The Selected Works of Cyril Connolly Volume One: The Modern Movement. This item is unavailable.The Selected Works of Cyril Connolly Volume One: The Modern Movement

A towering figure in the literary landscape for five decades, and one of the most astute and influential critics of the twentieth century, Cyril Connolly was infamous for his straight-talking, continuously engaging and utterly individual style.

The Modern Movement is the first of two volumes of Cyril Connolly’s Selected Works, edited by his son, Matthew. Featuring the best of his critical essays, it charts the whole of his career, spanning his early thoughts on film, through an analysis of the impact of war on literature, to his writings on the Modernists, including Auden, Camus, Dylan Thomas and Beckett. A sparkling collection, The Modern Movement exemplifies the penetrating mind, the questioning spirit and the provocative views of a man who lived a life in letters and held a place at the very heart of the literary world that his work described.

`An extraordinary stylist, and one who has aged remarkably well. You connect instantly, and with a bark of laughter’ Daily Telegraph

`Crammed with his moaning and yearning, with a restless staring into the world and a gloomy relish at nearly all he sees’ New Statesman

`Connolly may again prove to be salutary reading, now, in the bleak, mad days of this new century’ Spectator

`Connolly’s humour is mordant, self-lacerating – and occasionally brave’ Independent

Cyril Connolly was born in Coventry in 1903 and educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford. He began reviewing for the New Statesman in 1927 and continued to write there, intermittently, over the next twenty years. He also wrote for the Architectural Review (1932-34) and the Daily Telegraph (1935-36), among other publications. His first book, and only completed novel, The Rock Pool , was published in 1935. In 1939, with Peter Watson and Stephen Spender, he founded the literary magazine Horizon, which he edited until closing it in 1950. From 1942 to 1943 he was also the literary editor of the Observer. In 1951 he joined the staff of the Sunday Times and was a lead book reviewer there until his death in 1974.Cyril Connolly was appointed a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1947, a CBE and Companion of Literature in 1972, and an Honorary Member of the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1974.