Thorstein Veblen (Thorstein Bunde Veblen) Biography - (1857–1929), (Thorstein Bunde Veblen), The Theory of the Leisure Class, The Theory of Business Enterprise

American economist and social commentator, born in Cato, Wisconsin, educated at Johns Hopkins University and Yale. From 1891 onward, he held posts at the University of Chicago, Stanford University, the University of Missouri, and the New School for Social Research, New York. The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), his first and best-known work, offered a critical analysis of affluence as a major d…

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Vers libre

Victim, The - The Victim

a novel by Saul Bellow, published in 1947. Asa Leventhal is left alone by his wife, who has gone south to her mother's, to fend for himself in the sweltering New York summer. He is assailed by an acquaintance, Allbee, who accuses him of having brought about the loss of his job, this crime being linked, with increasing vehemence, to Leventhal's Jewishness. Leventhal is bemused, angry, upset, yet Al…

less than 1 minute read

Victory - Munsey's Magazine, The Tempest

a novel by Joseph Conrad, published in 1915, serialized in Munsey's Magazine (1915). Its central character, Axel Heyst, a Swedish aristocrat, lives on an island in the Malay Archipelago. Influenced by the sceptical philosophy of his father, and trying to avoid forming any attachments, his way of life is challenged when he rescues Lena, who has been touring the islands as part of a Ladies' Orchestr…

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Gore Vidal Biography - (1925– ), Williwaw, The City and the Pillar, A Search for the King, Julian, Memoirs of Hadrian

American writer, born in West Point, New York, educated in New Mexico and at the University of New Hampshire; he served in the US army from 1943 to 1946. His first novel, Williwaw (1946), a Second World War story, was derivative of Hemingway; however, Vidal employed this influence to good effect in The City and the Pillar (1948). Telling the story of a homosexual's obsession with his childhood com…

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Vietnam Writing - The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, Sticks and Bones, Streamers, Indians

The Vietnam War spawned a great range of cultural, poetic, and literary representations, as people sought to articulate the experiences of the conflict. The works frequently make new projections of mythic consciousness as attempts to extend the collective memory into new contexts of perception about the war. Among the dramatic works several plays have emerged by David Rabe, amongst them The Basic …

3 minute read

View from the Bridge, A

a play by Arthur Miller, published in 1955, revised in 1956. Reminiscent of a Greek tragedy, it is set amongst the longshoremen of New York, and deals with episodes in the life of a single family, which are described by the lawyer Alfieri, taking the role of ?chorus?. Eddie and his wife give hospitality to two illegal Italian immigrants, Marco and Rodolpho, who are brothers of very different tempe…

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Vile Bodies - Decline and Fall

a novel by Evelyn Waugh, published in 1930. Following the success of Decline and Fall, his chronicle of the empty hedonism of the ?roaring Twenties?, Waugh introduced many of the same themes and characters, including the brittle, amoral Margot Metroland, into his second novel. The book opens with an account of a Channel crossing undertaken by a group of ?Bright Young Things? including the hero, Ad…

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Barbara Vine Biography

Virginian, The: A Horseman of the Plains - The Virginian, Shane

a classic Western novel by Owen Wister, published in 1902. An important influence on later Westerns, The Virginian established a formula that was to become popular for the whole genre through its depiction of a laconic stranger who rides into a community and helps maintain law and order by taking on and defeating the forces of evil. It anticipates such later novels as Jack Schaeffer's Shane and nu…

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Vision - Bulletin, Vision

Vision, A - A Packet for Ezra Pound, A Vision, Yeats's ‘Vision’ Papers

a prose work by W. B. Yeats, originally published privately in 1925 and made generally available in considerably revised form in 1937. In A Packet for Ezra Pound (1929), which was included in the 1937 edition as an introduction, Yeats described how the book's system of twenty-eight historical and cultural phases was communicated to him by spirits through his wife's automatic writing. The phases, w…

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Vivisector, The

Gerald Vizenor Biography - (1934– ), Raising the Moon Vines: Original Haiku in English, Seventeen Chirps: Haiku in English

American writer of mixed French and Chippewa descent, born in Minneapolis, educated at the University of Minnesota; he became Professor of Literature and American Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Vizenor's work is concerned with the social, psychological, and spiritual difficulties experienced by Americans of mixed blood. Among his volumes of poetry are Raising the Moon Vines…

