Henry James: Novels 1903-1911 | Library of America Library of America Back Henry James: Novels 1903-1911 Print Share The Ambassadors | The Golden Bowl | The Outcry | Appendix: “The Married Son” Edited by Ross Posnock The Library of America crowns its six-volume edition of the novels of Henry James with three late masterworks Overview Save $50 when you buy all six volumes of Henry James’s novels—and pay in five monthly installments. This volume, the sixth and final in The Library of America’s edition of the complete novels of Henry James, brings together two masterpieces of his extraordinary late period—The Ambassadors (1903) and The Golden Bowl (1904)—as well as his last extended narrative work, The Outcry (1911), a short comic novel of social manners. The idea for The Ambassadors came from James’s friend William Dean Howells, who told of having given advice to a friend in France: “You have time. You are young.

Live!” In James’s novel, a conscientious American, Lambert Strether, travels to Paris to convince Chad Newsome, the son of a friend, to return home and take charge of family business matters. Strether finds Newsome significantly altered—mature and sophisticated, and with a mistress. Strether himself eventually succumbs to the charms of the old World and gives up his mission. Although others arrive from America to attempt to lure Newsome home, only the older man recognizes the true nature of the young man’s transformation. James described The Golden Bowl as “the most done of my productions—the most composed and constructed and completed.” In the novel an American woman, Maggie Verver, marries an Italian prince, while her wealthy father marries Maggie’s girlhood friend, Charlotte Stant—neither Verver being aware that the Prince and Charlotte have been (and possibly continue to be) lovers.

Maggie’s eventual discovery of the nature of that relationship provides the basis for an exploration of the fragility and strength of human ties and further develops what James once called that “complex fate, being an American.” This volume prints the New York Edition texts of The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl, which include the prefaces that James wrote for each work as well as the illustrations he commissioned from photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn. The Outcry, James’s last completed novel, is a crisp and witty comedy of manners adapted from an unproduced stage play he had written in 1909. Its light plot serves as a platform for a more serious discussion of the ethics of art collecting. Included as an appendix is “The Married Son,” the chapter James contributed to The Whole Family (1908), a multi-author novel conceived by Howells and portraying a fractious family whose struggles mirror the frustrated collaborative efforts of the book’s twelve contributors.

Ross Posnock, editor, is professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University and the author of several books, including Henry James and the Problem of Robert Browning (1985) and The Trial of Curiosity: Henry James, William James, and the Challenge of Modernity (1991). Henry James: Novels 1903–1911 is kept in print by a gift from Richard Poirier to the Guardians of American Letters Fund , made in honor of Cheryl Hurley. Book Review: Henry James: Novels, 1903-1911 – The Ambassadors/ The Golden Bowl/ The Outcry, Edited by Ross Posnock | Blogcritics Home / Books / Book Reviews / Book Review: Henry James: Novels, 1903-1911 – The Ambassadors/ The Golden Bowl/ The Outcry, Edited by Ross Posnock Book Review: Henry James: Novels, 1903-1911 – The Ambassadors/ The Golden Bowl/ The Outcry, Edited by Ross Posnock 0 0 The Library of America is an incredible imprint.

The non-profit publishing house (now in their 28th year) seeks to preserve classic American literature in affordable hard-cover editions. Their six-volume collection of the complete novels of Henry James (1843-1916) has just been completed with Novels 1903-1911. The three books that comprise this 1216-page tome are: The Ambassadors, The Golden Bowl, and The Outrcry. The Ambassadors (1903) is considered by many to be James’ final masterpiece. The point is arguable, but the fact that the dark humor of this novel remains as compelling as ever is not. Originally published in serial form in the North American Review, The Ambassadors is a story with many twists and turns, set against the backdrop of the Old World (Paris) against the New (Massachusetts). In broad strokes, our hero Lambert Strether goes to Paris from the U.S. to “rescue” his wealthy fiancee’s son from the woman he has fallen in love with there. The Golden Bowl (1904) concerns an American woman who marries an Italian prince.

Things get interesting when her father (unknowingly) marries the prince’s former mistress. The novel almost obsessively scrutinizes these four characters, and the way they interact with each other. When father and daughter begin to open up and share about their respective spouses, the groundwork is laid for the resumption of the affair between the prince and his former mistress. There is an element of what would later be termed “soap-opera” to the plot, but James’ writing saves the day. The final novel The Outcry (1911) was originally conceived as a play. When the story went unproduced, James converted it into a novel, which would prove to be the last one he completed in his lifetime. The Outcry is a light comedy about wealthy Americans buying up British art treasures. The title alludes to the patriotic outcry of upstanding Britons, incensed at the idea of these paintings being purchased by outsiders. Henry James: Novels 1903-1911 contains some remarkable work, from one of America’s finest authors. The Library of America have done all six-volumes a real justice. The final entry is no exception. F.

Scott Fitzgerald - Modern American Short Story - LibGuides at Florida Atlantic University Modern American Short Story Modern American Short Story: F. Scott Fitzgerald Exploring Literary Artistry: Studying the works of James, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Schwartz and Trilling. F. Scott Fitzgerald: Biography and Works F. Scott Fitzgerald Born: September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota, United States Died: December 21, 1940 in Hollywood, California, United States Nationality: American Born September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, MN; died of a heart attack, December 21, 1940, in Hollywood, CA: buried in Rockville Union Cemetery, Rockville, MD; reburied near his parents in St. Mary's Cemetery, Rockville, MD in 1975; S on of Edward (in business) and Mary (an heiress; maiden name, McQuillan) Fitzgerald; married Zelda Sayre (an artist, dancer, and writer), April 3, 1920 (died March 10, 1948); children: Frances Scott Fitzgerald Smith (formerly Mrs.

Samuel J. Lanahan). Education: Attended Princeton University, 1913-17. Religion: Catholic. All the Sad Young Men, 1926; Taps at Reveille, 1935; Afternoon of an Author (ed. A. Mizener) 1957 (stories and essays); Babylon Revisited and Other Stories, 1960; The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald (5 vols.) 1962-1968; The Price Was High (ed. M. S. Bruccoli) 1979; Perfect Lies: A Century of Great Golf Stories (ed. W. Hallberg) 1989; Poems, 1911-1940 (ed. M. J. Bruccoli) 1981. Drama The Vegetable, 1923; F. Scott Fitzgerald's St. Paul Plays, 1911-1914 (ed. A. Margolies) 1978; F. Scott Fitzgerald: Triangle Club Songs, 1979 (songs from plays produced at Princeton U.

