A brief biographical study and critical introductions accompany a collection of shorter and lesser-known works that includes a novella, episodes from The Cossacks, short stories, autobiographical passages, and philosophical writings

The Portable Tolstoy (Viking Portable Library)

Literature & Fiction

TOLSTOY, LEO

Bayley, John

Literary

Penguin??Books

John Bayley's only novel explores the effect of `the first cold winter of peace' on a group of British servicemen stationed after the war in a small town on the Rhine.

In Another Country

Oxford Univ. Pr.

Although Housman's three collections of poems, the third published posthumously, have remained continuously popular, they have not received much serious critical attention. Bayley makes up for 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. Bayley explores and explains the continuing appeal of the poetry to present-day readers, and the nature of craftsmanship and psychology which lie behind its deceptive simplicities. The book is a valuable introduction to Housman's achievement for the specialist and the poetry lover alike.

Housman's Poems

History & Criticism

Clarendon Press

Tolstoy and the Novel

Univ of Chicago Pr

The Red Hat

Related by a narrator whose gender is intentionally vague, this story follows three friends who travel to the Hague and end up embroiled in an international terrorist plot that involves a sensuous woman who may be a Mossad agent.

Contemporary

St Martins Pr

With remarkable tenderness, John Bayley recreates his passionate love affair with Iris Murdoch--world-renowned writer and philosopher, and his wife of forty-two years--and poignantly describes the dimming of her brilliance due to Alzheimer's disease. Elegy for Iris is a story about the ephemeral beauty of youth and the sobering reality of what it means to grow old, but its ultimate power is that Bayley discovers great hope and joy in his celebration of Iris's life and their love. In its grasp of life's frailty and its portrayal of one of the great literary romances of this century, Elegy for Iris is a mesmerizing work of art that will be read for generations.

Elegy for Iris

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Picador

Elegy For Iris

With remarkable tenderness, John Bayley recreates his passionate love affair with Iris Murdoch--world-renowned writer and philosopher, and his wife of forty-two years--and poignantly describes the dimming of her brilliance due to Alzheimer's disease. Elegy for Iris is a story about the ephemeral beauty of youth and the sobering reality of what it means to grow old, but its ultimate power is that Bayley discovers great hope and joy in his celebration of Iris's life and their love. In its grasp of life's frailty and its portrayal of one of the great literary romances of this century, Elegy for Iris is a mesmerizing work of art that will be read for generations.

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

After more than three years of suffering from Alzheimer's disease, the novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch died in January 1999. Early that month she was taken to a home for the terminally ill, and she remained radiant and calm for the last weeks of her life. The last year or so of Iris Murdoch's life provides the framework for IRIS AND THE FRIENDS, but within this structure John Bayley returns repeatedly to memories of his own earlier life, and of more than forty years of marriage to Iris. Alzheimer's is a lonely predicament for the carer, and Bayley describes how he copes with the ordeal of watching his wife become terminally ill by forming a growing dependency on memory as a stand-by, consolation and friend. In the final chapters, Bayley describes his wife's death which was an entirely serene one. He writes of how he is learning to cope with the loss of Iris, and how he is creating a new life for himself. Partly an autobiography, partly the biography of a marriage, IRIS AND THE FRIENDS provides a sensitive and, at times, a gently humourous lesson in the uses of adversity and will enthrall those fans of IRIS who wanted to know more about Bayley himself.

Iris and the Friends : A Year of Memories

ABACUS +

John Bayley takes us through 70 years of extensive reading, judiciously selecting extracts from novels, poems, letters, and diaries that have long been his good companionsinspiring or amusing him or soothing his spirits in times of adversity. Unlike many standard anthologies, Good Companions is highly personal and full of Bayley’s wit and wisdom.

Good Companions: An Anthology to Inspire, Amuse or Console

United States

Little, Brown Book Group

Every generation develops its own approach to tragedy, attitudes successively influenced by such classic works as A. C. Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy and the studies in interpretation by G. Wilson Knight. A comprehensive new book on the subject by an author of the same calibre was long overdue. In his book, originally published in 1981, John Bayley discusses the Roman plays, Troilus and Cressida and Timon of Athens as well as the four major tragedies. He shows how Shakespeare's most successful tragic effects hinge on an opposition between the discourses of character and form, role and context. For example, in Lear the dramatis personae act in the dramatic world of tragedy which demands universality and high rhetoric of them. Yet they are human and have their being in the prosaic world of domesticity and plain speaking. The inevitable intrusion of the human world into the world of tragedy creates the play's powerful off-key effects. Similarly, the existential crisis in Macbeth can be understood in terms of the tension between accomplished action and the free-ranging domain of consciousness. What is the relation between being and acting? How does an audience become intimate with a protagonist who is alienated from his own play? What did Shakespeare add to the form and traditions of tragedy? Do his masterpieces in the genre disturb and transform it in unexpected ways? These are the issues raised by this lucid and imaginative study. Professor Bayley's highly original rethinking of the problems will be a challenge to the Shakespearean scholar as well as an illumination to the general reader.

Shakespeare and Tragedy (Routledge Library Editions: Study of Shakespeare)

Dramas & Plays

Routledge

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bayley, John. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Bayley, John

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bayley, John. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Portable Tolstoy (Viking Portable Library)

In Another Country

Housman's Poems

Tolstoy and the Novel

The Red Hat

Elegy for Iris

Elegy for Iris

Iris and the Friends : A Year of Memories

Good Companions: An Anthology to Inspire, Amuse or Console

Shakespeare and Tragedy (Routledge Library Editions: Study of Shakespeare)