His keen grasp of human nature and a unique style of verse made Ogden Nash, in the mid-twentieth century, the most widely read and frequently quoted poet of his time. For years, readers have longed for a biography to match Nash's charm, wit, and good nature; now we have it in Douglas Parker's absorbing and delightful life of the poet. Intelligent, informative, and engaging.... There is no comparable study not only of Nash's life but also of the role that poetry, especially comic verse, played in modern American literary culture.... A story long overdue in the telling. -Dana Gioia

Modern biographies of William Shakespeare abound; however, close scrutiny of the surviving records clearly show that there is insufficient material for a cradle to grave account of his life, that most of what is written about him cannot be verified from primary sources, and that Shakespearean biography did not attain scholarly or academic respectability until long after Samuel Schoenbaum published William Shakespeare A Documentary Life in 1975. This study begins with a short survey of the history and practice of biography and then surveys the very limited biographical material for Shakespeare. Although Shakespeare gradually attained the status as a national hero during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there were no serious attempts to reconstruct his life. Any attempt at an account of his life or personality amounts, however, merely to "biografiction". Modern biographers differ sharply on Shakespeare's apparent relationships with Southampton and with Jonson, which merely underlines the fact that the documentary record has to be greatly expanded through contextual description and speculation in order to appear like a Life of Shakespeare.

In this collection of poetry and prose, Sara Surani weaves together the universal songs of her ancestors, voices of women she has met across the world, and her own reflections. These are not songs with music, but melodies of memory and spirit–of love and laughter. Of curiosity and wonder. Of healing and hope. Of the little moments when time slows down.

The daughter of Pakistani-Muslim immigrants who moved to South Texas to give their daughter a better life, Surani draws on her roots to create a tapestry of stories; comforting and deeply familiar. Throughout the book, she braids shared struggles with collective joy, reminding us of all that we hold in common while conjuring a deep sense of belonging–one that is needed now, more than ever.

First published in 1968. Richard Hengist Horne, virtually unknown today, was one of the more extraordinary figures of the nineteenth century literary scene. The author of an epic poem Orion was acclaimed a work of genius by almost every English critic. His voluminous literary output is for the most part forgotten, but his life and character, his widely romantic aspirations to be a Man of Genius, provide a fascinating tragi-comic study. As a background study to the literature and society of the time, Ann Blainey's book is packed with interest and anecdote, and as a study of a remarkable man it is consistently entertaining.

The third installment of Harvard's five-volume edition of Robert Frost's correspondence. The Letters of Robert Frost, Volume 3: 1929-1936 is the latest installment in Harvard's five-volume edition of the poet's correspondence. It presents 601 letters, of which 425 are previously uncollected. The critically acclaimed first volume, a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year, included nearly 300 previously uncollected letters, and the second volume 350 more. During the period covered here, Robert Frost was close to the height of his powers. If Volume 2 covered the making of Frost as America's poet, in Volume 3 he is definitively made. These were also, however, years of personal tribulation. The once-tight Frost family broke up as marriage, illness, and work scattered the children across the country. In the case of Frost's son Carol, both distance and proximity put strains on an already fractious relationship. But the tragedy and emotional crux of this volume is the death of Frost's youngest daughter, Marjorie. Frost's correspondence from those dark days is a powerful testament to the difficulty of honoring the responsibilities of a poet's eminence while coping with the intensity of a parent's grief. Volume 3 also sees Frost responding to the crisis of the Great Depression, the onset of the New Deal, and the emergence of totalitarian regimes in Europe, with wit, canny political intelligence, and no little acerbity. All the while, his star continues to rise: he wins a Pulitzer for Collected Poems in 1931 and will win a second for A Further Range, published in 1936, and he is in constant demand as a public speaker at colleges, writers' workshops, symposia, and dinners. Frost was not just a poet but a poet-teacher; as such, he was instrumental in defining the public functions of poetry in the twentieth century. In the 1930s, Frost lived a life of paradox, as personal tragedy and the tumults of politics interwove with his unprecedented achievements. Thoroughly annotated and accompanied by a biographical glossary and detailed chronology, these letters illuminate a triumphant and difficult period in the life of a towering literary figure.