1914-1916; recordings). Nonfiction F. Scott Fitzgerald on Writing (ed. L. W. Phillips) 1985; F. Scott Fitzgerald in His Own Time (eds. M. J. Bruccoli and J. R. Bryer) 1971 (essays and other writings). Autobiography The Crack-Up (ed. E. Wilson) 1945 (essays, letters, and notebook selections); Thoughtbook of Francis Scott Fitzgerald (ed. J. Kuehl) 1965; The Notebooks of F. Scott Fitzgerald (ed. M. J. Bruccoli) 1978. Correspondence Dear Scott/Dear Max: The Fitzgerald-Perkins Correspondence (eds. J. Kuehl and J. R. Bryer) 1971. As Scott Fitz Ever Letters between F. Scott Fitzgerald and His Literary Agent, Harold Ober 1919-1940 (ed. M. J. Bruccoli) 1972; Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald (ed. M. J. Bruccoli and M. M.

Duggan) 1980. Collections The Portable F. Scott Fitzgerald (selected by D. Parker) 1945; The Fitzgerald Reader (ed. A. Mizener) 1963. Other Works of Note: Author of "The Count of Darkness," "The Passionate Eskimo," and numerous other fiction works. Author of unproduced screenplays, such as "Red-Headed Woman" and "Lipstick." Contributor to film scripts, among them "A Yank at Oxford," 1937; "Infidelity" and "Madame Curie," both 1938; "Winter Carnival," "The Women," and "Gone With the Wind," all 1939; and "Cosmopolitan," 1940. Author of book reviews, introductions, and forewords. Contributor to periodicals and popular magazines, including Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, Metropolitan Magazine, Smart Set, American Mercury, Nassau Literary Magazine, New Yorker, Scribner's Magazine, Motor, Bookman, Woman's Home Companion, New Republic, McCall's, Red Book, Collier's, and Hearst's International.

Work represented in hundreds of anthologies, such as Innocent Merriment: An Anthology of Light Verse, McGraw, 1942; Fifty Best American Short Stories, 1915-1965, Houghton, 1965; The Age of Anxiety: Modern American Stories, Allyn & Bacon, 1972; and The Short Story: An Introductory Anthology, 2nd edition, Little, Brown, 1975.

Writings adapted for film include "Head and Shoulders," adapted as "The Chorus Girl's Romance," Metro Pictures, 1920; "Myra Meets His Family," adapted as "The Husband Hunter," Fox Film Corp., 1920; "The Offshore Pirate," Metro Pictures, 1921; The Beautiful and Damned, Warner Bros., 1922; "The Camel's Back," adapted as "Conductor 1492," Warner Bros., 1924; The Great Gatsby, Players-Lasky-Paramount, 1926, Paramount, 1949 and 1974; "The Pusher-in-the-Face," adapted as a movie short, Paramount, 1929; "Babylon Revisited," adapted as "The Last Time I Saw Paris," Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1954; Tender Is the Night, Twentieth-Century Fox, 1962; and The Last Tycoon, Paramount, 1976. The 1924 Film Guild movie "Grit" was based on an original story by Fitzgerald.

Works adapted for stage include The Great Gatsby, first produced in New York City at the Ambassador Theatre, February 2, 1926, and produced as a ballet by the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater at State University of New York, State University College at Purchase, NY, March 31, 1989; "Three Hours Between Planes," adapted as a one-act play, 1958; and This Side of Paradise, adapted as an Off-Broadway play, 1962. Some of Fitzgerald's writings were also adapted for radio and television. Novelist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and author of short stories. Worked briefly as a copywriter at Barron Collier Advertising Agency in New York, 1919; worked sporadically as a screenwriter at motion picture studios in Los Angeles, California, including Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and United Artists, 1927-40, contributing to film scripts such as "Winter Carnival," "The Women," and "Gone With the Wind," all 1939. Military service: U.S. Army, 1917-19; became second lieutenant.

The Great Gatsby was voted "one of the nation's 100 best-loved novels" by the British public as part of the BBC's The Big Read, 2003. Citation: Original source: World Authors 1900-1950 Original publication date: 1996 Editor: Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens Original publication type: Print Publisher of original publication: The H. W. Wilson Company Database publisher: The H.W. Wilson Company Database: Biography Reference Bank and "F(rancis) Scott (Key) Fitzgerald." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 27 Mar. 2011. Document URL Babylon Revisited [In the following essay, Turner demonstrates that frequent references to time in “Babylon Revisited” support a theme important to the story.] F. Scott Fitzgerald uses many references to time in his short story “Babylon Revisited.” His almost constant use of words relating to time helps reinforce one of the main themes of the story: the past cannot be escaped. Hours and minutes are noted during the narrative present of the story.

In the opening, Charlie Wales tells the bartender that he is in Paris for “four or five days” to see his daughter. It is also mentioned that it is “late afternoon” when Charlie leaves the bar. Throughout the story the current time is cited, even down to the exact hour in some cases. For example, when Charlie first sees Honoria at the Peterses', it is said that the “cheer of six o'clock” is in the room. The next day the reader learns that it is at “noon” that he eats with Honoria. The marking of the passage of time in the narrative present helps to show that while Charlie is trying to make up for his lost time with Honoria time is rapidly slipping away. Just as Charlie is aware of time passing, so is the reader. Although Charlie is aware of lost time, he has great hopes for the future. He has dreams of being with Honoria, and the dreams are often spoken of in terms of time. He talks of bringing his sister over from America “next month” to look after Honoria.

He tells his sister-in-law Marion that he plans to stay sober “permanently.” In order to help his depression, he reminds himself to think of his future with Honoria, to “think of Sundays spent with her and of saying good morning to her” when she comes to live with him. The future is all that Charlie has. He has lost his past, and his present is slipping away. Fitzgerald uses time particularly effectively in references to the sad past of Charlie Wales. Throughout the story, Charlie is reminded of his past. From the beginning, he sees all of the places from his drinking days. He asks about old friends and finds, “Two familiar names from the long list of a year and a half ago.” It is this part of his past that Charlie would like to erase. But at the restaurant with Honoria, Charlie sees “Sudden ghosts out of the past,” two friends of his who had helped him “make months into days in the lavish times of three years ago,” or “that crazy spring.” These constant reminders help Fitzgerald demonstrate his theme. Certainly Charlie is unable to escape the fact that he had “those crazy years” and lost his wife and Honoria.

