The Go-Between - Softcover

Hartley, L. P.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140183078 ISBN 13: 9780140183078

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1994

Synopsis

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there", begins L. P. Hartley's tale of nostalgia, the reawakening of lost memories, and the sexual awareness of an adolescent boy. It is 1952. Leo, now in his sixties, comes upon an old diary and is drawn back to the hot summer of 1900, when he visited Brandham Hall. He has managed to forget serving during his stay as a messenger between a young woman and her lover -- and to forget also the devastating events that ensued and destroyed his beliefs and his hopes for the future. As his memories begin to unfold and Leo recalls the lost era of Victorian country gentry, he finds he must reinterpret his newly discovered past in terms of his present life. This first annotated edition of Hartley's 1953 classic contains a number of corrections based on the surviving handwritten manuscript.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"An intelligent, complex and beautifully felt evocation of nascent boyhood sexuality that is also a searching exploration of the nature of memory and myth" --Douglas Brooks-Davies

An invitation to a friend's house changes an adolescent boy's life. Discovering an old diary, Leo, now in his sixties, is drawn back to the hot summer of 1900 and his visit to Brandham Hall. The past comes to life as Leo recalls the events and devastating outcome that destroyed his beliefs and future hopes.

The first annotated edition of L.P. Hartley's great classic, the present text generally follows that of the first edition of 1953 and also includes a number of small but significant corrections based on the surviving holograph of The Go-Between.

Lord David Cecil described L.P. Hartley as "One of the most distinguished of modern novelists; and one of the most original. For the world of his creation is composed of such diverse elements. On the one hand he is a keen and accurate observer of the processes of human thought and feeling; he is also a sharp-eyed chronicler of the social scene. But his picture of both is transformed by the light of a Gothic imagination that reveals itself now in a fanciful reverie, now in the mingled dark and gleam of a mysterious light and a mysterious darkness.... Such is the vision of light presented in[his] novels.

About the Author

L.P. Hartley (1895–1972), the son of the director of a brickworks, attended Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford, before setting out on a career as a literary critic and writer of short stories. In 1944 he published his first novel, The Shrimp and the Anemone, the opening volume of the trilogy Eustace and Hilda. In the spring of 1952, Hartley began The Go-Between, a novel strongly rooted in his childhood. By October he had already completed the first draft, and the finished product was published in early 1953. The Go-Between became an immediate critical and popular success and has long been considered Hartley’s finest book. His many other novels include Facial Justice, The Hireling, and The Love-Adept.

Colm Tóibín is the author of six novels, including The Master (a novel based on the life of Henry James) and Brooklyn, and two collections of stories, Mothers and Sons and The Empty Family. He has been a visiting writer at Stanford, the University of Texas at Austin, and Princeton, and is now Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140183078
• ISBN 13: 9780140183078
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288