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William T. Vollmann (William Tanner Vollmann) Biography - (1959– ), (William Tanner Vollmann), You Bright and Risen Angels, The Rainbow Stories

American novelist and short-story writer, born in Los Angeles, educated at Cornell University. His researches have taken him to many parts of the world, frequently to places engaged in political turmoil: he covered the war in Afghanistan and was wounded in Sarajevo. His first novel, You Bright and Risen Angels (1987), used the picaresque form, robust humour, and fascination with power found in Tho…

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Elizabeth von Arnim Biography - (1866–1941), Elizabeth and Her German Garden, Vera, Love, The Pastor's Wife, Father

British novelist who wrote under the pseudonym ?Elizabeth?, born Mary Annette BEAUCHAMP in Sydney, Australia, but brought up in England. In 1890 she married Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin, who appears as ?The Man of Wrath? in her best-known work, Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1898); it is a witty, slightly eccentric portrayal of her family life and the garden she created at Nassenh…

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Kurt Jr Vonnegut Biography - (1922–2007), Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan, Cat's Cradle, Mother Night

American novelist, born in Indianapolis; he studied biochemistry at Cornell University, and after serving in the Second World War studied anthropology at the University of Chicago. His first novel, Player Piano (1952), attacks the post-war conformity and standardization he had witnessed while working for a giant corporation. His two dystopic works, The Sirens of Titan (1959), a novel which envisag…

2 minute read

Vortex, The

Vorticism - Blast: The Review of the Great English Vortex, Timon of Athens, Composition, Workshop

a Modernist movement in British art and literature, linked to Imagism and Futurism, as promulgated by the Italian impresario Marinetti. Its leading figure was the writer and painter Wyndham Lewis; the term ?vortex? was first coined by Ezra Pound, in an essay on the sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, and was adopted by Lewis to describe the concentrated energy of the new movement. In October 1913, aft…

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Voss - Voss

a novel by Patrick White, published in 1957. Inspired by the true story of Ludwig Leichardt, Voss is the epic account of the German explorer Johann Voss, a visionary who planned to cross the Australian continent in 1845, in a Nietzschean attempt to transform himself into a superman. His encounter with the emancipated Laura Trevelyan before his departure develops into a mystical, telepathic bond st…

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Voyage Out, The

Helen Waddell (Helen Jane Waddell) Biography - (1889–1965), (Helen Jane Waddell), Lyrics from the Chinese, The Spoiled Buddha, The Wandering Scholars

British medievalist, born in Tokyo, where her father was a missionary; from the age of 10 onward she grew up in County Down, Ulster, and was educated at Queen's University, Belfast. Having studied under George Saintsbury, with whom she remained friendly, she produced Lyrics from the Chinese (1913), the first of her numerous works of translation; her play The Spoiled Buddha (1919) was produced in B…

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Miriam Waddington Biography - (1917–2004), First Statement, Preview, Green World, The Second Silence, The Season's Lovers

Canadian poet, the daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants, born in Winnipeg, educated at the University of Toronto. After many years as a social worker in Montreal, in 1964 she began lecturing at York University, Toronto, where she became Professor of English in 1973. During the early 1940s she was closely associated with the magazines First Statement and Preview. The lyrical reflections on persona…

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Henry Wade, pseudonym of Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey Fletcher Biography - 6th baronet, DSO, Croix de Guerre (1887–1969)

John Wain (John Barrington Wain) Biography - (1925–94), (John Barrington Wain), Hurry on Down, Strike the Father Dead, A Winter in the Hills

British poet, novelist, and critic, born in Stoke-on-Trent, educated at St John's College, Oxford. His first substantial publication was the novel Hurry on Down (1953), which charts the fortunes of its disaffected hero through a range of occupations, legitimate and illicit. Among his subsequent novels are Strike the Father Dead (1962), a further treatment of youthful rebellion, and A Winter in the…

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Jeffrey Wainwright Biography - (1944– ), The Important Man, Poetry of the Committed Individual, Poetry Introduction: 3

British poet, born in Stoke-on-Trent, educated at the University of Leeds. After teaching at University College, Aberystwyth, and Long Island University, New York, he became a lecturer at Manchester Polytechnic in 1973. The Important Man (1970) was his first independent publication as a poet. His work attracted critical acclaim when it appeared in Jon Silkin's edition of Poetry of the Committed In…

