarship. It aims above all to encourage and publish original English-language contributions to the understanding of Goethe and other authors of the Goethezeit, while also welcoming contributions from scholars around the world. Goethe Yearbook 15 features an array of interdisciplinary essays,among them articles on Goethe and such topics as architecture, mineralogy, theatrical improvisation, and Ulrich von Hutten. Readers will also find two astute and erudite interpretations of key poems, Alexis und Dora and Urworte. Orphisch, as well as a compelling exploration of the legal, social, and economic issues pertaining to the question: "Why Did Goethe Marry When He Did?" An interpretation of Goethe's Elective Affinities, two essays on Schiller's plays, and an incisive analysis by Peter Uwe Hohendahl titled "The New Man: Theories of Masculinity Around 1800" round out the volume. Contributors: Ehrhard Bahr, Yasser Derwiche Djazaerly, Robert Germany, Albert E. Gurganus, Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Jocelyn Hollnad, Borge Kristiansen, Elizabeth Powers, Daniel Purdy, Peter J. Schwartz, and Christoph Schweitzer Simon J. Richter is Professor of German at the University ofPennsylvania, and Daniel Purdy is Associate Professor of German at Pennsylvania State University. Book review editor Martha B. Helfer is Professor of German at Rutgers University.Trade Review[This volume] yet again establishes the journal as an outstanding venue for current scholarship on Goethe, Schiller, and German culture around 1800. . . . [E]xceptional individual studies providing noteworthy insights into several key questions of Goethe scholarship. Yet it is in the juxtaposition of the various articles, and the thereby divergent . . . views that they present, where one finds some of the most extraordinary insights. . . . It's a volume well worth reading in its entirety. * THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CURRENT BIBLIOGRAPHY *Table of ContentsGoethe's Reception of Ulrich von Hutten - Yasser Derwiche Djazaerly The School of Shipwrecks: Improvisation in Wilhelm Meisters theatrilische Sendung and the Lehrjahre - Jocelyn Holland The Sublime, "Über den Granit," and the Prehistory of Goethe's Science - Elizabeth Powers The Building in Bildung: Goethe, Palladio, and the Architectural Media - Daniel Purdy Virgilian Retrospection in Goethe's Alexis und Dora - Robert Germany Typologies of Repetition, Reflection, and Recurrence: Interpreting the Novella in Goethe's Wahlverwandtschaften - Albert E Gurganus Why Did Goethe Marry When He Did? - Peter J. Schwartz Zum Verhältnis von Selbstsein und Miteinandersein - Borge Kristiansen Schiller's Die Räuber: Revenge, Sacrifice, and the Terrible Price of Absolute Freedom - Christoph E Schweitzer Wallensteins Tod as a "Play of Mourning": Death and Mourning in the Aesthetics of Schiller's Classicism - Ehrhard Bahr The New Man: Theories of Masculinity around 1800 - Peter Uwe Hohendahl

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Book SynopsisUp-to-date and extensive revision of Najder's much-acclaimed scholarly biography of Conrad, employing newly accessible sources. Joseph Conrad is not only one of the world's great writers of English -- and world -- literature, but was a writer who lived a particularly full and interesting life. For the biographer this is a double-edged sword, however: thereare many periods for which documentation is uncommonly difficult. Zdzislaw Najder's meticulously documented biography first appeared in English in 1983, garnering high praise as the best, most complete biography of Conrad. Najder's command of English, French, Polish, and Russian allowed him access to a greater variety of sources than any other biographer, and his Polish background and his own experience as an exile have afforded him a unique affinity forConrad and his milieu. All this has come into play once again in the present, extensively revised edition: much of its extensive new material was unearthed in newly-opened former east-bloc archives. There is new material on Conrad's father's genealogy and his role in Polish politics; Conrad's service in the French and British merchant marines; his early English reading and correspondence; his experiences in the Congo; the circumstances of writing his memoirs, and much more. In addition, several aspects of Conrad's life and works are more thoroughly analyzed: his problems with the English language; his borrowings from French writers; his attitude toward socialism, his reaction to the reception of his books. Zdzislaw Najder teaches at the European Academy, Cracow.Trade ReviewThe most scholarly, most comprehensive, as well as the most faithfully Conradian account of the writer's life . Especially with the publication of its new edition . unlikely to be surpassed for a long time to come. * HUNGARIAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES *A great achievement in revealing to us with honesty and compassion a writer of immense moral stature and untiring devotion to his art. * POLISH REVIEW *The revisions ... further strengthen what was already the indispensable biography. They are extensive and substantial, incorporating not only Najder's own discoveries but those by such distinguished scholars as Andrew Busza, J. H. Stape, the late Sylvère Monod, and the late Hans van Marle. --Laurence Davies, University of Glasgow, General Editor of Conrad's Collected Letters * . *A heroic achievement. * THE INDEPENDENT *A portrait of a remarkable human in his native milieu and the story of how he adapted to a very different environment. Najder's Conrad is a man of deep emotions under a mask of circumspection. [Builds] up a detailed portrait of Conrad using every scrap of available information. * LITERARY REVIEW *A pleasure to read. This present edition is a fifth revision and the second published in English. [The author provides] material formerly unavailable. * POLISH AMERICAN JOURNAL *When I reviewed the first English edition of this book in 1984, I called it 'the richest and most persuasive portrait of Conrad we have had or will probably ever have.' Happily, however, the author hasn't rested on his laurels. Once again, Professor Najder sets the very highest biographical standard. Everything that has come to light about Conrad during the past quarter-century is now seamlessly integrated into the revised text. Many facts are new, but Najder's perspective remains unchanged -- because, quite simply, he got it exactly right the first time. -- Frederick CrewsNajder's book is a thoroughly updated and revised version of his Conrad biography of 1983...Najder's forte is not only Conrad's Polish background but Conrad's Polish perspective which describes and 'translates' attitudes, mental states as well as cultural norms and values...unfamiliar to non-Polish readers. * ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR ANGLISTIK UND AMERIKANISTIK *Table of ContentsIn the Shadow of Alien Ghosts: 1857-1874 - Zdzislaw Najder In Marseilles: 1874-1878 - Zdzislaw Najder The Red Ensign: 1878-1886 - Zdzislaw Najder Master in the British Merchant Marine: 1886-1890 - Zdzislaw Najder To the End of the Night: 1890 - Zdzislaw Najder The Sail and the Pen: 1891-1894 - Zdzislaw Najder Work and Romance: 1894-1896 - Zdzislaw Najder Strivings, Experiments, Doubts: 1896-1898 - Zdzislaw Najder Ford, the Pent, and Jim: 1898-1900 - Zdzislaw Najder Difficult Maturity: 1900-1904 - Zdzislaw Najder Uphill: 1904-1909 - Zdzislaw Najder Crisis and Success: 1910-1914 - Zdzislaw Najder Journey to Poland: 1914 - Zdzislaw Najder The War and the Memories: 1914-1919 - Zdzislaw Najder Hope and Resignation: 1919-1924 - Zdzislaw Najder

