Literature

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 2nd pr., 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 414 pages, b&w illustrations. Very good, clean, in a lightly worn, unclipped dust jacket. World famous at twenty-four, brilliant and reckless, hard-living and scandalous, Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage before he ever experienced war first-hand. So true was his portrait of a young man who runs from his first confrontation with battle that Civil War veterans argued about whose regiment Crane had been in. Considered by H.G. Wells as "beyond dispute, the best writer of our generation," Crane was also famous in his time as an unforgettable personality, an Adonis with tawny hair and gray-blue eyes that Willa Cather described as "full of luster and changing lights." A lover of women and truth at any cost, Crane, in his short life, paid dearly for both. He alienated the New York police when he testified against a policeman on behalf of a prostitute falsely accused of soliciting, forcing him to live the rest of his short life as an expatriate in England. Reporting on the Spanish American War, Crane described the Rough Riders blundering into a trap after arriving in Cuba, infuriating Roosevelt. He died tragically young, leaving behind a handful of fine short stories, including The Open Boat and The Blue Hotel, along with war reporting, novels, and poetry.

Hardcover. London, The Art Union of London, 1st thus, 1851, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, half-leather, maroon calf over maroon boards with gllt rules, spine with gilt decorated raised bands and lettering. Portrait frontispiece by J[ohn] Gilbert after Sir Joshua Reynolds. 14 pages of Goldsmith's verse followed by 30 plates engraved on wood by J.Thompson, W.T.Green, J.W.Whymper, G.Dalziel, E.Dalziel, &c. after the designs of C.Stanfield, J.Leech, E.H.Corbould, W.L.Leitch, E.M.Ward & others. Some cloth fade to covers, front fly leaf gone, bookplate on inside front cover. Mild foxing.

Hardcover. London , Macmillan, 1st, 1933, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 268 pages, illustrated with facsimile drawings and 8 collotype plates. Previous owner's inscription on front fly leaf. Blue cloth spine faded.

Softcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 248 pages. Name on front fly leaf whited out, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, chipped dust jacket. 410 pages, b&w illustrations. Best known as the author of "Windows for the Crown Prince, " an account of her years as English tutor to Crown Prince Akihito of Japan, Elizabeth Gray Vining now tells the full story of her life, including impressions of Japan that she omitted from her earlier book. Previous owner'e signature on Front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York: , Henry Holt, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 210 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy with minor if any wear to edges.

NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 188 pages. SIGNED BY OFFUTT on title-page.

Hardcover. NY, New York University Press, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 200 pages. Joyce Cary long a popular author among discriminating readers, is gaining a wider audience for his novels every year. This critical study of his work considers the developing relationship between his matter and his manner. It especially emphasizes his growth as artist and thinker. Looking closely at the language and structure of Cary's books, the author examines all the novels- the African ones, the historical ones, and the two trilogies most of them in detail. To gain an overall view he also considers Cary's nonfiction and some as yet unpublished material. While this study is essentially non-biographical, it does analyze Cary's interpretations of history, sociology and politics as they are gathered from the actions and words of his colorful characters. One of the most intriguing features of Dr. Wolkenfeld's book is the dialogue between characters of the various novels, where likenesses as well as dissimilarities, which reveal so much about Cary as a writer, become evident. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Jonathan Cape, 1st, 1937, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine. Frontiepiece photograph of the author as Lord Beaconsfield. 392 pages. Autobiography dealing with the author's life up to the mid 1930s. He was the brother of A E Housman, and was well-known in his own right as a writer of plays, as well as being active in the women's suffrage campaign and in the pacifist movement. A prolific writer with around a hundred published works to his name, Housman's output eventually covered all kinds of literature from socialist and pacifist pamphlets to children's stories. He wrote an autobiography, The Unexpected Years (1937), which, despite his record of controversial writing, said little about his homosexuality, the practice of which was then illegal. Mild shelf wear. Clean copy.

