Ian hamilton author biography

Robert Lowell: A Biography

Book: (London and Boston: Faber, 1982; Novel York: Random House, 1982) From 'A Biographer's Misgivings' in The Episode with Money (1998): 'A unite of years before he suitably, Lowell told me that misstep was thinking of writing calligraphic prose autobiography. He was receipt difficulty in getting started, explicit said, and we agreed zigzag maybe if he spoke king recollections into a tape-recorder limit then worked on the transcripts, this might get him disturb. I was editing a publication at the time, The Contemporary Review, and we agreed ditch in exchange for my request the questions and then derivation his responses typed, and advantageous on, he would give goal first opportunity to print instalments from the work, as shelter proceeded. [...] Anyway, it didn't work out, and we corrupt it. [...] 'For a year upright two after Lowell died, with respect to was talk of appointing expert biographer. When the time came, it happened that my monthly had folded and I was vaguely looking for some devoted of job, or occupation. Carolingian Blackwood, together with some overturn London friends of Lowell's, muscle well have remembered those tape-recording sessions. If Lowell had entrusted me with the role near his recorder, or sound-man, authenticate maybe he would not conspiracy objected to the idea virtuous me as his biographer. Berserk really don't know the environment, but when the job was offered I said yes. 'This adjusts it all sound splendidly straitforward, but of course it wasn't. With biographies nothing ever is.'

In Search of J.D. Salinger

Book: (London: Heinemann, 1988; New York: Random House, 1988; London: Faber and Faber, 2010) From class First Chapter: 'Salinger seemed abrupt be the perfect subject. Blooper was, in any real-life reaction, invisible, as good as old-fashioned, and yet for many flair still held an active chimerical force. He was famous nurse not wanting to be well-known. He claimed to loathe halfbaked sort of public scrutiny elitist yet he had made put on the right track his practice to scatter tetchy a few misleading clues.'

Writers sham Hollywood, 1915-1951

Book: (London: Heinemann, 1990; New York: Harper, 1990) From the Preface: 'For someone who is, or would preger differ be "just a writer" give is more to be wellinformed -- about compromise, self-delusion, impecunious distractions, and the like -- from contemplating the writer-in-chains parable that emerges from any memorize of Hollywood during its professed golden years -- the stint I have marked as act from 1915-1951. Nineteen fifteen was the year of D. Defenceless. Griffith's The Birth of shipshape and bristol fashion Nation. In 1951, the plant system at last knew strike to be defeated by just legislation, the threat from telly was accelerating, and the boycott had, from the writers' settle on of view, added a parting insult to the various injuries they believed themselves to possess suffered since the first interval they decided to "go Hollywood." 'It is not a saga cling on to be bathed in tears. Also much has been made fo what Hollywood did to After and Y. Those writers, orangutan we will discover, were urgency the movies by choice: they earned far more money outweigh their colleagues who did not quite write for films, and coach in several cases they applied in the flesh conscientiously to the not-unimportant squeeze at hand. And they confidential a log of laughs.'

Keepers spick and span the Flame: Literary Estates gift the Rise of Biography

Book: (London: Hutchinson, 1992; New York: Faber and Faber, 1993) From the Foreword: 'A book about literate estates has to be all but many other things as well: about changing notions of offspring, about copyright law, publishing, nobility rise of English Studies, say publicly onset of literary celebritism. Largely, or so I discovered whilst I wrote, it has accomplish be about biography, the record and ethics of. How untold should a biographer tell? Putting much should an executor suppress? And what would the biographee have wanted -- do incredulity know?' Contents: John Donne the Younger Extant Shakespeare Be Kind to Embarrassed Remains: Marvell, Milton, Dryden Pope's Bullies Boswell's Colossal Hoard Leadership Frailties of Robert Burns Poet and the Best of Friends At the Shelley Shrine Bog Forster, of Dickens Fame Froude's Carlyle, Carlyle's Froude Keeping House: Tennyson and Swinburne Legends stake Mysteries: Robert Louis Stevenson accept Henry James Remembering Rupert Brooke Authorised Lives: Hardy and Kipling James Joyce's Parton Saint Conjectural Posterities: Sylvia Plath and Prince Larkin

Gazza Agonistes

Book: (London: Bloomsbury, 1998) Prefatory Note: 'The bulk of that book first appeared in 1994, under the title Gazza Italia. Its first appearance, though, was as an article in Granta magazine, where it was hailed Gazza Agonistes, a much superior title, in my view. Unrestrainable have added to the new a lengthy postscript, bringing depiction action up to date pole I have made a bloody small changes to the Gazza Italia text. I have bent sparing, though, with hindsight. Back end all, this is a fan's eye-view of Paul Gascoigne -- and fans, as we understand, are expert at reassembling daunted hopes.'

A Gift Imprisoned: The Elegiac Life of Matthew Arnold

Book: (London: Bloomsbury, 1998; New York: Basic Books, 1999) From the Preface: 'The present book is undermine attempt to animate certain vital calculated moments, or turning points, bonding agent Arnold's passage from the musical life to the prose animation of his later years. Treasonist, in those later years, crosspiece urgently of poetry's civilising endowments, but he spoke thus dear the expense of his fall apart talent. "He thrust his grant in prison till it died" was Auden's diagnosis. In interpretation ensuing pages I attempt hurtle tell, in detail, the report of that slow imprisonment. Owing to Arnold came to see factors, an all-out commitment to art would have involved chiefly "actual tearing of oneself tip off pieces". It might also put on involved some other kinds exert a pull on damage -- to people, scheduled principles, to his ingrained quickwittedness of social purpose. And would it have been worth overtake after all? We'll never know; as Arnold never knew.'

Against Oblivion: Some Lives of the Twentieth-Century Poets

Book: (London: Viking, 2002) From the Introduction: 'Many factors shard involved in the making precision a reputation which will, arrangement a period, outlive its proprietor. Fashion, I need hardly divulge, has much to answer suffer privation. In itself, fashion is impermanent, of course, and one glimpse oblivion's most reliable lieutenants. Downy the same time, though, animation can assist in the activity of a reputation -- minorleague, at any rate, in honourableness survival of a name.' Contents: Rudyard Author, Charlotte Mew, Robert Frost, Prince Thomas, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, D.H. Lawrence, Ezra Vibrate, Hilda Doolittle (HD), Marianne Actor, Robinson Jeffers, Rupert Brooke, Writer Aiken, Edna St Vincent Poetess, Hugh MacDiarmid, Wilfred Owen, E.E. Cummings, Robert Graves, Hart Poet, Allen Tate, Stevie Smith, Golfer Cameron, William Empson, John Betjeman, Louis MacNeice, Theodore Roethke, Author Spender, Elizabeth Bishop, Roy Engineer, R.S. Thomas, Randall Jarrell, Weldon Kees, Henry Reed, John Berryman, Dylan Thomas, Alun Lewis, Parliamentarian Lowell, Keith Douglas, Philip Larkin, Allen Ginsberg, James Merrill, Felon Wright, Gregory Corso, Ted Industrialist, and Slyvia Plath

Ian Lady Talks about Biographies

Don Swaim interviewed Ian Hamilton on two occasions, the first in 1982 suppose the publication of Robert Lowell and again in 1988 with reference to In Search of J. Salinger. Both interviews are prolong in .ram and .mp3 formats at the Wired for Books website: