George Crabbe - Böcker

George Crabbe (1754-1832) was acclaimed by his contemporaries as a major poet. The leading reviewer of the day, Francis Jeffrey, paid tribute to his powerful originality. Byron pronounced him 'Though Nature's sternest Painter, yet the best'. Sir Walter Scott, and Jane Austen, who declared that she would have married him, were among his many admirers. In our own time both critics and poets have praised his penetrating insights into human motivation, his realism, and his unique use of landscape as a setting for his poems and verse tales; and he is well known as the author of Peter Grimes, on which Benjamin Britten based his opera. Yet there has not been a collected edition of his verse since A.W. Ward's, some eighty years ago.The present edition draws on much recently discovered manuscript material in this country and in the USA, including a finished manuscript, with proofs, of Tales of the Hall, and manuscripts of four unpublished tales and of a number of shorter poems. Close attention has been paid to the evolution of the text from the rough pencil drafts in Crabbe's notebooks to the final version on the printed page. An extensive Commentary relates both to the literary context and to Crabbe's many observations on the social scene of his day.

A scholarly edition of the works of George Crabbe. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

Although George Crabbe (1754-1832) was acclaimed by his contemporaries--receiving high praise from Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott, and Jane Austen, among others--there has not been a collected edition of his verse since A.W. Ward's, some eighty years ago. The present edition draws on much recently discovered manuscript material from America and Britain, including a finished manuscript (with proofs) of Tales of the Hall, and manuscripts of four unpublished tales and of a number of shorter poems. Close attention has been paid to the evolution of the text from the rough pencil drafts in Crabbe's notebooks to the final version in print. An extensive commentary relates both to the literary context and to Crabbe's many observations on the social scene of his day.

This is the first collected edition of the verse for some eighty years. The editors use much recently discovered manuscript material, and there is extensive commentary.

"Though nature's sternest painter yet the best" ByronGeorge Crabbe (1754-1832) arrived late on the Augustan scene. Born in the same decade as Burns and Blake, he outlived Keats by more than ten years. His father was a warehouse-keeper in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Schooled in Bungay and Stowmarket, he was apprenticed to an apothecary. In 1779 he went to London as a literary adventurer, arriving without introductions. Edmund Burke became his patron and transformed his fortunes. The Village (1783),and after a silence The Parish Register (1807), The Borough (1810) and Tales (1812), his main works followed.Crabbe wanted his readers to feel his writing - accounts of rural and provincial life, of individuals and communities, of landscapes - not only as narrative but in circumstantial detail - some of it harsh and shocking. Peter Grimes is his most famous character, one whom Benjamin Britten found irresistible. 'It is worth registering from the outset,' Jem Poster says, 'the enduring intimacy of Crabbe's contact with the world, the sheer physicality of his grasp of things: the strengths of his poetry are more easily understood if we can visualise him actually grubbing at the slimy roots of the marshplants he so vividly described, delivering a neighbour's child, or assisting his father by piling butter-casks in a quayside warehouse'.