Hardcover. UK, Oxford University Press, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Two hardcover volumes in bright dust jackets, 408 and 388 pages. The secular Latin poetry of the Middle Ages is at once great in bulk and interesting in kind, embracing as it does lyrical, epical, satirical, philosophical, grammatical, and historical verse. The rhetorical tradition of the ancient world can be traced throughout its development, from the fifth to the thirteenth century, when the tradition passes over into the new literary vernaculars. No adequate English survey of this delightful and historically important literature has hitherto been made. These volumes form a sequel to the same author's 'History of Christian-Latin Poetry', and the two works together offer a complete introduction to the whole field of medieval Latin poetry. First published in 1934. Clean copies.

Softcover. Los Angeles, Augustan Reprint Society, reprint, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Facsimile reprint of 17th century (1754) edition; stapled wraps; 44 pages with a 12 page introduction by Jocelyn Harris.

Softcover. NY/London, Routledge, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 198 pages. Stigmata collects some of Helene Cixous' most intriguing meditations. A unique book, it is a testimony to an extraordinary writer. B&w illustrations. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Cecil Woolf , 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 80 pages, b&w illustrations by Brigid Peppin

Hardcover. NY, Henry Holt & Co., 1st, 1926, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light gray boards with a black cloth spine with gilt lettering. Name and ownership stamp on front fly leaf, otherwise clean copy.

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 736 pages. The year 2010 marked the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain's death. In celebration of this important milestone, Twain's uncensored autobiography is available in its entirety and exactly as he left it. This major literary event brings to readers, admirers, and scholars the first of three volumes and presents Mark Twain's authentic and unsupressed voice, brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, and speaking clearly from the grave as he intended. Volume 1 ONLY ( of a planned 3 volume set). Clean copy. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A luminous collection of essays from Louise Gluck, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and one of our most original and influential poets. Five decades after her debut poetry collection, Firstborn, Louise Gluck is a towering figure in American letters. Written with the same probing, analytic control that has long distinguished her poetry, American Originality is Gluck's second book of essays-her first, Proofs and Theories, won the 1993 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction. Gluck's moving and disabusing lyricism is on full display in this decisive new collection. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on the title page. What motivates us to reread literary works? How is our pleasure, interpretation, involvement, and evaluation different when we read a literary work and when we reread it? This fascinating book by Matei Calinescu is the first to focus on the implications of rereading for critical understanding. Drawing on literary theory, cultural anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and previous theories of reading, Calinescu describes the dynamics of rereading and explores the sometimes complementary, sometimes sharply conflicting relationships between reading and rereading. Calinescu analyzes fictional works by Borges, Nabokov, Proust, Robbe-Grillet, and Henry James, among others, explaining how reading texts is related both to symbolic play or make-believe and to games with rules. He reviews the history of reading in modern times, discussing, for example, how the Reformation led to rereadings of Scripture and how the proliferation of books during the Enlightenment led to a shift from "intensive reading" to "extensive reading." Calinescu looks at the distinctions between reading and rereading from the perspectives of the age, situation, and gender of the individual reader. He discusses the problems raised by secret or oblique languages and codes - devised to evade censors, communicate with a select audience of "secret sharers," or play games of hide-and-seek with the reader - and shows that they naturally lead to rereading a text. Calinescu argues persuasively that an understanding of rereading is useful in formulating both analytic strategies of practical criticism and a poetics of reading. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. San Antonio TX, Wings Press, reprint, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 208 pages, b&w photos. On October 28, 1959, John Howard Griffin underwent a transformation that changed many lives beyond his own he made his skin black and traveled through the segregated Deep South. His odyssey of discovery was captured in journal entries, arguably the single most important documentation of 20th-century American racism ever written. More than 50 years later, this newly edited edition which is based on the original manuscript and includes a new design and added afterword gives fresh life to what is still considered a contemporary book. The story that earned respect from civil rights leaders and death threats from many others endures today as one of the great human and humanitarian documents of the era. Clean copy.

Softcover. Boston, Exact Change, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 342 pages. INSCRIBED BY ESHLEMAN in red ink on the half-title page. Clean, like new.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1940, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Poor, Hardcover, red cloth in a worn and chipped dust jacket with closed tears, 191 pages with index. Dr. Worcester presents a theory of satire, surveying the whole field since Dryden's Discourse of the Origin of Satire and drawing illustrations not only from English but from classical, French, German, and American literature. At the same time he makes a penetrating study of irony and its uses. Name on inside front cover otherwise clean.

