"Very probably the best of the many Mark Twain biographies. . .one that should be preeminent for quite a long time."--Frederick Crews, author of Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays"This biography o
"Jerome Loving is a major American biographer, and he has taken up the life of a central literary figure in The Last Titan. It is the best biographical study of Dreiser that has yet been written. Lovi
"The mystical origins and spiritual force of Leaves of Grass--a work that both embodies and defines the American soul--will always remain a mystery. But there's also the puzzle of Whitman himself. Jer
This is the story of an author and his apprentice. It is the story of literary influence and tragedy. It is also the story of incarceration in America.Norman Mailer was writing The Executioner’s Song,
Mark Twain, who was often photographed with a cigar, once remarked that he came into the world looking for a light. In this new biography, published on the centennial of the writer's death, Jerome Lov
In Emily Dickinson: The Poet on the Second Story Professor Jerome Loving provides an intuitive and 'interiorized' reading of the poet's most important works. Using biographical matters as a frame for his interpretations, Loving demonstrates how Dickinson's life is bound up with any series reading of her work. Literally, Dickinson wrote on the second storey of her father's house, but Loving argues that she also used that 'story' (or art) as both a retreat from the transitory nature of life and as a way of experiencing life in what might be termed the 'subjunctive' instead of the 'imperative'. Her persona, therefore, is as disembodied in the poems as was the reclusive poet to visitors to the Amherst 'Homestead'. Loving attempts to show that the voice we hear in the poems is that of the 'mind alone', as Dickinson herself said, 'without corporeal friend'. Of interest to students and scholars of American literature, this critical study will also interest more general readers who enjoy
Whitman is today regarded as America's Homer or Dante, and his work the touchstone for literary originality in the New World. In Leaves of Grass, he abandoned the rules of traditional poetry - breaki
Inspired by an actual crime that was sensationalized in the San Francisco papers, this novel tells the story of charlatan dentist McTeague and his wife Trina, and their spiralling descent into moral
The innovative free verse collection of small-town life that made Edgar Lee Masters a legend A literary sensation when it appeared in 1915, Spoon River Anthology earned Edgar Lee Masters comparisons t