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Book SynopsisBy reconsidering Kleist's reception of Rousseau and placing it in historical context, this book sheds new light on a range of political and ethical issues at play in Kleist's work. Heinrich von Kleist is renowned as an author who posed a radical challenge to the orthodoxies of his age. Today, his works are frequently seen to relentlessly deconstruct the paradigms of Idealism and to reflect a Romantic, even postmodern, perspective on the ambiguities of the world. Such a view fails, however, to do full justice to the more complex manner in which Kleist articulates the tensions between the securities of Enlightenment thought and the anxieties of the revolutionary age. Steven Howe offers a new angle on Kleist's dialogue with the Enlightenment by reconsidering his investment in the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Where previous critics have trivialized this as intense but fleeting and born of personal identification, Howe here establishes Rousseau's importance as a lasting source of inspiration for the violent constellations of Kleist's fiction. Taking account of both Rousseau'scritique of modernity and his later propositions for working toward the Enlightenment promise of emancipation, the book locates a mode of discourse which, placed in the historical context of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, sheds new light on the political and ethical issues at play in Kleist's work. Steven Howe is Associate Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, UK. He is co-editor, with Ricarda Schmidt and Seán Allan, of Heinrich von Kleist: Konstruktive und Destruktive Funktionen von Gewalt (forthcoming, 2012).Trade ReviewA] fascinating study of Rousseau's seminal influence on Kleist. Although [Kleist's] response to Rousseau and other philosophers has been addressed before . . . no one has treated the subject as thoroughly and with as much aplomb as Howe. . . . [His] contribution is to fill in the literary-historical gaps and to set a standard that will serve as a scholarly reference point for years to come. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Howe's intricately argued and meticulously documented study is an important contribution to reading Kleist in his historical and intellectual element. . . . [Howe's] positions are well considered and weighed carefully against scholarly alternatives, his judgments are nuanced, and the breadth and depth of his reading of Kleist are impressive. An important contribution that will appeal to readers interested in Rousseau and his German reception and the role of ethics and political violence in Kleist. -- Joseph D. O'Neill * GOETHE YEARBOOK *[O]ffers a detailed and rewarding assessment of Kleist's engagement with Rousseau's political and ethical theories. . . . [T]his excellent monograph is to be strongly recommended. Not only does it provide a valuable addition to Kleist scholarship, but it will [also] serve as an invaluable reference point for scholars working more generally on German literature and culture around 1800. -- Ernest Schonfield * ORBIS LITTERARUM *[Howe] sets out moments in Rousseau . . . that address the different problems raised [in the works of Kleist he examines] and makes his own judicious contribution . . . . The results . . . are all the more valuable for being carefully grounded in evidence and not over-stated. . . . [A]cademically impeccable and grounded in a really impressive grasp of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century political and moral thought. -- Michael Minden * JOURNAL FOR EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES *Howe's readings prove an impressive attempt at sharpening the analytical depth and accuracy of Kleist's engagement with Rousseau's philosophy. -- Sarah Wilewski * JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN STUDIES *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Interpreting Kleist's Paradoxes Kleist, Rousseau, and the Paradoxes of Enlightenment Das Erdbeben in Chili Die Verlobung in St. Domingo Die Herrmannsschlacht Prinz Friedrich von Homburg Conclusion

