Wond'rous Machine
Subtitle: A Literary Anthology Celebrating the Organ
Publisher: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
Published: June 28, 2000
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 224
ISBN-13: 9780810837881
Subjects: Collections & anthologies of various literary forms; Keyboard instruments; Special Subjects In Literature; Language Arts / Linguistics / Literacy; Fiction; Musical Instruments - General; Rhetoric; Music / Musical Instruments / General; General; Literary Collections; Organ (Musical instrument)
Description: "This anthology presents many of the literary expressions from writers who have tried to capture the magic of the organ for more than 2000 years - in poetry and prose, in stories, in factual and fictional accounts, in simile, and in metaphor. The book, which contains pieces of literature by approximately one hundred different authors, is divided into five sections, with an introduction by the compiler. The first section contains poetry by well-known poets from six centuries (such as W. H.

Auden, Robert Browning, Geoffrey Chaucer, Emily Dickinson, John Dryden, T. S. Eliot, Hermann Hesse, Andrew Marvell, John Milton and Dylan Thomas) as well as many lesser-known ones. The Second section contains passages from novels by such diverse writers as Honore de Balzac, E. F. Benson, Elizabeth Bowen, Elizabeth Goudge, Thomas Hardy, Aldous Huxley, Francois Rabelais and John Updike, among others. The third section includes excerpts from mystery writers like Kate Charles, Jane Langton, E. C. R. Lorac, and J. Meade Falkner.

The fourth section is made up of short stories, printed in their entirety, by such masters of the art as Arnold Bennett, David Ely, Bill Franzen, Garrison Keillor, H. L. Mencken, and Jessamyn West. The last section contains essays by a wide variety of authors such as Leigh Hunt, Gordon Roynolds, George Bernard Shaw, Richard Steele, and Virgil Thomson, among others. Selections are loosely linked with connective commentary and some background and biographical informtion.

It is a book with a wide variety of moods, just as the organ is an instrument with a wide variety of sounds, all sure to appeal to the avid fan and lover of this gloriously melodic instrument of music."--BOOK JACKET.