Works
Beach was the author of a number of works of poetry, literary criticism, and fiction. He was one of the first academic scholars to work on literary figures such as Henry James (The Method of Henry James (1918)), George Meredith (The Comic Spirit in Meredith (1911)), and Thomas Hardy. Allen Tate called his book on Henry James "a critical masterpiece, as its insights have not been replaced or improved upon to any great extent by later critics." Beach was also an authority on nineteenth-century literature, and especially Romantic poetry. He published his magnum opus, (The Concept of Nature in Nineteenth-Century English Poetry) in 1936. Beach's The Making of the Auden Canon (1957) was a study of how W. H. Auden revised his earlier-published poems as his view of the world changed. His other books include The Outlook for American Prose (1926), American Fiction: 1920-1040 (1941), and Obsessive Images: Symbolism in Poetry of the 1930s and 1940s (1960).
Beach also brought out three volumes of his own poetry--Sonnets of the Head and Heart (1903), Beginning With Plato (1944), and Involuntary Witness (1950)--as well as one novel--Glass Mountain (1930)--and a book of short stories--Meek Americans (1925). His letters and papers are housed in the Library of Congress and at the University of Minnesota library.
Read more about this topic: Joseph Warren Beach
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“We do not fear censorship for we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtuethe same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word, that art to which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare.”
—D.W. (David Wark)
“I know no subject more elevating, more amazing, more ready to the poetical enthusiasm, the philosophical reflection, and the moral sentiment than the works of nature. Where can we meet such variety, such beauty, such magnificence?”
—James Thomson (17001748)
“Night and Day ve been tampered with,
Every quality and pith
Surcharged and sultry with a power
That works its will on age and hour.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)