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Book SynopsisFrom the moment Katherine Anne Porter arrived on the American literary scene in 1922, the public was intrigued with her life. Yet she herself revealed only scant facts of her background and often gave conflicting accounts. She maintained, though, that a germ of her own experience lay at the core of everything she wrote. In Katherine Anne Porter: The Life of an Artist, Darlene Harbour Unrue finds that Porter's deceptions were a screen for deep personal turmoil. With unprecedented access to archival and personal papers, Unrue brings much new information to light. Porter's maternal grandmother was institutionalized; Porter had more marriages than she acknowledged; she lost babies to miscarriage, abortion, and stillbirth, and she grieved over her failed motherhood. Ever present were her fears of exile and insanity. Despite these constant fears, Porter (1890-1980) lived an extraordinary life that vaulted her from poverty and obscurity to wealth and the fame of being a best-selling author. She experienced or observed many of the major events of the twentieth century. So often on the move, she lived in Greenwich Village during its heyday as a hotbed of radical politics and experimental art, in Mexico during the cultural revolution of the 1920s, in Europe during the rise of Nazism, and in America during the Cold War. Thirteen years old when she first rode in an automobile and saw an airplane, she was invited in her last decade to observe and write about the launching of the final Apollo space ship. Asked to summarize her own life, Porter was fond of quoting Madame Du Barry: ""My life has been incredible. I don't believe a word of it!"" Darlene Harbour Unrue is a professor of English at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. She has written several books on Katherine Anne Porter, including Understanding Katherine Anne Porter and Truth and Vision in Katherine Anne Porter's Fiction.

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Book SynopsisUncovers the life of Jane Cumming, who scandalized her contemporaries with tales of sexual deviancy but also defied cultural norms, standing up to male authority figures and showing resilience. In 1810 Edinburgh, the orphaned Scottish-Indian schoolgirl Jane Cumming alleged that her two schoolmistresses were sexually intimate. The allegation spawned a defamation suit that pitted Jane's grandmother, a member of the Scottish landed gentry, against two young professional women who were romantic friends. During the trial, the boundary between passion and friendship among women was debated and Jane was viewed "orientally," as morally corrupt and hypersexual. Located at the intersection of race, sex, and class, the case has long been a lightning rod for scholars of cultural studies, women's and gender history, and, given Lillian Hellman's appropriation of Jane's story in her 1934 play The Children's Hour, theater history as well. Frances B. Singh's wide-ranging biography, however, takes a new, psychological approach, putting the notorious case in the context of a life that was marked by loss, separation, abandonment--and resilience. Grounded in archival and genealogical sources never before consulted, Singh's narrative reconstructs Cumming's life from its inauspicious beginnings in a Calcutta orphanage through her schooling in Elgin and Edinburgh, an abusive marriage, her adherence to the Free Church at the time of the Scottish Disruption, and her posthumous life in Hellman's Broadway play. Singh provides a detailed analysis not only of the case itself, but of how both Jane's and her teachers' lives were affected in the aftermath.Trade Review[Makes] an important contribution to unveiling the complicated relationship that involves racial, gender/sexual, and class prejudice in nineteenth-century Scotland. * BAVS NEWSLETTER *A welcome addition to histories of modern sexuality in Scotland, a field in which significant lacunae remain. * INNES REVIEW *A pacy highly readable and detailed account of the fascinating life of a young Indian-Scottish woman. * HISTORY SCOTLAND *This book is one of the first monographs to grapple with the history of Indian-Scottish children and in its rich research begins to open up the experiences of such children and to ask what happened to them when they were placed in Scottish society. In this, it offers an important starting point for what shall no doubt become a larger conversation. * English Historical Review *Singh's lively conference presentations . . . have prompted many of us to express hope that she would offer us a deeper dive into the influences around and within the life of a woman who embodies the figure of an outsider in many ways . . . The result is a many-faceted examination of not just Cumming and her extended family, but the eighteenth century as a whole. -- Susan Spencer, University of Oklahoma * Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer *Scandal and Survival is a timely and interesting contribution to the literature on the ways that concepts of race and sexuality shaped the lives of early 19th-century women. The use of recent sociological work on the experience of international adoptions adds a compelling frame to the treatment of Jane Cumming's experience. * Pam Perkins, University of Manitoba *Frances Singh's new biography brilliantly narrates each dramatic turn in this serpentine saga, giving perhaps the most detailed and thorough account yet of Cumming's extraordinary life. . . . Singh's thorough scholarship makes an important contribution to that effort and reveals an early modern world that bears some astonishing similarities to the present. * 1650–1850 Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Placing Jane Ante Jane Educating Jane (1) Educating Jane (2) Jane and the Lords of the Law (1) Jane and the Lords of the Law (2) Jane and William Tulloch Jane, Posthumously Conclusion: Assessing Jane Acknowledgments Appendix A: Marianne Woods, Jane Pirie and Romantic Friendship Appendix B: What Really Happened to Miss Marianne Woods and Miss Jane Pirie? Appendix C: Corinna: A Ballad Appendix D: Richard Rose's letter Written from the Manse of Kinnedar dated January 12, 1835 Appendix E: Jane's letter Written from the Dallas Manse dated 15 February 1836 to Sir William regarding wood stealing at Dallas Works Cited

