E.A. Robinson - American Writers 17 was first published in 1962. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
The life of Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49) is the quintessential writer’s biography—great works arising from a life of despair, poverty, alcoholism, and a mysterious solitary death. It may seem like a cliché now, but it was Poe who helped shape this idea in the popular imagination. Despite or perhaps even inspired by his many hardships, Poe wrote some of the most well-known poems and intricately crafted stories in American literature. In Edgar Allan Poe,Kevin J. Hayes argues that Poe’s work anticipated many of the directions Western thought would take in the century to come, and he identifies links between Poe and writers and artists such as Walter Benjamin, Salvador Dalí, Sergei Eisenstein, and Jean Cocteau.
Whereas previous biographers have tended to concentrate on the sorry details of Poe’s life, by contrast Hayes takes an original approach by examining Poe’s life within the context of his writings. The author offers fresh, insightful readings of many of Poe’s short stories, and presents newly-discovered information about previously unknown books from Poe’s library, as well as updated biographical details obtained from nineteenth-century newspapers and magazines. This well-researched biography goes beyond previous scholarship and creates a complete picture of Poe and his significant body of work.
Approachably written, Edgar Allan Poe will appeal to the many fans of Poe’s work—from “The Raven” to the “Tell-Tale Heart”—as well as readers interested in American literary history.
Edgar Allan Poe - American Writers 89 was first published in 1970. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
Edith Wharton - American Writers 12 was first published in 1961. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
Edith Wharton (1862–1937), who lived nearly half of her life during the cinema age when she published many of her well-known works, acknowledged that she disliked the movies, characterizing them as an enemy of the imagination. Yet her fiction often referenced film and popular Hollywood culture, and she even sold the rights to several of her novels to Hollywood studios.
Edith Wharton on Film explores these seeming contradictions and examines the relationships among Wharton’s writings, the popular culture in which she published them, and the subsequent film adaptations of her work (three from the 1930s and four from the 1990s). Author Parley Ann Boswell examines the texts in which Wharton referenced film and Hollywood culture and evaluates the extant films adapted from Wharton’s fiction.
The volume introduces Wharton’s use of cinema culture in her fiction through the 1917 novella Summer, written during the nation’s first wave of feminism, in which the heroine Charity Royall is moviegoer and new American woman, consumer and consumable. Boswell considers the source of this conformity and entrapment, especially for women. She discloses how Wharton struggled to write popular stories and then how she revealed her antipathy toward popular movie culture in two late novels.
Boswell describes Wharton’s financial dependence on the American movie industry, which fueled her antagonism toward Hollywood culture, her well-documented disdain for popular culture, and her struggles to publish in women’s magazines.
This first full-length study that examines the film adaptations of Wharton’s fiction covers seven films adapted from Wharton’s works between 1930 and 2000 and the fifty-year gap in Wharton film adaptations. The study also analyzes Sophy Viner in The Reef as pre-Hollywood ingénue, characters in Twilight Sleep and The Children and the real Hollywood figures who might have inspired them, and The Sheik and racial stereotypes.
Boswell traces the complicated relationship of fiction and narrative film, the adaptations and cinematic metaphors of Wharton’s work in the 1990s, and Wharton’s persona as an outsider. Wharton’s fiction on film corresponds in striking ways to American noir cinema, says Boswell, because contemporary filmmakers recognize and celebrate the subversive qualities of Wharton’s work.
Edith Wharton on Film, which includes eleven illustrations, enhances Wharton’s stature as a major American author and provides persuasive evidence that her fiction should be read as American noir literature.
Edmund Wilson - American Writers 67 was first published in 1968. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
Edna St. Vincent Millay was first published in 1967. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
Edward Albee - American Writers 77 was first published in 1969. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
Edward Everett Hale is remembered by millions as the author of The Man Without a Country. This popular and gifted nineteenth-century writer was an outstanding and prolific contributor to the fields of journalism, fiction, essay, and history. He wrote more than 150 books and pamphlets (one novel sold more than a million copies in his lifetime) and was intimately associated with the publication of many of the early American journals, among them the North American Review, Atlantic Monthly, and Christian Examiner. He served as editor of Old and New and was a frequent contributor to the foremost newspapers and periodicals of his time.
Yet the writings of this “journalist with a touch of genius” were only incidental to Hale’s Christian ministry in New England and in Washington, D.C., where he was for five years Chaplain of the Senate. His literary creed reflected that of his ministry, for Hale’s interpretation of the social gospel comprised an active concern with all phases of human affairs.
Confidant of poets and editors, friend to diplomats and statesmen, Hale helped mold public opinions in economics, sociology, history, and politics through three-quarters of what he called “a most extraordinary century in history.” In recounting Hale’s life and times, Holloway vividly portrays this fascinating and often turbulent era.
Edward Taylor - American Writers 52 was first published in 1965. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
This volume contains 189 hitherto unpublished letters by Edwin Arlington Robinson. They were written between 1897 and 1930 to one of his first admirers, Edith Brower of Pennsylvania.
