Survey of Modernist Poetry and a Pamphlet Against Anthologies
The books paired here make up the first collaborative study of "Modernist" poetry by two of the twentieth century's most important and original poets. In "A Survey of Modernist Poetry", Laura Riding and Robert Graves produce a contemporary reaction to the early experimentation of writers such as Eliot, Pound and e.e. cummings. Their close critical readings are deployed, along the way, in an engagement with Shakespeare's punctuation, issues of populism and elitism and an attempt to define – perhaps to invent – that elusive creature known as "the common reader".
"The Survey" contains groundbreaking readings of modern poems and movements and is an illuminating and polemical account of the beginnings of modernism. It is an important resource but also a valuable critical text in the reception and development of modernist poetry in English. "A Pamphlet Against Anthologies" is an entertaining tirade against the perceived iniquities of the trade anthology. A statement of poetic integrity, it poses awkward questions about the production and consumption of art in the mass markets of twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
"The Survey" contains groundbreaking readings of modern poems and movements and is an illuminating and polemical account of the beginnings of modernism. It is an important resource but also a valuable critical text in the reception and development of modernist poetry in English. "A Pamphlet Against Anthologies" is an entertaining tirade against the perceived iniquities of the trade anthology. A statement of poetic integrity, it poses awkward questions about the production and consumption of art in the mass markets of twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
About the author
Laura (Riding) Jackson (1901-1991) is among the most influential yet misread writers of the twentieth century. She renounced poetry after her "Collected Poems" in 1938, a body of work which left its mark upon Auden, Ashbery and many others. Her collaborations and her own essays, stories and poems are central to the creative and critical debate surrounding twentieth-century English and American literature. Robert Graves (1895-1985), poet, classical scholar, novelist, and critic, was one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century. Athough he produced over 100 books he is perhaps best known for the novel "I, Claudius" (1934), "The White Goddess" (1948) and "Greek Myths" (1955).
Robert Graves was born in Wimbledon, South London. His father, Alfred Percival Graves, was a school inspector, and his mother, Amalie von Ranke Graves, was a great-niece of the German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795-1866). He was educated at Charterhouse, and awarded a B. Litt by St. John's College, Oxford after his return from World war I, where he served alsongside Siegfried Sassoon.
Robert Graves died in 1985 in Deja, the Majorcan village he had made his home (with the exception of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War) since 1929.
Robert Graves was born in Wimbledon, South London. His father, Alfred Percival Graves, was a school inspector, and his mother, Amalie von Ranke Graves, was a great-niece of the German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795-1866). He was educated at Charterhouse, and awarded a B. Litt by St. John's College, Oxford after his return from World war I, where he served alsongside Siegfried Sassoon.
Robert Graves died in 1985 in Deja, the Majorcan village he had made his home (with the exception of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War) since 1929.
Reviews
Awards won by Patrick McGuinness
Long-listed, 2011 Wales Book of the Year, English Language Category in The Western Mail (Jilted City)
Long-listed, 2011 Wales Book of the Year, English Language Category in The Western Mail (Jilted City)