He asks himself, “How many weeks or months of dissipation to arrive at that condition of utter irresponsibility?” He sees the mistakes of his past as well as their consequences. He sees that “the days came along one after another, then two years were gone, and everything was gone, and I was gone.” In those two years, his wife died and he lost custody of Honoria. These facts of his past he cannot escape. His sister-in-law, Marion, also seems unwilling to let Charlie escape from his past. She brings up the “times” that Charlie lost control. It is “those crazy years” that she remembers. Again, Charlie's mistakes are referred to in terms of time. Charlie believes that Marion has forgotten how hard he worked, “for seven years” before his drunken binge. He says that she “just remembers one night.” He tells her that his drinking lasted for only “a year and a half.” Marion replies that “It was time enough.” When Marion finally gets upset enough to tell Charlie that she blames him for the death of her sister, Charlie has to keep his cool “for a moment.” The phrase, “for a moment” is repeated three times in the one paragraph.

It emphasizes how hard it is for Charlie to keep calm and also how much he wants Honoria. For a while it looks as though Charlie will be able to escape his past and gain a future with Honoria. He realizes that if he does not gain custody, it would be “hopeless to try and know her in so short a time,” during his visit to Paris. Once again, his needs and desires are expressed in terms of time. He feels that his time with Honoria is slipping away. Soon she will be grown, and he will not be a part of her life. He wants to be in her life; he believes that “the present is the thing.” Finally, Marion comes around. But just as Charlie is making arrangements for Honoria to live with him, his “ghosts from the past” arrive and spoil things for him.

His failure to escape the past is told in terms of time: “We'll have to let it slide for six months.” He thinks of his defeat in terms of time: he resolves to “come back someday; they couldn't make him pay forever.” Throughout “Babylon Revisited,” Fitzgerald uses words of time to convey his theme that people are unable to escape the past, in the story of a man trying to overcome his past mistakes, only to be constantly confronted with them. Source Citation Turner, Joan. "Fitzgerald's 'Babylon Revisited'." The Explicator 48.4 (Summer 1990): 282-283. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Anna J. Sheets. Vol. 31. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Mar. 2011. Document URL Fitzgerald: Overview F(RANCIS) SCOTT (KEY) FITZGERALD (September 24, 1896-December 21, 1940), American novelist and short story writer, was born in St.

Paul, Minnesota, the son of Edward and Mary (McQuillan) Fitzgerald. The family was prosperous, and he was educated first locally at St. Paul Academy and then at Newman School, a Catholic preparatory school in New Jersey, to which he was sent at a young age in his parents' hope of making him attend to his studies instead of "wasting his time scribbling." He entered Princeton University in 1913 but worked harder at extracurricular activities--mainly writing plays and lyrics for the Triangle Club--than at his courses. His poor academic record made him subsequently ineligible for most activities. In November 1917, without completing degree work, he left school to join the U.S. Army, where he served as a second lieutenant in the infantry and as a general's aide-de-camp. He was never sent overseas. Stationed at Camp Sheridan outside of Montgomery, Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre, the eighteen-year-old daughter of a prominent judge. Winning Zelda's hand and becoming a published writer were now his principal goals. Before coming to Camp Sheridan, he had written a draft of a novel tentatively entitled "The Romantic Egoist," but it was rejected by Scribner's.

He began rewriting it; he also became engaged to Zelda prior to his discharge early in 1919. After he was demobilized he went to New York City, where he wrote streetcar advertising slogans and stories no one wanted to buy. The second version of the novel was also rejected, and Zelda broke off the engagement; he did, however, sell his first short story to the Saturday Evening Post. He returned to his parents' house in St. Paul to work on his novel, and in the fall of 1919 Scribner's accepted it. Published in 1920, This Side of Paradise at once established Fitzgerald as a conspicuous figure in the literary world. The novel is young American lyricism at its finest, the perfect expression of the postwar "Jazz Age" (Fitzgerald's own phrase). In Smart Set, H. L.

Mencken called it "a truly amazing first novel--original in structure, extremely sophisticated in manner, and adorned with a brilliancy that is as rare in American writing as honesty is in American statecraft." Fitzgerald received the subsequent celebrity and money undazzled but delighted; he had always had faith in himself, always had been "determined to be a genius." And Zelda agreed; they were married the same year. He went on writing: short stories, a second novel (The Beautiful and DamnedN), and a play (The Vegetable). His experience with the theater was a failure, and he amassed debts which he had to work hard to liquidate. The novel, however, was popular, although most critical reviews were mixed. The story is a portrait of a marriage overwhelmed by excess and debauchery. Carl Van Doren, writing in the Nation in 1922, said that "few current writers can represent young love in its incandescence as he can, but his knowledge does not extend with the same accuracy to the seedy side of life which he has felt he must explore." With such success the Fitzgeralds lived fast and well.

From their marriage in 1920 until they left for Europe in 1924, they lived in and near New York City. Their life, which Arthur Mizener described as "an almost continual party," was expensive and forced Fitzgerald to begin an endless and desperate struggle to keep pace with the bills. After his precocious beginning (which he exaggerated occasionally to make it still more remarkable), he strove to keep on being young. He was aided by boyish good looks--fair blond hair and light blue eyes. Youth and contemporaneity were his strength as a writer but in the end his weakness. He was the voice of his generation--disillusioned, flippant, hard-boiled--and he spoke its exact language. The trouble was that the generation grew up and was succeeded by a very different one, to which Fitzgerald never made a successful adjustment. In the world of his last years he was lost, although he was only middle-aged. Unlike his imitators he never made a virtue of cynicism. He took himself and his work seriously, trying desperately to fulfill the magnificent promise of his youth.

