Miscellaneous verdicts : writings on writers, 1946-1989 / Anthony Powell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Powell, Anthony, 1905-2000, author.

Contributor:

Mathews, Harry, 1930-2017, former owner.

University of Chicago. Press, publisher.

Harry Mathews Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--History and criticism.

English literature.

American literature--History and criticism.

American literature.

English-speaking countries--Intellectual life.

English-speaking countries.

Intellectual life.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

viii, 501 pages, 1 unnumbered page ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1992, 1990.

Summary:

"Miscellaneous Verdicts represents the best of Anthony Powell's critical writing over a period of four decades. Drawn from his regular reviews for the Daily Telegraph, from his occasional humorous pieces for Punch, and from his more sustained pieces of critical and anecdotal writing on writers, this collection is as witty, fresh, surprising, and entertaining as one would expect from the author of Dance to the Music of Time." "Powell begins with a section on the British, exploring his fascination both with genealogy and with figures like John Aubrey, and writing in depth about writers like Kipling, Conrad, and Hardy. The second section, on Americans, also opens with discussions of family trees (in this case presidential ones) and includes pieces on Henry James, James Thurber, American booksellers in Paris, Hemingway, and Dashiell Hammett. Personal encounters, and absorbing incidents from the lives of his subjects, frequently fill these pages--as they do even more in the section on Powell's contemporaries--Connolly, Orwell, Graham Greene, and others. Finally, and aptly, the book closes with a section on Proust and matters Proustian, including a marvelous essay on what is eaten and drunk, and by whom, in A la Recherche du Temps Perdu."--Jacket.

Contents:

Acknowledgments (p.vi)

Introduction (p.1)

The British. Robert Burton (p.7)

John Speed (p.10)

John Leland (p.12)

John Aubrey (p.15)

English genealogy (p.30)

The House of Lords (p.35)

Burke's Landed Gentry (p.43)

Of that ilk (p.51)

Price of a peerage (p.54)

Isaac D'Israeli (p.56)

Benjamin Disraeli : G.A. Lawrence : Ouida (p.58)

Robert Surtees (p.67)

Charles Dickens (p.75)

Thomas Hardy (p.82)

Joseph Conrad (p.95)

Rudyard Kipling (p.120)

The Americans. Presidential origins (p.147)

First ladies (p.150)

America in arms (p.153)

The genteel tradition (p.156)

Edgar Allan Poe and Thomas Hood (p.159)

James McNeill Whistler (p.162).

Cont.): Mark Twain (p.165)

Henry James (p.168)

Edith Wharton (p.192)

Jack London (p.195)

Stephen Crane (p.198)

Robert Frost (p.201)

Edmund Wilson (p.204)

E.E. Cummings (p.208)

F. Scott Fitzgerald (p.211)

Maxwell Perkins (p.222)

Ernest Hemingway (p.225)

Gertrude Stein (p.238)

Alice B. Toklas and Morley Callaghan (p.241)

American booksellers and publishers in Paris (p.243)

John Dos Passos (p.250)

James Thurber (p.253)

Dashiell Hammett (p.256)

Nathanael West (p.259)

Carson McCullers (p.262)

Truman Capote (p.264)

My contemporaries. Ivy Compton-Burnett (p.269)

The Lamberts : George, Constant and Kit (p.277)

George Orwell (p.280).

Cont.): Cyril Connolly (p.292)

Barbara Skelton (p.308)

Evelyn Waugh (p.311)

Christopher Isherwood (p.327)

Nancy Mitford and Harold Acton (p.334)

Graham Greene (p.337)

Geoffrey Grigson (p.344)

Edward Burra (p.351)

John Betjeman (p.355)

Peter Fleming (p.358)

Osbert Lancaster (p.362)

Roy Fuller (p.367)

J. Maclaren-Ross (p.372)

Kingsley Amis (p.374)

Philip Larkin (p.381)

John Bayley (p.386)

V.S. Naipaul (p.391)

Proust and Proustian matters. Benjamin Constant (p.407)

Henri-Frederic Amiel (p.413)

Italo Svevo (p.430)

Marcel Proust (p.436)

Index (p.499).

Notes:

Originally published: London: Heinemann, 1990.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Kislak Center Harry Mathews Collection copy presented to the Penn Libraries in 2018 by Harry Mathews.

Mathews Collection copy retains dust jacket.

ISBN:

0226677109

9780226677101

OCLC:

25411821

Online:

Publisher description