"Birns offers readings of Powell's entire oeuvre, including the novels Afternoon Men, Venusberg, and The Fisher King, and his journals, which appeared in print between 1995 and 1997. Looking especially closely at A Dance to the Music of Time, the twelve-volume sequence of novels that is Powell's masterpiece, Birns sets the series in its social and historical context, emphasizing the role that both world wars and the cold war played in Powell's life and writing. He makes a particular study of the novel's dominating force - the arrogant, opportunistic Widmerpool, a social climber who delights in his own good fortune and gloats over the sufferings of others. While noting Widmerpool's central position, Birns illumines Powell's subtle aesthetic resistance, epitomized by minor characters and the voice of the narrator, against Widmerpool and his ilk.

The author of the award-winning Matisse: A Life gives us the definitive biography of writer Anthony Powell--and takes us deep into the heart of twentieth-century London's literary life. Insightful, lively, and enthralling, this biography is as much a brilliant tapestry of a seminal era in London’s literary life as it is a revelation of an iconic literary figure. Best known for his twelve-volume comic masterpiece, A Dance to the Music of Time, the prolific writer and critic Anthony Powell (1905–2000) kept company between the two world wars with rowdy, hard-up writers and painters—and painters’ models—in the London where Augustus John and Wyndham Lewis loomed large. He counted Evelyn Waugh and Henry Green among his lifelong friends, and his circle included the Sitwells, Graham Greene, George Orwell, Philip Larkin, and Kingsley Amis. Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews, Hilary Spurling—herself a longtime friend of Powell’s as well as an award-winning biographer—has produced a fresh and powerful portrait of the man and his times.

Since the first edition, an additional eight books by the English novelist and critic have appeared, including his four-volume complete memoirs. In this revision, Brennan casts light on Powell's fiction by drawing from the author's memory of his own life and times in his memoirs. Born just after the turn of the 20th century into the insular world of England's upper class, Powell has portrayed its inner workings in his fiction. From his first novel, Afternoon Men, a study of London's Bohemian art scene, through his 12 volume work, The Music of Time, to his last novel, The Fisher King, a study of an ageing artist, Powell has managed to combine ironic wit with a sympathetic awareness of human fallibility to create a body of work.

To "look good" and to "be good" have traditionally been considered two very different notions. Indeed, philosophers have seen aesthetic and ethical values as fundamentally separate. Now, at the crossroads of a new wave of aesthetic theory, Marcia Muelder Eaton introduces this groundbreaking work, in which a bold new concept of merit where being good and looking good are integrated into one.