1st Edition

Sherwood Anderson A Biographical and Critical Study

By Irving Howe Copyright 1966
292 Pages
by Routledge

292 Pages
by Routledge

Originally published in 1951 and reissued in 1966 this book combines stimulating biography with sound literary criticism in its account of a writer who observed America’s great nineteenth century change from an agrarian to an industrial society. Irving Howe places Anderson in the cultural context of his times and gives a fresh and balanced judgment both of his virtues and limitations. As an... Read more

Author’s Note 1966. Preface. ‘A Fair and Sweet Town’. Success and Consequences. ‘A Will to Splendour’. The Book of the Grotesque. Conditions of Fame. The Short Stories. In the Lawrencian Orbit. The Downward Curve. Final Wanderings. An American as Artist.

Biography

Irving Howe 

Original reviews of Sherwood Anderson:

‘[He writes] about Anderson’s work with a quiet, patient, discerning, instructed power that makes his own book itself a literary event.’ The New York Times Book Review

‘In Irving Howe’s Sherwood Anderson the most illuminating passages are, first, that in which Howe traces the ‘strand of action’ that runs through the tales in Winesburg, Ohio and ties the characters together around the central theme of their ‘lostness’; and second, his brilliant and subtle analysis of the oral narrative method in the triumphantly short stories which came later…’ The Yale Review

‘The chapter on Winesburg, Ohio is the most searching and the fairest discuss that the book has ever received.’ Malcolm Cowley, New York Herald Tribune Book Review