Who was Edmund Wilson and what did he do?

Who was Edmund Wilson and what did he do?

It’s true that Wilson was a curmudgeon from the point of view of readers who might like authors like Tolkien. Wilson didn’t like H.P. Lovecraft any more than he liked Tolkien. And one of his most famous articles is a root-and-branch denunciation of detective fiction titled “Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?”

Who are the four critics of Edmund Wilson?

Wilson is referring to an earlier paragraph in which he quotes favorable reviews by four critics, three of them British: Richard Hughes, Naomi Mitchison, C.S. Lewis, and one American, Louis J. Halle.

When did Edmund Wilson publish the bit between my teeth?

It was published in the journal The Nation in 1956, and reappeared in Wilson’s collection The Bit Between My Teeth (1965) and various other sources, earning a place in the otherwise laudatory Tolkien Scrapbook edited by Alida Becker (1978).

What did Edmund Wilson say about Robert Auden?

Wilson manages to dismiss Auden’s praise by suggesting that Auden’s professional interest in the theme of the Quest, a matter at the forefront of Tolkien’s tale, has short-circuited Auden’s critical judgment. So much for him.

Are there any books written by Edmund Wilson?

With two volumes of his essays and reviews in print from the canonizing Library of America, you’d think the answer must be yes. And yet, to read Edmund Wilson today is to get the impression that he belongs to some lost epoch—a day further gone than the real distance that separates us from his style of writing.

What did Edmund Wilson say about the American language?

In “Talking United States,” for instance—an article Wilson wrote about Mencken’s The American Language —he argued that American English offered real advantages to the writer, for it had grown beyond its British origins by incorporating the foreign elements brought to America by immigrants. No, the problem for art wasn’t the American language.

Who was Edmund Wilson married to before his death?

After her death in a freak accident two years after their marriage, Wilson wrote a long eulogy to her and said later that he felt guilt over having neglected her. From 1938 to 1946, he was married to Mary McCarthy who, like Wilson, was well known as a literary critic.

What did Edmund Wilson do for the public?

Wilson’s critical works helped foster public appreciation for several novelists: Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Vladimir Nabokov. He was instrumental in establishing the modern evaluation of the works of Dickens and Kipling.