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Author:   Jonathan Ellis (Reader in American Literature, University of Sheffield)
Publisher:   Edinburgh University Press
Imprint:   Edinburgh University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.576kg
ISBN:  

9780748681327

ISBN 10:   0748681329
Pages:   272
Publication Date:   13 January 2015
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Contributors; Acknowledgements; Introduction: For what is a letter? JONATHAN ELLIS; I: CONTEXTS AND ISSUES; 1 Dangerous Letters: A Biographer’s Perspective HERMIONE LEE; 2 Editing Poems in Letters DANIEL KARLIN; 3 Editing Twentieth-Century Letters: The Road to Words in Air THOMAS TRAVISANO; 4 Just Letters: Modern Poets in Correspondence HUGH HAUGHTON; II: ROMANTIC AND VICTORIAN LETTER WRITING; 5 Wordsworth’s Sweating Pages: The Love Letters of William and Mary Wordsworth FRANCES WILSON; 6 The Oakling and the Oak: The Tragedy of the Coleridges ANNE FADIMAN; 7 “Any thing human or earthly”: Shelley’s Letters and Poetry MADELEINE CALLAGHAN; 8 “Another sort of writing”? Invalidism and Poetic Labour in the Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning MARCUS WAITHE; 9 Passion and Playfulness in the Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins MICHAEL D. HURLEY; III: TWENTIETH-CENTURY LETTER WRITING; 10 The Gift of George Yeats MATTHEW CAMPBELL; 11 Epistolary Psychotherapy: The Letters of Edward Thomas and Philip Larkin EDNA LONGLEY; 12 Lorine Niedecker’s Republic of Letters SIOBHAN PHILLIPS; 13 “Wherever you listen from”: W. S. Graham and the Art of the Letter ANGELA LEIGHTON; 14 Fire Balloons: The Letters of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop PAUL MULDOON; 15 Last Letters: Keats, Bishop, and Hughes and Donaghy JONATHAN ELLIS; Index

Reviews

-The fifteen essays in this volume consider letters written during the past two centuries, and shed light on the state of correspondence today. The editor, Jonathan Ellis, offers a gentle admonition to critics who mourn the 'lost world' before the internet (in the words of Rebecca Solnit), a time when everyone wrote at length and thought in depth... The scholarly contributors to Letter Writing Among Poets argue that letters merit as much critical attention as texts in other genres, and that poets' letters reward particular scrutiny. A letter may offer explicit commentary on individual poems or poetics, as does one written by Keats on December 27, 1817, explaining his concept of negative capability. Others, such as those exchanged by Coleridge and his contemporaries, contain gossip that provides insight into the way literary networks operated. Every letter exemplifies its writer's literary style, while some can be a testing ground for poetry.- -- Nancy Campbell, Times Literary Supplement -The collection looks backwards rather than forwards, celebrating the productive hybridity of letters as 'not only a source of information but a form of information'; letters are taken seriously as an art form in their own right, rather than a secondary source the critic mines for insights. Central to the collection is the shared conviction that letters are not 'autobiography by another name' but rather 'performances'... Covering the Romantic period through to the twentieth century, the volume addresses a miscellany of subjects, although Keats and Bishop are, rightly, important touchstones... the essays are penetrating and engagingly written.- -- Ruth Hawthorn, PN Review -To read poets' letters to other poets is to gain insight into the context in which they operated and into the complex bond of common obsession and lonely practice that ties and at the same time separates them. It also, of course, casts light on the work itself.- -- Peter Sirr, Poetry Ireland Review

-The fifteen essays in this volume consider letters written during the past two centuries, and shed light on the state of correspondence today. The editor, Jonathan Ellis, offers a gentle admonition to critics who mourn the 'lost world' before the internet (in the words of Rebecca Solnit), a time when everyone wrote at length and thought in depth... The scholarly contributors to Letter Writing Among Poets argue that letters merit as much critical attention as texts in other genres, and that poets' letters reward particular scrutiny. A letter may offer explicit commentary on individual poems or poetics, as does one written by Keats on December 27, 1817, explaining his concept of negative capability. Others, such as those exchanged by Coleridge and his contemporaries, contain gossip that provides insight into the way literary networks operated. Every letter exemplifies its writer's literary style, while some can be a testing ground for poetry.- -- Nancy Campbell, Times Literary Supplement-The collection looks backwards rather than forwards, celebrating the productive hybridity of letters as 'not only a source of information but a form of information'; letters are taken seriously as an art form in their own right, rather than a secondary source the critic mines for insights. Central to the collection is the shared conviction that letters are not 'autobiography by another name' but rather 'performances'... Covering the Romantic period through to the twentieth century, the volume addresses a miscellany of subjects, although Keats and Bishop are, rightly, important touchstones... the essays are penetrating and engagingly written.- -- Ruth Hawthorn, PN Review-To read poets' letters to other poets is to gain insight into the context in which they operated and into the complex bond of common obsession and lonely practice that ties and at the same time separates them. It also, of course, casts light on the work itself.- -- Peter Sirr, Poetry Ireland Review

Author Information

Jonathan Ellis is Reader in American Literature at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of Art and Memory in the Work of Elizabeth Bishop (Ashgate, 2006). His articles and essays on twentieth-century poetry have appeared in various journals, including English, The Journal of Modern Literature, Mosaic, PN Review and Poetry Ireland Review. He is co-editor (with Angus Cleghorn) of The Cambridge Companion to Elizabeth Bishop (2014).

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