Softcover. Chicago, Chicago Review, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, literary journal with entire issue devoted to the poet. Fairly scarce. New and bright all around wraps. Poems by Dorn, plus an interview, correspondence to and from, LeRoi Jones and Tom Raworth, and Dale Smith, an interview with Eleni Sikelianos.

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 654 pages. From the more than 4000 letters that have survived, the editors have selected some 400 letters of one of the most important 20th century authors, Edith Wharton. These range from a letter written when Wharton was twelve years old to a letter penned just before her death. The collection shows Wharton at her epistolary best and most characteristic and in all the striking variety of her many voices. Clean copt.

Hardcover. NY, Garland Publishing, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth stamped in gilt, 327 pages. Clean, bright copy. No dj issued.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday & Company, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. A thoughtful biography of the too-short life of the woman who wrote one of the most controversial American novels of the 20th century.

Softcover. Los Angeles, Augustan Reprint Society, reprint, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 80 pages. The Augustan Reprint Society Number 251-252. Introduction by Janet E. Aikins. Orig. tan card wrappers, stapled binding. An 18th century theatre critic's remarks regarding Otway's play. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 398 pages. Mystery writer Dorothy Sayers is loved and remembered, most notably, for the creation of sleuths Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. As this biography attests, Sayers was also one of the first women to be awarded a degree from Oxford, a playwright, and an essayist--but also a woman with personal joys and tragedies. Here, Reynolds, a close friend of Sayers, presents a convincing and balanced portrait of one of the 20th century's most brilliant, creative women. 30 b&w photos. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Chicago, University Of Chicago Press, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 236 pages. A butler school in Houston, a livestock auction in Little Rock, a home for "frozen guys" in California, JFK's humidor in Manhattan--all are jumping off points for Friedman's baleful and sharply satirical scrutiny of American life and behavior in the second half of the twentieth century. Travel with Friedman from Harlem to Hollywood, from Port-au-Prince to Etta's Eat Shop in Chicago. In these pieces, which were published in literary and mass-circulation magazines from the 1960s to the 1990s, you'll meet such luminaries as Castro and Clinton, Natalie Wood and Clint Eastwood, and even Friedman's friends Irwin Shaw, Nelson Algren, and Mario Puzo. Friedman is a master of the essay, whether the subject is crime reporting ("Lessons of the Street"), Hollywood shenanigans ("My Life among the Stars"), or his outrageous adventures as the editor of pulp magazines (the classic "Even the Rhinos Were Nymphos"). We could sing his praises as a journalist, humorist, and social critic. But, as Buckley tells us, being Bruce Jay Friedman is enough. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Austin TX, University of Texas Press, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket with a touch of fading to edges, 177 pages. Essays, literary and philosophical, on the state of the humanities and the implications of conceiving dialogue as the root condition of human being. Translated from the Russian by Vern W. McGee. Clean copy of the hardcover edition. Book review laid-in.

Softcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 196 pages. investigates the intersection between post-colonial and feminist criticism, via the Western fascination with veiled women of the Orient. Her original and compelling argument calls into question dualistic conceptions of identity and difference, West and East masculinist assumptions of Orientalism, and Western feminist discourses that seek to 'liberate' the veiled woman. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1st pbk, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 472 pages with index. The editor, Joanne Trautmann Banks, previously was co-editor of the six volume 'Letters of Virginia Woolf.' For this volume, Ms. Banks selected 'jewels' from the earlier compilation, and has provided explanatory footnotes throughout. Clean copy.

Softcover. privately printed, 1921, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, program for the Memorial services held for the writer/naturalist at the Nest in Riverby, April 2, 1921. A selection of Bible passages, poetry and Burrough's own writings. Two tipped b&w plates. Folded gray wrappers with a string tie, 24 pages printed on gray charcoal paper. Very good, clean.

