John Sutherland is Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of English Literature at University College London. Twice on the Booker committee, in 2005 as chairman, he is a regular columnist and critic on radio and television. His books include How to Read a Novel (Profile), a bestselling trilogy on literary mysteries, and the moving memoir Last Drink to LA.
This is the most complete history of fiction in English ever published. The world's greatest authority - arguably the only person who could have written it, John Sutherland - provides the lives of some 294 novelists writing in English, from the genre's seventeenth-century origins to the present day.
John Sutherland is Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of English Literature at University College London. Twice on the Booker committee, in 2005 as chairman, he is a regular columnist and critic on radio and television. His books include How to Read a Novel, a bestselling trilogy on literary mysteries, and the moving memoir Last Drink to LA.
The fruit of a truly staggering amount of reading - the culmination
of half a century's engagement with fiction... it appeals as a font
of erudition, into which one can dip congenially... Lives of the
Novelists abounds with fascinating characters, many of them worth
reclaiming from obscurity... witty and humane... The most
gratifying effect of this peculiar but rather wonderful book is
that it makes you want to slink off and ransack a well-stocked
library.
*FT*
Sutherland is perect for this job - all pith and wit... He has made
a tricky job look easy.
*The Dubliner*
The funniest book I've read all year... it's a riot... Novelists in
Professor Sutherland's hands are, above all, lively company...
Sutherland himself is a very distinctive literary critic... His
throwaway lines are born of a deep knowledge of his subject, and
the best combine a sharp aperçu with picaresque expression.
*Evening Standard*
Sutherland is good value: provocative, polymathic and well
practised in the art of literary criticism. He has made an
eclectic, certainly idiosyncratic, selection of nigh on 300
international novelists writing in English over near enough the
past 400 years... What matters most in a book such as this is not
just the critical judgment, but the critical voice. Sutherland's is
conversational and confidential, concise and confident.
*Times*
Pithy quotes and witty moments
*Sunday Telegraph*
A modern take on a reassuringly ancient format... neatly
interweaves stories of the lives of writers with quirky insights
into their work... highly readable
*New Statesman*
FT Books of the Year: The fruit of decades of reading and
research... A witty, and enjoyably wide-ranging book.
*FT*
hugely enjoyable... Sutherland's brief lives display the soul of
wit - whose essence is to encompass the unexpected... (he has)
magnificent and infectious enthusiasm for the books he reads.
It is enthusiasm, indeed, that informs the book...
The Lives of the Novelists is partly a literary curiosity cabinet,
eccentric and beguiling...
For those modern women of today whose preferred drug is fiction, I
heartily endorse the prescriptions of Professor Sutherland.
*Spectator*
Delightful for dipping and discovery.
*Independent on Sunday*
A great work of scholarship that rarely feels like it. It's just
for pleasure.
*Word*
Illuminating and entertaining
*Literary Review*
Enjoyable... It is a pleasure to watch Sutherland at work and to
leaf through the pages is to circumnavigate the archives of English
literature in the company of its most distinguished librarian;
erudite, perspicacious and warm-hearted.
*TLS*
A collection of wise, witty biographical essays... healthily,
sanely irreverent
*Time Out*
A bumper treat for fiction fanatics... drawn with incision and wit
to make (for) exhilarating reading
*Daily Mail*
a starting point for many hours of literary discussions.
*Daily Beast*
erudite and entertaining, informative and provoking.
*Wall Street Journal*
A tremendously exhilarating book, John Sutherland's history of
fiction in English... is less a work of scholarship than it is a
catalogue of pleasures.
Indeed, there's something distinctly gossipy, almost salacious, in
Sutherland's fascination with the messy lives of authors... you can
read Sutherland for fun as well as for (cultural) profit.
...As if he were its custodian, Sutherland seems to know every room
in the House of Fiction, from the dank basement where the chained
monsters slaver to the formal drawing rooms of Jane Austen and
Henry James...
I really can't underscore enough the range and sprightliness of
Lives of the Novelists. ...There's something, in short, for every
taste and, implicitly, an invitation to try some new or exotic
items from fiction's smorgasbord.
... Sutherland can brilliantly sum up an author's overall
aesthetic...
Early in his book, Sutherland suggests, almost casually, that "the
air of reality (solidity of specification) seems to be the supreme
virtue of a novel." That phrase "solidity of specification" aptly
describes the nuggety, factual approach in these essays; there's
nothing gaseous about Sutherland's writing. By its heft, Lives of
the Novelists might look like an academic tome, but it reads like
one of those unputdownable blockbusters you take to the beach.
*Washington Post*
Engaging
*Booklist*
Sutherland's writing is just plain delightful.
*LA Times*
A big hearted book
*International Herald Tribune*
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