Scott Fitzgerald, a romantic and tragic figure who embodied the decades between the two world wars, was a writer who took his material almost entirely from his life. Despite his early success with The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald battled against failure and disappointment.

This book, by the acclaimed biographer of Hemingway, is the first to analyze frankly the meaning as well as the events of Fitzgerald's life and to illuminate the recurrent patterns that reveal his inner self. Meyers emphasizes Fitzgerald's alcoholism, Zelda's illnesses and her doctors, Fitzgerald's love affairs both before and after her breakdown, and his wide-ranging friendships, from the polo star Tommy Hitchcock to the Hollywood executive Irving Thalberg. His writer friends included Ring Lardner, John Dos Passos, James Joyce, Edith Wharton, and Dorothy Parker. His friend and lifelong hero, Ernest Hemingway, was a harsh critic of both his behavior and his novels, but Fitzgerald accepted this with remarkable humility. Meyers portrays the volatile connection between these two writers and Fitzgerald's marriage to the schizophrenic Zelda with insight and poignancy. Meyers also discusses Fitzgerald's fascinating relationship with his daughter, Scottie. Exercising a fine critical balance, he details Fitzgerald's weaknesses but ultimately reveals a man capable of fierce loyalty and great moral courage.

Originally published in 1980 and nominated for the Duff Cooper Prize, this was the first biography of Wyndham Lewis and was based on extensive archival research and interviews. It narrates Lewis’ years at Rugby and the Slade, his bohemian life on the Continent, the creation of Vorticism and publication of Blast, and his experiences at Passchendaele, as well as his many love affairs, his bitter quarrels with Bloomsbury and the Sitwells, the suppressed books of the thirties, the evolution of his political ideas, his self-imposed exile in North America and creative resurgence during his final blindness. Jeffrey Meyers also describes Lewis’ relationships with Roy Campbell, D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, T. E Lawrence, Hemingway, Huxley, Yeats, Auden, Spender, Orwell and McLuhan. As the self-styled Enemy emerges from the shadows, he is seen as an independent and courageous artist and one of the most controversial and stimulating figures in modern English art and literature.

The work of Alex Colville, O.C. (1920-2013), one of the great modern realist painters, combines the Flemish detail of Andrew Wyeth, the eerie foreboding of George Tooker and the anguished confrontations of Lucian Freud. Behind the North Americans stands their common master, Edward Hopper. Colville's works are in many museums in Canada and Germany. He has affinities with Max Beckmann and appeals to the German "secondary virtues": cleanliness, punctuality, love of order. In a long life he resolutely opposed the fashionable currents of abstract and expressionistic art. In contrast to Jackson Pollock's wild action painting, Colville created paintings of contemplation and reflection. As Jeffrey Meyers writes: I spent several days with Colville on each of three visits from California to Wolfville. I received seventy letters from him between August 1998 and April 2010, and kept thirty-six of my letters to him. He sent me photographs and slides of his work and, in his eighties, discussed the progress and meaning of the paintings he completed during the last decade of his life. His handwritten letters, precisely explaining his thoughts and feelings, provide a rare and enlightening opportunity to compare my insights and interpretations with his own intentions and ideas. He also discussed his family, health, sexuality, politics, reading, travels, literary interests, our mutual friend Iris Murdoch, response to my writing, his work, exhibitions, sales of his pictures and of course the meaning of his art. His letters reveal the challenges he faced during aging and illness, and his determination to keep painting as health difficulties mounted. He stopped writing to me when he became seriously ill two years before his death. In this context the late paintings, presented in colour in this book, take on a new poignancy.

British colonialism provided a rich vein of material for the novelists of the first half of the 20th century. This study, originally published in 1968, looks at five writers and their reaction to the Empire: Rudyard Kipling, E. M. Forster, Joseph Conrad, Joyce Cary and Graham Greene. It shows how the romantic adventure stories of Kipling’s early days, in which the indigenous population plays almost no part, gave rise to the much more important novels of spiritual and moral conflict in which the stereotyped values of Empire are questioned. The decline of colonialism from its apogee in the 1880s within a relatively short period makes the novels discussed a compact group, so that not only is the use of colonial material closely studied, but its impact on the novelists themselves emerges clearly. This is an important study of a major literary theme, linking modern literature and modern history at a vital point.

Originally published in 1980 and nominated for the Duff Cooper Prize, this was the first biography of Wyndham Lewis and was based on extensive archival research and interviews. It narrates Lewis' years at Rugby and the Slade, his bohemian life on the Continent, the creation of Vorticism and publication of Blast, and his experiences at Passchendaele, as well as his many love affairs, his bitter quarrels with Bloomsbury and the Sitwells, the suppressed books of the thirties, the evolution of his political ideas, his self-imposed exile in North America and creative resurgence during his final blindness. Jeffrey Meyers also describes Lewis' relationships with Roy Campbell, D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, T. E Lawrence, Hemingway, Huxley, Yeats, Auden, Spender, Orwell and McLuhan. As the self-styled Enemy emerges from the shadows, he is seen as an independent and courageous artist and one of the most controversial and stimulating figures in modern English art and literature.