Hardcover. np, Oscar Laighton, 1st, 1935, Hardcover, green cloth stamped in gilt, 177 pages. Many years ago Celia Thaxter wrote a poem adapted from one of the short stories of Count Tolstoy, she called it "The Heavenly Guest". It was later found by her granddaughter, Rosamond Thaxter, in a portfolio which had been loaned to the late Sara Orne Jewett, which was returned after her death. Also found were many unpublished papers of Celia Thaxter's. They are gathered here. This copy INSCRIBED BY ROSAMOND THAXTER on the front fly leaf, Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 867 pages. Over the course of a nearly sixty-year career, Norman Mailer wrote more than 30 novels, essay collections, and nonfiction books. Yet nowhere was he more prolific or more exposed than in his letters. All told, Mailer crafted more than 45,000 pieces of correspondence (approximately 20 million words), many of them deeply personal, keeping a copy of almost every one. Now the best of these are published most for the first time in one remarkable volume that spans seven decades and, it seems, several lifetimes. Together they form a stunning autobiographical portrait of one of the most original, provocative, and outspoken public intellectuals of the twentieth century. Compiled by Mailer s authorized biographer, J. Michael Lennon, and organized by decade, Selected Letters of Norman Mailer features the most fascinating of Mailer s missives from 1940 to 2007 letters to his family and friends, to fans and fellow writers (including Truman Capote, James Baldwin, and Philip Roth), to political figures from Henry Kissinger to Bill and Hillary Clinton, and to such cultural icons as John Lennon, Marlon Brando, and even Monica Lewinsky.

Hardcover. London, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1933, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 140 pages. Hardcover with price-clipped dust jacket. Clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Sarasota FL, Pineapple Press, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 260 pages. Follow Ernest Hemingway's exploits on the Bahamian island of Bimini from 1935 to 1937, the very moment in time when the International Game Fish Association (under the author's co-leadership) was emerging. Covers Hemingway's role in the formation of the IGFA, his underappreciated seminal writing about competitive saltwater angling when the sport was still in its infancy, the amazing fishing he enjoyed on the island, and the way all of these experiences translated into the composition of his posthumous novel Islands in the Stream. This is the only book on this period in Hemingway's life and reveals unexpected dimensions to the Hemingway portrait that deserve attention, including his surprising humor, his advanced conservationist views several decades before the environmental movement even began, and his egalitarian ideas about his contemporary female counterparts in the big-game fishing world--challenging the usual portrait of Hemingway as a chauvinist with no personal rules, boundaries, or conscience. Includes beautiful vintage photographs of 1930s Bimini that have never been published in book form.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 134 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY HALL ON BOOKPLATE ON FRONT END PAPER. Gutter crack on page 132, otherwise tight copy. Newspaper clipping laid in.

Chicago, Ivan Dee, 1st US, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 239 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Author of The Moonstone and The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins has been hailed as "the father of the detective story." His own life story has a similar mysterious ring to it. When Collins died in 1899 he shocked Victorians by dividing his estate equally between two mistresses. He also acknowledged the three children of one of the mistresses as his own. In The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins, William Clarke has pieced together the truth behind this menage a trois, uncovering and exploring, with insight and sympathy, the private relationships of a fascinating writer who was a contemporary of Dickens, Constable, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, and Rossetti. "A literary coup ... casts a fresh beam of light on the great, dark seam of Victorian sexual mores."--The Observer.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1931, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 319 pages, several b&w woodcut illustrations. Black cloth spine with marbled boards, top edge gilt. Minor corner wear.

Hardcover. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st US, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Non-paginated. Hardcover. Illustrated with full color photographs. Price clipped dust jacket with light wear to edges. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Brussels, B. Le Francq, 1st Thus, 1798, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 4 volumes. Leather bound hardcovers. Text in ENGLISH & FRENCH Books measure: 3.75"W by 5.75"L. Volume 1 - Front cover loose from book. Crack in leather length of spine - text block still firm. Previous owners bookplate on inside front cover. 2 black & white illustrations. Moderate rubbing to leather covers. Volume 2 - Previous owners bookplate on inside front cover. Half of front endpaper removed. 2 black & white illustrations. Moderate rubbing to leather covers. Volume 3 - Previous owners bookplate on inside front cover. 1 black & white illustration. Moderate rubbing to leather covers. Volume 4 - Previous owners bookplate on inside front cover. 1 black & white illustration. Moderate rubbing to leather covers.

