|
|
Article: Party on Parnassus
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- November 18, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1995 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
|
"An attempt to reflect a century of literary taste," is how
Peter Parker describes this 825-page compilation of
mini-biographies of 1,000 writers, from Lascelles Abercrombie to
Louis Zukofsky. In fact the time- scale stretches impressively
beyond a century: Thomas Hardy (b 1840) is allowed to be a
20th-century writer (though he stopped writing novels in 1898, his
career as a poet was only starting) and Simon Armitage (b 1963) is
deemed worthy to be included alongside him, despite having been
published since only 1989. Poets and dramatists are included, but
not historians, essayists or biographers (no Leavis, Schama or
Lytton Strachey, therefore). American writers figure largely, most
of ...