Shakespeare: A Life in Art brings together in a single volume Fraser's previously published two-volume biography (Young Shakespeare, 1988, and Shakespeare: The Later Years, 1992). This volume includes a new introduction, which looks back on the author's lifelong commitment to Shakespeare's work and seeks to find the pattern in his carpet. Fraser's approach places Shakespeare's work first but shows how the life and art interpenetrate, like "the yolk and white of one shell." What Shakespeare was doing in Stratford and London underlies what he was writing, or more exactly, the two flow together. Most of the book is devoted to Shakespeare the man and artist, but it simultaneously throws light on his literary and personal relations with contemporaries such as Jonson, Marlowe, and others known as the University Wits. His experience as an actor and man of theater is absorbingly recounted here, as well as his relations to well-born patrons like the Earl of Southampton and Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon (England's Lord Chamberlain). In 1603 when James I ascended the throne, the Chamberlain's Men became the King's Men, passing under the sovereign's protection. How Shakespeare responded to his ambiguous role--he was both servant to the great and their remorseless critic--is another of Fraser's subjects. In short, Fraser's principal purpose is to advance our understanding of Shakespeare, at the same time throwing light on the work of the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets had the "largest and most comprehensive soul." John Dryden, Shakespeare's first great critic, said that, and Fraser tries to estimate what he meant.

"Shakespeare: A Life in Art" brings together in a single volume Fraser's previously published two-volume biography ("Young Shakespeare," 1988, and" Shakespeare: The Later Years," 1992). This volume includes a new introduction, which looks back on the author's lifelong commitment to Shakespeare's work and seeks to find the pattern in his carpet.

Fraser's approach places Shakespeare's work first but shows how the life and art interpenetrate, like "the yolk and white of one shell." What Shakespeare was doing in Stratford and London underlies what he was writing, or more exactly, the two flow together. Most of the book is devoted to Shakespeare the man and artist, but it simultaneously throws light on his literary and personal relations with contemporaries such as Jonson, Marlowe, and others known as the University Wits. His experience as an actor and man of theater is absorbingly recounted here, as well as his relations to well-born patrons like the Earl of Southampton and Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon (England's Lord Chamberlain). In 1603 when James I ascended the throne, the Chamberlain's Men became the King's Men, passing under the sovereign's protection. How Shakespeare responded to his ambiguous role--he was both servant to the great and their remorseless critic--is another of Fraser's subjects. In short, Fraser's principal purpose is to advance our understanding of Shakespeare, at the same time throwing light on the work of the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets had the "largest and most comprehensive soul." John Dryden, Shakespeare's first great critic, said that, and Fraser tries to estimate what he meant.

In this new volume, Russell Fraser assembles fourteen twentieth-century writers he judges "worth keeping." All were famous in their time, but many outlived it, enduring an eclipse that Fraser intends this book to dispel. Each of the authors differs in background and in the kinds of writing practiced, and while together they do not constitute a modern canon, Fraser persuasively presents them as a group distinguished by a more than ordinary affiliation for language. Leading off are Oscar Wilde and J. M. Synge, both of whom were Irish and principally known as playwrights. The Scottish poets Edwin Muir and G.M. Brown are complemented by three great Europeans: Paul Valery, Eugenio Montale, and Osip Mandelstam, "mandarins" who wrote for an elite of their time, not a social elite, but readers who could read. The New Critics, who gave language first place in their writing, loom large in this account. R.P. Blackmur and Allen Tate are followed by Delmore Schwartz, Austin Warren, and Francis Fergusson, lesser stars orbiting those greater than themselves. Kingsley Amis the novelist and James Dickey the poet, with whom the book concludes, had a great run at fame and fortune, but ended bleakly. The world was livelier for these writers' presence, and what they left us still gives satisfaction. This heterogeneous group may be said to be our saving remnant. In a time of coarsened feeling, its members possess in high degree the ability to discriminate, seeing acutely, and inspiring feeling where it was dead. Their function is therapeutic, even restorative for the life of letters. To give them a hearing is the principal purpose of the book.

R. P. Blackmur was an American critic and poet, as well as a professor of English literature and creative writing at Princeton University. At the time of his death, he had completed five books and numerous plays, poems, and short stories. He devoted most of his life to studies on Henry Adams - someone he saw in himself. In his lifetime, he received a share of adulation, but he was not successful in the way that success is commonly measured. In this work, Russell Fraser follows the course of Blackmur's self-declared failed genius. He tells the story of his precocious youth in Cambridge; his eclectic education; his years of poverty and renown as a poet, novelist, freelance music critic, and essayist; his obsessive marriage to artist Helen Dickson; his entangled friendships with T. S. Eliot, Delmore Schwartz, Allen Tate, and John Berryman; and, his passion for the wilds of Maine. He discusses Blackmur's crucial role in the literary magazines of the twenties and thirties; his unique influence as instructor of creative writing; the emotional and professional price he paid for a doubtful security at Princeton University; and, the torment of wavering between intellectual inertia and prolific inspiration. With empathy and insight, Fraser shows how the trajectory of Blackmur's career parallels the movements in the American literary scene; the experiments in poetry and fiction; the development of the New Criticism; the writer's conflict between order and anarchy, taxonomy and the full response; and, the emergence of the critic as artist. A biography, intellectual history, and literary criticism, "A Mingled Yarn" unravels Blackmur's complex character and celebrates his great achievement.

