Edward Mendelson

Unlike the standard literary biography where the work is used to understand the life, here the events of Auden's life take a back seat to his evolution as a poetic thinker. Mendelson has a deep understanding of Auden's intellectual trajectory which informs his explication of the poetry. Readers looking for gossip about Isherwood or Spender will be disappointed as they play minor role here. Rather it is intellectual companions such as Thomas Hardy, Rainer Rilke, and Reinhold Niebuhr who show more figure more largely here due to their impact on Auden's thinking. show less

An illuminating exploration of how seven of the greatest English novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Between the Acts—portray the essential experiences of life.

Edward Mendelson—a professor of English at Columbia University—illustrates how each novel is a living portrait of the human condition while expressing its author’s complex individuality and intentions and emerging from show more the author’s life and times. He explores Frankenstein as a searing representation of child neglect and abandonment and Mrs. Dalloway as a portrait of an ideal but almost impossible adult love, and leads us to a fresh and fascinating new understanding of each of the seven novels, reminding us—in the most captivating way—why they matter. show less

To be frank, I am not very interested in Auden's poetry, but I am interested in the man, and although I also have the Auden biography by Humphrey Carpenter, I bought this book as it seems to contain so much biographical information.

I am also more interested in the young Auden than the early Auden, and of course the group of friends at the time of their budding friendship. It was entirely serendipitous that I was reading Christopher Isherwood's Lions & Shadows. An education in the Twenties, show more which is also mentioned, at almost the same time. As these two books cover about the same periods, the Twenties.

Edward Mendelson's Early Auden cover the period up to 1938, which biographically is the most interesting period and covers some of his travels to China and their stay in Germany, where he watched the rise of fascism. This period between schooling and the outbreak of the war is also the period of discovering his homosexuality and the development of life-long friendships with Isherwood and other writers and thinkers of the period.

Mendelson gives in-depth psychological explanations for the development and maturing of Auden's poetry, with many excerpts to illustrate. The book can be read as a biography of the young Auden, with a lot of attention given to his poetry.

Very well-written and very well done. show less

The Inner Life of Mrs Dalloway by Edward Mendelson is comprised of three essays based on three lectures he gave and an excellent Introduction that serves to connect these essays.

While each essay can stand on its own and be read independent of the others, reading this as a book, thanks to the Introduction, is equally rewarding. While the opening does set up a way to tie the essays together it is still the readers job, as an engaged reader, to see how that later framing serves to bring these show more separate essays together. So no, these lectures/essays weren't completely rewritten to spoon feed the connections he pointed out to us in the Introduction. Doing so would have taken away from what each essay focused on. But tying it all together is not a difficult job, especially if you're naturally an active and engaged reader.

I know a lot of readers like to find a book like this about a classic work before they read that work. I'm not sure this would make an ideal choice since it concentrates on just a few of many themes that run through Mrs Dalloway. This is one time I would suggest reading the work of fiction before reading various critical assessments. There are so many ways into Mrs Dalloway and reading this book first might cause you to miss one that would be more meaningful to you. That said, I highly recommend coming to this book after reading Dalloway.

When teaching, this was one of the books I often had students write about simply because there were so many things a student might relate to, or be irritated by, all of which led to some wonderful essays. The discussions after the essays were turned in were always productive because everyone mentioned perspectives and ideas others hadn't considered or noticed.

Highly recommended for those who enjoy gaining new insight and perspective on works they may have read more than once. If you haven't read Mrs Dalloway yet, I would suggest making this your first read AFTER reading Dalloway.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. show less