Overview
The story of Richard Aldington, outstanding Imagist poet and author of the bestselling war novel Death of a Hero (1929), takes place against the backdrop of some of the most turbulent and creative years of the twentieth century. Vivien Whelpton provides a remarkably detailed and sensitive portrayal of the writer from the age of thirty-eight to his death from a heart attack in 1962. The first volume, Richard Aldington: Poet, Soldier and Lover, described Aldington's life as a stalwart of the pre-war London literary scene, his experience as an infantryman on the Western Front and his postwar personal and creative crises; this second volume seeks to balance the stories of Aldington's subsequent public and private lives through a careful reading of his novels, poems and letters with his circle of acquaintances. The ways in which Aldington's dysfunctional childhood and survivor's guilt continued to haunt him through the inter-war years and beyond are masterfully untangled by an author with gifted psychological insight into her subject. Volume Two covers Aldington's personal and public lives as he transformed himself from poet to novelist and from novelist to biographer and explores his debacles and triumphs, particularly in the wake of his hugely controversial attack on the reputation of T.E. Lawrence. This authoritative biography recounts the life of one of the most underrated writers of the last century.
Full Product Details
Author: Vivien Whelpton
Publisher: James Clarke & Co Ltd
Imprint: Lutterworth Press
Weight: 0.647kg
ISBN: 9780718894771
ISBN 10: 0718894774
Pages: 415
Publication Date: 25 July 2019
Audience:
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Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Available To Order 
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Table of Contents
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction Part One: The Wanderer, 1930-1936 1. A Sociable Life: Travel, Friendship and Patronage, 1930-1931 2. A Sociable Life: France, 1930-1933 3. A Sociable Life: Italy - Further Friendships, 1930-1932 4. The Public Face: Critic and Satirist 5. The Public Face: Elegist and Romantic 6. The Social Life Fragments, 1932-1936 7. The Public Face: Reviewer, Philosopher and Essayist 8. The Private Life: Leading a Double Life, 1930-1936 9. The Private Life: Meltdown, 1936-1937 Part Two: The Exile, 1937-1950 10. Divorce, 1937-1938 11. A Crystal World? 1937-1939 12. The New World - Again, 1939-1942 13. A New Life - Hollywood, 1942-1946 14. The Public Face: Novelist, Biographer, Memoirist and Anthologist Part Three: The Recluse, 1951-1962 15. Back to the Old World, 1946-1947 16. The Sociable Life: Paradise Regained - and Lost, 1947-1949 17. The Public Face: The Old Loyalties 18. The Private Life: Crisis, 1950 19. The Public Face: Disaster 20. Private and Public Lives: Trials of Endurance, 1951-1957 21. A Solitary Life, 1957-1962 22. From Tragedy to Triumph, 1961-1962 Afterwords Notes Bibliography Index
Reviews
Vivien Whelpton's two-part biography of the writer Richard Aldington is a formidable achievement. This second volume illuminates the world of English letters from the Thirties to the Sixties while deftly charting the fluctuations of Aldington's career and personal life. Whelpton's scrupulous account of his latter years, and of how the controversy surrounding his book Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Enquiry brought his reputation and career to premature collapse, is a heartening demonstration of scholarly and fair-minded literary biography at its best. Adrian Barlow, The English Association This meticulously researched book draws on extensive archival material to present a nuanced, thorough, and highly readable account of Richard Aldington's life in the years after the publication of Death of a Hero. Whelpton unfailingly guides her reader through the maze of difficult personal and literary relationships that were so characteristic of Aldington and, as she did in the first volume of this two-part biography, makes a compelling argument for his continued importance to literary history. Professor Elizabeth Vandiver, Whitman College Whelpton has lain the details of his life before us with a careful scrupulousness. -Anne Williamson Henry Williamson Society Vivien Whelpton's achievement is very considerable in bringing to life a writer who for a long time has been represented more by his name than his work. -Meg Crane, Tunbridge Wells, Kent
Vivien Whelpton's two-part biography of the writer Richard Aldington is a formidable achievement. This second volume illuminates the world of English letters from the Thirties to the Sixties while deftly charting the fluctuations of Aldington's career and personal life. Whelpton's scrupulous account of his latter years, and of how the controversy surrounding his book Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Enquiry brought his reputation and career to premature collapse, is a heartening demonstration of scholarly and fair-minded literary biography at its best. Adrian Barlow, The English Association This meticulously researched book draws on extensive archival material to present a nuanced, thorough, and highly readable account of Richard Aldington's life in the years after the publication of Death of a Hero. Whelpton unfailingly guides her reader through the maze of difficult personal and literary relationships that were so characteristic of Aldington and, as she did in the first volume of this two-part biography, makes a compelling argument for his continued importance to literary history. Professor Elizabeth Vandiver, Whitman College
Author Information
Vivien Whelpton is a former teacher of English and Media Studies with a special interest in the literature of the First World War. She has written journal articles and monographs in this field. She has an M.A. in War Studies and has conducted tours of the Western Front for several years. Her first volume, Richard Aldington: Poet, Soldier and Lover (The Lutterworth Press, 2014), was shortlisted for The Biographers' Club Tony Lothian Prize in 2011.
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