Literary Rivals: Literary Antagonism, Writers' Feuds and Private Vexations

(Hardback)

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Novelists, poets and playwrights live double lives, sharing the real world with everyone else while spending a good deal of time in a universe of their own making. When they fall out with each other they seem able to kindle feuds as passionate and as public as workers in any trade.

Richard Bradford's highly entertaining book looks at some of the closest and most complex friendships in literary history and examines the dramatic effects on relationships and on literature itself. Figures covered here include Nabokov, whose novel Lolita originated from a festering argument with his erstwhile friend the esteemed critic Edmund Wilson.

Reviews

Just how many of the great literary works were replies to, or parodies of, lesser works by rivals It's an intriguing question... which Richard Bradford commendably doesn't shirk from confronting; we don't necessarily like to see our favourites behaving badly - What Bradford also exposes, apart from who the clear winners of these arguments are, is the importance of literary success, and legacy, to many writers, especially those whose egos fail to allow them to accept nothing less than immortality. The Independent on Sunday The sections on complex one-upmanship, evinced in letters and the works themselves, are full of close reading and insight. If you're after some knockout put-downs, it doesn't get much better than this. Financial Times Well written, entertaining and provocative. The Independent Bradford has done his homework; he quotes some fascinating exchanges. The Spectator Well written, entertaining and provocative. The Telegraph Simultaneously playful and erudite, Richard Bradford's cleverly conceived work embraces the bias and the bizarre impulses of writers we might suppose above such behaviour. Good Book Guide There's a vacancy for a compendium of the most entertaining feuds of the past. And Bradford has stepped in to fill it. Prospect

Author Bio

Richard Bradford has published twenty-two books on a variety of subjects. Most recently he has specialised in literary biographies of great writers such as Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, Alan Sillitoe and Martin Amis. His book The Odd Couple: The Curious Friendship Between Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin was highly praised.