When their only child, Frances Scott, was about three (she had been born in 1921), the Fitzgeralds decided to move to Europe in order to economize; they stayed there, more or less, for the next six years. Much of the time they resided in Paris and in the fashionable south of France. Fitzgerald immediately set to work on his next novel, the romantic tale of Jay Gatsby's questionable rise to wealth in order to impress--and reclaim--his former sweetheart, now the married Daisy Buchanan. The action of The Great Gatsby shifts back and forth from New York City to Long Island, from the parties of the wealthy to the desolate ash-heaps where Tom Buchanan's mistress lives with her garage-owner husband. The author presents the lives of the rich as empty and corrupt, the rich themselves as dishonest and callous, but curiously ingenuous. Gatsby is different: at least he has a dream, however ephemeral and shallow his idealized Daisy is. In beautifully charged and evocative prose, with hardly a wasted word or phrase, the author captures the essence of character and situation.

Gatsby's parties are the highlight of the social season, but for him just an elaborate scheme to attract Daisy like a moth to his light. Yet once she is his again, once dream meshes with reality, something gained becomes something irrevocably lost. The romantic dangers of their illicit bliss take a desperate turn when Daisy fails to live up to her lover's expectations; then, driving Gatsby's car, she accidentally runs down her husband's mistress. The ensuing sordid trauma and panic draw Daisy and Tom back together; they are careless people whose wealth insulates them from the consequences of the damage they inflict upon others. Gatsby, the quintessential dreamer, awaits a call from Daisy that never comes. His finest novel, The Great Gatsby is also Fitzgerald's most revealing piece of fictional writing. As Andrew Turnbull has observed, "The essential Gatsby, however--he of the heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, of the extraordinary gift for hope and the romantic readiness--was Fitzgerald himself.

In the figure of Gatsby, he had been able to objectify and poetize his early feelings about the rich: that they were a race apart with a better seat in life's grandstand, that their existence was somehow more beautiful and intense than that of ordinary mortals." The Fitzgeralds' life in Paris and on the Riviera, in Rome, on Capri, and elsewhere, proved as frenetic as their life in America had been. Fitzgerald's drinking grew worse, and Zelda's mental instability became increasingly apparent. He made the acquaintance of other expatriate writers, notably Ernest Hemingway, whom he recommended to his editor Maxwell Perkins at Scribner's. Fitzgerald also helped Hemingway with some revisions to the novel The Sun Also Rises. But eventually their friendship soured. The Fitzgeralds' closest friends were Gerald and Sara Murphy, an expatriate couple whose hedonistic lifestyle would be reflected in Tender Is the Night. During much of 1927 and 1928 the Fitzgeralds were in Hollywood, where he worked on screenwriting without success.

Shortly after their return to Europe, Zelda--always trying to establish a sense of her own creative self, whether in ballet dancing, painting, or writing--suffered a complete breakdown and was hospitalized for almost a year in a Swiss sanatorium. The strain on Fitzgerald's writing was as inevitable as the impact on his financial situation. Upon their return to the United States in 1930, Zelda had another breakdown. Fitzgerald stayed near her, living and writing in Baltimore, but his own problems with alcohol, poor health, and debt worsened. During the early 1930s he worked on Tender Is the Night, the story of a young psychiatrist who marries one of his patients, a beautiful and unbalanced socialite. He tries to arrange a carefree life for her, but as her condition improves, his deteriorates, until she leaves him, his career and life in ruins. Mixing his own relationship with Zelda with a depiction of the Murphys, and setting the novel mainly on the French Riviera, Fitzgerald attempted a profound, however ambiguous, examination of American mores and personal values as well as emotional loss.

Although he knew that Tender Is the Night was flawed--he later noted that the third part of the novel was written "entirely on stimulant"--Fitzgerald was in no way prepared for its critical and commercial failure. He had pinned his hopes on a book which reviewers called uneven, poorly constructed, and disappointing. Furthermore, his stories were no longer so eagerly sought by the leading magazines; he had lost the knack for writing saleable short fiction. Some of this sudden falling-off may have been due to a shift in public taste, toward works that reflected the social concerns of the Depression, but Fitzgerald felt that he was finished as a writer. He was devastated, and suffered a breakdown of his own. In 1936, after the worst was over, he published a series of intimate essays in Esquire magazine entitled "The Crack-Up": "I began to realize that for two years my life had been a drawing on resources that I did not possess, that I had been mortgaging myself physically and spiritually to the hilt." Convinced of not only emotional but creative bankruptcy, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood in 1937 to write for the movies. He had pulled himself together; his drinking was under control and his debts were paid.

For the next year and a half he was under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; after that he worked free-lance for other movie studios. His only acknowledged contribution was as cowriter, with E. E. Paramore, Jr., of MGM's Three Comrades, but during his years in Hollywood he contributed to films such as The Women and Gone with the Wind. Despite occasional alcoholic lapses and an at times tempestuous affair with the film columnist Sheilah Graham, he worked hard, especially when he rediscovered his talent for fiction in writing a novel about Hollywood and the movie industry. The Last Tycoon, again mixing romance with realism, is a vivid account of the powerful Monroe Stahr, largely based on the producer Irving Thalberg, whom Fitzgerald had met in California over a decade earlier. Unlike his other novels, this work focused thematically on the artist--the dilemma of the creative idealist who must work in a harsh, money-oriented industry. Fitzgerald planned the book carefully, littering his room with notes, charts, and completed text. He frequently wrote to Zelda, now institutionalized in Asheville, North Carolina, about his new book and his old ones.

"I am a forgotten man," he told her in March of 1940 (The Letters of F. Scott FitzgeraldN). Indeed, his last royalty statement from Scribner's that year came to just over $13. He hoped his new work would be his comeback. But he never completed it. He died suddenly of a heart attack in December at age forty-four. His friend the critic Edmund Wilson edited the manuscript of The Last Tycoon and published it and the author's notes posthumously, calling the novel, even in its unfinished state, Fitzgerald's "most mature piece of work." In the decade following his death, Fitzgerald's reputation grew steadily. Wilson published a collection of his autobiographical essays and selections from his notebooks and letters in The Crack-Up; Dorothy Parker chose the author's best writing for The Portable F. Scott Fitzgerald; Malcolm Cowley put together a comprehensive edition of his short stories with illuminating notes and an incisive introduction; and Arthur Mizener published his full-length biography, The Far Side of Paradise. Today Fitzgerald's contribution to American fiction is secure not only in the legacy of the imaginative writing he left but in his dazzling if not dizzying portrait of the Jazz Age and the Lost Generation.

