{"product_id":"the-collected-essays-of-elizabeth-hardwick-isbn-9781681371542","title":"The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe first-ever collection of essays from across Elizabeth Hardwick's illustrious writing career, including works not seen in print for decades.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003eNotable Book of 2017\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eElizabeth Hardwick wrote during the golden age of the American literary essay. For Hardwick, the essay was an imaginative endeavor, a serious form, criticism worthy of the literature in question. In the essays collected here she covers civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s, describes places where she lived and locations she visited, and writes about the foundations of American literature—Melville, James, Wharton—and the changes in American fiction, though her reading is wide and international. She contemplates writers’ lives—women writers, rebels, Americans abroad—and the literary afterlife of biographies, letters, and diaries. Selected and with an introduction by Darryl Pinckney, the Collected Essays gathers more than fifty essays for a fifty-year retrospective of Hardwick’s work from 1953 to 2003. “For Hardwick,” writes Pinckney, “the poetry and novels of America hold the nation’s history.” Here is an exhilarating chronicle of that history.\u003cb\u003ePROVISIONAL TOC\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Selected and edited by Darryl Pinckney\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 1. The Decline of Book Reviewing\u003cbr\u003e 2. Anderson, Millay, and Crane in Their Letters\u003cbr\u003e 3. William James: An American Hero\u003cbr\u003e 4. Mary McCarthy\u003cbr\u003e 5. The Neglected Novels of Christina Stead\u003cbr\u003e 6. Memoirs, Conversations and Diaries\u003cbr\u003e 7. George Eliot’s Husband\u003cbr\u003e 8. Loveless Love: Graham Greene\u003cbr\u003e 9. America and Dylan Thomas\u003cbr\u003e 10. The Subjection of Women\u003cbr\u003e 11.  Simone Weill\u003cbr\u003e 12. Uncollected Stories of Faulkner\u003cbr\u003e 13. Meeting VS Naipaul\u003cbr\u003e 14. Ring Lardner\u003cbr\u003e 15. Robert Frost in His Letters\u003cbr\u003e 16. Domestic Manners\u003cbr\u003e 17. Thomas Mann at 100\u003cbr\u003e 18. Wives and Mistresses\u003cbr\u003e 19. Nabokov: Master Class\u003cbr\u003e 20. Bartleby in Manhattan\u003cbr\u003e 21. The Sense of the Present\u003cbr\u003e 22. Fiction\u003cbr\u003e 23. English Visitors in America\u003cbr\u003e 24. Letters of Delmore Schwartz\u003cbr\u003e 25. Mrs. Wharton in New York\u003cbr\u003e 26. On Washington Square\u003cbr\u003e 27. The Genius of Margaret Fuller\u003cbr\u003e 28. Gertrude Stein\u003cbr\u003e 29. Djuna Barnes: The Fate of the Gifted\u003cbr\u003e 30. Katherine Anne Porter\u003cbr\u003e 31. Wind from the Prairie (Masters, Sandburg,)\u003cbr\u003e 32. Edmund Wilson\u003cbr\u003e 33. Norman Mailer: The Teller and the Tape\u003cbr\u003e 34. Mary McCarthy in New York\u003cbr\u003e 35. The Magical Prose of Poets: Elizabeth Bishop\u003cbr\u003e 36. Tru Confessions (Capote)\u003cbr\u003e 37. Melville: Redburn\u003cbr\u003e 38. Thomas Wolfe\u003cbr\u003e 39. Sinclair Lewis\u003cbr\u003e 40. Nathaniel West\u003cbr\u003e 41. Henry James\u003cbr\u003e 42. Tess Slesinger\u003cbr\u003e 43. Schhedrin\u003cbr\u003e 44.  Boston\u003cbr\u003e 45. After Watts\u003cbr\u003e 46. Selma\u003cbr\u003e 47. The Emigre\"In good fiction, every sentence and detail is necessary. The same is true of these impeccably economical essays, which, collected here with a wise introduction by Pinckney, offer a rich immersion in both [Hardwick’s[ brilliant mind and the minds of so many others….Astringent and unsentimental, these essays span over half a century and, as such, constitute a monumental, if unwitting, autobiography.\" —Hermione Hoby, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Elizabeth Hardwick, long recognized as one of the great literary   critics of the 20th century, is generously represented by this selection   of her eloquent, erudite, chatty, and often very witty essays and   reviews, with a warmly sympathetic and informative introduction by   Darryl Pinckney.” —Joyce Carol Oates\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Hardwick’s \u003ci\u003eCollected Essays\u003c\/i\u003e is an authoritative immersion in American writing….It’s a Who’s Who of American writers, or those who came to America to write. Here are Dylan Thomas’s last days in New York, when it seems always 'the dead, anguished middle of a drunken night'; Truman Capote’s 'unique crocodilian celebrity'; WH Auden, Isherwood, Henry James, Nabokov, Mailer, Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, to name but a few. Hardwick can send you back to what you’ve admired, or give you a list of books you wish you had read.” —Olivia Cole, \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“How crucial it is to have Hardwick’s Collected Essays now. For they are  incorruptible. Their intelligence is prodigious, but never boastful.  