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Article: Edmund Wilson, at last.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- September 12, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature, by Lewis M. Dabney (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 656 pp., $35)
THIS splendid biography of Edmund Wilson, decades in preparation, was worth waiting for. Author Lewis Dabney met Wilson during the 1960s and admires him, even to the point of identifying with his sense of being the citizen of "an older America." The biographer has done prodigious research: Here we have the great man of letters, and the man as he was. No previous biography compares to it, and none could possibly supersede it.
Dabney's title, precise and important, defines the problem for a Wilson biographer: His life was indeed a "life in literature." Dabney ...