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Waiting for Godot - En Attendant Godot

the first play by Samuel Beckett; it was published in French as En Attendant Godot in 1952, staged in French in Paris in 1953, and performed in Beckett's own English translation in 1955. One of the key works of the twentieth century, it is set on and around a country road and involves two days in the life of Estragon and Vladimir, both tramps and both awaiting the arrival of the mysterious title c…

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Waiting for Lefty - The Communist Manifesto

by Clifford Odets, his most famous short play, first produced by the Group Theatre on 6 January 1935 at a benefit for striking cab drivers. Framed by an introduction and conclusion are six memory scenes (later five), which, on a darkened stage, reveal the injustices of working people's lives. At a strike meeting, taxi drivers await their leader, Lefty Costello, while a corrupt union boss, Harry Fa…

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Tom Wakefield Biography - (1935–96), Forties Child, Mates, The Discus Throwers, The Variety Artistes, Lot's Wife, War Paint

British novelist and short-story writer, born into a mining family in Staffordshire, educated at the University of London. Forties Child (1980) is a poignant recreation of his early years. Wakefield was the author of a number of novels which celebrate the sensitive person trapped by the conventions that society demands. The stubborn strength in a homosexual attachment is the subject of Mates (1983…

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Diane Wakoski Biography - (1937– ), Coins and Coffins, Discrepancies and Apparitions, The George Washington Poems, Inside the Blood Factory

American poet, born in Whittier, California, educated at the University of California at Berkeley. Wakoski has taught at several universities. A prolific poet, her first publication was Coins and Coffins (1962). She established her reputation with Discrepancies and Apparitions (1966); later notable collections include The George Washington Poems (1967), Inside the Blood Factory (1968), The Motorcy…

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Derek Walcott (Derek Alton Walcott) Biography - (1930– ), (Derek Alton Walcott), In a Green Night, The Castaway, The Star-Apple Kingdom

West Indian poet and playwright, born in Castries, St Lucia, educated at the University College of the West Indies; he worked as schoolteacher before pursuing a career in journalism from 1956 onward. In 1959 he founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop, where a number of his plays were first performed. From 1981 he has held a succession of visiting professorships at American universities. In a Green N…

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Anne Waldman (Anne Lesley Waldman) Biography - (1945– ), (Anne Lesley Waldman), Angel Hair, Giant Night, Baby Breakdown, No Hassles

American poet, born in Millville, New Jersey; she attended Bennington and from 1968 onwards was the director of a community arts project at St Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery. Organizing readings and workshops, coediting Angel Hair magazine and books, being involved with John Giorno's experimental sound recordings, her activities there were integral to the younger generation of the New York School of …

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Arthur Waley (Arthur David Waley) Biography - (1889–1966), (Arthur David Waley), Bulletin, Cathay, One Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems

British poet and translator, born in Tunbridge Wells, educated at King's College, Cambridge. In 1913 he became Binyon's assistant in the Sub-Department of Oriental Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. In the course of his work he learned Chinese and Japanese and developed a strong interest in the poems incorporated into paintings he dealt with. In 1917 a large number of his verse translation…

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Alice Walker (Alice Malsenior Walker) Biography - (1944– ), (Alice Malsenior Walker), The Third Life of Grange Copeland, Freedomways

American novelist, poet, and short-story writer, born in Eatonton, Georgia, educated at Spelman College and Sarah Lawrence College. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College, where she wrote her first novel (The Third Life of Grange Copeland, 1970), Walker taught writing and African-American literature at Jackson State College and Tougaloo College in Mississippi. She has also taught at Wellesle…

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Kath Walker Biography

Margaret Walker (Margaret Abigail Walker) Biography - (1915–1998), (Margaret Abigail Walker), For My People, Prophets for a New Day

African-American poet and novelist, born in Birmingham, Alabama, educated at Northwestern University and the University of Iowa. She began her academic career at Livingstone College, North Carolina, in 1941 and was Professor of English at Jackson State College, Mississippi, from 1949 to 1979. For My People (1942), her first collection of verse, was widely acclaimed; in addition to its powerful fre…

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Ted Walker (Ted Edward Joseph Walker) Biography - (1934–2004), (Ted Edward Joseph Walker), Priapus, Fox on a Barn Door, The Solitaries

British poet, born in Lancing, Sussex, educated at St John's College, Cambridge. In 1962, with John Cotton, he founded the magazine Priapus. His first full collection, Fox on a Barn Door (1965), rapidly established him as a formidable talent extending the tradition of English nature poetry. The essential landscapes of his work, the Sussex coastline and remote inland locations, were defined in this…

