John Bayley

The last month or so of the life of Iris Bayley, the wife of the author, provides the framework for this biography. But within this structure the author enters into extensive memories of the past. The book could almost be called "The Use of Memory" - in a Proustian sense. It continually harks back to the author's own childhood and to Iris's early years to explain how they came together and how they were 'right' for each other. So in this book the author explains much more about himself and describes in much more details how he managed to cope with the ordeal of seeing his wife become terminally ill and lose her faculties. In this he quotes a considerable amount from literature, which is his own field of study.

Pushkin on Literature approaches Pushkin's literary accomplishment from a unique perspective: it focuses on Pushkin the critic and on his passion-are enthusiasm, volatile judgments, joy, frustration and fascination with the literary world that surrounded him. This is the only English-language edition of the complete set of Pushkin's critical writing, both on his own work and on the wide range of European literature - Byron, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Milton - which he read and studied, and which so profoundly influenced his own writing, is organized into sections, each featuring a biographical survey of Pushkin's activities during the period covered. These extracts from Pushkin's letters, articles, and working notes provide a complete chronological record of the artist's literary evolution and provide a fascinating glimpse into the poet's intellectual passions.

Although Housman's three collections of poems, the third published posthumously, have remained popular, they have not received much serious critical attention. John Bayley makes good the omission in this thorough and comprehensive reappraisal of the whole oeuvre, placing Housman's achievement in the context of the poetry of his own time and of more recent European and American poetry. Close analysis and comparison with other poets - Hardy, Frost, Edward Thomas, Larkin, and Paul Celan - prove illuminating in relation to a poet who has usually been considered something of an odd man out, and even an anachronism in the modern era. Professor Bayley explores and explains the continuing appeal of the poet to present-day readers, and the nature of the craftsmanship and psychology which lie behind its deceptive simplicities. The book will be a valuable introduction to Housman's achievement for the specialist and the poetry-lover alike.

A. C. Bradley put Shakespeare on the map for generations of readers and students for whom the plays might not otherwise have become "real" at all' writes John Bayley in his foreword to this edition of Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. Approaching the tragedies as drama, wondering about their characters as he might have wondered about people in novels or in life, Bradley is one of the most liberating in the line of distinguished Shakespeare critics. His acute yet undogmatic and almost conversational critical method has—despite fluctuations in fashion—remained enduringly popular and influential. For, as John Bayley observes, these lectures give us a true and exhilarating sense of 'the tragedies joining up with life, with all our lives; leading us into a perspective of possibilities that stretch forward and back in time, and in our total awareness of things.

This 1981 book suggests an insightful approach to Hardy as a poet and novelist. With the novels in particular it concentrates not so much on ideas and attitudes as on the texture of the writing, and on the crucial importance in it between one kind of exposition and another. John Bayley starts by establishing a difference between Hardy the private 'noticer' of things and people, and Hardy the professional author committed to interpreting these observations to his readers. The vital ingredients of eroticism and humour are analysed in detail, as are the unusual ways in which passiveness, 'pessimism', and anthropomorphism function in the poems and novels, and an insightful reading of Tess is put forward. Professor Bayley shows that the rewards of reading Hardy are greater than ever, although they are not necessarily those which the reader expects, or has been taught to look for.

This digitally reprinted edition of Pushkin: A Comparative Commentary has the same content as the original 1971 edition. Professor Bayley, in this first critical assessment in English of the whole range of Pushkin's writing, examines his achievement in relation to Russian literature and the European tradition, analysing Pushkin's language in detail to illustrate how he obtains his literary effects.