Imatge de l'autor

Edmund Wilson (1895–1972)

Autor/a de To the Finland Station

89+ obres 7,938 Membres 75 Ressenyes 17 preferits

Sobre l'autor

Wilson roamed the world and read widely in many languages. He was a journalist for leading literary periodicals: Vanity Fair, where he was briefly managing editor; The New Republic, where he was associate editor for five years; and the New Yorker, where he was book reviewer in the 1940s. These mostra'n més varied experiences were typical of Wilson's range of interests and ability. Eternally productive and endlessly readable, he conquered American literature in countless essays. If he is idiosyncratic and lacks a rigid mold, that probably contributes to his success as a literary critic, since he was not committed to interpretation in the straitjacket of some popular approach or dogma. His critical position suits his cosmopolitan background---historical and sociological considerations prevail. He went through a brief Marxist period and experimented with Freudian criticism. Axel's Castle (1931), a penetrating analysis of the symbolist writer, has exerted a great influence on contemporary literary criticism. Its dedication, to Christian Gauss of Princeton, reads:"It was principally from you that I acquired.. .my idea of what literary criticism ought to be---a history of man's ideas and imaginings in the setting of the conditions which have shaped them."His volume of satiric short stories, Memoirs of Hecate County (1946), with its frankly erotic passages, was the subject of court cases in a less tolerant decade than the present one. It was Wilson's own favorite among his writings, but he complained that those individuals who like his other work tend to disregard it. (Bowker Author Biography) mostra'n menys
Crèdit de la imatge: Courtesy of the NYPL Digital Gallery (image use requires permission from the New York Public Library)

Sèrie

Obres de Edmund Wilson

To the Finland Station (1940) 1,303 exemplars
The Crack-Up (1945) — Editor — 910 exemplars
Memoirs of Hecate County (1946) 554 exemplars
The scrolls from the Dead Sea (1955) 463 exemplars
The American Earthquake (1958) 139 exemplars
Apologies to the Iroquois (1959) 128 exemplars
I Thought of Daisy (1929) 110 exemplars
The Triple Thinkers (1938) 89 exemplars
Israel and the Dead Sea Scrolls (2000) 80 exemplars
The Portable Edmund Wilson (1983) 79 exemplars
Europe Without Baedeker (1966) 74 exemplars
A Literary Chronicle: 1920-1950 (1952) 46 exemplars
The Devils And Canon Barham (1973) 33 exemplars
Eight essays (1954) 32 exemplars
Red, Black, Blond and Olive (1956) 26 exemplars
Night Thoughts (1961) 24 exemplars
The Higher Jazz (1998) 24 exemplars
Galahad and I Thought of Daisy (1963) 20 exemplars
The Intent of the Critic (1941) — Col·laborador; Col·laborador — 15 exemplars
From Uncollected Edmund Wilson (1995) 14 exemplars
Edmund Wilson, Man In Letters (2001) 12 exemplars
Five Plays (1954) 12 exemplars
The fruits of the MLA (1963) 8 exemplars
The Collected Essays of John Peale Bishop (1948) — Introducció; Editor — 7 exemplars
The Undertaker's Garland (1922) 6 exemplars
Galahad (1971) 4 exemplars
Note Books of Night (1942) 4 exemplars
The Rats of Rutland Grange. (1974) 4 exemplars
The surprise of excellence: modern essays on Max Beerbohm (1974) — Col·laborador — 3 exemplars
Obra selecta (2008) 2 exemplars
Poets, Farewell! 2 exemplars
Who Killed Carlo Tresca? (1983) 2 exemplars
A Book of Princeton Verse, Volume I — Col·laborador — 2 exemplars
Dead Sea Scrolls 1947 1969 (1969) 1 exemplars
Szkice 1 exemplars
Ivan Turgheniev (1960) 1 exemplars