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Book SynopsisHistorian Jeremy Black is comprehensive, as ever, but in his treatment of the British Gothic novel his greatest service is the preservation of the detail––namely, the human impetus behind art that is often undervalued. Gothic novelists were purposeful, thoughtful, and engaged questions and feelings that ultimately shaped a century of culture. Black notes that the Gothic novel is also very much about "morality and deploying history accordingly." The true interest of the Gothic novel is more remarkable than it is grisly: the featured darkness and macabre are not meant to usurp heroism and purity, but will fall hard under the over-ruling hand of Providence and certainty of retribution. Black's understanding of the Gothic writer is a remarkable contribution to the legacy of British literature and the novel at large. Once again, in Black thoroughness meets fidelity and the reader is overcome with his own insights into the period on the merit of Black's efforts. In The Weight of Words Series, Black is devoted to the preservation of the memory of British literary genius, and in so doing he is carving out a niche for himself. As in the Gothic novel where landscapes give quarter to influences that seem to interact with the human fates that freely wander in, reading Black is an experience of suddenly finding oneself in possession of an education, and his allure takes a cue from the horrific Gothic tempt.

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Book Synopsis"This book fits into a sequence of books I have written in which writers are used to throw light on their times, and vice versa, a sequence beginning with Fleming, Shakespeare and Austen, and continuing with Dickens, Christie, Doyle, Fielding, Smollett and the Gothic novelists. I have found the approach a fascinating one, not least in leading me to re-read much from earlier years. […] This study is not a biography, in whole or part, of Defoe. […] Instead of biography, we have here a study of Britain in the Age of Defoe, a work intended to throw light on his life and to benefit from a close reading of his works, but also to stand on its own separate to an engagement with the author himself. The range of Defoe’s interest and the extent of his writings would make the latter a different task, as indeed any attempt to offer an easy coherence to personality, career and works. Yet, Defoe can be approached as a traveller, both literally so, and in his interests and imagination. […] In his range of interests, vigorous engagement with life and issues, often polemical content and style, and willingness to engage with low life, Defoe prefigures Tobias Smollett, another writer covered in this series and, to a lesser extent, Henry Fielding, who can be more ‘polite.’ Defoe was an outsider, as Smollett was to be, but as Fielding certainly was not. ‘One whose business is observation,’ Defoe’s description of himself in his Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–6), captured, however, a pose as well as a reality, for he had values aplenty to offer. As a writer, Defoe brought together a reality usually presented as, and endorsed by, history, with the imaginative focus of storytelling, and the direction of, variously, propaganda, analysis, and exemplary tale." — Taken from the Preface

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Book SynopsisDuring more than a half century at the University of Notre Dame, Dr. Ralph McInerny’s legendary achievements include writing more than 50 non-fiction books in philosophy, medieval studies, and theology, as well as more than 90 novels, including the Father Dowling Murder Mystery series. This volume offers personal reflections on the man himself and what he meant to so many over his rich life of teaching, writing, and contributing to the life of the mind. Alasdair MacIntyre, Cardinal Francis George, Ralph’s brother D.Q. McInerny, Michael Novak, John Haldane, Joseph Bottum, Thomas De Konick, Jude P. Dougherty, Gerard V. Bradley, Fr. Marvin O’Connell, and many others (see below) aim to capture some of the ‘more’ that was McInerny, a more that cannot be captured by any curriculum vitae, even one as impressive as Ralph’s. The stories, anecdotes, and reflections in this volume give us various snapshots of the man that cannot be found in news accounts, press releases, or academic evaluations. A person as great as Ralph should not live merely in memory, so some record such as this volume written his friends, colleagues, and former students becomes appropriate. Also included is a full list of all the books – fiction and non-fiction – authored by McInerny as well as enumeration of his forty-eight doctoral students and their dissertations completed under his direction. Finally, the collection is rounded out by five contributions by McInerny himself: a poem about his late wife Connie, a scholarly article “Why I Am a Thomist,” a popular essay, “Mementoes Never Die,” an early Roger Knight mystery entitled “Dust Abhors a Vacuum,” as well as his last written words.