His own life in its achievements and failures significantly mirrors the lives of his major protagonists--Jay Gatsby, Dick Diver, Monroe Stahr. "Sometimes I don't know whether I'm real or whether I'm a character in one of my own novels," he once remarked. Zelda Fitzgerald died in 1948, in a fire that swept through the hospital in Asheville where she had remained a patient. The most important collection of the papers of F. Scott Fitzgerald is in the library at Princeton University. Further Readings Allen, Joan, Candles and Carnival Lights, New York University Press, 1978. Berman, Ronald, The Great Gatsby and Modern Times, University of Illinois Press (Urbana), 1994. Berman, Ronald, The Great Gatsby and Fitzgerald's World of Ideas, University of Alabama Press, 1997. Bloom, Harold, editor, F Scott Fitzgerald, Chelsea House (New York City), 1999. Bloom, Harold, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Chelsea House, 1995.

Bruccoli, Matthew J., The Composition of "Tender Is the Night": A Study of the Manuscripts, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963. Bruccoli, Fitzgerald and Hemingway: A Dangerous Friendship, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 1994. Bruccoli, F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Descriptive Bibliography,revised edition, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987. Bruccoli, "The Last of the Novelists": F. Scott Fitzgerald and "The Last Tycoon," Southern Illinois University Press, 1977. Bruccoli, Reader's Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, University of South Carolina Press (Columbia), 1996. Bruccoli, Scott and Ernest: The Authority of Failure and the Authority of Success, Random House, 1978. Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Harcourt, 1981. Bruccoli, editor, Fitzgerald Newsletter: No. 1-40, Spring, 1958-Winter, 1968, reprinted, NCR/Microcard Editions, 1969.

Bruccoli and Jackson R. Bryer, editors, F. Scott Fitzgerald in His Own Time: A Miscellany, Kent State University Press, 1971. Bruccoli and Margaret Duggan, editors, Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Random House, 1980. Bruccoli, Scottie Fitzgerald Smith, and Joan P. Kerr, editors, The Romantic Egoists: Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Scribner, 1974. Bruccoli and others, editors, Fitzgerald/Hemingway Annual, NCR/Microcard Editions Books/Information Handling Services, 1969-76, Gale, 1977-79. Bryer, Jackson R. The Critical Reputation of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Bibliographical Study, supplement, Archon Books, 1984. Bryer, New Essays on F. Scott Fitzgerald's Neglected Stories, University of Missouri Press (Columbia), 1996. Bryer, The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: New Approaches to Criticism, University of Wisconsin Press, 1982. Bryer, Jackson R., editor, F.

Scott Fitzgerald: The Critical Reception, Burt Franklin, 1978. Buttitta, Tony, After the Good Gay Times, Viking, 1974. Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography: The Twenties, 1917-1929, Gale, 1989. Cowley, Malcolm and Robert Cowley, editors, Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age, Scribner, 1966. Cross, K. G. W., F. Scott Fitzgerald, Oliver & Boyd, 1964. de Koster, Katie, Readings on F. Scott Fitzgerald, Greenhaven Press, 1997. de Koster, Katie, editor, Readings on the Great Gatsby, Greenhaven Press, 1997. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale, Volume 4: American Writers in Paris, 1920-1939, 1980, Volume 9: American Novelists, 1910-1945, 1981. Dictionary of Literary Biography Documentary Series, Volume 1, Gale, 1982.

Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook: 1981, Gale, 1982. Dillard, Mary, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Research & Education Association (Piscataway, NJ), 1994. Dolan, Marc, Modern Lives: A Cultural Re-reading of the "Lost Generation," Purdue University Press (West Lafayette, IN), 1996. Donaldson, Scott, Fool for Love: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Congdon & Weed, 1983. Donaldson, editor, Critical Essays on F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," G. K. Hall, 1984. Elbe, Kenneth, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Twayne, 1963, revised edition, G. K. Hall, 1977. Elbe, Kenneth, editor, F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Criticism, McGraw-Hill, 1973. Gale, Robert L., An F. Scott Fitzgerald Encyclopedia, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998.

Geismar, Maxwell, The Last of the Provincials, Houghton Mifflin, 1943. Goldhurst, William, F. Scott Fitzgerald and His Contemporaries, World, 1963. Graham, Sheilah, College of One, Viking, 1967. Graham, The Rest of the Story, Coward-McCann, 1964. Graham and Gerold Frank, Beloved Infidel, Holt, 1958. Gross, Dalton, and Maryjean Gross, Understanding the Greek Gatsby : A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998. Hemingway, Ernest, A Moveable Feast, Scribner, 1964. Higgins, John A., F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Study of the Stories, St. John's University Press, 1971. Hoffman, Frederick J., editor, "The Great Gatsby": A Critical Study,Scribner, 1962. Kazin, Alfred, editor, F.

Scott Fitzgerald: The Man and His Work, World Publishing Co., 1951. Kennedy, J. Gerald, and Jackson R. Bryer, editors, French Connections: Hemingway and Fitzgerald Abroad, St Martins Press, 1998. Kuehl, John and Jackson R. Bryer, editors, Dear Scott, Dear Max: The Fitzgerald-Perkins Correspondence, Scribner, 1971. LaHood, Marvin J., editor, "Tender Is the Night": Essays in Criticism, Indiana University Press, 1969. Lanahan, Eleanor Anne, Scottie, the Daughter of--: The Life of Frances Scott Fitzgerald Lanahan Smith, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1995. Lehan, Richard D., F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Craft of Fiction, Southern Illinois University Press, 1966. Le Vot, Andre, F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography, translation by William Byron, Doubleday, 1983. Long, Robert Emmet, The Achieving of "The Great Gatsby": F.

Scott Fitzgerald, 1920-1925, Bucknell University Press, 1979. Margolies, Alan, editor and author of introduction, F. Scott Fitzgerald's St. Paul Plays, 1911-1914, Princeton University Library, 1978. Mayfield, Sara, Exiles from Paradise: Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Delacorte, 1971. Mellow, James R., Invented Lives: F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Houghton Mifflin, 1984. Meyers, Jeffrey, Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1994. Milford, Nancy, Zelda: A Biography, Harper, 1970. Miller, James E., F. Scott Fitzgerald: His Art and His Technique, New York University Press, 1964. Mizener, ArthurThe Far Side of Paradise, 2nd edition, Houghton, 1965. Mizener, editor, F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall, 1963.