British colonialism provided a rich vein of material for the novelists of the first half of the 20th century. This study, originally published in 1968, looks at five writers and their reaction to the Empire: Rudyard Kipling, E. M. Forster, Joseph Conrad, Joyce Cary and Graham Greene. It shows how the romantic adventure stories of Kipling's early days, in which the indigenous population plays almost no part, gave rise to the much more important novels of spiritual and moral conflict in which the stereotyped values of Empire are questioned. The decline of colonialism from its apogee in the 1880s within a relatively short period makes the novels discussed a compact group, so that not only is the use of colonial material closely studied, but its impact on the novelists themselves emerges clearly. This is an important study of a major literary theme, linking modern literature and modern history at a vital point.

This set comprises 40 volumes covering nineteenth and twentieth century European and American authors. These volumes will be available as a complete set, mini boxed sets (by theme) or as individual volumes. This second set compliments the first 68 volume set of Critical Heritage published by Routledge in October 1995.

This set comprises 40 volumes covering nineteenth and twentieth century European and American authors. These volumes will be available as a complete set, mini boxed sets (by theme) or as individual volumes. This second set compliments the first 68 volume set of Critical Heritage published by Routledge in October 1995.

The "Collected Critical Heritage II" comprises 40 volumes covering 19th and 20th century European and American authors. These volumes will be available as a complete set, mini boxes sets (by theme) or as individual volumes. This second set compliments the first 68 volume set of "Critical Heritage" published by Routledge in October 1995. The "Critical Heritage" series gathers together a large body of critical figures in literature. These selected sources include contemporary reviews from both popular and literary media. This volume covers the English novelist, George Orwell.

Series Information:
Collected Critical Heritage II

Known to millions as the preeminent swashbuckler of the silver screen, Errol Flynn was a complex man who lived a life far more adventurous than any of his films. In My Wicked, Wicked Ways, Flynn reveals himself to be a self-aware and cosmopolitan devotee of excitement and pleasure. With gusto, he recalls his years as a soldier of fortune in the South Seas, his trip to war-torn Spain, his battles in Hollywood with studio honchos (Jack Warner was a particular nemesis) and ex-wives (esp. Lili Damita), and the furor surrounding his trial for rape in 1943. Freely mixing verbal abuse and tall tales with candid confessions, Flynn's autobiography makes for one hell of a read.

Best known as the creator of the consulting detective par excellence Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was a man of wide-ranging interests and talents, and his literary output went far beyond his Holmes and Watson stories. The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Reader collects works from all the genres in which he wrote, including mysteries, historical adventure tales, science fiction stories, ghost stories, plays, memoirs, essays on spiritualism (in which he was a dedicated believer) and reports on the Boer War and World War I. This collection features the account of Watson's first meeting with Holmes from A Study in Scarlet, an account of the dinosaurs inhabiting The Lost World, tales of Doyle's Napoleonic hero Brigadier Gerard, a condemnation of Belgium's exploitation of the Congo, and the complete text of his apocalyptic book The Poison Belt, in addition to several other stories and excerpts.

ENDURING LITERATURE ILLUMINATED BY PRACTICAL SCHOLARSHIP

In these beloved works by Lewis Carroll, a young girl named Alice finds fantastical adventures down a rabbit hole and through a mirror, encountering a variety of wonderfully eccentric creatures. Strikingly unique for their time, Carroll's enchanting stories not only incite our imaginations, but also deliver a brilliant parody of Victorian children's literature.

THIS ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES:

- A concise introduction that gives the reader important background information

- A chronology of the author's life and work

- A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context

- An outline of key themes and plot points to guide the reader's own interpretations

- Detailed explanatory notes

- Critical analysis and modern perspectives on the work

- Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction

- A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience

Simon & Schuster Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential.

Robert Lowell was known not only as a great poet but also as a writer whose devotion to his art came at a tremendous personal cost. In this work, his third on Robert Lowell, Jeffrey Meyers examines the poet's impassioned, fraught relationships with the key women in his life, including his mother, Charlotte Winslow Lowell; his three wives -- Jean Stafford, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Caroline Blackwood; nine of his many lovers; his close women friends -- Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Bishop, and Adrienne Rich; and his most talented students, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath.Lowell's charismatic personality and compelling poetry attracted lovers and friends who were both frightened and excited by his aura of brilliance and danger. He loved the idea of falling in love, and in his recurring manic episodes he needed women at the center of his emotional and artistic life. While he idealized his loves and encouraged their talents, he never fully grasped his wives' and lovers' deepest needs and feelings, and his frenetic affairs and tortured marriages were always conducted entirely on his own terms. Robert Lowell in Love tells the story of the poet in the grip of love and gives voice to the women who loved him, inspired his poetry, and suffered along with him.