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Book SynopsisDuring the last months of the war, Josef Pieper saw the realization of a long-cherished plan to escape from the “lethal chaos” that was the Germany of that time, “plucked,” he writes, “as was Habakkuk, by the hair of his head . . . to be planted into a realm of the most peaceful seclusion, whose borders and exists were, of course, controlled by armed sentries.” There he made contact with a friend close-by, who possessed an amazing library, and Pieper hit upon the idea of reading the letters of Goethe from that library. Soon, however, he decided to read the entire Weimar edition of fifty volumes, which were brought to him in sequence, two or three at a time.The richness of this life revealing itself over a period of more than sixty years appeared before my gaze in its truly overpowering magnificence, which almost shattered my powers of comprehension – confined, as they had been, to the most immediate and pressing concerns. What a passionate focus on reality in all its forms, what an undying quest to chase down all that is in the world, what strength to affirm life, what ability to take part in it, what vehemence in the way he showed his dedication to it! Of course, too, what ability to limit himself to what was appropriate; what firm control in inhibiting what was purely aimless; what religious respect for the truth of being! I could not overcome my astonishment; and the prisoner entered a world without borders, a world in which the fact of being in prison was of absolutely no significance. But no matter how many astonishing things I saw in these unforgettable weeks of undisturbed inner focus, nothing was more surprising or unexpected than this: to realize how much of what was peculiar to this life occurred in carefully preserved seclusion; how much the seemingly communicative man who carried on a world-wide correspondence still never wanted to expose in words the core of his existence. It was precisely in the seclusion, the limitation, the silence of Goethe that made the strongest impact on Pieper. Here was modern Germany’s quintessential conversationalist intellectual, but the strength of his words came from the restraint behind them, even to the point of purposeful forgetting:The culmination is when the eighty-year-old sees forgetting not as a convulsive refusal to think of things, but as what could almost be termed a physiological process of simple forgetting as a function of life. He praises as “a great gift of the gods” . . . “the ethereal stream of forgetfulness” which he “was always able to value, to use, and to heighten.” However manifold the forms of this silence and of their unconscious roots and conscious motives may have been, is it not always the possibility of hearing, the possibility of a purer perception of reality that is aimed at? And so, is not Goethe’s type of silence above all the silence of one who listens? . . . This listening silence is much deeper than the mere refraining from words and speech in human intercourse. It means a stillness, which, like a breath, has penetrated into the inmost chamber of one’s own soul. It is meant, in the Goethean “maxim,” to “deny myself as much as possible and to take up the object into myself as purely as it is possible to do.” . . . The meaning of being silent is hearing – a hearing in which the simplicity of the receptive gaze at things is like the naturalness, simplicity, and purity of one receiving a confidence, the reality of which is creatura, God’s creation. And insofar as Goethe’s silence is in this sense a hearing silence, to that extent it has the status of the model and paradigm – however much, in individual instances, reservations and criticism are justified. One could remain circumspectly silent about this exemplariness after the heroic nihilism of our age has proclaimed the attitude of the knower to be by no means that of a silent listener but rather as that of self-affirmation over against being: insight and knowledge are naked defiance, the severest endangering of existence in the midst of the superior strength of concrete being. The resistance of knowledge opposes the oppressive superior power. However, that the knower is not a defiant rebel against concrete being, but above all else a listener who stays silent and, on the basis of his silence, a hearer – it is here that Goethe represents what, since Pythagoras, may be considered the silence tradition of the West.Pieper concludes his remarkable find with this summation:When such talk, which one encounters absolutely everywhere in workshops and in the marketplace – and as a constant temptation – , when such deafening talk, literally out to thwart listening, is linked to hopelessness, we have to ask is there not in silence – listening silence – necessarily a shred of hope? For who could listen in silence to the language of things if he did not expect something to come of such awareness of the truth? And, in a newly founded discipline of silence, is there not a chance not merely to overcome the sterility of everyday talk but also to overcome its brother, hopelessness – possibly if only to the extent that we know the true face of this relationship? I know that here quite different forces come into play which are beyond human control, and perhaps the circulus has to be broken through in a different place. However, one may ask: could not the “quick, strict resolution” to remain silent at the same time serve as a kind of training in hope?

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Book SynopsisAcclaimed British historian examines the layers of craft and insight in Tobias Smollett, and discusses the particular nature of his genius and influence on British culture. Once again, Black acquaints the reader with the full range of a prolific writer's works and offers a backstage tour of the meaning and context of Britain's most beloved stories and story-tellers.

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Book SynopsisIlluminating the parallel and overlapping careers and relationships of Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams, this catalogue juxtaposes the two poets with unique material on view for the first time. With essays by biographer Paul Mariani, poets Paul Muldoon and Daniel Halpern, and collector Alan Klein, it represents a remarkable opportunity for understanding the overlapping careers of Stevens and Williams, their development as poets, the progression of their reputations, and the development of American Modernism.

