Studies in Classic American Literature (Shearsman Classics) - Softcover

Lawrence, D H

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1848611587 ISBN 13: 9781848611580

Publisher: Shearsman Books, 2011

Synopsis

Studies in Classic American Literature [...] is at once a work of cultural criticism, a study and critique of American myths, a meditation on the relationship between the Old World and the New, a new theory of the self, a theory of textuality (and a fearless demonstration of a radical, self-styled form of psycho-social criticism), a theory of art, a history of America, a critique of the Enlightenment and one of the greatest covert autobiographies in world literature (all the writers in the book represent either versions of Lawrence's self or versions of himself he felt he had to liberate). And, of course, it is a bravura interpretation of "classic" American texts, one of the most innovative and penetrating critical performances of modern times. -from Jon Thompson's Introduction.

About this title

Book Description:

Studies in Classic American Literature, first published in 1923 and long out of print, provides a cross-section of Lawrence's writing on American literature, including landmark essays on Benjamin Franklin, Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and Walt Whitman. This volume offers the final 1923 version of the text in a newly corrected and uncensored form, as well as earlier, often very different, versions of many of the essays, and a host of other materials, including four different versions of Lawrence's pioneering essay on Whitman.

About the Author:

D.H. Lawrence was born in Eastwood, Nottingham in 1895, to a father who was a miner and a mother who was a home-based lace-worker. After beginnings as a teacher, Lawrence's work was taken up by Ford Madox Ford and others, and he made a significant mark as a novelist and as a writer of short stories. Often steeped in controversy because of his frank treatment of sexuality, but also because of his elopement with another man's wife-a German national-just before World War 1, Lawrence eventually was to spend many years in voluntary exile in continental Europe, and then in Mexico and the U.S.A. Famous in the wider world for novels such as Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, and the scandal-struck Lady Chatterley's Lover, he wrote over 800 poems, and several collections of short stories and volumes of essays. He was also an accomplished painter. Lawrence died of tuberculosis in Vence, in the south of France, in 1930.

About this edition

• Publisher: Shearsman Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1848611587
• ISBN 13: 9781848611580
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 196