The letters begin when the twenty-seven-year-old poet writes gratefully to the stranger who has expressed appreciation of his first, privately printed, book of poems, The Torrent and the Night Before. Soon he was carrying on an intense correspondence, baring his soul—safely, he believed, because the woman he described as “infernally bright and not at all ugly,” with “something of a literary reputation,” was “too old to give me a chance to bother myself with any sentimental uneasiness.” (She was twenty-one years his senior.)
Continually reflecting his laconic, self-deprecating Yankee spirit, the letters range from the uncontrollable outpourings of a lonely individual, desperate for encouragement and understanding, to brief words of greeting or farewell. Without reserve, Robinson—who was eventually awarded the Pulitzer prize for poetry three times—confides his reactions to people and places, his thoughts about his own work, and his personal opinions of such writers as Browning, Dickens, Hardy, Moody, and Pater.
Mr. Cary has included Miss Brower’s unpublished memoir on the poet’s character and literary career, “Memories of Edwin Arlington Robinson,” and her penetrating review of The Children of the Night. In addition to an informative Introduction, he contributes full explanatory notes, a list of Robinson’s works, and an index.
E.E. Cummings - American Writers 87 was first published in 1969. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
Ellen Glasgow - American Writers 33 was first published in 1964. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
"An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man," Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote--and in this book, the leading scholar of New England literary culture looks at the long shadow Emerson himself has cast, and at his role and significance as a truly American institution. On the occasion of Emerson's 200th birthday, Lawrence Buell revisits the life of the nation's first public intellectual and discovers how he became a "representative man."
Born into the age of inspired amateurism that emerged from the ruins of pre-revolutionary political, religious, and cultural institutions, Emerson took up the challenge of thinking about the role of the United States alone and in the world. With characteristic authority and grace, Buell conveys both the style and substance of Emerson's accomplishment--in his conception of America as the transplantation of Englishness into the new world, and in his prodigious work as writer, religious thinker, and philosopher. Here we see clearly the paradoxical key to his success, the fierce insistence on independence that acted so magnetically upon all around him. Steeped in Emerson's writings, and in the life and lore of the America of his day, Buell's book is as individual--and as compelling--as its subject. At a time when Americans and non-Americans alike are struggling to understand what this country is, and what it is about, Emerson gives us an answer in the figure of this representative American, an American for all, and for all times.
This long-awaited volume offers the general reader the heart of Emerson’s journals, that extraordinary series of diaries and notebooks in which he poured out his thoughts for more than fifty years, beginning with the “luckless ragamuffin ideas” of his college days.
Emerson as revealed in his journals is more spontaneous, more complex, more human and appealing than he appears in the published works. This man is the seeker rather than the sage; he records the turmoil, struggle, and questioning that preceded the serene and confident affirmations of the essays. He is honest, earthy, tough-minded, self-critical (“I am a lover of indolence, & of the belly”), warm in his enthusiasms, a witty and sharp observer of people and events. Everything is grist for his mill: personal experiences, his omnivorous reading, ruminations on matters large and small, his doubts and perplexities, public issues and local gossip. There are abrupt shifts in subject and tone, reflecting the variousness of his moods and the restless energy of his mind.
Drawing from Harvard’s sixteen-volume scholarly edition of the journals—but omitting the textual apparatus that makes it hard to read—Joel Porte presents a sympathetic selection that brings us close to Emerson the man.
Emily Dickinson - American Writers 81 was first published in 1969. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
From the award-winning author of Poe the Detective: The Curious Circumstances Behind "The Mystery of Marie Roget" comes a compelling argument for the identity of Emily Dickinson’s true love
Proud of my broken heart
Since thou didst break it,
Proud of the pain I
Did not feel till thee . . .
Those words were written by Emily Dickinson to a married man. Who was he?
For a century or more the identity of Emily Dickinson’s mysterious “Master” has been eagerly sought, especially since three letters from her to him were found and published in 1955. In Emily Dickinson in Love, John Evangelist Walsh provides the first book-length treatment of this fascinating subject, offering a solution based wholly on documented facts and the poet’s own writings.
Crafting the affair as a love story of rare appeal, and writing with exquisite attention to detail, in Part I Walsh reveals and meticulously proves the Master to be Otis Lord, a friend of the poet’s father and a man of some reputation in law and politics. Part II portrays the full dimensions of their thirty-year romance, most of it clandestine, including a series of secret meetings in Boston.
After uncovering and confirming the Master’s identity, Walsh fits that information into known events of Emily’s life to make sense of facts long known but little understood—Emily’s decision to dress always in white, for instance, or her extreme withdrawal from a normal existence when she had previously been an active, outgoing friend to many men and women.
In a lengthy section of Notes and Sources, Walsh presents his proofs in abundant detail, demonstrating that the evidence favors one man so irresistibly that there is left no room for doubt. Each reader will decide if he has truly succeeded in making the case for Otis Lord.