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Book SynopsisThe first full biography of Warren Lewis, brother and secretary of C. S. LewisDetailing the life of Warren Hamilton Lewis, author Don W. King gives us new insights into the life and mind of Warren's famous brother, C. S. Lewis, and also demonstrates how Warren's experiences provide an illuminating window into the events, personalities, and culture of 20th-century England. Inkling, Historian, Soldier, and Brother will appeal to those interested in C. S. Lewis and British social and cultural history.As a career soldier, Warren served in France during the nightmare of World War I and was later posted to Sierra Leone and Shanghai. On his retirement from the army, he became an active member of the household at the Kilns, the residence outside Oxford that he co-owned with his brother and Mrs. Janie Moore, and he played an important role in the relationship between his brother and Joy Davidman, the woman who became C. S. Lewis's wife. A talented writer and accomplished amateur historian, Warren also researched and wrote seven books on 17th-century French history.Inkling, Historian, Soldier, and Brother examines Warren Lewis's role as an original member of the Oxford Inklings—that now famous group of novelists, thinkers, clergy, poets, essayists, medical men, scholars, and friends who met regularly to drink beer; discuss books, ideas, history, and writers; and share pieces of their own writing for feedback from the group. Drawing from Warren Lewis's unpublished diaries, his letters, the memoir he wrote about his family, and other primary materials, this biography is an engaging story of a fascinating life, period of history, and of the warm and loving relationship between Warren and his brother, which lasted throughout their lives.Trade ReviewIndependent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) 2023 Bronze Medal Winner in World History "A consistently interesting and well-paced life story of Warren Lewis. …. To bring Warren out of the shadows, Don King's biography draws upon a wide range of sources, especially published and unpublished passages from his diary." —CSL: The Bulletin of the New York C.S. Lewis Society "Don W. King offers a consistently fact-filled and engaging account of Warren Lewis's life and times, providing as well an illuminating social history of 20th-century Britain. This work allows readers to view C. S. Lewis's life from a new perspective. Warren's story deserves to be told, and Don King is just the right person to tell that story." —David C. Downing, codirector, Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College "King gives us a richly detailed life of Warnie Lewis to make the case that he is interesting not only because of his famous brother but in his own right. We see Warnie with C. S. Lewis growing up, living at the Kilns, and as Inklings, but we also clearly see the complexities of Warnie himself, proud soldier and self-taught historian who yet was psychologically dependent on his brother and tragically diminished by alcoholism." —John Rosegrant, author of Tolkien, Enchantment, and Loss: Steps on the Developmental Journey "King offers a treasure trove of new information and at the same time succeeds admirably in engaging both the expert and someone new to Lewis studies. This book is a must have for any serious Lewis collection—as much for its insights and commentary as for the information it provides." —Devin Brown, professor of English, Asbury University, and author of A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C. S. Lewis

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Book SynopsisAn homage to the life of poet, writer, and teaching artist Judith Tannenbaum and her impact on incarcerated and marginalized students. The Book of Judith honors Judith Tannenbaum but also reflects, through both form and content, on the complexities of seeing both the parts and the whole. The book presents different aspects of Judith—poet, teaching artist, friend, mentor, colleague—through a collection of original poetry, prose, essay, illustration, and fiction from 33 contributors. In so doing, it echoes her own determination to perceive contradiction without judgment. For the next generation of teaching artists in Corrections and elsewhere, the book serves as an inspiration on the qualities needed to survive and thrive in a multi-faceted, ever-changing environment. The book is divided into four sections, separated by riveting black and white pencil drawings inspired by the lives of those serving life in prison without possibility of parole. In Unfinished Conversations, contributors share their bond with Judith Tannenbaum through prose and excerpts from letters both real and imagined. In the second section, After December, poets reflect on the life, artistry, and legacy of Judith. The third section, Looking and Listening, focuses on the truth-seeking qualities that Judith brought to her work. The fourth section, Legacy, features work from winners of an award and a fellowship bestowed in her name.Trade ReviewThe ecosystem left in Judith Tannenbaum's wake is a colorful network of creative minds, burning hearts and artists who walk through walls: literally, and metaphorically. To be dropped into The Book of Judith is to understand what it means to be an artist-in-motion: oozing with creativity, taking risks, and crossing lines of difference to kindle the flame of connection. Judith set the path for many of us working in prisons: her legacy is a gift, inspiration, and teacher. Bless this book, and Judith's comrade Spoon for compiling it. May we all become richer teachers and learners, mentors, and friends. May we become more like Judith. -- Caits Meissner, writer and Director of Prison and Justice Writing, PEN AmericaClosing love's circuits and facilitating its flow was truly Judith's thing. All too often, women who nurture and bring forth the beauty in the world go unsung. Thank goddess, in this book, that is not the case. -- Ani DiFranco, singer, songwriter, founder of Righteous Babe Records and author of No Walls and the Recurring DreamThe Book of Judith contains remembrances of someone who gave so much to so many. And it is more—a call to action, a call to community, and a call, in so many ways, to our soul-making. The people who were touched by Judith Tannenbaum give testimony to what one person can do —with persistence, patience, and passion. It is a diverse record with poetry, memoir, storytelling, and love letters. As Spoon Jackson said, Judith waited and ‘found wisdom in silence’ and then ‘she ignited our fire.’ The giant of California literature, Luis Rodriguez, was enlisted by Judith, in the work of prison arts and finally knew ‘I am in her revolution, a rhyme warrior, who also teaches the forgotten …’ This book is in many ways a map to our own change as well as to transforming a brutal world. -- Laurie Brooks, Executive Director and Arts Administrator, William James Association