Obres associades

The Last Tycoon (1941) — Pròleg, algunes edicions; Editor, algunes edicions; Prefaci, algunes edicions2,563 exemplars
The Waste Land (Norton Critical Editions) (2000) — Col·laborador — 1,523 exemplars
50 Great Short Stories (1952) — Col·laborador — 1,242 exemplars
The Best American Essays of the Century (2000) — Col·laborador — 774 exemplars
Brief Lives (1898) — Pròleg, algunes edicions693 exemplars
Nightmare Abbey (1818) — Pròleg, algunes edicions432 exemplars
Critical Theory Since Plato (1971) — Col·laborador, algunes edicions398 exemplars
The QPB Companion to The Lord of the Rings (2001) — Col·laborador — 359 exemplars
The 40s: The Story of a Decade (2014) — Col·laborador — 275 exemplars
Writing New York: A Literary Anthology (1998) — Col·laborador — 275 exemplars
Peasants and Other Stories (1956) — Editor — 222 exemplars
Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach (1958) — Col·laborador — 209 exemplars
The Norton Book of Personal Essays (1997) — Col·laborador — 142 exemplars
A Comprehensive Anthology of American Poetry (1929) — Col·laborador — 128 exemplars
The Great Gatsby / Tender Is The Night / The Last Tycoon (1953) — Editor, algunes edicions107 exemplars
Twentieth-Century American Poetry (1777) — Col·laborador — 96 exemplars
War No More: Three Centuries of American Antiwar and Peace Writing (2016) — Col·laborador — 86 exemplars
A Reader's Companion to the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings (1995) — Col·laborador — 77 exemplars
Years of Protest: A Collection of American Writings of the 1930's (1967) — Col·laborador — 39 exemplars
The Complete Works of Kate Chopin (Southern Literary Studies) (1969) — Pròleg, algunes edicions; Pròleg — 36 exemplars
H.P. LOVECRAFT: Four Decades of Criticism (1980) — Col·laborador — 34 exemplars
James Joyce: Two Decades of Criticism (1946) — Col·laborador — 22 exemplars
A. E. Housman: A Collection of Critical Essays (1968) — Col·laborador — 22 exemplars
J. R. R. Tolkien, der Mythenschöpfer (1984) — Autor — 7 exemplars
Eighteen Stories (1965) 4 exemplars
32 Współczesne Opowiadania Amerykańskie - Tom I — Col·laborador — 1 exemplars
The Ethnic Image in Modern American Literature, 1900-1950 (1984) — Col·laborador — 1 exemplars
The Dial, Vol LXXVII No 3, September 1924 — Col·laborador, algunes edicions1 exemplars

Etiquetat

Coneixement comú

Altres noms
Bunny
Data de naixement
1895-05-08
Data de defunció
1972-06-12
Lloc d'enterrament
Wellfleet, Massachusetts, USA
Gènere
male
Nacionalitat
USA
Lloc de naixement
Red Bank, New Jersey, USA
Lloc de defunció
Talcottville, New York, USA
Llocs de residència
Red Bank, New Jersey, USA
Talcottville, New York, USA
Wellfleet, Massachusetts, USA
Educació
Princeton University
The Hill School, Pottstown, Pennsylvania, USA
Professions
managing editor (Vanity Fair)
newspaper reporter
associate editor (The New Republic)
book reviewer
literary critic
historian (mostra-les totes 8)
translator
memoirist
Relacions
McCarthy, Mary (wife)
Nabokov, Vladimir (friend)
Fitzgerald, F. Scott (friend)
Bishop, John Peale (friend)
Zabel, Morton Dauwen (friend)
Organitzacions
The Sun (New York)
Vanity Fair
The New Republic
The New Yorker
The New York Review of Books
Premis i honors
Presidential Medal of Freedom (1963)
Emerson-Thoreau Medal (1966)
Biografia breu
Edmund Wilson was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. He attended The Hill School, a private boarding school in Pennsylvania, where he served as the editor-in-chief of the school's literary magazine, then went on to Princeton University, where he was a classmate of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Their friendship became one of the most important literary relationships in the history of American letters. Wilson read omnivorously across the spectrum of modern European and Russian writers, including Proust, Joyce, Eliot, Valéry, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, and Pushkin, along with almost all the 20th century American writers. He began his writing career as a reporter for the New York Sun, and became the managing editor of Vanity Fair in 1920. He later served as associate editor of The New Republic and as a book reviewer for The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. He wrote plays, poems, and novels, but his greatest influence was as a literary critic, essayist, and historian. These books included Axel's Castle: A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870–1930 (1931) a sweeping survey of Symbolism. To the Finland Station (1940) was a broad study of European socialism up to the Bolsheviks Revolution. Wilson's work was heavily influenced by the ideas of Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx, and in turn, his work influenced novelists such as Upton Sinclair, John Dos Passos, Sinclair Lewis, and Theodore Dreiser. Wilson was married four times, most famously to Mary McCarthy, who was 17 years his junior, from 1938 to 1946.

Wilson edited the posthumous papers and notebooks of his college friend F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up (1945), and also edited the novel The Last Tycoon (1941), which Fitzgerald had left uncompleted at his death.