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Edgar Wallace (Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace) Biography - (1875–1932), (Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace), The Four Just Men, King Kong, The Man Who Bought London

British novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist, probably the most popular mystery and crime writer of all time. Born in Greenwich, the illegitimate son of an actor and actress, he was adopted by a fish porter, joined the army, and served in South Africa during the Boer War, writing war poetry and acting as a correspondent for Reuters and London newspapers. His first mystery and best-kn…

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Chris Wallace-Crabbe (Christopher Wallace-Crabbe) Biography - (1934– ), (Christopher Wallace-Crabbe), The Music of Division, In Light and Darkness, The Rebel General

Australian poet, born in Richmond, Victoria, educated at the University of Melbourne. 1965 to 1967 he was Fellow in Creative Writing at Yale University and subsequently taught at the University of Melbourne, where he became Professor of English in 1988. The Music of Division (1959), In Light and Darkness (1964), and The Rebel General (1967) established his reputation as one of the most valuable Au…

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Edward Lewis Wallant Biography - (1926–62), The Human Season, The Pawnbroker, The Tenants of Moonbloom, The Children at the Gate

American novelist, born in New Haven, Connecticut, educated at the University of Connecticut, at the Pratt Institute, and the New School for Social Research, New York. His first novel was The Human Season (1960), followed by The Pawnbroker (1961). His other two novels, The Tenants of Moonbloom (1963) and The Children at the Gate (1964), were published posthumously, following his early death from a…

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Leo Walmsley (Leo Lionel Walmsley) Biography - (1892–1966), (Leo Lionel Walmsley), Foreigners, The Sound of the Sea, Flying and Sport in East Africa

British regional novelist, born in Shipley, West Yorkshire. His semi-autobiographical novels Foreigners (1935) and The Sound of the Sea (1959) are set in a fictional ?Bramblewick? which closely resembles Robin Hood's Bay in North Yorkshire where Walmsley spent much of his childhood. His service in East Africa during the First World War resulted in his war memoir, Flying and Sport in East Africa (1…

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Sir Hugh Walpole (Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole) Biography - (1884–1941), (Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole), Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill, The Dark Forest

British novelist, born in New Zealand, educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, the son of a canon who became bishop of Edinburgh in 1910. Like E. M. Forster he was a tutor to the children of Elizabeth von Arnim; he also taught at a preparatory school for a short time, which provided the background for his novel Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill (1911). His First World War experiences, serving with the Re…

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Ania Walwicz Biography - (1951– ), Writing, Travel/Writing, Boat, Red Roses, Girlboytalk, Dissecting Mice, Elegant

Marina Warner Biography - (1946– ), The Dragon Empress

British cultural historian, novelist, and critic, born in London to an English father and an Italian mother, educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Her first published work, The Dragon Empress (1972), a biography of Tzu His of China, was praised for its lavishly detailed recreation of a significant period of Chinese history. With Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (1976), …

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Rex Warner Biography - (1905–86), Poems, Poems and Contradictions, The Wild Goose Chase, The Professor, Trial of a Judge

British poet, novelist, and translator, born in Gloucestershire, educated at Wadham College, Oxford. Much of Warner's Poems of 1937 was in recognizable alignment with the more declamatory writing of W. H. Auden and C. Day Lewis, whom he met at Oxford; in ?Light and Air? his political beliefs were inextricably linked to his vision of the benign energies of nature. Other poems related to his experie…

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Sylvia Townsend Warner Biography - (1893–1978), The Espalier, Collected Poems, Lolly Willows, Mr Fortune's Maggot, The True Heart

British novelist and poet, born in Harrow where her father was a schoolmaster at Harrow School. Her first published work was a volume of poems, The Espalier (1925), and she continued to write verse throughout her life; Collected Poems appeared in 1982. She is best known as a writer of prose fiction. Her first novel, Lolly Willows (1926), the story of a witch who makes an uneasy pact with the devil…

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War Poetry; - Up the Line to Death, The Terrible Rain, The Oxford Book of War Poetry

although poetic treatments of armed conflict have been written at almost every stage in the history of English literature, the term is taken to denote work produced in response to the First and Second World Wars. Furthermore, ?war poetry? most typically arises from active experience of battle and other aspects of military life, and does not, therefore, include a poem like Binyon's ?For the Fallen?…

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