Front cover image for Selected letters of Robert Penn Warren

Selected letters of Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren (Author), William Bedford Clark (Editor, Writer of introduction), Randy Hendricks (Editor), James A. Perkins (Editor)
V. 1: In America s twentieth century, there is no man of letters more versatile, distinguished, and influential than the poet, novelist, edi-tor, critic, social commentator, and teacher Robert Penn Warren (1905 1989). The most intimate of Warren s letters, his personal correspondence, now join his published canon under William Bedford Clark s expert supervision. Volume 1, The Apprentice Years, forms a kind of epistolary coming-of-age 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. Warren s letters, all but one previously unpublished, fascinate in their revelations, such as the author s surprisingly tangled relationship with his parents, his delicate health, and the gossip about major literary figures, including Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson, and Laura Riding. But beyond rich biographical detail, they offer a veritable self-portrait of the fledgling artist: When a person writes a letter it is nearly as much one to himself as to the person who takes it from the postbox. The precocious, self-conscious, yet sensitive young Warren transforms into 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 Warren s life are conveyed, his writing persona and historical person always an intriguing comparison.--Publisher
Print Book, English, 2000
Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 2000
personal correspondence
6 volumes : illustrations ; 24 cm
9780807125366, 9780807126578, 9780807130858, 9780807133002, 9780807138274, 9780807152829, 9780807152836, 0807125369, 0807126578, 0807130850, 0807133000, 0807138274, 080715282X, 0807152838
42736444
Volumes 3-6 edited by Randy Hendricks and James A. Perkins