Great Contemporaries

This is a collection of 25 short biographical essays about famous people, written and published by Winston Churchill before his first tenure as Britain’s Prime Minister from 1940-1945. The original collection of 21 essays was published in 1937, mainly written between 1928 and 1931. This 1939 edition contains four additional essays on Lord Fisher, Charles Stewart Parnell, Lord Baden-Powell and Franklin D. Roosevelt. “THESE essays on Great Men of our age have been written by me at intervals during the last eight years. Although each is self-contained, they throw from various angles, a light upon the main course of the events through which we have lived. I hope they will be found to illustrate some of its less well-known aspects. Taken together they should present not only the actors but the scene. In their sequence they may perhaps be the stepping-stones of historical narrative. The central theme is of course the group of British statesmen who shone at the end of the last century and the beginning of this—Balfour, Chamberlain, Rosebery, Morley, Asquith and Curzon. All lived, worked and disputed for so many years together, knew each other well, and esteemed each other highly. It was my privilege as a far younger man to be admitted to their society and their kindness. Reading again these chapters has brought them back to me, and made me feel how much has changed in our political life. Perhaps this is but the illusion which comes upon us all as we grow older. Certainly we must all hope this may prove to be so. In the meantime those to whom these great men are but names—that is to say the vast majority of my readers—may perhaps be glad to gain from these notes some acquaintance with them.” “By far the most important, thoughtful edition of Churchill’s famous personality sketches ever published...The indispensable ‘desert island’ text for any marooned Churchillian.”—Finest Hour “Interesting, well written and worth reading.”—Kirkus Reviews

Insightful biographical sketches of major historical figures of the twentieth century, from the incomparable British statesman. Winston S. Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on the strength of “his mastery of historical and biographical description.” Nowhere is that mastery more evident than in Great Contemporaries—which features Churchill’s profiles of many of the major figures of his time. These short biographies cover political and cultural personalities ranging from Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Lawrence of Arabia, and Leon Trotsky to Charlie Chaplin, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, and George Bernard Shaw. This edition includes five previously uncollected essays and a number of photographs, plus an enlightening introduction and annotations by noted Churchill scholar James W. Muller. Written in the decade before Churchill became prime minister, these essays focus on the challenges of statecraft at a time when the democratic revolution was toppling older regimes based on tradition and aristocratic privilege. Churchill’s keen observations take on new importance in our own age of roiling political change. Ultimately, Great Contemporaries provides fascinating insight into these subjects as Churchill approaches them with a measuring eye, finding their limitations at least as revealing as their merits.

In 1946, Clement Attlee came to power as Labour Prime Minister with a huge landslide majority. Under his leadership, some of the greatest reforms were initiated, not least the founding of The National Health Service. Attlee had a firm vision of a more just and equitable society, which the nation wanted. This firm vision is something that attracts Frank Field. To Field, Attlee is a hero. After retirement, Clement Attlee wrote a masterly series of profiles of his great contemporaries, many published at the time in The Observer. These are now collected together in a book for the first time. They are of extraordinary historical interest and will command an audience in their own right. In them we see how Attlee emphasised the importance of character for successful politics. To Field they epitomise the intellect and humanity of a hero of 20th Century politics, a man with profound qualities that are so poorly represented in today's politics. In a brilliant and most controversial introduction, Frank Field argues just how radical Attlee was, wishing, for example, to realign British foreign and defence policy. In his epilogue, Professor Peter Hennessy, shows the importance of Attlee in full historical perspective.

The original edition of this collection of articles was published in 1937 (Thornton Butterworth); subsequent editions appeared in 1936 (with four new articles, including a portrait of FDR) and in 1943 (in which articles on Trotsky and Roosevelt were omitted for political reasons). This first American edition makes available Churchill's eloquent and personal observations on 25 prominent people of the era. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This collection of 25 essays allows fresh ways of exploring Churchill and his perspectives. Great Contemporaries presents Churchill's thoughts on notable figures of his time, including men of state, of letters, and of war; ranging from Lawrence of Arabia to Adolf Hitler, from King George V to Leon Trotsky. In these essays, the reader is taken on a journey along the "stepping-stones of historical narrative" through Churchill's eyes. Published to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Churchill's birth, this volume is a bridge in Churchill's autobiographical works, falling between My Early Life and The Second World War. First published in 1937, this is the most complete edition that includes five additional essays and a reconstruction of underlying source material, expertly edited and annotated by Churchill scholar James W. Muller.

First published in 1972, the second edition of this highly respected classic of Trollope criticism will be welcomed by Trollope scholars everywhere. David Skilton examines the literary background against which Trollope wrote, and drawing on the vast evidence of mid-Victorian periodical criticism, he shows how this criticism controlled the novelist's creativity. He then goes on to examine Trollope's particular type of realism in the context of the theories of literary imagination current in the 1860s. 'A book I admire. It has been of great value to me.' - J. Hillis Miller 'The first and still the best study of Trollope's relationships, connections and interactions with the literary world of his own time. Skilton's is the necessary introduction to any serious investigation of Trollope's fiction.' - John Sutherland

In March of 2006, scholars from around the world gathered in Sun Valley, Idaho for a conference devoted to not only John Steinbeck but also to the authors whose work influenced, informs, or illuminates his writings. This volume represents the many unique papers delivered at that conference by scholars from around the world. This collection includes studies on authors who influenced Steinbeck's work, discussions of writers whose work is in dialogue with Steinbeck, and examinations of Steinbeck's contemporaries, whose individual works invite comparisons with those of the Nobel-prize winning author. Revealing Steinbeck's penchant for culling 'all old books,' the first section focuses on Steinbeck's European forebears, particularly Sir Thomas Malory's retelling of the legend of King Arthur, Le Morte d'Arthur, and Henry Fielding's novel Tom Jones. This section also includes articles on his American forebears: Walt Whitman and Sarah Orne Jewett. The second part, 'Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner, and Cather' includes a personal reminiscence by Ernest Hemingway's daughter-in-law, Valerie, as well as comparisons of Steinbeck with other great American authors of the 20th century. The third section includes an essay by National Book Award winner Charles Johnson (Middle Passage), as well as articles that compare Steinbeck's work with Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison. Further articles are concerned with Steinbeck's moral philosophy and strong sense of social justice, eliciting comparisons with Sinclair Lewis, Tom Kristensen, and Charles Johnson. The fourth section, 'Steinbeck, the Arts, and the World' includes articles on the film adaptation of The Moon Is Down, on Steinbeck and Mexican Modernism, on the American experience as portrayed in The Grapes of Wrath and Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, and on Steinbeck and ecocriticism. The book fittingly concludes with John Ditsky's keynote address, 'In Search of a Language: Steinbeck and Others,' which was delivered at the conference shortly before Ditsky's death. John Steinbeck and His Contemporaries not only provides a rich array of new insights and new voices, it also points Steinbeck studies in new and varied directions. Containing more than thirty essays, this volume is not only a valuable addition to Steinbeck studies but to literary criticism in general.