The rediscovered writings of Veza Canetti : out of the shadows of a husband / Julian Preece.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Preece, Julian.

Series:

Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture (Unnumbered)

Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Canetti, Veza, 1897-1963.

Canetti, Veza.

Authors, Austrian--20th century--Biography.

Authors, Austrian.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xii, 184 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Rochester, N.Y. : Camden House, 2007.

Summary:

The Viennese playwright, novelist, and short-story writer Veza Canetti was born in 1897 into a mixed Sephardic-Ashkenazi Jewish family and died in 1963 in London. Part of the avant garde In 1920s Vienna (where she met her future husband and Nobel Prize winner, Elias Canetti), from 1932 she wrote radical short stories drawn from everyday life for the Vienna Arbeiter-Zeitung. After censorship under the so-called Corporate State reduced her opportunities for publication, she disguised her critique in irony and humor, but from then on published little. Until 1990, when her first novel, Yellow Street, was finally published, she was known only as her husband's muse and literary assistant. As more of her writings appeared, some critics became convinced that it was he who was responsible for her decline into obscurity, notwithstanding his protestations of support and admiration. This biography tells a more nuanced story, presenting Canetti's literary career against the background of her troubled times, drawing on her husband's unpublished papers to assess their literary partnership, and showing how their early writings constituted a private dialogue on topics as diverse as feminism and Jewish identity and how several key themes in his work are anticipated in hers.

Contents:

A lost literary life recovered: Veza Canetti

The case of Veza Magd

Shared beginnings

Workers' writer: Veza at the Arbeiter-Zeitung, 1932-33

What's in a name? On maids

Writing under cover, 1934-38

Portraits

Rivalry and partnership.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [169]-176) and index.

ISBN:

1571133534

9781571133533

OCLC:

74029237