Hardcover. Gloucester MA, Peter Smith , reprint, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 342 pages. Beige cloth with black lettering on spine. Light underlining to about 10 pages, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York, Harcourt Brace , 1st US, 1957, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover, 200 pages. Illustrated with black & white photographs. This copy previously owned by author Roger Shattuck and includes his underlining and editing of text in various colors of ink. Upper right corner of front cover bumped. Foxing to endpapers and edges. Dust jacket quite worn.

Hardcover. New York, Holiday House, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 152 pages. Hardcover with black & white illustrations. Light edgewear to dust jacket with closed tears to front cover. Protected by mylar cover. Clean, tight copy. History of this children's book publishing house followed by chronological listing of all their publications.

Hardcover. London, William Pickering, 1st, 1835, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 298 pages. Black leather covers with gilt rules, faded gilt title on ribbed spine. All edges gilt. Covers with edgewear and the top 6th of the spine leather is gone. Marbled endpapers with bookplate inside front cover. Rear flyleaf with a chunk cut out. Interior is very good. Medieval and Renaissance French poetry, translated into English by an acclaimed poet, travel writer, historian, and painter. Louisa Costello (1799-1870), was an accomplished Anglo-Irish artist and prolific poet and author. She was also a fine miniature painter, and her illustrations show her exquisite sensibility. 4 beautifully hand-colored lithograph plates by the author. Not all copies contain these plates.

Hardcover. New York , Clarkson N. Potter, Inc, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 216 pages, b&w illustrations. Dust jacket with slightly faded spine and small tear to uper edge of front cover. Previous owner's bookplate on front end paper. Clean, tight copy. "This collection of fifteen original essays, written especially for this occasion by distinguished Carrollian authorities from around the world, including Morton Cohen, Roger Henkle, Donald Rackin, Jean Gattegno, and Edward Guiliano, celebrates the many aspects of Carroll's life and art."

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Clean. "Once in a while a great book appears which through the author's strength of vision and freshness of language, allows is to see the world anew, OUT OF MY DEPTH--mixing memoir, sport, metaphysics, and playful contemption--is just a book. Several years ago noted author Paul West took a look at himself and saw a man who loved the water but couldn't swim." - dust jacket copy.

Hardcover. London, The Folio Society, 1st thus, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, printed silk bound boards with gilt buckram title stamp to spine. Housed in a red cardboard slipcase. 642 pages. Collected and edited by Deirdre Le Faye. Index. Color frontispiece. Color plates which illustrate objects, people, places mentioned in the letters or associated with Jane Austen. Her letters afford a unique insight into the daily life of the intimate and gossipy, observant and informative--they read much like the novels themselves. They bring alive her family and friends, her surroundings and contemporary events, all with a freshness unparalleled in modern biographies. Most important, we recognize the unmistakable voice of the author of such novels as Pride and Prejudice and Emma. We see the shift in her writing from witty and amusing descriptions of the social life of town and country, to a thoughtful and constructive tone while writing about the business of literary composition. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Young, 1st, 1953, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, burgundy cloth, 281 pages. Translated and edited with an introduction by Francis Steegmuller. Light fading to spine, name on front fly leaf, otherwise tight and clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, letters, and diaries, an authorized biography of the critically acclaimed philosopher and novelist traces her personal life and literary and philosophical career, from her student days at Oxford, through her marriage to John Bayley, to Murdoch's remarkable influence on literary England, from 1940 to the present day.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 897 pages. John Updike's fiftieth book and fifth collection of assorted prose, most of it first published in The New Yorker, brings together eight years' worth of essays, criticism, addresses, introductions, humorous feuilletons, and - in a concluding section, 'Personal Matters' - paragraphs on himself and his work. Herman Melville, Edith Wharton, Sinclair Lewis, Dawn Powell, Henry Green, John Cheever, Vladimir Nabokov, and W. M. Spackman are among the authors extensively treated, along with such more general literary matters as the nature of evil, the philosophical content of novels, and the wreck of the Titanic. Clean copy.