Title
Selected Letters Of Robert Penn Warren: The Apprentice Years 19241934 (Southern Literary Studies),Used
Processing time: 1-3 days
US Orders Ships in: 3-5 days
International Orders Ships in: 8-12 days
Return Policy: 15-days return on defective items
Payment Option
In Americas twentieth century, there is no man of letters more versatile, distinguished, and influential than the poet, novelist, editor, critic, social commentator, and teacher Robert Penn Warren (19051989). The most intimate of Warrens letters, his personal correspondence, now join his published canon under William Bedford Clarks expert supervision. Volume One, The Apprentice Years, forms a kind of epistolary comingofage novel, taking Warren from the awkwardness of emerging genius during his Fugitive student years at Vanderbilt to the brink of producing great work in a newly appointed post at Louisiana State University.Warrens earliest correspondence limns a friendship in earnest with Allen Tate, a crushing heartbreak, and an attempted suicide. Eventually the author regroups, graduates with honors, and entertains a badboy phase at Berkeley and Yale. As he studies at Oxford, writes his first book, and decides not to complete his doctorate, Warren exhibits a deepening maturity and devotion to his literary craft, expressing ever more complex ideas about poetry and fiction. His nagging financial difficulties, growing commitment to the Agrarian movement, controversial essay for Ill Take My Stand, marriage to Cinina Brescia, and professional uncertainty as one of the first to combine writing with college teaching lead him into the 1930s, when the bright prospect of tenure and an opportunity to remake the Southwest Review arises.Warrens letters, all but one previously unpublished, fascinate in their revelations, such as the authors surprisingly tangled relationship with his parents, his delicate health, and the gossip about major literary figures, including Tate, John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson, and Laura Riding. But beyond rich biographical detail, they offer a veritable selfportrait of the fledgling artist: When a person writes a letterit is nearly as much one to himself as to the person who takes it from the postbox. The selfconscious, precocious, yet sensitive young Warren modulates to the sardonic, irreverent aesthete/wit Red and finally acquires a voice distinctively Warrenesque, confident and sophisticated. Thus the imaginative as well as literal aspects of these years in Warrens life are conveyed, his writing persona and historical person always an intriguing comparison.Highly accessible, unfailingly interesting, and scrupulously annotated, The Apprentice Years will satisfy scholar and lay reader alike, providing a unique window on what it means to profess the writers calling in an era of rapid change. When complete, the selected letters of Robert Penn Warren will prove an indispensable addition to the authors literary oeuvre.
⚠️ WARNING (California Proposition 65):
This product may contain chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.
For more information, please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov.