Twentieth Century Writers

E.E. Cummings on T.S. Eliot
(The Dial Magazine, 1920)

A review of T.S. Eliot‘s (1888 – 1965) second collection, Poemsstyle=border:none (1919), as reviewed by E.E. Cummings (1894 – 1962) in the well respected magazine of the arts, THE DIAL. It was in this volume that Eliot’s well remembered series of quatrains first appeared: Sweeney Among the Nightingales, Sweeney Erect The Hippopotamus and Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service.

Cummings at that time was living in Paris and writing his first book, The Enormous Roomstyle=border:none, which would be published in 1922. The review of that work can be read here.

‘The Attack of the Super Novelists”
(Vanity Fair, 1919)

In this article, P.G. Wodehouse (1904 – 1975) sounded-off on a new type of novelist that had surfaced in 1919 – and has yet to decamp. He breaks the novelizing classes into two groups:

…the ordinary novelist, the straightforward, horny-handed dealer in narrative, who is perfectly contented to turn out two books a year, on the understanding – a gentleman’s agreement between himself and his public – that he reserves movie rights and is allowed an occasional photograph in the papers..

Virginia Woolf Reviews E.M. Forster
(Atlantic Monthly, 1927)

Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941) had her say regarding the novels of E.M. Forster (1879 – 1970):

There are a many reasons which should prevent one from criticizing the work of contemporaries… With a novelist like E.M. Forster this is specially true, for he is in any case an author about whom there is considerable disagreement. There is something baffling and evasive in the very nature of his gifts.

T.E. Lawrence and the Literary Coup of 1935
(Literary Digest, 1935)

The accidental death of T.E. Lawrence (1888 – 1935) triggered an event within the publishing world that was much discussed in all quarters:

THE SATURDAY REVIEW of LITERATURE, weekly guide-post for the literati, last week scooped the world with an air-tight exclusive story that was scheduled to be front page news fourteen years hence. The editorial coup was a review of Thomas Edward Lawrence’s (Lawrence of Arabia) final book, The Mintstyle=border:none, which by the terms of his will was not to be made known to the world until 1950.

One of the First Reviews of ‘Sons and Lovers’
(Vanity Fair, 1913)

Later in the century there would be many ink-slingers to gush over the talents of D.H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930); but in 1913, the writer would simply have to bide his time and suffer the reviews that were printed in the society pages.

It emphatically is not a book for the ‘young person’, and it is certainly a book that will make the older conservative wince a bit…nevertheless it is a study that was worth doing, and D.H. Lawrence has done it well. He has dealt with very real things in a way that leaves a distinctness of impression unequaled by nine books out of ten one picks up nowadays.

One of the First Reviews of ‘Sons and Lovers’
(Vanity Fair, 1913)

Later in the century there would be many ink-slingers to gush over the talents of D.H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930); but in 1913, the writer would simply have to bide his time and suffer the reviews that were printed in the society pages.

It emphatically is not a book for the ‘young person’, and it is certainly a book that will make the older conservative wince a bit…nevertheless it is a study that was worth doing, and D.H. Lawrence has done it well. He has dealt with very real things in a way that leaves a distinctness of impression unequaled by nine books out of ten one picks up nowadays.

Carl Sandburg at 70
(’48 Magazine)

Here is a salute to the poet Carl Sandburg (1878 – 1967) written by Louis Untermeyer (1885 – 1977) marking the occasion of Sandburg’s biography of Abraham Lincoln:

At 70 Sandburg is the voice of the common man, and it is only natural that his biography of Abraham Lincoln should express for all time the spirit of that uncommon man who was the common denominator of humanity.

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