Book by Book (19 page)

L
ORD
D
UNSANY
(1878-1957). Irish writer, known for his luxuriant, poetic prose, vivid imagination, and masterly skill as a teller of fantastic tales. See
The Book of Wonder.

U
MBERTO
Eco (b. 1932). Italian expert on semiotics (the study of linguistic and cultural signs) and author of such best-selling novels as
The Name of the Rose.

W
ILLIAM
E
MPSON
(1906-1984). Major influence on “New Criticism,” largely through his early masterpiece
Seven Types of Ambiguity
, which appeared when he was in his midtwenties. An almost equally important English poet (“And learn a style from a despair”).

R
ONALD
F
IRBANK
(1886-1926). The archetypal “camp” novelist
(Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli)
, but also the genius who freed English prose from fustian heaviness and gave it lightness and air.

M. F. K. F
ISHER
(1908-1992). Widely admired memoirist, writer on food, and celebrant of French life and culture—a sensual life related in sensuous prose.

E
LLA
F
ITZGERALD
(1917-1996). The greatest all-round female jazz vocalist.

T
HEODOR
F
ONTANE
(1819-1898). Late-blossoming German writer, whose
Effi Briest
—about a young girl married to an incompatible older man—may be the finest German novel between Goethe's
Elective Affinities
and Thomas Mann's
Buddenbrooks.

F
ORD
M
ADOX
F
ORD
(1873-1939). The great pivot figure of modernism—a writer who personally knew Joseph Conrad and Henry James just as he later knew Ernest Hemingway and Ezra Pound.
The Good Soldier
has been called the finest “French” novel in English.

M
ICHEL
F
OUCAULT
(1926-1984). Controversial (yet much revered) French philosopher and scholar, best known for his studies of repressive institutions and the history of sexuality.

C
HARLES
F
OURIER
(1772-1837). French Utopian socialist visionary, he theorized a society based on phalanxes, where people would lead lives of maximum freedom and self-expression.

K
AREN
J
OY
F
OWLER
(b. 1960). Highly original and genre-bending fantasy and science fiction writer
(Sarah Canary).
Author of the comic and touching novel,
The Jane Austen Book Club.

N
ORTHROP
F
RYE
(1912-1991). Canadian educator and critic, author of the masterpiece of the “archetypal” interpretation of literature,
Anatomy of Criticism.

A
NTHONY
G
RAFTON
(b. 1950). Teacher and intellectual historian, specializing in Latin culture and learning during the Renaissance and early modern period.

H
ENRY
G
REEN
(1905-1973). Author of nine slender novels, half with gerundive titles
(Living, Loving, Party Going)
, all deeply admired by other writers (including John Updike and Eudora Welty).

D
ONALD
H
ALL
(b. 1928). Eminent poet, essayist, critic, interviewer (Pound, Eliot), teacher, and memoirist.

J
AMES
H
AMILTON-PATERSON
(b. 1941). Wide-ranging English writer, whose books include
Gerontius
, a Whitbread Prize-winning novel about the composer Edward Elgar, and a study of Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines.

R
UPERT
H
ART-DAVIS
(1907-1999). English publisher, biographer, and editor (of Oscar Wilde's letters). His correspondence with his Eton teacher, George Lyttelton, offers a panorama of London literary life during the late 1950s and early '60s.

A
NTHONY
H
ECHT
(1923-2004). Eminent American poet, teacher, essayist and critic. A man of the most kindly sophistication and courtliness, he wrote verse known for its wit, formal perfection, and understated passion. Try
The Venetian Vespers.

G
EORGETTE
H
EYER
(1902-1974). The modern mistress of the Regency romance. Her novels are built on wit, ingenuity, and moral complexity (see
A Civil Contract, Sprig Muslin).

R
ICHARD
H
OFSTADTER
(1916-1970). Social and intellectual historian, specializing in politics, and envied for his masterly and witty prose.
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
remains one of the best books ever written about education in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

M
ICHAEL
I
NNES
(1906-1994). Pen name of Oxford professor J.I. M. Stewart, under which he produced extremely witty, donnish mysteries and imaginative spy thrillers. Most famous title:
Hamlet, Revenge!
but his greatest book is probably
Lament for a Maker
, his funniest
Appleby's End.

D
IANA
W
YNNE
J
ONES
(b. 1934). Major English writer of fantasy for children. Her books can range from hilarious to harrowing, and some— like
Hexwood
—are structurally highly complex.
Howl's Moving Castle
was made into a Japanese animated film.

H
UGH
K
ENNER
(1923-2003). Important Canadian-American literary historian and critic, and the leading authority on twentieth-century modernism, able to marshal and connect the most disparate insights and facts. See
The Pound Era.

S
HERIDAN
LE F
ANU
(1814-1873). The leading Irish writer of ghost stories during the nineteenth century (“Green Tea,” “Carmilla”), and author of
Uncle Silas
, a mystery novel as fine as
The Moonstone
or
The Woman in White.

V
ERNON
L
EE
(1856-1935). The penname of Violet Paget, an expert on Italian places, gardens, and history, who wrote many essays and a handful of incomparable supernatural stories, in particular the hauntingly sexy “Amour Dure” and “Oke of Okehurst.”

M
ICHAEL
L
EVEY
(b. 1927). Cultivated English art historian, authority on Italian art of the Renaissance and on French eighteenth-century painting.

F. L. L
UCAS
(1894-1967). English essayist and scholar; author of a book about prose style and editor of a groundbreaking edition of John Webster's plays.

A
NTONIO
M
ACHADO
(1875-1939). Widely regarded as the greatest Spanish poet of modern times.

J
ULIAN
M
ACLAREN-ROSS
(1912-1964). English novelist, short-story writer, memoirist, and charming, feckless, hard-drinking, money-cadging legend in his own time (and after).

