Publisher's Weekly Review
In these 20 enjoyable lectures, articles, prefaces and reviews covering a span of 30 years, a great American literary biographer writes with insight, wisdom, humor and charm about the subjects of his major works (Wilde, Yeats and Joyce) as well as about Washington Irving, George Eliot, Henry James, Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Ernest Hemingway, Frank O'Connor, Samuel Beckett and Henri Michaux. Additional contents include an essay on the Edwardians, a lecture on Freud and literary biography and a previously unpublished study of the background to Joyce's play Exiles , demonstrating that exile was a state to which Joyce was peculiarly suited. The collection will be of interest to general readers as well as to scholars and specialists. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
In addition to writing two of the finest literary biographies of the past three decades (James Joyce, 1959, and Oscar Wilde, 1987), Ellmann (d. 1987) produced over the years a series of sensitively perceived and written essays. Here are 18, dealing with such subjects as Henry James, Pound and Yeats, 1890's decadence, and Freud and the biographer's art. In all his work, Ellmann had the happy ability to combine extraordinary erudition with a simplicity of style that guides his reader through the subtleties of his thought with deceptive ease. As an added bonus, he enjoyed a talent for witty aphorism. Ellmann's rare gifts are delightfully evident in this new collection. While each of these short pieces can be read with pleasure and profit, it is perhaps the section on ""Freud and Literary Biography"" that will create the greatest impression today. With debate raging about what Joyce Carol Oates recently called ""pathography,"" Ellmann's analysis of the uses of psychological insights in evaluating the lives and works of writers past and present is balanced and convincing. The pertinence of his position is, of course, validated by Ellmann's own work. In this essay, the reader is gently instructed in biographical methods by a master of the genre. Elsewhere, too, Ellmann is equally astute, as in his delineation of Henry James' fears of and attraction to the aesthetic movement of the 1890's. Ellmann's insights strike the reader with the force of truth. A collection that should be on the shelves of everyone interested in the writer's craft. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
This posthumous collection of essays from the biographer of Oscar Wilde [BKL Ja 1 88] covers familiar subjects that the critic addressed throughout his distinguished career. Drawn from journals, book reviews, and Ellmann's own books, these pieces preserve the solid investigations and astute judgments that characterize Ellmann at his creative best as critic and writer. Among the subjects covered are Henry James, Wallace Stevens, and James Joyce (in a piece published for the first time). Index. -- John Brosnahan
Library Journal Review
Ellmann planned this selection of his literary and biographical essays before his death in May 1987. The modern literary gang's all here: Henry James, Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, Pound, Eliot, Stevens, Lawrence, Hemingway, and Beckett. Though many of the essays have appeared in earlier books--including Eminent Domain and Golden Codgers-- they all profit from the company they keep in this new assemblage. Ellmann's wide range, erudition, insightfulness, and stylistic grace are all on display. The book's title, taken from Finnegan's Wake, points to the valedictory nature of the book and reminds us how much Ellmann will be missed.-- Keith Cushman, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
