Chronicles the life and times of Tambimuttu (1915-1983). Over a period of forty years, Tambimuttu occupied a unique position in the world of letters. Himself a writer, In 1939 he launched Poetry London, An illustrated journal which was to exert a dec

South Asian Writers in Twentieth-Century Britain is the first book to provide a historical account of the publication and reception of South Asian anglophone writing from the 1930s to the present, based on original archival research drawn from a range of publishing houses. This comparison of succeeding generations of writers who emigrated to, or were born in, Britain examines how the experience of migrancy, the attitudes towards migrant writers in the literary market place, and the critical reception of them, changed significantly throughout the twentieth century. Ranasinha shows how the aesthetic, cultural, and political context changed significantly for each generation, producing radically different kinds of writing and transforming the role of the postcolonial writer of South Asian origin. The extensive use of original materials from publishers' archives shows how shifting political, academic, and commercial agendas in Britain and North America influenced the selection, content, presentation, and consumption of many of these texts. The differences between writers of different generations can thus in part be understood in terms of the different demands of their publishers and expectations of readers in each decade. Writers from different generations are paired accordingly in each chapter: Nirad Chaudhuri (1897-1999) with Tambimuttu (1915-83); Ambalavener Sivanandan (born 1923) with Kamala Markandaya (born 1924); Salman Rushdie (born 1947) with Farrukh Dhondy (born 1944); and Hanif Kureishi (born 1954) with Meera Syal (born 1963). Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand, Attia Hosain, V.S Naipaul, and Aubrey Menen are also discussed.

Naum Gabo (1890-1977), whose eventful life took him from his native Russia to Berlin, Paris, London, and finally the United States, achieved renown as one of the most inventive and controversial figures in twentieth-century sculpture. This book is the first comprehensive account of Gabo's life, career, and artistic theory and practice. Martin Hammer and Christina Lodder explore in detail the evolution of the artist's work and his aesthetic concerns, creative processes, assimilation of such new materials as plastic, and approach to public sculpture. The authors also examine his response to the scientific and political revolutions of his age and trace the origins and development of Gabo's utopian conviction that Constructivist art was profoundly in tune with modernity, social progress, and advances in science and technology. Drawing on Gabo's extensive and largely unpublished archives of letters, diaries, notebooks, models, and sketchbooks, Hammer and Lodder discuss the sculptor's work in the context of his relations with other avant-garde artists, architects, and critics, including his brother Antoine Pevsner. They also situate his aesthetic theory and practice within the Constructi

Thirty-eight rare, out-of-print or previously unpublished essays and letters by Lawrence Durrell with scholarly introduction.

Individual chapters treat the poetry Ewart contributed to various "little magazines" during the 1930s and 1940s; references in Ewart's poems to poetic craft, audience, and tradition; and his handling of characteristic themes including place, the world of work, marriage and children, and death. A full chapter is devoted to the erotically charged poetry for which Ewart was probably best known; the author argues that the richness of this poetry arises from the dynamic interplay of two contrasting poetical personae."--BOOK JACKET.

Keith Douglas was almost certainly the greatest poet of the Second World War. He was killed in Normandy three days after D-Day. He was only twenty-four. His short life was one of contradictions: the gifted artist and romantic, always in love with the wrong girl also enjoyed soldiering and was quick to volunteer at the beginning of the war. The brave and resourceful tank commander with the Sherwood Rangers in the Western Desert, in the campaign of which his Alemein to Zem Zem is the classic account, was also an outspoken critic of the military establishment and often in trouble with his superiors. There was always another side to Keith Douglas: difficult, even arrogant, he was at the same time, as Desmond Graham, observes in his original preface, 'generous, sensitive to the difficulties of others, remorselessly honest, energetic, and passionately, innocently open.' Douglas made in his brief life some friends who never forgot him, and whose memories of him have contributed much to this book. For this biography, Desmond Graham had access to much private and unpublished material. From that, interviews, Keith Douglas' own poems, letters and drawings emerges a definitive biography. 'An almost unqualified success . . . Mr Graham has used his material with great skill and tact.' Roy Fuller 'It is difficult to imagine a better biography than this being written about Keith Douglas . . . Desmond Graham provides us with an astonishing amount of information.' Stephen Spender 'Extremely well-done . . It is written with authority and it will be standard.' Peter Levi 'Sumptuously evocative' John Carey

After the publication of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, a complex series of debates occurred over the traditions of English poetry. Analyzing these diverse discussions in a wide range of well-known periodicals during the late modernist period, Chambers uncovers how poetry was shaped by avant-garde ideas, setting poetic trends for the 20th century.

Over sixty years after his death, Wallace Stevens remains one of the major figures of American modernist poetry, celebrated for his masterful style, formal rigor, and aesthetic investigations of the natural, political, and metaphysical worlds. In Making the Poem, noted Stevens scholar George S. Lensing explores the poet’s progress in the creation of his body of work, considering its development, composition, and reception. Drawing on little-known sources and nuanced readings of Stevens’ texts, Lensing expands the customary view of the poet’s creative approaches. This wide-ranging study extends from the origins and overlapping themes of well-known poems through the social and political backgrounds that marked Stevens’ work to the prosodic and musical elements central to his style. Making the Poem features a dynamic new reading of the important early poem “Sea Surface Full of Clouds”—viewing it alongside his wife Elsie’s journal describing the sea voyage that inspired the poem—and an extensive, multiperspective treatment of the widely anthologized “The Idea of Order at Key West,” as well as a careful excavation of the poem “Mozart, 1935” in the context of the U.S. Great Depression. Lensing concludes with a discussion of the gradual (and sometimes reluctant) recognition Stevens’ work received from poets and critics in Great Britain and Ireland. Stemming from decades of research and writing, Making the Poem: Stevens’ Approaches presents a holistic view of his creative achievements and a wealth of new material for readers to draw upon in their future encounters with the poetry of Wallace Stevens.

The first full study of the role of 'little magazines' and their contribution to the making of artistic modernism. A major scholarly achievement of immense value to teachers, researchers and students interested in the material culture of the first half of the 20th century and the relation of the arts to social modernity.