Letter Writing Among Poets: From William Wordsworth to Elizabeth Bishop

by Jonathan Ellis (Editor)

Overview

The first book to look at poets’ letters seriously as an art form
Fifteen enlightening chapters by leading international biographers, critics and poets examine letter writing among poets in the last two hundred years. They range from Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats and Shelley in the nineteenth-century to Eliot, Yeats, Bishop and Larkin in the twentieth. In doing so, they respond to the following questions. Who are the great letter writers of the past? Why is reading other people’s mail so addictive? What is the relationship between letter writing and other literary genres such as poetry? Divided into three sections—Contexts and Issues, Romantic and Victorian Letter Writing, and Twentieth-Century Letter Writing—the volume demonstrates that real letters still have an allure that virtual post struggles to replicate.
Key Features:
A comprehensive collection of essays on the art and genre of letter writing among Romantic, Victorian and Twentieth Century poetsContributors are leading international biographers, critics and poets, including Hermione Lee, Paul Muldoon, Daniel Karlin, Hugh Haughton, Anne Fadiman, Edna Longley and Angela LeightonAn absorbing history of literary friendship, literary love, and literary rivalryA sensitive study of the often close relationship between letter writing and poetry

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474414128
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	08/24/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Ellis is Reader in American Literature at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of Art and Memory in the Work of Elizabeth Bishop (Ashgate, 2006). His articles and essays on twentieth-century poetry have appeared in various journals, including English, The Journal of Modern Literature, Mosaic, PN Review and Poetry Ireland Review. He is co-editor (with Angus Cleghorn) of The Cambridge Companion to Elizabeth Bishop (2014).

Table of Contents

Contributors; Acknowledgements; Introduction: For what is a letter? JONATHAN ELLIS; I: CONTEXTS AND ISSUES; 1 Dangerous Letters: A Biographer’s Perspective HERMIONE LEE; 2 Editing Poems in Letters DANIEL KARLIN; 3 Editing Twentieth-Century Letters: The Road to Words in Air THOMAS TRAVISANO; 4 Just Letters: Modern Poets in Correspondence HUGH HAUGHTON; II: ROMANTIC AND VICTORIAN LETTER WRITING; 5 Wordsworth’s Sweating Pages: The Love Letters of William and Mary Wordsworth FRANCES WILSON; 6 The Oakling and the Oak: The Tragedy of the Coleridges ANNE FADIMAN; 7 “Any thing human or earthly”: Shelley’s Letters and Poetry MADELEINE CALLAGHAN; 8 “Another sort of writing”? Invalidism and Poetic Labour in the Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning MARCUS WAITHE; 9 Passion and Playfulness in the Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins MICHAEL D. HURLEY; III: TWENTIETH-CENTURY LETTER WRITING; 10 The Gift of George Yeats MATTHEW CAMPBELL; 11 Epistolary Psychotherapy: The Letters of Edward Thomas and Philip Larkin EDNA LONGLEY; 12 Lorine Niedecker’s Republic of Letters SIOBHAN PHILLIPS; 13 “Wherever you listen from”: W. S. Graham and the Art of the Letter ANGELA LEIGHTON; 14 Fire Balloons: The Letters of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop PAUL MULDOON; 15 Last Letters: Keats, Bishop, and Hughes and Donaghy JONATHAN ELLIS; Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Vicarious lives, the alter egos of unwritten or belatedly written poems, trap doors into hitherto unseen aspects of a personality, feints and personae—poets’ letters can be and have been all these and more, and the all-star lineup of critics, poets and essayists here demonstrate. This collection isn’t just the last word so far on a topic (two topics, at least) or permanent interest, but an example for literary critics in general: Anne Fadiman’s defense of Hartley Coleridge, Paul Muldoon on Bishop and (or Bishop vs.) Lowell, Michael Hurley on humour in Hopkins, Ellis himself on frustration and temporality in Bishop and Keats—here is a model for writers. And for readers. And for letter-writers, scholarly and otherwise, everywhere."

Stephen Burt

Yale University Langdon Hammer

Letters—that thoroughly familiar yet under-studied form of writing, always ancillary and yet essential to literary understanding. They blur the boundaries between ordinary experience and art, improvisation and convention, individual expression and collaboration. Somehow they matter especially for poets and poetry. With speculative force, nuanced interpretation, and lively narrative too, the various essays in this book, the only one of its kind, begin to answer the question (important to poetry and letters both) of why.　　 　