This is a personal history of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of Edith Kurzweil, author, teacher, editor of Partisan Review, and a recent recipient of the National Medal of Humanities. The book opens with Kurzweil early adolescence in Vienna during the Nazi takeover. It ends with the author finding herself in the new century. In between, she kept moving on and interrogating the world around her. The reader follows Kurzweil on her perilous journey, at the age of fourteen, to Belgium, through France, Spain, and Portugal, alone with her younger brother. Her fantasies of reunion with her parents in New York kept her going but came to naught: she had not expected to fall from a wealthy childhood into the life of the working-class poor, as a millinery apprentice or a diamond cutter. Instead of entering college life, she eventually became a conventional American housewife. Unhappy and anxious, she anticipated the social changes in America, and returned to Europe with her second husband and her two children. She arrived at the beginning of the Italian miracle--its post-war revitalization. In Milan she met many Americans as an active member of its community and of the British-American club. After personal tragedy she returned to New York, and only then pursued her early intellectual ambitions. The author eventually became a professor of sociology and quickly climbed up the academic ladder. Just as she had been as a little girl, she still "wanted to know everything," beginning with her study of Italian entrepreneurs and going on to European history and French thought, to psychoanalysis and anti-Semitism. Her early writings prompted William Phillips, co-founder and editor of Partisan Review, to invite her into the elite circle of New York intellectuals. She worked alongside him, first as a reader, then as executive editor, and took over the editorship of the legendary journal during its final period. Kurzweil's journey was one of courage, and of emotional and intellectual growth. Full Circle will be of interest to intellectual and cultural historians, literary and Holocaust scholars, and American studies specialists.

On June 23rd, 1950, Pavese, Italy's greatest modern writer received the coveted Strega Award for his novel Among Women Only. On August 26th, in a small hotel in his home town of Turin, he took his own life. Shortly before his death, he methodically destroyed all his private papers. His diary is all that remains and for this the contemporary reader can be grateful. Contemporary speculation attributed this tragedy to either an unhappy love aff air with the American film star Constance Dawling or his growing disillusionment with the Italian Communist Party. His Diaries, however, reveal a man whose art was his only means of repressing the specter of suicide which had haunted him since childhood: an obsession that finally overwhelmed him. As John Taylor notes, he possessed something much more precious than a political theory: a natural sensitivity to the plight and dignity of common people, be they bums, priests, grape-pickers, gas station attendants, office workers, or anonymous girls picked up on the street (though to women, the author could--as he admitted--be as misogynous as he was affectionate). Bitter and incisive, This Business of Living, is both moving and painful to read and stands with James Joyce's Letters and Andre Gide's Journals as one of the great literary testaments of the twentieth century.

On the fiftieth anniversary of his death, C.S. Lewis was commemorated in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, taking his place beside the greatest names in English literature. Oxford and Cambridge Universities, where Lewis taught, also held celebrations of his life. This volume gathers together addresses from those events into a single anthology. Rowan Williams and Alister McGrath assess Lewis's legacy in theology, Malcolm Guite addresses his integration of reason and imagination, William Lane Craig takes a philosophical perspective, while Lewis's successor as Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English, Helen Cooper, considers him as a critic. Others contribute their more personal and creative responses: Walter Hooper, Lewis's biographer, recalls their first meeting; there are poems, essays, a panel discussion, and even a report by the famous 'Mystery Worshipper' from the Ship of Fools website, along with a moving recollection by Royal Wedding composer Paul Mealor about how he set one of Lewis's poems to music. Containing theology, literary criticism, poetry, memoir, and much else, this volume reflects the breadth of Lewis's interests and the astonishing variety of his own output: a diverse and colourful commemoration of an extraordinary man.