Ernest Hemingway - American Writers 1 was first published in 1959. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
Erskine Caldwell - American Writers 78 was first published in 1969. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
This pamphlet series has been hailed by critics, teachers, and librarians as an ideals means of introducing both students and general readers to American writers of all periods. Choice has commented: "For the small library this series offers at small cost introductions by reputable critics o dozens of significant authors, and the larger the library the greater the number of undergraduate students looking for a place to start on some writer." The New York Times Book Review has called the pamphlets "extraordinarily good," pointing out that "they are just long enough (48 pages) to permit a real survey of an author's work and short enough to attract the casual reader, the anxiety-ridden student, and the professor desperate for the straight word on an unfamiliar writer."
The Essential Tagore showcases the genius of India’s Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian Nobel Laureate and possibly the most prolific and diverse serious writer the world has ever known.
Marking the 150th anniversary of Tagore’s birth, this ambitious collection—the largest single volume of his work available in English—attempts to represent his extraordinary achievements in ten genres: poetry, songs, autobiographical works, letters, travel writings, prose, novels, short stories, humorous pieces, and plays. In addition to the newest translations in the modern idiom, it includes a sampling of works originally composed in English, his translations of his own works, three poems omitted from the published version of the English Gitanjali, and examples of his artwork.
Tagore’s writings are notable for their variety and innovation. His Sonar Tari signaled a distinctive turn toward the symbolic in Bengali poetry. “The Lord of Life,” from his collection Chitra, created controversy around his very personal concept of religion. Chokher Bali marked a decisive moment in the history of the Bengali novel because of the way it delved into the minds of men and women. The skits in Vyangakautuk mocked upper-class pretensions. Prose pieces such as “The Problem and the Cure” were lauded by nationalists, who also sang Tagore’s patriotic songs.
Translations for this volume were contributed by Tagore specialists and writers of international stature, including Amitav Ghosh, Amit Chaudhuri, and Sunetra Gupta.
Eudora Welty - American Writers 66 was first published in 1968. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
Eugene O'Neill - American Writers 45 was first published in 1965. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
Now, nearly forty years after its original translation into English, Roger Asselineau's complete and magisterial biography of Walt Whitman will remind readers of the complex weave of traditions in Whitman scholarship. It is startling to recognize how much of our current understanding of Whitman was already articulated by Asselineau nearly half a century ago. Throughout its eight hundred pages, The Evolution of Walt Whitman speaks with authority on a vast range of topics that define both Whitman the man and Whitman the mythical personage. Remarkably, most of these discussions remain fresh and relevant, and that is in part because they have been so influential.
In particular, The Evolution of Walt Whitman inaugurated the study of Leaves of Grass as a lifelong work in progress, and it marked the end of the habit of talking about Leaves as if it were a single unified book. Asselineau saw Whitman's poetry “not as a body of static data but as a constantly changing continuum whose evolution must be carefully observed.” Throughout Evolution, Asselineau placed himself in the role of the observer, analyzing Whitman's development with a kind of scientific detachment. But behind this objective persona burned the soul of a risk taker who was willing to rewrite Whitman studies by bravely proposing what was then a controversial biographical source for Whitman's art—his homosexual desires.
The Evolution of Walt Whitman is a reminder that extraordinary works of criticism never exist in and of themselves. In this expanded edition, Roger Asselineau has provided a new essay summarizing his own continuing journey with Whitman. A foreword by Ed Folsom, editor of the Walt Whitman Quarterly, regards Evolution as the genesis of contemporary Whitman studies.
Sometimes, only the most heartbreaking memories possess the capacity—in their elegiac immediacy—to take our breath away. With Excellent Things in Women, Sara Suleri offers the reader a delicately wrought memoir of life in postcolonial Pakistan. Suleri intertwines the violent history of Pakistan's independence with her own intimate experiences—relating the tumult of growing up female during a time of fierce change in the Middle East in the 1960s and ’70s. In the two selections presented here, “Excellent Things in Women” and “Meatless Days,” we watch as Suleri re-encounters the relationships that inform her voyage from adolescence to womanhood—with her Welsh mother; her Pakistani father, prominent political journalist Z. A. Suleri; and her tenacious grandmother, Dadi, along with her five siblings—as she comes to terms with the difficulties of growing up and her own complicated passage to the West.
From Eudora Welty's memoir of childhood to May Sarton's reflections on her seventieth year, writers' journals offer an irresistible opportunity to join a creative thinker in musing on the events—whether in daily life or on a global scale—that shape our lives. In An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days, best-selling mystery novelist Susan Wittig Albert invites us to revisit one of the most tumultuous years in recent memory, 2008, through the lens of 365 ordinary days in which her reading, writing, and thinking about issues in the wider world—from wars and economic recession to climate change—caused her to reconsider and reshape daily practices in her personal life.
Albert's journal provides an engaging account of how the business of being a successful working writer blends with her rural life in the Texas Hill Country and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico. As her eclectic daily reading ranges across topics from economics, food production, and oil and energy policy to poetry, place, and the writing life, Albert becomes increasingly concerned about the natural world and the threats facing it, especially climate change and resource depletion. Asking herself, "What does it mean? And what ought I do about it?", she determines practical steps to take, such as growing more food in her garden, and also helps us as readers make sense of these issues and consider what our own responses might be.
Ezra Pound - American Writers 26 was first published in 1963. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
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