Langdon Hammer, Yale University

Editorial Reviews

Vicarious lives, the alter egos of unwritten or belatedly written poems, trap doors into hitherto unseen aspects of a personality, feints and personae—poets’ letters can be and have been all these and more, and the all-star lineup of critics, poets and essayists here demonstrate. This collection isn’t just the last word so far on a topic (two topics, at least) or permanent interest, but an example for literary critics in general: Anne Fadiman’s defense of Hartley Coleridge, Paul Muldoon on Bishop and (or Bishop vs.) Lowell, Michael Hurley on humour in Hopkins, Ellis himself on frustration and temporality in Bishop and Keats—here is a model for writers. And for readers. And for letter-writers, scholarly and otherwise, everywhere.

Stephen Burt

The fifteen essays in this volume consider letters written during the past two centuries, and shed light on the state of correspondence today. The editor, Jonathan Ellis, offers a gentle admonition to critics who mourn the 'lost world' before the internet (in the words of Rebecca Solnit), a time when everyone wrote at length and thought in depth... The scholarly contributors to Letter Writing Among Poets argue that letters merit as much critical attention as texts in other genres, and that poets' letters reward particular scrutiny. A letter may offer explicit commentary on individual poems or poetics, as does one written by Keats on December 27, 1817, explaining his concept of negative capability. Others, such as those exchanged by Coleridge and his contemporaries, contain gossip that provides insight into the way literary networks operated. Every letter exemplifies its writer’s literary style, while some can be a testing ground for poetry.

Times Literary Supplement - Nancy Campbell

To read poets' letters to other poets is to gain insight into the context in which they operated and into the complex bond of common obsession and lonely practice that ties and at the same time separates them. It also, of course, casts light on the work itself.

Poetry Ireland Review - Peter Sirr

The collection looks backwards rather than forwards, celebrating the productive hybridity of letters as 'not only a source of information but a form of information'; letters are taken seriously as an art form in their own right, rather than a secondary source the critic mines for insights. Central to the collection is the shared conviction that letters are not 'autobiography by another name' but rather 'performances'... Covering the Romantic period through to the twentieth century, the volume addresses a miscellany of subjects, although Keats and Bishop are, rightly, important touchstones... the essays are penetrating and engagingly written.

PN Review - Ruth Hawthorn

"The fifteen essays in this volume consider letters written during the past two centuries, and shed light on the state of correspondence today. The editor, Jonathan Ellis, offers a gentle admonition to critics who mourn the 'lost world' before the internet (in the words of Rebecca Solnit), a time when everyone wrote at length and thought in depth... The scholarly contributors to Letter Writing Among Poets argue that letters merit as much critical attention as texts in other genres, and that poets' letters reward particular scrutiny. A letter may offer explicit commentary on individual poems or poetics, as does one written by Keats on December 27, 1817, explaining his concept of negative capability. Others, such as those exchanged by Coleridge and his contemporaries, contain gossip that provides insight into the way literary networks operated. Every letter exemplifies its writer's literary style, while some can be a testing ground for poetry."
— Nancy Campbell, Times Literary Supplement

"The collection looks backwards rather than forwards, celebrating the productive hybridity of letters as 'not only a source of information but a form of information'; letters are taken seriously as an art form in their own right, rather than a secondary source the critic mines for insights. Central to the collection is the shared conviction that letters are not 'autobiography by another name' but rather 'performances'... Covering the Romantic period through to the twentieth century, the volume addresses a miscellany of subjects, although Keats and Bishop are, rightly, important touchstones... the essays are penetrating and engagingly written."
— Ruth Hawthorn, PN Review

"To read poets' letters to other poets is to gain insight into the context in which they operated and into the complex bond of common obsession and lonely practice that ties and at the same time separates them. It also, of course, casts light on the work itself."
— Peter Sirr, Poetry Ireland Review

From the Publisher

This much needed and very welcome work does two important things: It gives us all of Mansfield’s fiction, with useful notes; and it removes many of John Middleton Murry’s intrusions into the stories he edited after Mansfield’s death. We all owe the editors, Gerri Kimber and Vincent O’Sullivan, a debt of gratitude for this excellent edition of the work of a major modernist writer.

Professor Robert Scholes

Letters—that thoroughly familiar yet under-studied form of writing, always ancillary and yet essential to literary understanding. They blur the boundaries between ordinary experience and art, improvisation and convention, individual expression and collaboration. Somehow they matter especially for poets and poetry. With speculative force, nuanced interpretation, and lively narrative too, the various essays in this book, the only one of its kind, begin to answer the question (important to poetry and letters both) of why.　　 　Langdon Hammer, Yale University

Yale University Langdon Hammer