Isaac Rosenberg - Hardcover

Moorcroft Wilson, Jean

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297851454 ISBN 13: 9780297851455

Publisher: Orion, 2008

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review

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)

Book Description

First full-length biography for 30 years of the great First World War poet.

About this edition

• Publisher: Orion
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0297851454
• ISBN 13: 9780297851455
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 496