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Book SynopsisAn homage to the life of poet, writer, and teaching artist Judith Tannenbaum and her impact on incarcerated and marginalized students. The Book of Judith honors Judith Tannenbaum but also reflects, through both form and content, on the complexities of seeing both the parts and the whole. The book presents different aspects of Judith—poet, teaching artist, friend, mentor, colleague—through a collection of original poetry, prose, essay, illustration, and fiction from 33 contributors. In so doing, it echoes her own determination to perceive contradiction without judgment. For the next generation of teaching artists in Corrections and elsewhere, the book serves as an inspiration on the qualities needed to survive and thrive in a multi-faceted, ever-changing environment. The book is divided into four sections, separated by riveting black and white pencil drawings inspired by the lives of those serving life in prison without possibility of parole. In Unfinished Conversations, contributors share their bond with Judith Tannenbaum through prose and excerpts from letters both real and imagined. In the second section, After December, poets reflect on the life, artistry, and legacy of Judith. The third section, Looking and Listening, focuses on the truth-seeking qualities that Judith brought to her work. The fourth section, Legacy, features work from winners of an award and a fellowship bestowed in her name.Trade Review""The ecosystem left in Judith Tannenbaum's wake is a colorful network of creative minds, burning hearts, and artists who walk through walls, literally and metaphorically. Judith set the path for many of us working in prisons—her legacy is a gift, inspiration, and teacher."" -- Caits Meissner * writer and Director of Prison and Justice Writing, PEN America *""Closing love's circuits and facilitating its flow was truly Judith's thing. All too often, women who nurture and bring forth the beauty in the world go unsung. Thank goddess, in this book, that is not the case." " -- Ani DiFranco * singer, songwriter, founder of Righteous Babe Records and author of No Walls and The Recurring Dream *"“The Book of Judith contains remembrances of someone who gave so much to so many. And it is more— a call to action, a call to community, and a call, in so many ways, to our soul-making. The people who were touched by Judith Tannenbaum give testimony to what one person can do — with persistence, patience, and passion. It is a diverse record with poetry, memoir, storytelling, and love letters. As Spoon Jackson said, Judith waited and ‘found wisdom in silence’ and then ‘she ignited our fire.’ The giant of California literature, Luis Rodriguez, was enlisted by Judith, in the work of prison arts and finally knew ‘I am in her revolution, a rhyme warrior, who also teaches the forgotten ...’ This book is in many ways a map to our own change as well as to transforming a brutal world.” " -- Laurie Brooks * Executive Director and Arts Administrator, William James Association *"The Book of Judith is a series of prose and poetic remembrances of Judith Tannenbaum, a California-based poet who taught poetry to prisoners—to much acclaim—at San Quentin, just north of her Bay Area home. Importantly, Tannenbaum was also a national voice on the methods and values of her teaching, and a mentor, often from a distance, for many men and women who were also teaching at prisons across the country. The Book of Judith enticingly sketches aspects of her holistic (“larger picture”) approach." * Journal of Community Justice *

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Book SynopsisFirst revised edition of interviews with 14 prominent activists whose writings influenced the 1979 Nicaraguan revolution and help us understand present-day Nicaragua Margaret Randall presents a dynamic collection of personal interviews with Nicaragua's most important writer-revolutionaries who played major roles in the 1979 revolution and the subsequent reconstruction. This revised first edition includes a new preface and additional notes that frame the narrative in high relevance to the present day. The featured writer-activists speak of their work and practical tasks in constructing a new society. Among the writers included are Gioconda Belli, Tomás Borge, Omar Cabezas, Ernesto Cardenal, Vidaluz Menéses, Julio Valle-Castillo, and Daisy Zamora. The work also features 50 evocative photographs from the era by Margaret Randall.Trade ReviewThis is a book that encourages and empowers those of us who are poets, those of us who write – and those of us who work to change society to fit the hopes and dreams of the common people. -- Alice WalkerThis new collection of fourteen interviews with Nicaraguan writers is a fascinating testament to basic human possibilities despite the harshly political determinations we have forced upon them. Once again it is Margaret Randall’s unique power as a listener that can make a bridge to this complex place we must finally recognize as our common world. -- Robert CreeleyThe wonder of some of these interviews – I’m thinking of Giocanda Belli and Vidaluz Meneses particularly – the truthfulness as they tell their lives as women and literary workers in a revolutionary time … the happiness, the toll, the sacrifice that’s part of the process. And most interesting to an American woman and writer – the pride of being heard, your next poem waited for – your trade “poet” respected and emulated by the young. -- Grace Paley‘We’re all poor and we’re all poets here,’ said one of the leaders of the Revolution that’s making a nation out of a colony. In Nicaragua, a country under constant attack, a country searching for itself, there isn’t a word worthy of being spoken or written if it hasn’t first been celebrated and suffered. These interviews by Margaret Randall bear witness to that literature standing on its own two feet.” -- Eduardo Galeano