Membres

Ressenyes

The Scrolls from the Dead Sea and The Dead Sea Scrolls 1947-1969
By Edmund Wilson

This is a review of Edmund Wilson’s original book about the Dead Sea Scrolls, published in 1955, and his updated and expanded book, published in 1969. Much like Elaine Pagels’ books about the Gnostic Gospels, Wilson’s books are about the history and interpretation of the Dead Sea scrolls, rather than a translation of the original texts. Wilson’s books, more than Pagels’, are full of high adventure and intrigue, especially because they take place in Palestine, a land notorious for religious and political upheaval, and because of the time in which they take place, from 1947, at the end of the British mandate, to 1969, two years after the Six-Day War between the Arabs and the Israelis. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by a Bedouin boy in a cave along the western shore of the Dead Sea in 1947, two years after the discovery of the Nag Hammadi scrolls (gnostic gospels) in Egypt. Unlike the Nag Hammadi texts, which are Christian (written in Coptic), the Dead Sea Scrolls are Jewish (written in Hebrew). They are of interest, however, to both Jewish and Christian biblical scholars, although for different reasons.

Wilson explains why the discovery of the scrolls was problematic and upsetting for scholars and why it took some time for them to be accepted as authentic. He reminds us that up until about 400 BCE, the Israeli religion was practiced and handed down through oral tradition. Our earliest written Judeo-Christian scriptures are:

- [ ] The Alexandrian Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that dates from the third century BCE)
- [ ] St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate (a Latin translation of the Christian Bible that dates from the late fourth century CE)
- [ ] The Masoretic texts (a translation of the Hebrew Bible that dates from the ninth century CE)

It’s important to remember that almost all knowledge of the Bible, up until the 1947 discovery had come from a small set of texts that span from a period of about 1,300 years - 400 years before Christ with the Septuagint to 900 years after him with the Masoretic texts. As Wilson says, “It took some courage to face new materials where none had been imagined to exist.”

Wilson, one of America’s greatest literary critics, is a brilliant writer. He masterfully weaves a story that combines political intrigue, place-setting in a dry, dusty land where if only the fighting would stop so that archaeologists (several of whom are also clergy) can get on with it, and scholarly bickering and possessiveness of not only the scrolls but of their interpretation as well. His theory, or not so much his but the general consensus of what he believes are the more objective scholars, is that the Essenes, a Jewish communal society who lived from the second century BCE to the first CE, may have been the precedent for Christianity. At the start of his book, Wilson somewhat dryly describes the archaeology of the Essene monastery - the “cave” where the Bedouin boy unknowingly discovered the sect’s library. Much later, after he’s woven his fascinating tale, he connects the archaeological, religious, and historical dots with a beautiful sentence: “The monastery, this structure of stone that endures, between the bitter waters and precipitous cliffs, with its oven and its inkwells, its mill and its cesspool, its constellation of sacred fonts and the unadorned graves of its dead, is perhaps, more than Bethlehem or Nazareth, the cradle of Christianity.“

I enjoyed the original of Wilson’s book more than I did the expanded version. The original story was more compelling, and while the expanded version was certainly interesting, it didn’t capture the imagination quite so effectively. Additionally, Wilson weakened the aura of his story with an offputting appendix in the expanded version. The appendix was intended to demonstrate a point he had made consistently throughout both books - that scholars, many of whom have their own personal religious allegiances, often focus on minutia as a way to deflect from the big picture impact of the scrolls on collective Biblical knowledge. Knowledge that for some can be uncomfortable to absorb. Wilson simply could have left it at that because an astute reader understood exactly his point. However, in his appendix, he includes a series of point / counterpoint letters between himself and an anonymous scholarly reviewer of another author’s book about the scrolls. Rather than making himself look good, instead, through the esoteric and bitchy back and forth, both ended up looking like petty cat-fighters. They were both trying to make scholarly points, but to the lay reader, the points didn’t mean much. Instead, I found myself thinking, “Would you both just give it a drink!”

Regardless, I greatly enjoyed the original Scrolls from the Dead Sea. It was exciting to read after having read about the gnostic gospels because it showed the connection between Judaism and Christianity at a time when both were evolving from semi-mythology into written, codified religions.
… (més)
 
Marcat
Mortybanks | Hi ha 5 ressenyes més | Mar 7, 2024 |
The Scrolls from the Dead Sea and The Dead Sea Scrolls 1947-1969
By Edmund Wilson

This is a review of Edmund Wilson’s original book about the Dead Sea Scrolls, published in 1955, and his updated and expanded book, published in 1969. Much like Elaine Pagels’ books about the Gnostic Gospels, Wilson’s books are about the history and interpretation of the Dead Sea scrolls, rather than a translation of the original texts. Wilson’s books, more than Pagels’, are full of high adventure and intrigue, especially because they take place in Palestine, a land notorious for religious and political upheaval, and because of the time in which they take place, from 1947, at the end of the British mandate, to 1969, two years after the Six-Day War between the Arabs and the Israelis. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by a Bedouin boy in a cave along the western shore of the Dead Sea in 1947, two years after the discovery of the Nag Hammadi scrolls (gnostic gospels) in Egypt. Unlike the Nag Hammadi texts, which are Christian (written in Coptic), the Dead Sea Scrolls are Jewish (written in Hebrew). They are of interest, however, to both Jewish and Christian biblical scholars, although for different reasons.

