The Assumption of the Rogues and Rascals - Softcover

Smart, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0586090401 ISBN 13: 9780586090404

Publisher: Paladin, 1991

Synopsis

Elizabeth Smart was born in Ottawa, Canada, in 1913. She was educated at private schools in Canada and for a year at King's College, University of London. One day, while browsing in a London bookshop, she chanced upon a slim volume of poetry by George Barker - and fell passionately in love with him through the printed word. Eventually they communicated directly and, as a result of Barker's impecunious circumstances, Elizabeth Smart flew both him and his wife to the United States. Thus began one of the most extraordinary, intense and ultimately tragic love affairs of our time. They never married but Elizabeth bore George Barker four children and their relationship provided the impassioned inspiration for one of the most moving and immediate chronicles of a love affair ever written - By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. Originally published in 1945, this remarkable book is now widely recognized as a classic work of poetic prose which, more than four decades later, has retained all of its searing poignancy, beauty and power of impact.
After the war, Elizabeth Smart supported herself and her family with journalism and advertising work. In 1963 she became literary and associate editor of Queen magazine but subsequently dropped out of the literary scene to live quietly in a remote part of Suffolk. Elizabeth Smart died in 1986.

About this title

Product Description

Used book

Review

‘Smart writes like an angel. Again and again a vein of pure poetry opens in this little book’ The Times

‘Welcome back to Elizabeth Smart. Sometimes an echo of Beckett breaks into her soliloquy, but more often her prose has a strong female beat, an earthy indifference’ Daily Telegraph

‘At its best, reading Smart’s writing on love is like standing in front of a blast furnace’ The Times

‘Some Audenesque echoes occur, as do nods towards Joyce, or perhaps Beckett. But it is Smart’s ability to encompass the whole modern female reaction to the male ordered world, matched in British women novelists perhaps only by Fay Weldon, that impresses most’ Sunday Times

Edition details

• Publisher: Paladin
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0586090401
• ISBN 13: 9780586090404
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112