Bücher von Humphrey Carpenter

Die autorisierte Biographie über den größten Fantasy-Autor aller Zeiten, den Schöpfer von MittelerdeDer Hobbit, Der Herr der Ringe, Das Silmarillion - Wer ist der Mann, der hinter der Schöpfung dieser Meisterwerke steht? Um dies zu erhellen führte Humphrey Carpenter unzählige Gespräche mit Weggefährtinnen und Freunden Tolkiens. Er hatte unbeschränkten Zugang zu den ­maß­geblichen Quellen und Archiven. Carpenters Schilderung, gerade von Tolkiens Arbeit am Herr der Ringe, ist in manchen Zügen so fesselnd und humorvoll, als läse man ein weiteres Kapitel der ­Ring-Geschichte selbst. Und tatsächlich hatte sich das Leben des Oxforder Professors bereits mit einem Schlag völlig verändert, als er jenen berühmten Satz auf ein Blatt Papier kritzelte: 'In einem Loch im Boden, da lebte ein Hobbit ...'

In Humphrey Carpenter's own words, 'This is the story of the longest-ever literary party, which went on in Montparnasse, on the Left Bank, throughout the 1920s.''This book', to continue to quote Carpenter himself, 'is chiefly a collage of Left-Bank expatriate life as it was experienced by the Hemingway generation - "e;The Lost Generation"e;, as Gertrude Stein named it in a famous remark to Hemingway.'There are brief portraits of Gertrude Stein, Natalie Clifford Barney and Sylvia Beach, who moved to Paris before the First World War and provided vital introductions for the exiles of the 1920s. The main narrative, however, concerns the years 1921 to 1928 because these saw the arrival and departure of Hemingway and most of his Paris associates.'He is a compelling guide, catching the kind of idiosyncratic detail or incident that holds the readers' attention and maintains a cracking pace. Anyone wanting an introduction to the constellation of talent that made the Left Bank in Paris during the Twenties a second Greenwich Village would find this a useful and inspiring book.' Times Educational Supplement

'[The Brideshead Generation] has both style and substance, and is above all an enjoyable companion. It has a wildly amusing cast, here controlled by a skilful director.' Evening Standard'Jovial and entertaining, full of the sort of stories that your friends will tell you if you don't read it before them.' Independent'Carpenter has read widely and has collected an enormous fund of entertaining stories and facts.' Sunday Telegraph'Hauntingly sad and wonderfully funny and by far the best thing Humphrey Carpenter has done.' Fiona MacCarthy, The Times

Covering the period from the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Winnie-the-Pooh, Humphrey Carpenter examines the lives and writings of Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Grahame, George Macdonald, Louisa May Alcott, Frances Hodgson Burnett, A.A. Milne and others whose works make up the Golden Age of children's literature.Both a collective biography and a work of criticism, Secret Gardens forces us to reconsider childhood classics in a new light. 'Secret Gardens permits us to see in a fresh light the interaction between cultural history and literature, and to realize that ... it wasn't mere misfits who withdrew into the writing of children's books, but rather the sort of misfits who reflected the prevailing dissatisfactions of the age.' New York Times Book Review

W. H. Auden disapproved of literary biography. Or did he? The truth is far more equivocal than at first seems apparent. There is no denying he delivered himself of such unambiguous pronouncements as 'Biographies of writers are always superfluous and usually in bad taste.'; and that he asked for his friends to burn his letters at his death, but, against that, Auden himself often reviewed literary biographies and normally with enthusiasm. Moreover he argued for biographies of writers such as Dryden, Trollope, Wagner and Gerard Manley Hopkins as their lives would tell us something about their art.Humphrey Carpenter himself nicely summarizes Auden's ambiguity on this question. 'Here (referring to literary biography), as so often in his life, Auden adopted a dogmatic attitude which did not reflect the full range of his opinions, and which he sometimes flatly contradicted.'Although the biography was not authorized it did receive the co-operation of the Auden Estate which gave permission for letters and unpublished works to be quoted. The result is a biography that was widely praised on first publication in 1981 and which continues to hold its own. Now is the obvious time to reissue it with the character of Humphrey Carpenter playing an important role in Alan Bennett's The Habit of Art. In his introduction Alan Bennett writes 'When I started writing the play I made much use of the biographies of both Auden and Britten written by Humphrey Carpenter and both are models of their kind. Indeed I was consulting his books so much that eventually Carpenter found his way into the play.' 'Carpenter is a model biographer - diligent, unspeculative, sympathetic, and extremely good at finding out what happened when and with whom . . . admirably detailed and researched study.' John Bayley, The Listener'an illuminating book; full of information, unobtrusively affectionate, it describes with unpretentious elegance the curve of a great poet's life and work' Frank Kermode, Guardian'sharpens and usually lights up even the most canvassed parts of the Auden life and myth . . . a deeply interesting book about a deeply interesting life' Roy Fuller, Sunday Times' . . . the story of a remarkable man told by one of the best living biographers' David Cecil, Book Choice

Dennis Potter's death in 1994 deprived British television of its most controversial figure. Potter was a prolific writer of genius. Yet while his subversive television plays scandalized and delighted the nation, they also made him the butt of the tabloids, who nicknamed him 'Dirty Den' for his 1989 serial "Blackeyes".

Kingsley Amis, John Osborne, John Braine, Colin Wilson, John Wain - five names instantly redolent of the 1950s and the Angry Young Men phenomenon.