Writers' notebooks sometimes prove more revelatory than diaries or intimate journals. At first they might appear to be rag-and-bone shops of ideas, insights, hesitations, doubts, and records of things seen, heard, read, dreamt. But eventually they coalesce into a labyrinthine map of the creative process. Swiss poet Philippe Jaccottet has faithfully kept notebooks for many decades, and the selections that make up the Seedtime volumes have retained a vividness of insight and discovery despite the passage of time. After all, as the poet himself says, his notebooks are "a collection of delicate seeds with which I try to replant my 'spiritual forest.'" Seedtime III, which brings this series to a close, records numerous fleeting thoughts, ephemeral experiences, and philosophical observations from a renowned poet well into his seventies, charting the single steps-sometimes forwards, sometimes back-taken in a lifelong attempt to transcend the limits of art. The inconclusive nature of the notebook entries, their tentativeness and lack of resolution, renders them as intriguing and evocative as some of Jaccottet's best works. In them readers will find a life full of the kind of contemplation that attracts yet eludes most of us in our daily existence.

As an American comic book writer, editor, and businessman, Jim Shooter (b. 1952) remains among the most important figures in the history of the medium. Starting in 1966 at the age of fourteen, Shooter, as the young protege of verbally abusive DC editor Mort Weisinger, helped introduce themes and character development more commonly associated with DC competitor Marvel Comics. Shooter created several characters for the Legion of Super-Heroes, introduced Superman's villain the Parasite, and jointly devised the first race between the Flash and Superman. When he later ascended to editor-in-chief at Marvel Comics, the company, indeed the medium as a whole, was moribund. Yet by the time Shooter left the company a mere decade later, the industry had again achieved considerable commercial viability, with Marveldominating the market. Shooter enjoyed many successes during his tenure, such as Chris Claremont and John Byrne's run on the Uncanny X-Men, Byrne's work on the Fantastic Four, Frank Miller's Daredevil stories, Walt Simonson's crafting of Norse mythology in Thor, and Roger Stern's runs on Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man, as well as his own successes writing Secret Wars and Secret Wars II. After a rift at Marvel, Shooter then helped lead Valiant Comics into one of the most iconic comic book companies of the 1990s, before moving to start-up companies Defiant andBroadway Comics. Interviews collected in this book span Shooter's career. Included here is a 1969 interview that shows a restless teenager; the 1973 interview that returned Shooter to comics; a discussion from 1980 during his pinnacle at Marvel; and two conversations from his time at Valiant and Defiant Comics. At the close, anextensive, original interview encompasses Shooter's full career.

The incredible autobiography from Claire Lorrimer, bestselling romance novelist and daughter of 'Queen of Romance' Denise Robins. You Never Know is former WAAF officer and bestselling novelist Claire Lorrimer's autobiography, containing a graphic description of the six years she spent doing vitally secret work as a WAAF in the Fighter Command Filter Rooms in World War Two. It is the fascinating story of a life overflowing with adventure, humour, tragedy, love, joy and disasters. Claire paints vivid images of her childhood when her mother, the famous author Denise Robins, entertained pre-and post-war literati at her weekend country house parties. Armed with an old typewriter, a vivid imagination and a passion for life, Claire started writing books during the war. She has had a remarkable career and You Never Know is the intriguing story of a long and extraordinary life.

"A richly rewarding, insightful, and engaging study."
--"American Literary Realism"

"Glass provides a novel, nuanced, and sound critical perspectives on the productive interaction of seemingly opposite forces: modernism and the mass market."--"Choice"

"Glass offers insightful readings of such books as Stein's "Everybody's Autobiography"(1937) and Hemingway's "Death in the Afternoon" (1932)."
--"The Journal of American History"

"A fascinating exploration of the relationship among modern authorial celebrity, the rise of the mass market, and the crisis of masculinity at the turn of the twentieth century. This crisply argued book unites sophisticated theoretical arguments about the changing shape of subjectivity in American culture with attentive literary readings and careful historical scholarship."
--Janice Radway, Duke University

"Provocatively and deftly tackles the question of literary celebrity in modern America. A smart and combelling book that has broken through the silence on literary celebrity, and it will serve as the foundation for other inquiries into this complex phenomenon."
--"The Hemingway Review"

The first comprehensive and systematic study of literary celebrity in the twentieth-century United States, Authors Inc. focuses on the autobiographical work of Mark Twain, Jack London, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and Norman Mailer. Through these classic American authors, Loren Glass reveals the degree to which literary modernism in the United States is inseparable from the mass cultural forces it opposed.

