Philip Collins

#2

Frank Laurence Lucas (28 December 1894 – 1 June 1967) was an English classical scholar, literary critic, poet, novelist, playwright, political polemicist, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and intelligence officer at Bletchley Park during World War II. He is now best remembered for his scathing 1923 review of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, and for his book Style (1955; revised 1962), an acclaimed guide to recognising and writing good prose. His Tragedy in Relation to Aristotle's 'Poetics' (1927, substantially revised 1957) was for over fifty years a standard introduction. His most important contribution to scholarship was his four-volume old-spelling Complete Works of John Webster (1927), the first collected edition of the Jacobean dramatist since that of Hazlitt the Younger (1857), itself an inferior copy of Dyce (1830). Eliot called Lucas "the perfect annotator", and subsequent Webster scholars have been indebted to him, notably the editors of the new Cambridge Webster (1995–2019). Lucas is also remembered for his anti-fascist campaign in the 1930s, and for his wartime work at Bletchley Park, for which he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).

#3

"With the delectable wit, unforgettable characters, and challenging themes that have won her a Pulitzer Prize and national bestseller status, Jane Smiley naturally finds a kindred spirit in the author of such classics as Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol. Because "his novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels," Smiley's Charles Dickens is at once a sensitive profile of the great master and a fascinating meditation on the writing life.". "Smiley evokes Dickens as he might have seemed to his contemporaries: convivial, astute, boundlessly energetic - and lionized. As she makes clear, Dickens not only led the action-packed life of a prolific writer, editor, and family man, but, balancing the artistic and the commercial in his work, he also consciously sustained his status as one of the first modern "celebrities."". "Charles Dickens offers brilliant interpretations of almost all the major works, an exploration of Dickens's narrative techniques and his innovative voice and themes, and a reflection on how his richly varied lower-class cameos sprang from an experience and passion more personal than his public knew. Jane Smiley's own "demon narrative intelligence" (The Boston Globe) touches, too, on controversial details that include Dickens's obsession with money, his squabbles with publishers, his unhappy marriage, and the rumors of an affair."--BOOK JACKET.