Moreland, Kim Ileen, The Medievalist Impulse in American Literature: Twain, Adams, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville), 1996. Perosa, Sergio, The Art of F. Scott Fitzgerald, University of Michigan Press, 1965. Piper, Henry Dan, F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Critical Portrait, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965. Piper, Henry Dan, editor, Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby", Scribners, 1970. Ring, Frances Kroll, Against the Current: As I Remember F. Scott Fitzgerald, Creative Arts Book Co., 1985. Roulston, Robert, The Winding Road to West Egg: The Artistic Development of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bucknell University Press (Lewisburg, PA), 1995. Schlacks, Deborah Davis, American Dream Visions: Chaucer's Surprising Influence on F. Scott Fitzgerald, P. Lang (New York, NY), 1994. Shain, Charles E., F. Scott Fitzgerald, University of Minnesota Press, 1961.

Short Story Criticism, Gale, Volume 6, 1990. Sklar, Robert, F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Last Laocoon, Oxford University Press, 1967. Stern, Milton R., The Golden Moment: The Novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald, University of Illinois Press, 1970. Stern, Tender is the Night: The Broken Universe, Maxwell Macmillan International (New York, NY), 1994. Sufrin, Mark, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Maxwell Macmillan International (New York, NY), 1994. Tate, Mary Jo, Fitzgerald A to Z, Facts on File, 1997. Tompkins, Calvin, Living Well Is the Best Revenge, Viking, 1971. Tredell, Nicolas, editor, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Great Gatsby, (Columbia Critical Guides), Columbia University Press, 1999. Turnbull, Andrew, Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography, Scribner, 1962. Turnbull, editor, The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Scribner, 1963.

Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Gale, Volume 1, 1978, Volume 6, 1982, Volume 14, 1984, Volume 28, 1988, Volume 55, 1995. Washington, Bryan R., The Politics of Exile: Ideology in Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Baldwin, Northeastern University Press (Boston, MA), 1995. Way, Brian, F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Art of Social Criticism, St. Martin's, 1980. Westbrook, Robert, Intimate Lies: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sheilah Graham: Her Son's Story, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1995. Weston, Elizabeth A., The International Theme in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Literature, P. Lang (New York, NY), 1995. Wilson, Edmund, Letters on Literature and Politics, 1912-1972, edited by Elena Wilson, introduction by Daniel Aaron, foreword by Leon Edel, Farrar, Straus, 1977.

Wilson, Edmund, editor, "The Last Tycoon": An Unfinished Novel, Scribner, 1941. Zhang, Aiping, Enchanted Places: The Use of Setting in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Fiction, Greenwood Press, 1997. PERIODICALS Chicago Daily News, March 31, 1920. Chicago Daily Tribune, April 18, 1925. Chicago Evening Post, September 24, 1920. Dial, August, 1925. Esquire, February, 1936, April, 1936, August, 1936. Nation, May 9, 1934. New Yorker, November 15, 1941. New York Evening Journal, April 12, 1934. New York Times, April 4, 1989. New York Times Book Review, March 5, 1922, November 9, 1941. New York Tribune, May 7, 1922.

New York World, April 12, 1925. Princeton University Library Chronicle, Number 5, 1944. Saturday Evening Post, April 5, 1924. Saturday Review of Literature, December 6, 1940. Smart Set, August, 1920, December, 1920, April, 1922. St. Paul Dispatch, April 12, 1934. Washington Post, September 25, 1989. Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2011 Gale, Cengage Learning. Source Citation: "F(rancis) Scott (Key) Fitzgerald." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 27 Mar. 2011. Document URL AND Original source: World Authors 1900-1950 Original publication date: 1996 Editor: Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens Original publication type: Print Publisher of original publication: The H. W. Wilson Company Database publisher: The H.W.

Wilson Company Database: Biography Reference Bank The Outcry - a tutorial, study guide, and critical commentary Mantex The Outcry critical commentary, study resources, plot, and web links The Outcry (1911) was Henry James’s last novel before he died in 1916. It’s quite unlike most of his major works – light, short, and with even a happy ending. In common with some of his other novels from the ‘late period’ (such as The Other House ) it’s based on an idea he had for a stage play. In fact the dialogue had already been written. James merely furnished some connecting passages between the highly stylized conversations. It deals with a theme which was of contemporary interest – the buying up of European art treasures by rich American art collectors and capitalists – something James had touched on earlier in the figure of Adam Verver in The Golden Bowl . And the novel caught the public’s attention. It sold more copies than his other far more serious later works. It has to be said that the possible reason for this is that the novel is shorter and more easily understandable than the long and intellectually demanding works of his late period.

Henry James – by John Singer Sargeant The Outcry – critical commentary This is another of the late novels that James’s originally conceived for the theatre, and following the conventions of dramatic structure and narrative devices that it exists in almost a genre of its own, alongside The Awkward Age and The Other House as a novelised drama – what we would now call ‘the book of the play’. Although it deals with the well tried Jamesian themes of New World forcefulness and acquisition pitted against Old Europe’s stiff and cautious traditions, the novel ends on what is for James an unusually light and positive note. Two couples, Lord Theign and Lady Sandgate, then his daughter Lady Grace and Hugh Crimble are happily united. There is none of the usual moral ambiguity and negative resolution of James’s other late work. What triumphs is generosity of spirit and a gesture which puts public good before private advantage. No wonder the novel was popular and a best-seller. It has to be said however that these very elements may have contributed to The Outcry becoming one of James’s least-known and little-read works today. Because despite the fact of its success on first publication, it is now almost universally ignored.

The Outcry – study resources Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources The Outcry – plot summary Book First. The action takes place at Dedborough, the country house of Lord Theign. He is a wealthy aristocrat with two daughters giving him problems. The eldest, Lady Kitty is a widow with substantial gambling debts owed to a duchess. The duchess’s son, Lord John, is paying court to Theign’s younger daughter, Lady Grace, with a proposal that if it is accepted, means that the debts will be written off as part of the marriage settlement. Meanwhile Beckenridge Bender, a rich American collector arrives at Dedborough at Lord John’s invitation to buy up any rare and expensive art objects. At the same time Grace has invited Hugh Crimble, a young art connoisseur, to look over her father’s collection. He discovers that a lesser painting might in fact be a rare and undiscovered work by an old master, Mantovano. He also finds that a Rubens in the collection has been falsely attributed, but agrees not to make his findings public so long as they agree not to let prize pieces from the collection to be sold off and taken out of the country.