Chronicling the emergence of literary celebrity in the late nineteenth century up through its contemporary manifestations, Glass focuseson how individual authors themselves struggled with the conditions of mass cultural renown. Furthermore, by emphasizing the complex relation between masculinity and modernist authorship in the United States, the book provides a bracing new account of the psychosexual economy of the American profession of authorship.

By combining a socio-historical approach with a rhetorical analysis of the autobiographical work in which classic American writers attempted to intervene in the formation of their public personae, Authors Inc. offers a long overdue study of one of the most important, and neglected, aspects of modern American literature.

A E Housmans poetry (especially A Shropshire Lad) remains well-known, widely read and often quoted. However, Housman did not view himself as a professional poet, always making quite clear that his proper job was as a Professor of Latin. Housmans fame as a poet has often obscured the fact that he was the leading British classical scholar of his generation, and a Cambridge Professor. It has also sometimes been suggested that Housmans two areas of activity are the sign of a flawed or divided personality. This book argues that there is no fundamental tension between Housman the poet and Housman the scholar, and his career is presented very much as that of a working academic who also wrote poetry. The book gives a full account of what Housman described as the great and real troubles of my early manhood, and in particular his unrequited and life-long love for his undergraduate friend Moses Jackson. It resists the temptation to classify Housman too exclusively as a melancholic, and is sceptical about Housmans reputed rudeness and misanthropy, pointing out that, though Housman was famously aloof in manner, he was notably loyal and generous, courteous in his daily dealings and generally liked by those who knew him. He also possessed a highly developed sense of the absurd and a ready and often disconcerting wit, features which characterised not only his letters and miscellaneous writings, but also, famously, much of his scholarly work.

This study, a companion to Peter Macardle’s edition of the "Confabulationes," examines the ways in which the colloquies relate to their Cologne background, to the major contemporary colloquy collections (particularly Erasmus’s "Colloquia "and Mosellanus’s "Paedologia"), and to the humanist renewal of Classical Latin. It also looks in detail at the documentary traces of Schotten’s career, and of his networks of friendship and patronage, and tries to understand how he fitted into the structures of a university which has often been (wrongly) understood as hostile to humanism. Based on primary archival material, this is the only full-length study of this underrated German humanist’s life and work.

While Henry David Thoreau's travels to the Maine Woods and Cape Cod were well documented and have been followed by "Thoreauvians" for decades, his 1861 "journey west" with Horace Mann, Jr.--which took the duo from Massachusetts to Minnesota and back--was left to be veiled in mystery. This book details this, the last, longest, and least-known of Thoreau's excursions. The story of two 19th-century men and the 21st-century woman who was determined to follow their 4,000-mile path, this account will intrigue history buffs as they follow in the footsteps of a popular American writer and naturalist.

"Rewriting" in the context of critical work on Caribbean literature has tended to be used to discuss revisionism from a variety of postcolonial perspectives, such as "rewriting history" or "rewriting canonical texts." By shifting the focus to how Caribbean writers return to their own works in order to rework them, this book offers theoretical considerations to postcolonial studies on "literariness" in relation to the near-obsessive degree of rewriting to which Caribbean writers have subjected their own literary texts. Focusing specifically on Franketienne, this book offers an overview of how the defining aesthetic and thematic components of Franketienne's major works have emerged over the course of his forty-year writing career. It reveals the marked development of key notions guiding his literary creation since the 1960s, and demonstrates that rewriting illustrates the central aesthetic of the Spiral which has always shaped his oeuvre. It is, the book argues, the constantly moving form of the Spiral which Franketienne explores through his constant reworking of his previously written texts. Franketienne and Rewriting negotiates between the literary and material ends of the burgeoning field of postcolonial studies, arguing that literary characteristics in Franketienne connect with changing political, social, economic, and cultural circumstances in the Haiti he rewrites.

