Awards

• Winner of National Jewish Book Award (Book of the Year) 2014

Overview

From the prizewinning Jewish Lives series, a fresh look at Lillian Hellman’s restless life, her extraordinary plays, and her autobiographical myths “A fast-flowing, deeply provocative portrait of a seductive, truculent, and audacious literary powerhouse.”—Booklist Glamorous, talented, audacious—Lillian Hellman knew everyone, did everything, had been everywhere. By the age of twenty-nine she had written The Children’s Hour, the first of four hit Broadway plays, and soon she was considered a member of America’s first rank of dramatists, a position she maintained for more than twenty-five years. Apart from her literary accomplishments—eight original plays and three volumes of memoirs—Hellman lived a rich life filled with notable friendships, controversial political activity, travel, and love affairs, most importantly with Dashiell Hammett. But by the time she died, the truth about her life and works had been called into question. Scandals attached to her name, having to do with sex, with money, and with her own veracity. Dorothy Gallagher confronts the conundrum that was Lillian Hellman—a woman with a capacity to inspire outrage as often as admiration. Exploring Hellman’s leftist politics, her Jewish and Southern background, and her famous testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Gallagher also undertakes a new reading of Hellman’s carefully crafted memoirs and plays, in which she is both revealed and hidden. Gallagher sorts through the facts and the myths, arriving at a sharply drawn portrait of a woman who lived large to the end of her remarkable life and never backed down from a fight. About Jewish Lives:  Jewish Lives is a prizewinning series of interpretative biography designed to explore the many facets of Jewish identity. Individual volumes illuminate the imprint of Jewish figures upon literature, religion, philosophy, politics, cultural and economic life, and the arts and sciences. Subjects are paired with authors to elicit lively, deeply informed books that explore the range and depth of the Jewish experience from antiquity to the present. In 2014, the Jewish Book Council named Jewish Lives the winner of its Jewish Book of the Year Award, the first series ever to receive this award. More praise for Jewish Lives: ""Excellent"" –New York Times ""Exemplary"" –Wall Street Journal ""Distinguished"" –New Yorker ""Superb"" –The Guardian

Full Product Details

9780300164978

Table of Contents

Reviews

Unafraid to question Hellman's idealized memoirs, Gallagher (Hannah's Daughters) meets the 'unflaggingly famous' dramatist head on in this pithy biography. -Publishers Weekly Publishers Weekly 'This snappy biography is full of piquant details and entertaining quotations.'-Molly Guinness, The Spectator -- Molly Guinness The Spectator

Unafraid to question Hellman's idealized memoirs, Gallagher (Hannah's Daughters) meets the 'unflaggingly famous' dramatist head on in this pithy biography. -Publishers Weekly Publishers Weekly 'This snappy biography is full of piquant details and entertaining quotations.'-Molly Guinness, The Spectator -- Molly Guinness The Spectator An illuminating and convincing portrait of Lillian Hellman, the real one and the heroically fanciful one. -Playbill Playbill Gallagher pounces on and decisively dissects the choicest bits in Hellman's colorful and contrary life of artistic excellence and blinkered radicalism, self-mythologizing and egregious lies, creating a fast-flowing, deeply provocative portrait of a seductive, truculent, and audacious literary powerhouse. -Donna Seaman, Booklist -- Donna Seaman Booklist Gallagher has shown herself to be an incisive, sharp-edged, darkly humorous writer, and these qualities help engage readers in a study of Lillian Hellman (1905-1984) that might otherwise seem mean-spirited. The author has no personal ax to grind against her subject, as do many of the sources she quotes, but her portrait is all the more devastating since it seems so matter-of-fact. -Kirkus Reviews Kirkus Reviews

'This snappy biography is full of piquant details and entertaining quotations.'--Molly Guinness, The Spectator --Molly Guinness The Spectator (07/05/2014)

Gallagher has shown herself to be an incisive, sharp-edged, darkly humorous writer, and these qualities help engage readers in a study of Lillian Hellman (1905-1984) that might otherwise seem mean-spirited. The author has no personal ax to grind against her subject, as do many of the sources she quotes, but her portrait is all the more devastating since it seems so matter-of-fact. -Kirkus Reviews * Kirkus Reviews * Gallagher pounces on and decisively dissects the choicest bits in Hellman's colorful and contrary life of artistic excellence and blinkered radicalism, self-mythologizing and egregious lies, creating a fast-flowing, deeply provocative portrait of a seductive, truculent, and audacious literary powerhouse. -Donna Seaman, Booklist -- Donna Seaman * Booklist * An illuminating and convincing portrait of Lillian Hellman, the real one and the heroically fanciful one. -Playbill * Playbill * 'This snappy biography is full of piquant details and entertaining quotations.'-Molly Guinness, The Spectator -- Molly Guinness * The Spectator * Unafraid to question Hellman's idealized memoirs, Gallagher (Hannah's Daughters) meets the 'unflaggingly famous' dramatist head on in this pithy biography. -Publishers Weekly * Publishers Weekly *

Gallagher has shown herself to be an incisive, sharp-edged, darkly humorous writer, and these qualities help engage readers in a study of Lillian Hellman (1905-1984) that might otherwise seem mean-spirited. The author has no personal ax to grind against her subject, as do many of the sources she quotes, but her portrait is all the more devastating since it seems so matter-of-fact. -Kirkus Reviews * Kirkus Reviews * Gallagher pounces on and decisively dissects the choicest bits in Hellman's colorful and contrary life of artistic excellence and blinkered radicalism, self-mythologizing and egregious lies, creating a fast-flowing, deeply provocative portrait of a seductive, truculent, and audacious literary powerhouse. -Donna Seaman, Booklist -- Donna Seaman * Booklist * An illuminating and convincing portrait of Lillian Hellman, the real one and the heroically fanciful one. -Playbill * Playbill * `This snappy biography is full of piquant details and entertaining quotations.'-Molly Guinness, The Spectator -- Molly Guinness * The Spectator * Unafraid to question Hellman's idealized memoirs, Gallagher (Hannah's Daughters) meets the 'unflaggingly famous' dramatist head on in this pithy biography. -Publishers Weekly * Publishers Weekly *

Author Information

Dorothy Gallagher is the author of Hannah’s Daughters and All the Right Enemies: The Life and Murder of Carlo Tresca, and two volumes of memoirs. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, and Grand Street. She lives in New York City.

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