Isaac Rosenberg

Siegfried Sassoon praised Isaac Rosenberg's 'genius' and T.S. Eliot called him the 'most extraordinary' of the Great War poets. Yet it is over thirty years since there has been a full-length biography of Isaac Rosenberg. This major reappraisal of his life and work by one of the First World War literature's leading authorities, Jean Moorcroft Wilson, is long overdue. Rosenberg dies on the Western Front in 1918 aged only twenty-seven, his tragic early death resembling that of many other well-known poets of that conflict. But he differed from the majority of Great War poets in almost every other respect - race, class, education, upbringing, experience and technique. He was a skilled painter as well as a brilliant poet. The son of impoverished immigrant Russian Jews, he served as a private in the army and his perspective on the trenches is quite different from the other mainly officer-poets, allowing the voice of the "poor bloody Tommy" to be eloquently heard. Jean Moorcroft Wilson focuses on the relationship between Rosenberg's life and work - his childhood in Bristol and the Jewish East End of London; his time at the Slade School of Art and friendship with David Bomberg, Mark Gertler and Stanley Spencer; his visit to Cape Town, where he was staying when war broke out in August 1914 and where he fell in love with the divorced wife of South Africa's future Prime Minister; and his harrowing life as a private in the British Army. This monumental new life is published to mark the 90th anniversary of his death. Based on all known Rosenberg material and a mass of important new discoveries, Dr Wilson's biography has been authorised by Rosenberg's family and written with their blessing and help. It is also beautifully illustrated, including some hitherto unseen self-portraits, bringing together for the first time all that is known of this outstanding poet-painter.

ISBN 0297851454   Pages 512 ISBN13 9780297851455 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Orion Publishing Co   Weight (grammes) 896 Imprint Weidenfeld & Nicolson   Published in London Format Hardback   Height (mm) 234 Publication date 27 Mar 2008   Width (mm) 153 DEWEY 821.912   Spine width (mm) 41 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level General

		List of Illustrations
		Author's Note
		Map
		Introduction		1
1		'My Wild Little Pick-a-Back Days in Bristol'		16
2		Lost in Translation: an East End Education		31
3		'The Days of Youth Go By': Apprenticeship		50
4		'Art Is Not a Plaything': Bolt Court and Birkbeck College		72
5		The Whitechapel Group		93
6		'Lady, You Are My God': Romance, frustration and Fulfillment		111
7		An Introduction to the Slade		127
8		Serving Two Masters		153
9		'His Divided Self': John Rodker, Sonia Cohen and the 'Slot Meter'		175
10		'It is All Cafe Royal Poetry Now': Meeting Edward Marsh		186
11		South Africa: 'I Have Lived in the Underworld Too Long'		199
12		'If You Are Fire': Marda Vanne and Poetry		217
13		'On Receiving News of the War'		231
14		'No More Free Will Than a Tree': From Cape Town to Enlistment		247
15		'Yea I a Soldier': 'This Rat Trap Affair'		272
16		Moses: a Farewell to England		288
17		In the Trenches		311
18		'The Desolate Land of France'		328
19		'Returning, We Hear the Larks' and 'Dead Man's Dump'		343
20		'Daughters of War' and a Last Leave-Taking		359
21		'When Will We Go On With the Things That Endure?'		374
22		'Through These Pale Cold Days'		387
		More...

"Wilson is excellent on Rosenberg's life and her comments on his poems are always grounded." -- FRANCES SPALDING DAILY MAIL "admiring and devotedly researched, yet critical of his character... Moorcroft Wilson's account, incorporating new findings is the fullest we are ever likely to get of his life... well worth buying for its splendid reproductions of his drawing and paintings." -- JOHN CAREY SUNDAY TIMES "this is a measured, thoroughly researched biography, incorporating much new material by and about the poet, which should be definitive. With this labour of love, sensitively and sensibly analysing the poetry, Moorcroft Wilson has now surely said the last word on this gifted by tragically unlucky figure." SUNDAY TELEGRAPH "What has been needed is a single, definitive biography bringing together the differing strands of fact and interpretation, while building on the new material and analysis of recent years. Jean Moorcroft Wilson has supplied it." -- VIVIEN NOAKES FINANCIAL TIMES "meticulous... this book is a tremendous achievement of research, ye the story it tells is so very remarkable." DAILY TELEGRAPH "This author said of her biography of the wealthy Siegfried Sassoon, " A study of his life is a study of an age". So is this one." -- P J KAVANAGH THE SPECTATOR "... particularly good on his early painting ambitions." THE INDEPENDENT "This is a better book than Moorcroft Wilson's biography of Sassoon." LITERARY REVIEW Michael Rosen: "delightful to read... in a way I was reading about my grandparents... the other great thing about Jean's book is that she gets inside the poems and busts them apart in an utterly wonderful and ruthless way, it's quite an eyeopener... " -- Michael Rosen NIGHTWAVES, BBC RADIO 3 "Wilson takes a fresh approach to the life of one of Britain's finest war poets looking not only at his military experiences but also his upbringing and love life." SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY "beautifully illustrated." CATHOLIC HERALD

 Be the first to write a customer review