Description
About the Author
John Haffenden is Professor of English Literature at the University of Sheffield. His books include The Life of John Berryman, W. H. Auden: The Critical Heritage, Viewpoints: Poets in Conversation, and Novelists in Interview; and he has edited Berryman's Shakespeare and several collections by William Empson including Complete Poems. The first volume of this biography, William Empson: Among the Mandarins, was published in 2005. Haffenden is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the English Association, and has been a British Academy Research Reader and a Leverhulme Research Fellow.
Reviews
John Haffenden is calm and accepting in his account of Empson's private life. * John Batchelor, Modern Language Review *
John Haffenden's monumental two-volume biography leaves us in no doubt of the importance of Empson's upbringing as a scion of Yorkshire gentry...One of the big achievements of Haffenden's narrative is the painstaking account of Empson's gradual maturation as a critic. * Jason Harding, Essays in Criticism *
Haffenden's narrative is driven along with such gusto, such alert intelligence, such obvious pleasure in the task, that no one could reasonably grumble at the story's inordinate length. It is a virtuoso feat of scholarship: a telling demonstration of what biography, as it finest, can actually achieve. * Ian Donaldson Australian Book Review *
This is scholarship in the grand style * Contemporary Poetry Review *
Biography is a dominant form these days, and Haffenden's is one of the best. * Fred Inglis, The Independent (Review) *
The culmination of a majestic achievement * Mark Bostridge, Independent on Sunday *
This is a definitive work, brimming with dry humour, acute political and literary analysis and a quiet respect for Empson's defining idiosyncrasies. * Tim Martin, Telegraph *
His two-volume Empson now ranks, with say, Holmes on Coleridge. McCarthy on Morris, Bellos on Perec, Ellman on Joyce and Wilde: it is one of the great literary biographies. * Kevin Jackson, Sunday Times Culture *
It would be high enough praise to say that Haffenden has equalled the achievement of his first volume; the reality is that he has excelled it. * Kevin Jackson, Sunday Times Culture *
Haffenden has given us an Empson we should be arguing about, and arguing with, well into the future. * Peter McDonald, Literary Review *
Impressive. * Andrew Motion, The Guardian *
Resolutely unhysterical, affectionately written and delightfully incisive. * Tim Martin, Daily Telegraph *
Magisterial biography. * Tim Martin, Daily Telegraph *
Immense and magnificent biography * Frank Kermode, London Review of Books *
[A] superlative work * Eric Griffiths *
Haffenden's collection of material and mastery of the mass of published and unpublished documents is exemplary...Taken together his two volumes give a splendid sense of their subject, and of the literary, intellectual and political milieux in which Empson worked. * David Fuller, The Review of English Studies, Volume 58, Number 237 *
Awards
Winner of The Guardian, The Independent on Sunday and The Sunday Times Christmas Picks 2006.
Book Information
ISBN 9780199276608
Author John Haffenden
Format Hardback
Page Count 836
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 241mm * 167mm * 48mm