Wilson explains why the discovery of the scrolls was problematic and upsetting for scholars and why it took some time for them to be accepted as authentic. He reminds us that up until about 400 BCE, the Israeli religion was practiced and handed down through oral tradition. Our earliest written Judeo-Christian scriptures are:

- [ ] The Alexandrian Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that dates from the third century BCE)
- [ ] St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate (a Latin translation of the Christian Bible that dates from the late fourth century CE)
- [ ] The Masoretic texts (a translation of the Hebrew Bible that dates from the ninth century CE)

It’s important to remember that almost all knowledge of the Bible, up until the 1947 discovery had come from a small set of texts that span from a period of about 1,300 years - 400 years before Christ with the Septuagint to 900 years after him with the Masoretic texts. As Wilson says, “It took some courage to face new materials where none had been imagined to exist.”

Wilson, one of America’s greatest literary critics, is a brilliant writer. He masterfully weaves a story that combines political intrigue, place-setting in a dry, dusty land where if only the fighting would stop so that archaeologists (several of whom are also clergy) can get on with it, and scholarly bickering and possessiveness of not only the scrolls but of their interpretation as well. His theory, or not so much his but the general consensus of what he believes are the more objective scholars, is that the Essenes, a Jewish communal society who lived from the second century BCE to the first CE, may have been the precedent for Christianity. At the start of his book, Wilson somewhat dryly describes the archaeology of the Essene monastery - the “cave” where the Bedouin boy unknowingly discovered the sect’s library. Much later, after he’s woven his fascinating tale, he connects the archaeological, religious, and historical dots with a beautiful sentence: “The monastery, this structure of stone that endures, between the bitter waters and precipitous cliffs, with its oven and its inkwells, its mill and its cesspool, its constellation of sacred fonts and the unadorned graves of its dead, is perhaps, more than Bethlehem or Nazareth, the cradle of Christianity.“

I enjoyed the original of Wilson’s book more than I did the expanded version. The original story was more compelling, and while the expanded version was certainly interesting, it didn’t capture the imagination quite so effectively. Additionally, Wilson weakened the aura of his story with an offputting appendix in the expanded version. The appendix was intended to demonstrate a point he had made consistently throughout both books - that scholars, many of whom have their own personal religious allegiances, often focus on minutia as a way to deflect from the big picture impact of the scrolls on collective Biblical knowledge. Knowledge that for some can be uncomfortable to absorb. Wilson simply could have left it at that because an astute reader understood exactly his point. However, in his appendix, he includes a series of point / counterpoint letters between himself and an anonymous scholarly reviewer of another author’s book about the scrolls. Rather than making himself look good, instead, through the esoteric and bitchy back and forth, both ended up looking like petty cat-fighters. They were both trying to make scholarly points, but to the lay reader, the points didn’t mean much. Instead, I found myself thinking, “Would you both just give it a drink!”

Regardless, I greatly enjoyed the original Scrolls from the Dead Sea. It was exciting to read after having read about the gnostic gospels because it showed the connection between Judaism and Christianity at a time when both were evolving from semi-mythology into written, codified religions.
… (més)
 
Marcat
Mortybanks | Hi ha 5 ressenyes més | Mar 7, 2024 |
 
Marcat
aallegue | Hi ha 24 ressenyes més | Feb 4, 2024 |
I don't often read books of literary essays anymore, but Wilson was a very fine critic and he brings to light some interesting writers of the Civil War era I hadn't come across before. He also reminds me that Reconstruction was a failed experiment that the Americans should have learned from before they dismantled the Iraqi state. How hard it is to impose democratic institutions where none had been before.
 
Marcat
MylesKesten | Hi ha 4 ressenyes més | Jan 23, 2024 |

Llistes

Premis

Potser també t'agrada

Autors associats

Leon Edel Editor, Preface, Introduction

Estadístiques

Obres
89
També de
37
Membres
7,938
Popularitat
#3,053
Valoració
3.8
Ressenyes
75
ISBN
234
Llengües
8
Preferit
17

Gràfics i taules