Janet Morgan's definitive and authorised biography of Agatha Christie, with a new retrospective foreword by the author. Agatha Christie (1890-1976), the world's bestselling author, is a public institution. Her creations, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, have become fiction's most legendary sleuths and her ingenuity has captured the imagination of generations of readers. But although she lived to a great age and was prolific, she remained elusively shy and determinedly private. Given sole access to family papers and other protected material, Janet Morgan's definitive biography unravels Agatha Christie's life, work and relationships, creating a revealing and faithfully honest portrait. The book has delighted readers of Christie's detective stories for more than 30 years with its clear view of her career and personality, and this edition includes a new foreword by the author reflecting on the longevity of Agatha Christie's extraordinary success and popularity.

In 1969, poet and revolutionary Margaret Randall was forced underground when the Mexican government cracked down on all those who took part in the 1968 student movement. Needing to leave the country, she sent her four young children alone to Cuba while she scrambled to find safe passage out of Mexico. In I Never Left Home, Randall recounts her harrowing escape and the other extraordinary stories from her life and career. From living among New York's abstract expressionists in the mid-1950s as a young woman to working in the Nicaraguan Ministry of Culture to instill revolutionary values in the media during the Sandinista movement, the story of Randall's life reads like a Hollywood production. Along the way, she edited a bilingual literary journal in Mexico City, befriended Cuban revolutionaries, raised a family, came out as a lesbian, taught college, and wrote over 150 books. Throughout it all, Randall never wavered from her devotion to social justice. When she returned to the United States in 1984 after living in Latin America for twenty-three years, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service ordered her to be deported for her "subversive writing." Over the next five years, and with the support of writers, entertainers, and ordinary people across the country, Randall fought to regain her citizenship, which she won in court in 1989. As much as I Never Left Home is Randall's story, it is also the story of the communities of artists, writers, and radicals she belonged to. Randall brings to life scores of creative and courageous people on the front lines of creating a more just world. She also weaves political and social analyses and poetry into the narrative of her life. Moving, captivating, and astonishing, I Never Left Home is a remarkable story of a remarkable woman.

In his travel narrative Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (1879), Robert Louis Stevenson declares, "I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move." Taking up the concepts of time, place, and memory, the contributors to this collection explore in what ways the dynamic view of life suggested by this quotation permeates Stevenson's work. The essays adopt a wide variety of critical approaches, including post-colonial theory, post-structuralism, new historicism, art history, and philosophy, making use of the vast array of literary materials that Stevenson left across a global journey that began in Scotland in 1850 and ended in Samoa in 1894. These range from travel journals, letters, and classic literary staples such as Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, to rarely read masterpieces such as The Master of Ballantrae or The Ebb-Tide. While much recent scholarship on Stevenson foregrounds geography, the present volume also examines the theme of movement across memory, time, and generic boundaries. Taken together, the essays offer a view of Stevenson that demonstrates how the protean nature of his literary output reflects the radical developments in science, technology, and culture that characterized the age in which he lived.

This is the first biography of a remarkable writer and incorrigible rebel. Evelyn Sharp's story encapsulates the shifts in opportunities for talented Victorian women who survived into the mid-twentieth century.

She was born into a privileged family in 1869 and became a very popular writer of schoolgirl fiction. Extremely versatile, she also produced fairy tales alongside stories for the infamous "Yellow Book." A Manchester Guardian journalist for over four decades, Evelyn Sharp became the first regular contributor to its iconic Women's Page. Before and during the First World War she was a leading suffragette, editing the newspaper, "Votes for Women."

This biography draws on Evelyn Sharp's publications, as well as letter and diaries vividly describing experiences such as famine relief in Soviet Russia and daily life in wartime Kensington for and elderly woman. It will be of interest to gender and social historians as well as to those interested in children's and women's literature.