When he tries to pressure Lord Theign to retain the paintings as part of the national heritage, he is dismissed. But Lady Grace takes on his services instead, which displeases her father. Book Second. The action takes place three or four weeks later in the Bruton Street home of Lady Sandgate, an old friend of Lord Theign’s. She receives Crimble, who is waiting for news confirming his attribution of the Mantovano. Crimble and Grace agree to urge Bender to seek maximum publicity for his purchases in order that he should fail – by arousing public animosity. Crimble receives bad news on his attribution from one expert, but seeks a second opinion elsewhere. Lord Theign argues with Grace on the issue of selling paintings from his collection, and he particularly disapproves of her dealings with Crimble, with whom he forbids her to associate. She disobeys him. Book Third. Events take place in the same location, a fortnight later. Crimble, whilst waiting for the second opinion on his art-detective work, forms a romantic alliance with Grace.

Lord Theign spars with Bender over the price he will charge for his painting, and the deal is further complicated when Lady Sandgate also puts one of her own old masters into the equation. It is confirmed that the Mantovano is a rare and priceless old master. Crimble is vindicated and his reputation as an expert established. Lord Theign and Lady Sandgate finally agree to thwart Bender by giving their family portraits to the Nation, and the deal is sealed with a romantic coupling. Principal characters Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007. F.W. Dupee, Henry James: Autobiography, Princeton University Press, 1983. Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985. Philip Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters, Viking/Allen Lane, 1999. Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001. Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999 F.O.

Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988. Critical commentary Elizabeth Allen, A Woman’s Place in the Novels of Henry James London: Macmillan Press, 1983. Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993. Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993. Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, 1991. Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, Macmillan, 2010. J. Donald Crowley and Richard A. Hocks (eds), The Wings of the Dove, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978. Victoria Coulson, Henry James, Women and Realism, Cambridge University Press, 2009. Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993. Virginia C.

Fowler, Henry James’s American Girl: The Embroidery on the Canvas, Madison (Wis): University of Wisconsin Press, 1984. Jonathan Freedman, The Cambridge Companion to Henry James, Cambridge University Press, 1998. Judith Fryer, The Faces of Eve: Women in the Nineteenth Century American Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976 Roger Gard (ed), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1968. Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, 2009. Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996. Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A study of the short fiction, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990. Donatella Izzo, Portraying the Lady: Technologies of Gender in the Short Stories of Henry James, University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Colin Meissner, Henry James and the Language of Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2009 John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993. Richard Poirer, The Comic Sense of Henry James, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967. Hugh Stevens, Henry James and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press, 1998. Merle A. Williams, Henry James and the Philosophical Novel, Cambridge University Press, 1993. Judith Woolf, Henry James: The Major Novels, Cambridge University Press, 1991. Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994. Other works by Henry James Washington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel – the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian father. She has a handsome young suitor – but her father disapproves of him, seeing him as an opportunist and a fortune hunter. There is a battle of wills – all conducted within the confines of their elegant town house. Who wins out in the end?

You will be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, with a sensitive picture of a woman’s life. Buy the book here The Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion. Buy the book here The Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage.

The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out. Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes. © Roy Johnson 2011 Improve your Writing Skills (.pdf) Improve your writing skills – now! Improve your English and your communication skills. Learn how to write with clarity and style. Choose the most effective vocabulary. Make every word count with clear grammar and punctuation. This eBook will show you how to write effective sentences and paragraphs, plus how to structure your writing. Overcome writer’s […] Order Improve your Writing Skills Improve your Writing Skills @ £1.95 You can leave a response , or trackback from your own site.

If you found this article interesting you might want to Tell-A-Friend . Tell A Friend Toby Litt - Literature Literature Biography Toby Litt was born in Bedfordshire, England, in 1968. He read English at Worcester College, Oxford, and studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia where he was taught by Malcolm Bradbury, winning the 1995 Curtis Brown Fellowship. He lived in Prague from 1990 to 1993 and published his first book, a collection of short stories entitled Adventures in Capitalism, in 1996. He is the author of the novels: Beatniks: An English Road Movie (1997), a modern On the Road transposed to middle-England; Corpsing (2000), a thriller set in London's Soho; and Deadkidsongs (2001), a dark tale of childhood. Exhibitionism (2002), is a collection of short stories that explore the boundaries of sex and sexuality.

A short story by Toby Litt was included in the anthology All Hail the New Puritans (2000), edited by Matt Thorne and Nicholas Blincoe, and he has edited The Outcry (2001), Henry James's last completed novel, for Penguin in the UK. Finding Myself (2003) is the story of what happens when budding author Victoria About gathers together ten friends for an all-expenses-paid holiday in Southwold in order to write up the ensuing events. In 2003 Toby Litt was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'. A new collection of short stories, I Play the Drums in a Band Called Okay, was published in 2008. Toby Litt's latest novels are Journey into Space (2009), King Death (2010) and Life-Like (2014), which has been shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2015 and longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. He lives in London and is a member of English PEN.

Bibliography Critical perspective Toby Litt's second novel Corpsing (2000), his most successful to date, is a slick, snappy London thriller, dealing with the surprising consequences of an out-of-the-blue shooting in a trendy London restaurant. From its opening in fashionable Soho it's a very London book, urban and stylish, though Litt is only a Londoner by adoption. He grew up in Ampthill in Bedfordshire, a town whose name echoes through the settings of his work - it metamorphoses into Amplewick (in the northern county of 'Midfordshire') in Deadkidsongs (2001), and appears as itself (Ampthill, Beds.) in Beatniks (1997); but Corpsing rings with the authenticity of a native Londoner, with the shrewd, urban voice of its snappiest, most metropolitan inhabitants.Conrad, the narrator of Corpsing, doesn't know what has hit him. His (recently) ex-girlfriend, Lily, is the only fatality of the restaurant shooting, and Conrad finds himself having to deal not only with the alarming fallout spiralling from the shooting itself but also with Lily's bereaved parents.