R. P. Blackmur was an American critic and poet, as well as a professor of English literature and creative writing at Princeton University. At the time of his death, he had completed five books and a number of plays and short stories. His poetry mattered most to him and some of it is permanent work. He devoted much of his life to a biography of Henry Adams, someone he saw in himself. In his lifetime, he received his share of adulation, but he was not successful in the way that success is commonly measured.

In this work, Russell Fraser follows the course of Blackmur's self-declared failed genius. He tells the story of his precocious youth in Cambridge; his eclectic education; his years of poverty and renown as a poet, novelist, freelance music critic, and essayist; his obsessive marriage to artist Helen Dickson; his entangled friendships with T. S. Eliot, Delmore Schwartz, Allen Tate, and John Berryman; and his passion for rural Maine on the Tidal Water. He discusses Blackmur's crucial role in the literary magazines of the twenties and thirties; his unique influence as instructor of creative writing; the emotional and professional price he paid for a doubtful security at Princeton University; and the torment of wavering between intellectual inertia and prolific inspiration.

With empathy and insight, Fraser shows how the trajectory of Blackmur's career parallels the movements in the American literary scene; the experiments in poetry and fiction; the development of the New Criticism; the writer's conflict between order and anarchy, taxonomy and the full response; and the emergence of the critic as artist. A biography, intellectual history, and literary criticism, "A Mingled Yarn" unravels Blackmur's complex character and celebrates his great achievement.

This is a new release of the original 1927 edition.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

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Alexander Leggatt has written a new Introduction to this updated edition of Russell Fraser's text on one of Shakespeare's most ambiguous plays. Leggatt's interest in performance informs his introduction and account of the instability of the main characters. He offers a thoughtful account of the play's critical and theatrical fortunes to the end of the twentieth century, as well as of the audience experience. An updated reading list completes the edition. First Edition Hb (1986): 0-521-22150-1 First Edition Pb (1986): 0-521-29365-0

Alexander Leggatt has written a new Introduction to this updated edition of Russell Fraser's text on one of Shakespeare's most ambiguous plays. Leggatt's interest in performance informs his introduction and account of the instability of the main characters. He offers a thoughtful account of the play's critical and theatrical fortunes to the end of the twentieth century, as well as of the audience experience. An updated reading list completes the edition. First Edition Hb (1986): 0-521-22150-1 First Edition Pb (1986): 0-521-29365-0

This title offers an invitation to tour the globe with a veteran world-wanderer in search of regional peculiarities and universal truths. With a title borrowed from Samuel Johnson, insatiable globe-trotter Russell Fraser fondly recalls his travels in China, Peru, Italy, France, Russia, Scotland, the Persian Gulf, and the Antarctic in this series of meditations on the distinguishing elements of culture and history found in far-flung locales. Fraser establishes himself as a knowledgeable guide who combines an intimate familiarity with local history, a keen eye for culture, a companionable wit, and a penchant for speculation about the grip of the past on the present. Fraser's fascination with people leads him to banter and at times to argue with locals in his quest to discern the peculiarities of a given place, be it a communist training school near Milan or the best bar in St. Petersburg. His grand appreciation for discoveries that can be made only through travel is apparent in every poetically phrased description and artfully reconstructed dialogue. Fraser begins each essay with an autobiographical passage before turning to the place and moment at hand. This technique establishes camaraderie with our learned, informative, and entertaining guide as we walk deserts and frozen plains, Old World neighborhoods and Far Eastern danger zones, the lobbies of plush new hotels and the aisles of centuries-old cathedrals. In his ruminations, Fraser circles strategically between personal and global pasts - traveling in time as well as space - to put our modernity in perspective and to ponder facets of human experience found amid the regions he describes so vividly. The heart of Fraser's memoir is a two-chapter sequence devoted to meandering through his ancestral homeland of Scotland, a narrative that ably couples family history and travelogue. In the concluding essay, the author's adventure in Antarctica parallels a trip taken decades earlier by his great-grandfather Alexander V. Fraser, the first commander of the U.S. Coast Guard, and again he deftly juxtaposes the personal with the global and the past with the present. Fraser's tales are peppered with the anecdotes, asides, and well-chosen quotations of a traveler steeped in knowledge of the world's history and its literature. ""From China to Peru"" is a welcoming invitation to travel the globe, if only through the insightful memoirs of one well-versed in such passages.