In 1907, author, poet, essayist, and folk art historian Eliza Calvert Hall (1856--1935) published Aunt Jane of Kentucky, a collection of stories about rural life infused with the spirit and gentle good humor of its elderly narrator, Aunt Jane. The book and several sequels achieved wide popularity, reaching an estimated one million readers in her lifetime, and placed Hall in the front ranks of "local color" fiction writers of her time. Eliza Calvert Hall's life and work unfolded during a time of restlessness and change for American women. Born Eliza "Lida" Calvert in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Hall experienced the upheaval of both the Civil War and family scandal. Forced to help support her mother and four siblings by teaching school, she became a published poet, adopting her grandmother's name, Hall, as her pseudonym. At twenty-nine, she married William A. Obenchain, and in the space of eight years gave birth to four children. As Hall struggled to balance her writing career with the duties of a nineteenth-century wife and mother, suffragist Laura Clay was lobbying for every woman's right to vote. Hall joined the battle, writing fearlessly in support of suffrage and equality. While her passionate essays served as a direct appeal for this cause, her creative writing also carried a feminist spirit, celebrating the strength, humor, love, and art of the common woman. In Eliza Calvert Hal: Kentucky Author and Suffragistl, Lynn E. Niedermeier tells the story of this remarkable Kentuckian for the first time. Hall's challenge was to balance the artist's creative ambitions with the crusader's passion for achieving the goal of political equality for American women. Her successes did not stem from privilege or leisure; although she was an acclaimed writer, Hall was an ordinary woman, a wife and mother of moderate economic means. Through the power of her words, she challenged others to match her courage, independence, intellectual energy, and loyalty to her sex.

"I was one of the 8,000-strong 'Betjemaniacs' gathered at Carruan farm in Cornwall in August 2006 to celebrate the hundredth birthday of Sir John Betjeman, the late Poet Laureate. Situated high above Polzeath, with tremendous views out to the azure Atlantic and the great headland of Pentire, Carruan was, with its exhilarating sense of space, an inspirational choice for this great event. I stood in the pasty-queue with the Archbishop of Canterbury, watched the poetic performance of Bert Biscoe, and browsed among the bookstalls in the hope of finding second-hand copies of rare Betjeman books to add to my collection. Here was that Patrick Taylor-Martin volume that had eluded me for years, and Betjeman's Britain - compiled by Candida Lycett Green, Betjeman's daughter - together with more recent editions of old favourites." Philip Payton, in the preface to John Betjeman and Cornwall Quintessentially English, Betjeman was an 'outsider' in England - and doubly so in Cornwall where, as he was the first to admit, he was a 'foreigner'. And yet, as this book describes, Betjeman also strove to acquire a veneer of 'Cornishness', cultivating an alternative Celtic identity, and finding inspiration in Cornwall's Anglo-Catholic tradition. He was also active in Cornish affairs, insisting that Cornwall was not part of England, and championing Cornish environmental concerns that anticipated today's focus on sustainability. The new research in this book includes a wealth of previously ignored source material, forming a lively new account of Betjeman's life and work and his defining relationship with Cornwall. This book is likely to be controversial and to provoke debate.

A.E. Housman's poetry (especially A Shropshire Lad) remains well-known, widely read and often quoted. However, Housman did not view himself as a professional poet, always making quite clear that his proper job' was as a Professor of Latin. Housman's fame as a poet has often obscured the fact that he was the leading British classical scholar of his generation, and a Cambridge Professor. It has also sometimes been suggested that Housman's two areas of activity are the sign of a flawed or divided' personality. A.E. Housman: A Single Life argues that there is no fundamental tension between Housman the poet and Housman the scholar, and his career is presented very much as that of a working academic who also wrote poetry. The book gives a full account of what Housman described as the great and real troubles of my early manhood', and in particular his unrequited and life-long love for his undergraduate friend Moses Jackson. It resists the temptation to classify Housman too exclusively as a melancholic, and is sceptical about Housman's reputed rudeness and misanthropy, pointing out that, though Housman was famously aloof in manner, he was notably loyal and generous, courteous in his daily dealings and generally liked by those who knew him. He also possessed a highly developed sense of the absurd and a ready and often disconcerting wit, features which characterised not only his letters and miscellaneous writings, but also, famously, much of his scholarly work.