Précis

I Précis I Michèle Bowman University of North Carolina, Greensboro Anand, MuIk Raj. Conversations in Bloomsbury. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995. Oxford India Paperbacks, χ + 179 pp. Paper $8.95 This new title in the Oxford India Paperbacks was first published in 1981 by Arnold-Heinemann. MuIk Raj Anand, distinguished Indian writer and art critic, managed to meet up with and have interesting, if not always successful, conversations with many of pre-World War II Britain's imminent writers and American ex-patriots. Among the conversationalists remembered and recorded here, E. M. Forster, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, Virginia and Leonard Woolf, and Clive Bell appear. Unfortunately, one cannot help but read some of the "conversations" as awkward attempts at interviews with writers Anand admired. As a memoir, the book is still valuable for its insights into the informalities that often come with less formal encounters with admired writers. Conrad, Joseph. Victory: An Island Tale. The World's Classics. John Batchelor, ed. 1915; New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. xli + 426 pp. Paper $5.95 Conrad's early classic Victoiy is introduced by Tony Tanner and includes a Chronology of Conrad, an Author's Note to the first edition, published in 1915, and explanatory notes. The story of the island retreat of Alex Heyst and Lena, the English Cockney girl he rescues from a travelling orchestra, Victory is a jarring novel of violence and emotional silence. In his first novel after the commercial success of Chance in 1914, Conrad continues crafting the combination of narrative adventure and psychological investigation that he began in 1900 with the publication οι Lord Jim. Hamalian, Leo. D. H. Lawrence and Nine Women Writers. Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996. 182 pp. $35.00 In setting out to "reclaim" D. H. Lawrence from unbalanced feminist-led attacks on the reputation of one of the great, if often misogynistic, influences of modern writers, Hamalian offers readers what Mark Spilka in his lengthy, rather solicitous foreword calls "an old-fashioned influence study placed without apologies in a postmodern context." Hamalian argues that Lawrence's influence was warmly accepted through three generations of women writers, citing nine cases including Katherine Mansfield, H.D., Rebecca West, and Meridel LeSueur; the next generation with Anai's Nin, Kay Boyle, and Sylvia Plath; and contemporary writers Margaret Drabble and Joyce Carol Oates. With such a tall order to fill, it is not surprising that Hamalian must make 251 ELT 40:2 1997 many apologies and disclaimers along the way on behalf of Lawrence. He paraphrases "Julie" [sic] Kristeva in an effort to explain why he would use nine incredibly strong women to resurrect the reputation of Lawrence: "In order to abide the strangers around us, we must first recognize the stranger in ourselves." Hardy, Thomas. Life's Little Ironies. The World's Classics. Alan Manford, ed. 1896; New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. xiii + 251 pp. Paper $7.95 This third collection of Hardy's short stories is edited by Alan Manford, with an introduction by Norman Page, and includes "An Imaginative Woman," "The Son's Veto," "For Conscience' Sake," "A Tragedy of Two Ambitions," "On the Western Circuit," "To Please His Wife," "The Fiddler of the Reels," and "A Few Crusted Characters." The stories range from the mystical and magical to the humorous and realistic, and the appendices include another text and parts of the text of two stories and Hardy's 1896 preface to the collection. As the first collection to be based on a critical examination of all Hardy's available manuscripts, this World's Classics edition should be enthusiastically welcomed to the library of any Hardy admirer. Jeffares, A. Norman. W. B. Yeats: Man and Poet. 1949; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. χ+ 338 pp. Paper $17.95 In his third edition and first paperback publication of this popular book, Jeffares, an internationally respected Yeatsian, adds a new introduction and makes revisions to the 1949 and 1962 editions based on new evidence concerning Yeats's life and poetry. One of the best books on Yeats, W. B. Yeats eschews the vast number of critical viewpoints of others to draw upon assistance from Yeats's family and...