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Book SynopsisFirst revised edition of interviews with 14 prominent activists whose writings influenced the 1979 Nicaraguan revolution and help us understand present-day Nicaragua Margaret Randall presents a dynamic collection of personal interviews with Nicaragua's most important writer-revolutionaries who played major roles in the 1979 revolution and the subsequent reconstruction. This revised first edition includes a new preface and additional notes that frame the narrative in high relevance to the present day. The featured writer-activists speak of their work and practical tasks in constructing a new society. Among the writers included are Gioconda Belli, Tomás Borge, Omar Cabezas, Ernesto Cardenal, Vidaluz Menéses, Julio Valle-Castillo, and Daisy Zamora. The work also features 50 evocative photographs from the era by Margaret Randall.Trade Review"This is a book that encourages and empowers those of us who are poets, those of us who write – and those of us who work to change society to fit the hopes and dreams of the common people." -- Alice Walker"This new collection of fourteen interviews with Nicaraguan writers is a fascinating testament to basic human possibilities despite the harshly political determinations we have forced upon them. Once again it is Margaret Randall’s unique power as a listener that can make a bridge to this complex place we must finally recognize as our common world." -- Robert Creeley"The wonder of some of these interviews – I’m thinking of Giocanda Belli and Vidaluz Meneses particularly – the truthfulness as they tell their lives as women and literary workers in a revolutionary time … the happiness, the toll, the sacrifice that’s part of the process. And most interesting to an American woman and writer – the pride of being heard, your next poem waited for – your trade “poet” respected and emulated by the young." -- Grace Paley"‘We’re all poor and we’re all poets here,’ said one of the leaders of the Revolution that’s making a nation out of a colony. In Nicaragua, a country under constant attack, a country searching for itself, there isn’t a word worthy of being spoken or written if it hasn’t first been celebrated and suffered. These interviews by Margaret Randall bear witness to that literature standing on its own two feet.”" -- Eduardo Galeano

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Book SynopsisAs a novelist who has spent years crafting and refining his intense and oft outrageous ""Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction"" persona, James Ellroy has used interviews as a means of shaping narratives outside of his novels. Conversations with James Ellroy covers a series of interviews given by Ellroy from 1984 to 2010, in which Ellroy discusses his literary contribution and his public and private image.Born Lee Earle Ellroy in 1948, James Ellroy is one of the most critically acclaimed and controversial contemporary writers of crime and historical fiction. Ellroy's complex narratives, which merge history and fiction, have pushed the boundaries of the crime fiction genre: American Tabloid, a revisionist look at the Kennedy era, was Time magazine's Novel of the Year 1995, and his novels L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia were adapted into films. Much of Ellroy's remarkable life story has served as the template for the personal obsessions that dominate his writing. From the brutal, unsolved murder of his mother, to his descent into alcohol and drug abuse, his sexual voyeurism, and his stints at the Los Angeles County Jail, Ellroy has lived through a series of hellish experiences that few other writers could claim.In Conversations with James Ellroy, Ellroy talks extensively about his life, his literary influences, his persona, and his attitudes towards politics and religion. In interviews with fellow crime writers Craig McDonald, David Peace, and others, including several previously unpublished interviews, Ellroy is at turns charismatic and eloquent, combative and enigmatic.

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Book SynopsisConversations with William Maxwell collects thirty-eight interviews, public speeches, and remarks that span five decades of the esteemed novelist and New Yorker editor's career. The interviews collectively address the entirety of Maxwell's literary work--with in-depth discussion of his short stories, essays, and novels including They Came Like Swallows, The Folded Leaf, and the American Book award-winning So Long, See You Tomorrow--as well as his forty-year tenure as a fiction editor working with such luminaries as John Updike, John Cheever, Eudora Welty, Vladimir Nabokov, and J.D. Salinger. Maxwell's words spoken before a crowd, some previously unpublished, pay moving tribute to literary friends and mentors, and offer reflections on the artistic life, the process of writing, and his Midwestern heritage. All retain the reserved poignancy of his fiction. The volume publishes for the first time the full transcript of Maxwell's extensive interviews with his biographer and, in an introduction, correspondence with writers including Updike and Saul Bellow, which enlivens the stories behind his interviews and appearances.

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Book SynopsisTo read these interviews given between 1969 and 1996 is to gain insights into William Kennedy's high seriousness in pursuing the craft of fiction and to witness the artistic growth of this remarkable writer. The twenty-four interviews in this collection reveal how the opportunities and challenges in Kennedy's writing life parallel those other contemporary writers have faced in the last years of the century.""The high drama of imagined worlds,"" he says, ""becomes a Rosetta Stone, the key that unlocks the very real mysteries and complexities of our daily lives.""""You're inventing out of a confluence of known facts and random ideas,"" he says about the process of writing, ""juxtaposing reality and abstractions, and then wham! You've got something brand new in your head, and on the page. You're functioning on a plane of existence you didn't know was possible. That's creation, and it's profound pleasure. It's what you live for.""Readers of these interviews will be privy to another process as well, the arduous but exciting process by which Kennedy has emerged as a major voice in contemporary letters. His meteoric rise to fame in 1983 and his continuing popularity since are the stuff of drama and folklore. In that year his novel Ironweed, rejected earlier by thirteen publishers, was finally published by Viking. It earned him a MacArthur Award, the New York Book Critics Circle Award, and a Pulitzer Prize. Governor Mario Cuomo honored him with the New York State Governor's Arts Award and declared that in Kennedy ""Albany [had] found its Homer."" Hollywood came calling and secured screen rights to Ironweed, Legs, and Billy Phelan's Greatest Game. With Francis Ford Coppola, Kennedy co-wrote the screenplay of The Cotton Club.The career that lifted off with such dramatic momentum has shown no signs of flagging. With steady regularity, Kennedy continues to add to his Albany Cycle of novels, as he experiments boldly with the craft of fiction.

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