This major American writer dares, inspires, and cajoles us into reading  and writing with renewed conviction and resistance to the meretricious.\"  —Catharine R. Stimpson\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This collection, edited and with an introduction by her former student Pinckney, is significant. Hardwick, who was a cofounder, editor, and advisor to the \u003ci\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e, covered the important events of her time (the civil rights and women’s movements, protests against the Vietnam War) with clarity and precision and without sentimentality. Her ear for language and eye for detail, i.e., her novelist’s sensibility (she published three), makes her sketches and essays a pleasure to read and savor. Pinckney's introduction offers insights into Hardwick's keen intelligence and quick wit.” —\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Throughout her . . . career, Hardwick was devoted to pursuing literature as a way of life and finding life in literature.” —\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This fine, revealing career retrospective showcases the late Hardwick, a novelist and cofounder of the \u003ci\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e, honing her favorite form, the literary review, to razor-sharp precision...this book contains ample examples of literary criticism that might be imitated or even matched but not surpassed in its style, insight, and genuine love for literature.\" —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Just as Edwin Denby, Clement Greenberg, and Pauline Kael transformed the nature of criticism in the fields of dance, art, and film, respectively, Hardwick has redefined the possibilities of the literary essay.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e“Hardwick wrote when she had something to say, and she took her time; the impression of ease is owing strictly to her style. Not a poet, she produced a poet’s prose...” —\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Elizabeth Hardwick is our most original, brilliant, and amusing critic. Many of these essays are already classics for their insight and style.” —Diane Johnson\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Hardwick has a gift for coming up with descriptions so thoughtfully selected, so exactly right, that they strike the reader as inevitable.” —Anne Tyler\u003cb\u003eElizabeth Hardwick\u003c\/b\u003e (1916–2007) was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and educated at the University of Kentucky and Columbia University. A recipient of a Gold Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she is the author of three novels, a biography of Herman Melville, and four collections of essays. She was a co-founder and advisory editor of \u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e and contributed more than one hundred reviews, articles, reflections, and letters to the magazine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eDarryl Pinckney\u003c\/b\u003e selected \u003ci\u003eThe New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick\u003c\/i\u003e (2010). He is the author of two novels, \u003ci\u003eHigh Cotton\u003c\/i\u003e (1992) and \u003ci\u003eBlack Deutschland\u003c\/i\u003e (2016), and of two works of nonfiction, \u003ci\u003eOut There: Mavericks of Black Literature\u003c\/i\u003e (1992) and \u003ci\u003eBlackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy\u003c\/i\u003e (2014). He also worked for Robert Wilson on his productions of \u003ci\u003eThe Forest\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eOrlando\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eTime Rocker\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Old Woman\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eLetter to a Man\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eGarrincha: A Street Opera\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304858898661,"sku":"NP9781681371542","price":24.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781681371542.jpg?v=1767738730","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-collected-essays-of-elizabeth-hardwick-isbn-9781681371542","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}