Lucy McDiarmid is Marie Frazee-Baldassarre Professor of English at
Montclair State University. The recipient of fellowships from the
Guggenheim Foundation, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers
at the New York Public Library, and the National Endowment for the
Humanities, she is the author or editor of five previous books. Her
scholarly interest in cultural politics, especially quirky,
colourful, suggestive episodes, is exemplified by her most recent
book,
The Irish Art of Controversy, as well as by Poets and the Peacock
Dinner. She is also a former president of the American Conference
for Irish Studies.
...with its in-depth original and archival research, and its forays
into networks that made a material difference to the production of
art, The Poets & the Peacock Dinner remains an interesting read. It
joins excellence on Irish literature with close readings of poetry,
and adds weight to ideas that Pound cared more for advancing his
own agenda than for purely improving poetry. As an example of
literary-historical materialism, this book is exceptional.
*Nicholas Taylor-Collins, Notes and Queries*
no one is better placed or qualified than McDiarmid, with her deep
knowledge of Irish cultural history, to unravel and clarify the
details and complexities.
*New Canterbury Literary Society News, Michael Copp*
Lucy McDiarmid's book is a serious exploration of 'the way literary
intimacies create means of transmitting the professional culture of
poetry', but it is also an entertaining account of a carefully
stage-managed occasion ... McDiarmid writes very persuasively ...
compelling ... a considerable achievement.
*John Greening, Times Literary Supplement*
this work is a vital and important study of an event often referred
to but heretofore inadequately examined.
*Review of English Studies, Catherine E. Paul*
[a] fascinating study ... meticulously researched ... Prof
McDiarmid makes a highly credible case ... [and] writes with
sensitivity and insight ... What makes this book an important as
well as a very entertaining one is that it seeks to substantiate an
original theory about literary influence ... [and] prompts one to
wonder how Irish literary history could be illuminated by
McDiarmid's theory.
*Terence Brown, Irish Times*
Over the course of her elaborate account of an unconventional
dinner held in a Sussex manor house in honour of its owner, Wilfrid
Scawen Blunt... we witness her careful untangling of the literary
and personal lives of W. B. Yeats, Pound, Blunt and Lady Augusta
Gregory.
*Times Higher Education, Sandeep Parmar*
McDiarmid's intimate, intricate narrative wittily reveals
cross-currents: the young men flattered and challenged the
patriarch, jostling amongst themselves.
*Stevie Davies, Independent on Sunday*
McDiarmid uncovers a wealth of significant and previously
unexamined information about the event that reveals its importance
to the defining of the profession of the male poet in this period
... deftly moves from straight-forward narration, to exploration of
these various writers' careers and work ... a vital and important
study of an event often referred to but heretofore inadequately
examined.
*Catherine E. Paul, Review of English Studies*
McDiarmid's book is a highly original work of literary sociology
... McDiarmid has cast her net widely for the published and
unpublished sources that provide the details of her story, and she
hauls it in with a sure hand and a lively and lucid prose style
that bear her considerable learning lightly.
*Matthew Sperling, Literary Review*
a lively, engaging account of the dinner, its varied significances,
and its participants. Highly recommended.
*G. Grieve-Carlson, CHOICE*
There is a strong Irish element to the background of this story,
and no one is better placed or qualified than McDiarmid, with her
deep knowledge of Irish cultural history, to unravel and clarify
the details and complexities ... scholarly and engaging.
*Michael Copp, New Canterbury Literary Society News*
A lovely thing to own.
*The Taster*
The occasion in January 1914 when seven poets headed by Yeats and
Pound sat down to a dinner of peacock in honour of the ageing poet
and public agitator Wilfid Scawen Blunt is a key moment in literary
history. Or so it emerges in Lucy McDiarmid's brilliant exploration
of the event. With her extraordinary flair for imaginative
scholarship, she illuminates the origins and precedents for the
peacock dinner, the offstage role of Lady Gregory, Yeats's close
friend and Blunt's former lover, in organising this all-male
gathering, the rivalries and alliances in those invited and
excluded, and its long-term significance in terms of the
genealogies of poetic modernism. Whatever the roast peacock tasted
like, this is a book to be savoured and enjoyed.
*Nicholas Grene, Professor of English Literature, Trinity College
Dublin*
How could one meal (even if peacock was on the menu) matter so
much? From a minor incident, one lunch eaten by seven male poets,
Lucy McDiarmid serves up a literary historical analysis of major
importance. The pivotal role played by a woman who wasn't one of
the diners sustains this sophisticated reading of sexual
intimacies, cultural transmission, modernist poetics, and literary
professionalism. Poets and The Peacock Dinner is also utterly
delicious: only McDiarmid can deliver a concoction at once this
erudite and sexy, offering page-turning consumption in the time it
takes to eat a long lunch but lingering satisfaction for much
longer.
*Margaret Mills Harper, University of Limerick*
This fascinating and original book explores the complex dynamics of
friendship, mentoring, rivalry, and professionalization among a
group of men and illuminates the central but often invisible role
that women played in mediating those dynamics. Both wide-ranging
and meticulously observed, rigorous and imaginative, Poets and the
Peacock Dinner is a masterful combination of literary history,
biography, and cultural theory.
*Marjorie Howes, Boston College*
A splendid book in every respect ... Writing about literature has
struggled with how to bring together technical 'new criticism' with
'new historicism'; this book does it without a struggle. One could
hope that the book's approach will have many imitators, but copying
the style of the book won't be easy ... This is truly grown-up
feminist criticism.
*Adrian Frazier, National University of Ireland, Galway*
[A]n excellent book which deserves to be widely-read ... with a
strong narrative construction and with much fascinating
biographical and historical material which is nevertheless
critically sophisticated and at all times theoretically aware ... a
significant contribution to the study of the pre-Great War
beginnings of literary modernism.
*Matthew Campbell, University of York*
Lucy McDiarmid's study is an absorbing work of rigorous scholarship
consistently enlivened by a sharp and delightful wit. Its triumph
resides in a lovingly meticulous unfolding of the webs of
significance which radiate from this small gathering: literary
homosociality, the practical business of coteries, the development
of modernist poetics, assumptions about gender and creativity, and
the politics of anti-imperialism. Few indeed are the books which so
substantially vindicate the most ambitious claims of
literary-historical scholarship.
*Edward Larrissy, Emeritus Professor of Poetry, Queen's University,
Belfast*
Sumptuous ... The book grapples with the complexities of art,
politics, and the 'male homosocial friendships' that permeate
literary history ... McDiarmid brings into focus a world on the
brink of change and an event that managed to connect the pre- and
post-Victorian world by traditionally paying homage to the literary
past while making way for the poets of tomorrow.
*Matthew Skwiat, Irish America*
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