The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster, and the Year that Changed Literature by Bill Goldstein
The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster, and the Year that Changed Literature by Bill Goldstein
Some years are understood as pivotal in history -- 1492, 1776, 1865, 1968. In The World Broke in Two Bill Goldstein tells the captivating story of 1922, a pivotal year in literary history, by weaving together the intellectual and personal journeys of four legendary writers: Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, and E.M. Forster. As 1922 begins, all four are at a loss for words, confronting an uncertain creative future despite success in the past. The literary ground is shifting as Ulysses is published in February and Proust's In Search of Lost Time begins to be published in England in the autumn.
As dismal as their prospects seemed in January, by the end of the year Woolf has started Mrs. Dalloway; Forster has, for the first time in nearly a decade, returned to work on the novel that will become A Passage to India; Lawrence has written Kangaroo, his unjustly neglected and most autobiographical novel; and Eliot has finished -- and published to acclaim -- The Waste Land.
Friendships, in particular between Woolf and Forster, as well as rivalries and jealousies -- including with James Joyce and the specter of his Ulysses -- had a role in these writers' renewed creativity that The World Broke in Two recounts in sparkling detail. Woolf, looking over her shoulder at her contemporaries in February 1922, wrote in her diary with a mix of admiration and awful surprise, "How these writers live in their works -- How ambition consumes them!"
What Woolf, Eliot, Lawrence, and Forster were struggling with that year was in fact the invention of modernism. Based on original research, The World Broke in Two captures both the literary breakthroughs and the intense personal dramas of these beloved writers as they strive for greatness.
Henry Holt and Company, Hardcover, 1st Edition, 1st Printing, 2017
THIS IS A BRAND NEW BOOK. THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE BOTTOM PAGE EDGES.