The story which unfolds around him is (for him) overwhelming, but for the reader it makes for a narrative which is fast-paced and highly readable. Its pace and texture - in parts a compound of straight narrative exposition with newspaper articles, hospital reports, and so on - grip the reader's attention firmly throughout. This is, it should be said, a very hard book to put down. It is also an extraordinarily visual book, extraordinarily cinematic (if it isn't soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture then it ought to be). The descriptions of the trajectory - as if in slow motion - of each of the gunman's bullets are particularly vivid and startlingly original. As a rule Litt doesn't waste words on character development and such frivolities; Corpsing is quite bare but for plot development (hence in part the pace). So even though it has been considered overlong by some, and the ending is perhaps weaker than most of the rest of the book, overall it is, yes, slick and trendy and stylish and dynamic. And most of all of his novels it is funny too - not wild and hilariously funny, but written with real relish and pleasure.

Litt is largely known for this book, but to look around a little there's actually so much more than just this... Take, for example, his most recent novel, Deadkidsongs - from the German Kindertotenlieder - a stranger and more fragmented work. It is the story of Gang, a gang of four boys in the north ('Midfordshire') who spend their days preparing for a war, dreaming of fighting and of being war heroes. In fact they do end up in war of sorts - not the war they had been training for but one against the adult world - parents, teachers, social workers, etc. All adults, that is, except Andrew's dad, the Best Father. He is tough, military, he beats Andrew (and his wife), he applauds the boys' violence as 'courage' - and of course the boys all worship him. He is, to them, the only adult who understands what's really important - honour, strength, victory. The narrative switches between the points of view of the principle characters (though always in the third person), the styles of the different sections sometimes distinctive, sometimes indistinguishable.

This causes a certain amount of confusion towards the end, as characters' identities are allowed to flow quite freely one to another, making it all a little baffling; and yet it is surprising how little this matters. Although some price is paid for this narrative disruption, the last chapters are nonetheless the most gripping, the most engaging - so even the most disorientated reader will feel compelled to keep reading regardless. Deadkidsongs is a very chilling and sometimes shocking book; Litt is not afraid to show the boys' evil, their cruelty, and - worse still - their rationalisation of it. It is this that is most disturbing, the fact that these characters are not motivated by anger or other uncontrollable emotions, but justify their cruelty coolly in terms of ideas of justice and honour (only very rarely is anyone seen to be out-of-control or psychotic). And these are all things they have learnt from adults around them. Deadkidsongs is a bigger experiment, a bigger risk than the slick Corpsing; it might be less successful in many ways, less consistently fluent, but it's also a far bolder gesture.

Litt's first novel, Beatniks, is simpler, a cool, funny story of narrator Mary's attempts to be accepted into a gang of pure 1960s 'hipness'. Jack, Neil and Maggie who make up this gang try to keep things just as they were on July 29th, 1966, at the height of Beat, the year when (in their version of events) Bob Dylan was killed in a motorcycle accident. But it soon becomes clear that none of them is strong enough to maintain absolute purity, and they all have secrets from each other. Even Mary only really wants to join because she's attracted to Jack (who's in a relationship with Maggie; meanwhile Neil is attracted to Mary, who eventually - largely through lack of willpower - agrees to go out with him although she's still really attracted to his friend...). Beatniks is really a small studio piece; it has few active characters (only five who play any significant part in events at all); and it's only really Jack and Neil (and by extension Neil's cat Koko) who are given body and well explored, this thanks to our narrator Mary's attempts to analyse them).

Like Deadkidsongs' Gang, it is thematically all about inclusiveness and exclusion; about people wanting to be in, and those who have the power to determine who is and who isn't.In some ways Beatniks has all the hallmarks of a typical first novel; set in the author's own home town, (parents' house, Ampthill, Beds.), with a main protagonist of about the author's age, it is a sort of fantasy escape story - though it is the escape from a particular kind of English lifestyle, and nothing more dramatic or malignant than that. But it is a bolder work than this description might suggest - for one thing the first-person narrator is female, a brave move for a first novel. Admittedly, the book's strength isn't particularly in Mary's voice or character (which are both fine), but in the plotting, the play between the other main characters - that's what makes it gripping read. Exhibitionism (2002) is a collection of pieces of short fiction, many of which have Sex as a common theme (of which the best is probably the quirky On the etiquette of eye-contact during oral sex).

One which doesn't quite fit in is nonetheless among the most original pieces in the collection; The Audioguide (formerly titled The Museum of Inside-Your-Head) purports to be the narrative text of an audio-guide to an empty museum; the guide, in other words, is all the exhibition there is. It's a slightly surreal piece, quite unlike anything else Litt has published, but a perfect balance between an odd humour and a sinister oddness, and the most compelling thing in the book. The rest of the book is patchier - good without being outstanding; it feels like a sort of flexing of Litt's writerly muscles, just for exercise, no more nor less than that. More than half of these pieces had published elsewhere first, so it doesn't quite cohere as a collection, but there are still many moments that are clever or funny or sinister. What distinguishes this from Litt at his best, however, is that here they are rarely all these things at the same time.There is also an earlier collection of short fiction, Adventures in Capitalism (1996).

Daniel Hahn ____ Early on in Beatniks (1997), Toby Litt’s first novel, the narrator, Mary, tells us why she is drawn to a gang of three in her hometown of Bedford which is intent on adopting the look, mood, style and attitude of the Beat generation: There, in the window of Next, was the summer dress – but I didn’t want it any more: I was going to wear black and smoke pot; I was going to attend poetry readings; I was going to become a Beatnik. Something about that whole lifestyle suddenly appealed to me. I felt like being an adolescent again, even if only nostalgically, ironically, temporarily. There we have Toby Litt’s project: the temporary, ironic and nostalgic adoption of style for the purpose of remaining at a distance from not only the style in question, but also anything which might be seen by others to be a genuine emotion. Litt’s style is not to have a style. Or to have so many styles that no one could ever accuse him of having anything so conservative, traditional or conventional as a style. Litt’s idea is to write a book for each letter of the alphabet, adopting a new genre each time.

The project began with a collection of short stories called Adventures in Capitalism (1996), which combines Douglas Coupland’s anthropological interest in pop culture with the sort of artistic pretension which English literature graduates favour. At the time of writing, the project has reached King Death (2010), a detective story based on the deliberately ridiculous premise that a disembodied heart will slide slowly enough down a roof for it to be identifiable as a human organ. Garan Holcolmbe 2013

Question: 'Outcry' was the last completed novel by which writer, published in 1911?
Answer: Henry James