Description
Book SynopsisRobert Bechtold Heilman was a great literary figure of the 20th century. This work includes the letters that follow Heilman's career from the time he was a thirty-six-year-old member of Louisiana State University's English Department, through his tenure at the University of Washington from 1948 to 1975, until a few years before his death in 2004.
Trade Review"The book makes a valuable record of the intellectual ferment of the New Criticism, demonstrating its national dimensions and offering important insights on the nature of academic vocation from a man who was truly at the center."
-- Bryan A. Giemza * The Journal of Southern History *
"Reading these letters makes one eager to go back to Robert Heilman's books and articles, but it also arouses the suspicion that it may be his letters even more than his critical works, fine as they are, that have the most lasting interest..The editors can be proud of their work in assembling this monument to the humanity, integrity, and hard-earned wisdom of one of the foremost of those New Critics whose humanistic legacy has for decades been too often either neglected or distorted."
* Weekly Standard *
"Any letter of Heilman's has an astonishing measures of wit and wisdom. This book of letters constitutes the prototype of what a book of letters written to and from a great correspondent can be. I salute Heilman and his editors."
* Sewanee Review *
"Reading [these letters] reminds us that once letter writing was an art form and that through them great minds used it to seek out kindred spirits with whom to commune about the great issues of the times. The book is a feast for the intellect and literary sensibility."
* The Key Reporter, Phi Beta Kappa *
"This collection offers . . . a glimpse behind the curtain of how poets often are made famous (in part by patient and laborious handholding of fellow academics and supportive institutions), and it offers literature scholars a firsthand look at the New Criticism as it was founded and subsequently flourished."
* Choice *
"The six-hundred-plus letters selected . . . represent letter writing (almost a lost art in today's world of electronic communication) at its finest, not merely because of the articulation and use of language, but more so because of the educational issues they address and the ethical and gentlemanly manner in which Heilman responded to them."
* Academic Questions *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Editorial Practices
Introduction by Edward Alexander
1. Reading Minds and Intentions: The 1940s
2. Categories of Existence: The 1950s
3. A Mind Grappling in a New Way: The 1960s
4. The Kultur-Kampf over Literary Studies: The 1970s
5. Gains and Losses: The 1980s
6. Cast Me Not Off in Old Age: The 1990s and Beyond
Chronology
Heilman's Correspondents
Permissions
Index
