The Life of Kingsley Amis

商家名称	信用等级	购买信息	订购本书
		The Life of Kingsley Amis
		The Life of Kingsley Amis

基本信息·出版社：Vintage Books
·页码：998 页
·出版日期：2007年11月
·ISBN：0099428423
·条形码：9780099428428
·装帧：平装
·正文语种：英语
·外文书名：金斯莱·艾米斯的一生

内容简介 The eagerly-awaited authorized biography of Kingsley Amis.

In this, the authorized biography, Zachary Leader argues that Kingsley Amis was not only the finest comic novelist of his generation, but the dominant figure of post-war British writing.

Drawing not only on interviews with a range of Amis’s friends, relatives, fellow writers, students and colleagues, many of them never before consulted, but also on almost a thousand previously unpublished letters, Leader’s biography will for the first time give a full picture of Amis’s childhood, school-days, life as a teacher, critic, polemicist, professional author, husband, father and lover. He explores Amis’s fears and phobias, and the role that drink played in his life. And of course he pays due attention to Amis’s work.

As the editor of Kingsley Amis’s Letters (hailed in the Sunday Telegraph as “one of the last major monuments to the epistolary art”), Leader is more than qualified to be his authorized biographer. His book will surprise, entertain and illuminate.


From the Hardcover edition.
作者简介 Zachary Leader is Professor of English Literature at the Roehampton University. His books include On Modern British Fiction (2002) and Revision and Romantic Authorship (1999). His editing of Kingsley Amis’s Letters was described as “omniscient” by John Carey in the Sunday Times.


From the Hardcover edition.
媒体推荐 From Bookmarks Magazine
Zachary Leader determined to have the final word on the life and work of one of Britain's most interesting and controversial literary figures, and his earlier edition of Kingsley Amis's correspondence gives him ample credentials. Despite the book's imposing heft, The Life of Kingsley Amis can be engaging and readable. Fans of Amis will appreciate Leader's comprehensive coverage, though some lengthy literary discussions can be heavy sledding. Jonathan Yardley points out that Eric Jacobs published a similar (albeit much briefer) book shortly after Amis's death, and he wonders if Leader's obsessive attention to detail somehow undermines the very goal of literary biography: to provide insight into a life that leads, ultimately, to a better understanding of a writer's work.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
This is one big, fat, and fascinating biography of Kingsley Amis. The author of Lucky Jim and a host of similarly wicked and bright comic novels, Amis enjoyed a productive, flamboyant career as a novelist, poet, critic, teacher, and gadfly--a career that stretched from the 1940s to his death in 1995--at the same time pursuing a private life of serious sexual adventurism. Leader offers a candid, extraordinarily detailed look at both sides of Amis' life, fairly and fully assessing his subject's personal foibles while giving more-than-adequate attention to his considerable literary gifts and accomplishments. At more than 1,000 pages, the book will strike some readers as more information than anyone other than Amis' most passionate admirers will need, but even those who don't read every word will be riveted by the twists and turns of Amis' wild ride through life, and by Leader's deft way of connecting the life to the work. Trygve Thoreson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review
“Leader has surpassed himself…he gives us not only the man, but also his milieu; he gives us not only the compelling virtues but also the staggering flaws. This is the best biography I have read for ages.”
–Daily Telegraph

“Marvellous…. It’s a pleasure to read.”
–Independent


编辑推荐 Sunday Telegraph
`the finest British comic novelist of the second half of the twentieth century'

The Herald
`elegantly exhaustive and authoritative... Amis emerges as a more likeable and understandably complex man than myth has painted him'

Scotsman
"Unsurprisingly in a biography of this size, he really has left no
stone unturned" --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Daily Telegraph
"This is the best biography I have read for ages: deeply
researched, crisply written and beautifully judged" --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Seven, The Sunday Telegraph
"awe-inspiring research" --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Independent
"marvellous ... It's a pleasure to read, and the accumulation of
detail gives a real sense of a life being led" --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Sunday Times
"Few literary biographies can match it for depth and intimacy" --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Independent on Sunday
Diary Story. Julian Barnes on Kingsley Amis --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

The Irish Times Books of the Year. Rev by Adam Sisman
The book I most look forward to reading is Zachary Leader's The
Life of Kingsley Amis" --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

The Saturday Herald
Books of the Year. Chosen by Andrew Marr --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


专业书评 From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Leader delivers a scrupulously researched and unfailingly entertaining account of the life of one of postwar Britain's funniest and most famous writers. Amis (1922–1995) asserted that many writers lead dull lives, but his was especially high-spirited, particularly once he left his restrictive parents for Oxford and beyond. Known first as a poet, Amis began an academic career in Wales at University College of Swansea after marrying Hilary Bardwell (mother of his three children, including contemporary British writer Martin Amis), but his springboard to literary celebrity was the 1954 publication of the comic classic Lucky Jim. Leader (editor, 2001's The Letters of Kingsley Amis) combines exhaustive biographical detail with trenchant literary analysis for a complex, remarkable portrait of Amis and his work: his prodigious output (more than 40 books, including novels, poetry, anthologies and nonfiction), his notorious womanizing and boozing as well as his friendships, including his central relationship (illuminated by lively excerpts of correspondence) with poet Philip Larkin. This massive, splendid biography bears out Leader's contention that Amis was "a compelling person, a man of alarming appetites and energies, the funniest man most people had ever met, or the cleverest, or the rudest." 24 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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