The highly influential author of novels The Razor's Edge, Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence, and the story "The Letter" (all of which have been made into films), William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) wrote an impressive 78 books, sharing his ironic yet sympathetic view of human passion and agony with readers from the Victorian era's close to the world after WWII. His works influenced generations of subsequent writers, including D.H. Lawrence, George Orwell, and V.S. Naipaul. The W. Somerset Maugham Reader presents the full range of Maugham's literary capabilities, from his early works of social realism, to his dramatic tales of love and revenge, to his pieces on travel to exotic lands. Included are stories and book excerpts for which Maugham is famous, as well as pieces which focus on his reoccurring themes: flight from sexual repression, the decay of Europeans transplanted to the tropics, and marriages turned unhappy or violent.

In Joseph Conrad: A Biography, acclaimed writer Jeffrey Meyers presents the definitive account of the life of Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), author of Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Nostromo, and many other landmarks in modern literature. Meyers' biography, published for the first time in paperback by Cooper Square Press, is the first biography of the author in many years. Joseph Conrad brings to light new information about Conrad's life and its impact on his fiction: new models emerge for his characters, including Heart of Darkness' Kurtz, and Meyers also examines in great detail Conrad's relationship with the wild and beautiful American journalist Jane Anderson.

Jeffrey Meyers' Resurrections: Authors, Heroes-and a Spy brings to life a set of extraordinary writers, painters, and literary adventurers who turned their lives into art. Meyers knew nine of these figures, in some cases intimately, while five others he admires and regrets never meeting. As he writes in the preface, ""The chapters in this book represent in miniature my career as a life-writer. My biographies have always been driven by fascination with the source of artistic creativity, with people who wrote or painted and with the worlds they inhabited."" Ian Watt, who taught Meyers at Berkeley, struggled with the legacy of his ordeal as a Japanese prisoner of war, and with its depiction in the film, The Bridge on the River Kwai. The story of Paul Theroux's feud with Sir Vidia Naipaul is well known, but Meyers finds greater meaning in their quarrel through the lens of his own long friendship with Theroux. While James Salter, fighter pilot and brilliant stylist, epitomizes Meyers' heroic ideal, the fiction writer also responds with an epistolary friendship, punctuated by visits, and Meyers is delighted by Salter's great reputation late in life. Anthony Blunt, art historian and communist spy, fascinates the biographer for a darker reason: the depth of his capacity for intellectual and personal deceit. The feckless, lesser-known Hugh Gordon Porteus, told Meyers many revealing and amusing stories about his friends Wyndham Lewis, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. In the process of writing these profiles, Meyers discovers a common thread relating to himself: not only do these subjects provoke a kind of personal testing, they also represent his search for the ideal father in his vivid intellectual and imaginative inquiry.

On every level -- writing, direction, acting -- "Double Indemnity" (1944) is a triumph and stands as one of the greatest achievements in Billy Wilder's career. Adapted from the James M. Cain novel by director Wilder and novelist Raymond Chandler, it tells the story of an insurance salesman, played by Fred MacMurray, who is lured into a murder-for-insurance plot by Barbara Stanwyck, in an archetypal femme fatale role. From its grim story to its dark, atmospheric lighting, "Double Indemnity" is a definitive example of World War II-era film noir. Wilder's approach is everywhere evident: in the brutal cynicism the film displays, the moral complexity, and in the empathy we feel for the killers. The film received almost unanimous critical success, garnering seven Academy Award nominations. More than fifty years later, most critics agree that this classic is one of the best films of all time. The collaboration between Wilder and Raymond Chandler produced a masterful script and some of the most memorable dialogue ever spoken in a movie.
This facsimile edition of "Double Indemnity" contains Wilder and Chandler's original -- and quite different -- ending, published here for the first time. Jeffrey Meyers's introduction contextualizes the screenplay, providing hilarious anecdotes about the turbulent collaboration, as well as background information about Wilder and the film's casting and production.

The one vampire to outlive them all.
Here begins the story of an evil both ages old and forever new. It is the story of those who instill a diabolic craving in their victims, the men and women from whose blood they draw their only sustenance. It is a novel of peculiar power, of hypnotic fascination. The reader is warned that he who enters Castle Dracula may not escape its baleful spell-even when he closes this book...
This trade paperback edition will carry a teaser chapter from Dacre Stoker's upcoming, familyendorsed sequel, "Dracula: The Un-Dead."

One of the most critically acclaimed biographers working today, Jeffrey Meyers offers in Privileged Moments a window into the work of both creative writers and their biographers. Describing these portraits -- of Allen Ginsberg, James Dickey, Ed Dorn, Arthur Miller, Iris Murdoch, V. S. Naipaul, Francis King, and J. F. Powers -- Meyers writes, "I wanted to learn everything about their lives, what they looked like, how they lived, what they said. I was most curious about the creative process, the relation between authors' lives and their art, the public image and the real self".

Meyers himself becomes the ninth writer encountered in Privileged Moments, displaying the master biographer's sharp eye for telling details. In lively and compelling style, he offers us insights into the writers' lives: their reactions to criticism; how they advanced their careers and achieved fame; how feuds and quarrels started and ended; their struggles with money, illness, marriages, and love affairs.