Following the acclaimed first volume, Among the Mandarins, this is the second and concluding volume of the authorized biography of William Empson, one of the foremost poets and literary critics of the twentieth century.
Against the Christians begins during the Second World War and follows Empson's turbulent years of writing wartime propaganda for the BBC. As Chinese Editor, he organized broadcasts to China and propaganda programs for the Home Service, during which time his friends and colleagues included the prickly George Orwell. The effectiveness of Empson's work for the BBC provoked...

This edited collection of letters by William Empson (1906-1984), one of the foremost writers and literary critics of the twentieth century, ranges across the entirety of his career. Parts of the correspondence record the development of ideas that were to come to fruition in seminal texts including Seven Types of Ambiguity, The Structure of Complex Words, and Milton's God. The topics of other letters range from Shakespeare's Dark Lady to Marvell's marriage and Byron's bisexuality. Empson relished correspondence that was combative, if not downright aggressive. As a result, parts of this edition...

The Collected Critical Heritage II series comprises 40 volumes covering 19th and 20th century European and American authors. These volumes are available as a complete set, mini box sets (by theme) or as individual volumes. The series gathers together a large body of critical figures in literature. These sources include contemporary reviews from both popular and literary media. In these students can read about how Lady's Chatterly's Lover shocked contemporary reviewers, or what Ibsen's Doll's House meant to the early women's movement. The series also includes little-published documentary...

This collection of William Empson's essays on drama is the second volume of his writings on Renaissance literature. Edited by leading Empson scholar John Haffenden, the contents range from essays on The Spanish Tragedy, Volpone and The Duchess of Malfi to a sprightly piece on Elizabethan spirits. In addition, there are several hitherto unpublished essays, including a magnificent, provocative new reading of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Throughout the volume Empson fights his own critical corner with unequaled zest, intelligence and insight.

This volume gathers some of William Empson's most passionate and controversial essays and includes previously inaccessible pieces on influential Renaissance writers and scientists. Introduced by leading Empson scholar John Haffenden, this is a book for anyone interested in the Renaissance, the history of science, and the history of literary criticism.

The poetry of John Berryman occupies an incomparable place in modern American literature. This study traces the composition of the major poems, and interprets Berryman's characteristic trials and his imaginative triumphs. In Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, which Edmund Wilson called ' the most distinguished long poem by an American since The Waste Land ', Berryman set himself enormous problems of theme and form, and overcame them with the vigorous and exciting craft that is described in this book. He transformed his personal concerns and historical interests into a fully achieved artistic...

William Empson was the foremost English literary critic of the twentieth century. He was a man of huge energy and curiosity, and a genuine eccentric who remained imperturbable in the face of all the extraordinary circumstances in which he found himself. The discovery of contraceptives in his possession by a bedmaker at Cambridge University led to his being robbed of a promised Fellowship. Yet Seven Types of Ambiguity, drafted while he was still an undergraduate, promptly brought him world-wide fame.
Empson invented modern literary criticism in English. He acted too as a cultural...

This edited collection of letters by William Empson (1906-1984), one of the foremost writers and literary critics of the twentieth century, ranges across the entirety of his career. Parts of the correspondence record the development of ideas that were to come to fruition in seminal texts including Seven Types of Ambiguity, The Structure of Complex Words, and Milton's God. The topics of other letters range from Shakespeare's Dark Lady to Marvell's marriage and Byron's bisexuality. Empson relished correspondence that was combative, if not downright aggressive. As a result, parts of this edition...

Following the acclaimed first volume, Among the Mandarins, this is the second and concluding volume of the authorized biography of William Empson, one of the foremost poets and literary critics of the twentieth century.
Against the Christians begins during the Second World War and follows Empson's turbulent years of writing wartime propaganda for the BBC. As Chinese Editor, he organized broadcasts to China and propaganda programs for the Home Service, during which time his friends and colleagues included the prickly George Orwell. The effectiveness of Empson's work for the BBC provoked...

This set comprises of 40 volumes covering nineteenth and twentieth century European and American authors. These volumes will be available as a complete set, mini boxed sets (by theme) or as individual volumes. This second set compliments the first 68 volume set of Critical Heritage published by Routledge in October 1995.