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Herbert Read: The Stream and the Source
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During his lifetime, Herbert Read (1893-1968) acquired a considerable international reputation. Poet and anarchist, novelist and biographer, aesthetic philosopher, critic of art, literature, and life, and revolutionary theorist of education, Read was in a unique place as an interpreter of his time. Few writers have probed so deeply into the nature of the prevailing culture, and none brought together the insights of modern philosophers and critics, poets and artists, and psychologists and social scientists, as Read did.
As a follower of the theories of Carl Jung, Read was a pioneer in the English-speaking world in the use of psychoanalysis as a tool for art and literary criticism. Although knighted by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1953 for "services to literature," Read regarded himself, politically, as an anarchist.
This work, by fellow anarchist George Woodcock, is a critical study of Read's intellectual career, as well as a thorough study of Read's criticism, creative writing, art theory, and anarchist philosophy. Read saw art, culture, and politics as a single expression of human consciousness; Woodcock accordingly does not divide Read's writings on politics from those on art and culture.
Comprehensive and authoritative, it is an impressive volume that presents a unified portrait of one of England's most distinguished twentieth-century critics.
George Woodcock (1912-1995) was an award-winning poet, author, essayist and widely known as a literary journalist and historian. He published more than 90 titles on history, biography, philosophy, poetry and literary criticism.
2008; 270 pages
Herbert Read Retail Prices
Paperback:
9781551643182 $19.99
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9781551643199 $48.99