The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes (Oxford Books of Prose & Verse) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199543410 ISBN 13: 9780199543410

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2008

Synopsis

In The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, master anthologist John Gross brings together a delectable smorgasbord of literary tales, offering striking new insight into some of the most important writers in history. Many of the anecdotes here are funny, others are touching, outrageous, sinister, inspiring, or downright weird. They show writers from Chaucer to Bob Dylan acting both unpredictably and deeply in character. The range is wide--this is a book which finds room for Milton and Shakespeare, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, Kurt Vonnegut and P. G. Wodehouse, Chinua Achebe and Salman Rushdie, James Baldwin and Tom Wolfe. It is also a book in which you can find out which great historian's face was once mistaken for a baby's bottom, which film star experienced a haunting encounter with Virginia Woolf not long before her death, and what Agatha Christie really thought of her popular character Hercule Poirot. It is in short an unrivalled collection of literary gossip offering intimate glimpses into the lives of authors ranging from Shakespeare to Philip Roth--a book not just for lovers of literature, but for anyone with a taste for the curiosities of human nature.

About this title

About the Author

John Gross is the editor of The Oxford Book of Aphorisms, The Oxford Book of Essays, After Shakespeare, and many other publications. He was editor of the Times Literary Supplement from 1974 to 1981, and is currently theatre critic of the Sunday Telegraph.

Review

`Review from previous edition contains scores of delightful items...All the anecdotes are set out in the elegant, unobtrusive manner that one is accustomed to from other of Mr. Gross's handsome anthologies for Oxford -- volumes of aphorisms, essays, comic verse, and English Prose.'
Joseph Epstein, Wall Street Journal

`hugely enjoyable'
John Mullen, Guardian Review

`splendid anthology'
Oldie

`a surprisingly good selection...a collection that will instruct and, more important, give immense pleasure.'
Contemporary Review, Volume 288

`An informative and amusing collection'
Patrick Richards, Day by Day

`John Gross's enlightening and hugely enjoyable anthology revivifies the literary dust of many centuries with both wit and grace'
Peter Parker, TLS

`Mr Gross has also produced succinct notes to help the reader and has, over all, produced a collection that will instruct and, more importantly, give immense pleasure'
Contemporary Review

`Gross widens and strenthens the idea of a literary anecdote, with enriching results. Books like this are usually recommnded as ideal bedtime reading. This one, however, should on no account be allowed in the bedroom, or you will find youself awake in the cold, small hours, still turning the
pages.'
John Carey, Sunday Times

`John Gross has produced a fascinating book.'
Jonathan Sale, Financial Times Magazine

`so many things here to enjoy'
Jeremy Lewis, Literary Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0199543410
• ISBN 13: 9780199543410
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 385
• Editor: Gross John