Portraits from life : modernist novelists and autobiography / Jerome Boyd Maunsell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Maunsell, Jerome Boyd, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Novelists, English--20th century--Biography.

Novelists, English.

Novelists, American--20th century--Biography.

Novelists, American.

Autobiography.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

282 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2018.

Summary:

What happens when novelists write about their own lives directly, in memoirs and autobiographies, rather than in novels? How do they present themselves, and what do their self-portraits reveal? In a series of biographical case studies, Portraits from Life examines how seven canonical Modernist writers - Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Henry James, Wyndham Lewis, Gertrude Stein, H.G. Wells, and Edith Wharton - depicted themselves in their memoirs and autobiographies during the first half of the twentieth century. Drawing on a range of life-writing sources in this innovative group portrait, Jerome Boyd Maunsell reconstructs the periods during which these authors worked on their memoirs, often towards the end of their lives, and shows how memoirs and autobiographies are just as artful as novels. The seven portraits in the book also create a rich network of encounters, as many of these writers knew each other, and wrote about each other in their reminiscences.0Portraits from Life investigates the difficulties and possibilities of autobiography - the relation of fact and fiction, biography and autobiography; the ethical issues of dealing with real people; the thin generic lines between novels and autobiographies; and the deceptive workings of memory - and how all these writers dealt with these concerns as they looked back on their lives. An act of portraiture and biography as well as an act of criticism, moving from London to Paris and through two world wars, it also pieces together a fresh and constantly inter-connecting narrative of the Modernist era in England and France.

Contents:

1 The secret of my life / Joseph Conrad Conrad, Joseph 11

2 A Straight dive into the past / Henry James James, Henry 37

3 For facts a most profound contempt / Ford Madox Ford Ford, Ford Madox 63

4 The life apart / Edith Wharton Wharton, Edith 95

5 Alive and kicking / H. G. Wells Wells, H. G. 121

6 You are never yourself to yourself / Gertrude Stein Stein, Gertrude 147

7 My life being so difficult a one to live / Wyndham Lewis Lewis, Wyndham 181.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-268) and index.

ISBN:

019878936X

9780198789369

OCLC:

990030446