J
AMES
M
ARSHALL
(1942-1992). Major author-illustrator of children's books. His masterpiece is probably the multivolume saga of the hippos George and Martha.

C
HINA
M
IEVILLE
(b. 1972). English writer of baroque literary fantasy, in the tradition of Mervyn Peake (q.v.), marked by colorful vocabulary and political commitment. See
Per dido Street Station.

S
TEVEN
M
ILLHAUSER
(b. 1943). Novelist
(Edwin Mullhouse
, the Pulitzer Prize-winning
Martin Dressier)
and short-story writer, possessed of a supple, lyric prose style and a wistful, romantic imagination. See the collections
The Barnum Museum
and
Little Kingdoms.

J. B. M
ORTON
(1893-1969). English journalist and comic writer (often under the name “Beachcomber”).

F
ERDINAND
M
OUNT
(b. 1939). Novelist, political commentator, and former editor of the
Times Literary Supplement.

M
ARVIN
M
UDRICK
(1921-1986). Teacher, critic, and essayist. Regarded by many as the fiercest book reviewer since Randall Jarrell. “When the French get heavy, they make the Germans look like ballerinas.”

P
HYLLIS
R
EYNOLDS
N
AYLOR
(b. 1933). Prolific author of books for children and teenagers. Best known for the Newbery Award-winner
Shiloh
, about a boy, his dog, and moral decision making.

E. N
ESBIT
(1858-1924). Creator of
The Bastables
and the “Five Children” (e.g.,
Five Children and It)
, she is a key figure in the development of the modern children's novel, and especially of that subgenre in which the fantastic overturns the lives of ordinary schoolkids.

H
OMAS
L
OVE
P
EACOCK
(1785-1866). Learned and witty nineteenth-century writer who satirized the literature, politics, and culture of his time in a series of lighthearted “conversation” novels set mainly in English country houses.
Nightmare Abbey
and
Gryll Grange
are perhaps the best known.

M
ERVYN
P
EAKE
(1911-1968). With J.R.R. Tolkien and T.H. White, the third great English fantasy novelist of the century, as well as an equally important artist and illustrator. His trilogy, consisting of
Titus Groan, Gormenghast
, and
Titus Alone
, possesses a dark, bitter flavor all its own.

R
OBERT
P
HELPS
(b. 1922). American man of letters, best known for several books devoted to Colette
(Earthly Paradise
gathers her autobiographical
writings) and for his friendship and advocacy of writers like his contemporaries James Salter, Richard Howard, and Ned Rorem and, from the previous generation, Louise Bogan, Glenway Wescott, and James Agee.

E. K. R
AND
(1871-1945). Intellectual historian of antiquity and early medieval Europe. Best known for his
Founders of the Middle Ages.

S
AX
R
OHMER
(1883-1959). Popular novelist and creator of the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu.

D
ENIS DE
R
OUGEMONT
(1906-1985). Swiss scholar whose studies of sexual passion and obsession have been widely influential, though his advocacy of marriage and Christian love have tended to be somewhat slighted.

A
LAN
R
YAN
(b. 1941). English scholar of political philosophy, especially interested in Bertrand Russell.

J
AMES
S
CHUYLER
(1923-1991). Particularly troubled member of the New York school of poets, and close friend to John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara. One of the most ingratiating lyric voices of our time: see
The Morning of the Poem.

W. M. S P
ACKMAN
(1905-1998). Author of four masterly, syntactically demanding novels about love, generally between cultivated older men and college-age women. The first, and most admired, bears an unforgettable title:
An Armful of Warm Girl.

R
EX
S
TOUT
(1886-1975). Creator of the great stay-at-home detective, the enormously fat, orchid-loving Nero Wolfe. Stylish literate mystery
writing at its finest, and atmospheric evocations of New York in the 1930s and '40s.

G
OTTFRIED VON
S
TRASSBURG
(d. 1250). Building upon the (now) incomplete work of the French writers Thomas and Beroul, he produced the most complete and polished account (admittedly in German) of the immortal love story of Tristan and Isolde.

J
EAN
T
OOMER
(1894-1967). Author of one of the most admired of all African American novels,
Cane
, an important influence on Toni Morrison, among others.

C
HRETIEN DE
T
ROYES
(second half of the twelfth century). The major French author of chivalric romances. The finest is probably
Yvain.

F
RANK
M. T
URNER
(b. 1944). Professor of history at Yale, director of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and a leading authority on Victorian culture.

K
ENNETH
T
YNAN
(1927-1980). During the 1950s the major English theater critic, later author of superb profiles of “show people” like Mel Brooks, Johnny Carson, Tom Stoppard, and Louise Brooks.

M
ARINA
W
ARNER
(b. 1946). Novelist and authority on fairy tales, nursery rhymes, and other aspects of the popular imagination. Her masterpiece thus far is
From the Beast to the Blonde.

W
OLFRAM VON
E
SCHENBACH
(d. 1220). Author of
Parzival
, the greatest Middle High German epic: the story of the quest for the Holy Grail.

P. G. W
ODEHOUSE
(1881-1975). The preeminent English comic novelist of the twentieth century, author of nearly a hundred books over seventy years. Creator of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster.

M
ARY
W
OLLSTONECRAFT
(1759-1797). Pioneering advocate for women's rights, wife of philospher-novelist William Godwin, mother of Mary Shelley (author of
Frankenstein).
She died too young.

F
RANCES
Y
ATES
(1899-1981). Leading historian of Renaissance magic, alchemy, and estoteric philosophy. Her
Art of Memory
describes the “memory palaces” that enabled users to learn by heart epic poems, the Bible, anything.