Anglo-Saxon Attitudes - Softcover

Wilson, Angus

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312142757 ISBN 13: 9780312142759

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1996

Synopsis

The publication and phenomenal success of Anglo-Saxon Attitudes in 1956 confirmed Angus Wilson's status as a world-class writer, on a par with other such literary greats as Graham Greene, Kingsley Amis, and John Osborne.
Still considered Wilson's finest work, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes chronicles the middle age of historian Gerald Middleton, a sixty-year-old self-defined failure, and of the most hopeless kind, "a failure with a conscience." Separated from his wife and mistrusted by his own children, Middleton soon finds himself mired in one of the cruelest archeological hoaxes of the century.
Hosting a colorful cast of memorable characters from Middleton's gay son, who is dominated by his overbearing mother, to Dollie, his unsatisfied mistress and accessory to the great hoax, Wilson depicts the hilarious foibles of English society with an unexpected, bittersweet compassion. It is no wonder Angus Wilson was considered the Charles Dickens of his day.

About this title

About the Author

Angus Wilson (1913–1991) worked as a deputy superintendent of the British Museum Reading Room before establishing a reputation with a collection of short stories, The Wrong Set. A novel, Hemlock and After, one of the first English books to describe the lives of gay men, brought more success, and Wilson began a prolific career as a writer of fiction, criticism, and reviews. He was a professor of English at the University of East Anglia and spent his last years in France.

Jane Smiley, winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, is the author of many novels and other works. In 2010 she published Private Life, a novel; A Good Horse, a book for young adults; and The Man Who Invented the Computer, the first volume of the Sloane American Inventors series.

Review

"After Evelyn Waugh, what? The answer is Angus Wilson, a master of mimicry, diction, intention and wit." —Edmund Wilson 

"One of the five greatest novels of the century." —Anthony Burgess

"...brilliant and ambitious...In every generation one or two novelists revise the conventional picture of English character. Mr. Wilson does this." —V.S. Pritchett, New Statesman and Nation

"It’s Dickens for the smart set, or Edmund Wilson with a dash of savage silliness." —Susan Salter Reynolds, The Los Angeles Times

"So read this splendid novel and you will find yourself not only entertained and at times vastly amused, but actually wiser about human nature. You will not only experience vicariously some interesting slices of postwar English life, but you will be conducted into a world of fine moral and ethical distinctions, which are this novelist’s particular forte. Much wisdom and humanity are to be found in the pages ofAnglo-Saxon Attitudes." —Martin Rubin, The Washington Times

Edition details

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0312142757
• ISBN 13: 9780312142759
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 346