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Ivor Brown (1891–1974)

Autor von Shakespeare

80+ Werke 710 Mitglieder 5 Rezensionen Lieblingsautor von 2 Lesern

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Bildnachweis: Photo credit: Howard Coster

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Werke von Ivor Brown

Shakespeare (1900) 203 Exemplare
Chosen Words (1955) 44 Exemplare
A Book of England (1947) 43 Exemplare
How Shakespeare Spent the Day (1963) 26 Exemplare
Ivor Brown's Book of Words (1944) 24 Exemplare
Shakespeare in his time (1960) 23 Exemplare
Shakespeare and his world (1964) 16 Exemplare
A Book of London (1961) 15 Exemplare
I Give You My Word (1945) 15 Exemplare
Jane Austen and her world (1966) 12 Exemplare
Winter in London (1951) 12 Exemplare
Dickens and His World (1970) 12 Exemplare
The women in Shakespeare's life (1968) 12 Exemplare
Just another word (1943) 10 Exemplare
A Word In Your Ear (1944) 9 Exemplare
Say the Word 9 Exemplare
The heart of England (1935) 8 Exemplare
Shaw in his time (1963) 8 Exemplare
Dickens in his time (1963) 8 Exemplare
Having the last word (1950) 7 Exemplare
Conan Doyle (1972) 7 Exemplare
I Break My Word (1951) 7 Exemplare
No Idle Words (1948) 6 Exemplare
H. G. Wells (1929) 6 Exemplare
W. Somerset Maugham (1970) 6 Exemplare
Balmoral (1955) 5 Exemplare
The Way of My World (1954) 5 Exemplare
A ring of words (1972) 5 Exemplare
Shakespeare and the actors (1970) 5 Exemplare
Words on the Level (1973) 5 Exemplare
The Bedside 'Guardian' 2 (1953) — Herausgeber — 5 Exemplare
London; an illustrated history (1969) 4 Exemplare
A word in edgeways 4 Exemplare
Words in our time (1974) 4 Exemplare
The Bedside Guardian 7: A Selection from the Manchester Guardian 1957-58 (1958) — Herausgeber; Herausgeber — 4 Exemplare
The Bedside Guardian (1952) 4 Exemplare
J.B. Priestley (1957) 4 Exemplare
Theatre 1955-6 4 Exemplare
Random Words (1971) 4 Exemplare
Words in season (1974) 3 Exemplare
Years of plenty (2012) 3 Exemplare
A Charm of Names (1972) 3 Exemplare
Mind your language! 3 Exemplare
THE BEDSIDE GUARDIAN 4. (1955) 3 Exemplare
Parody Party (1970) — Autor — 3 Exemplare
The Bedside Guardian - 3 (1954) — Herausgeber — 3 Exemplare
Old And Young (1971) 2 Exemplare
A rhapsody of words (1969) 2 Exemplare
Summer in Scotland 2 Exemplare
Life within reason 2 Exemplare
Stately Homes in Colour (1961) 2 Exemplare
The East Shropshire Coalfields (1999) 2 Exemplare
DR. JOHNSON AND HIS WORLD (1965) 2 Exemplare
Ivor Brown 1 Exemplar
About antiques (1973) 1 Exemplar
Observer Profiles 1 Exemplar
English Political Theory (1929) 1 Exemplar

Zugehörige Werke

Death of a Salesman [critical edition] (1967) — Mitwirkender — 1,254 Exemplare
A Book of English Essays (1942) — Mitwirkender — 242 Exemplare
Churchill: By His Contemporaries (1953) — Mitwirkender — 72 Exemplare
The National Trust: A Record of Fifty Years' Achievement (1945) — Mitwirkender — 13 Exemplare
Essays in labour history (1960) — Mitwirkender — 9 Exemplare
British and American Essays, 1905-1956 (1959) — Mitwirkender — 7 Exemplare
The Legacy of England (1935) — Autor — 6 Exemplare
All in the game (1952) — Einführung, einige Ausgaben2 Exemplare
Essays of the year (1929-1930) (1930) — Mitwirkender — 1 Exemplar

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More hagiography than biography, but some beautifully written passages.
 
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lisahistory | Apr 25, 2019 |
Ivor Brown (1891 - 1974) was a prominent British drama critic who published a wide range of books on the theatre, poetry, and Shakespeare. Between 1925 and 1935, he had reviewed quite a number of Somerset Maugham's plays for two leading periodicals (acc. to Charles Sanders' W. Somerset Maugham: Annotated Bibliography of Writings). Thus, in 1970, when no reputable biography of Maugham had yet emerged, he was a reasonable choice for a contribution about the author for the International Profiles series of books. Now that a number of detailed biographies on Somerset Maugham are available, this work will likely get little attention. It does offer in very concise form a survey of Maugham's life and his literary contributions, along with photographs that have never been reprinted elsewhere in book form. Overall, I find myself ambivalent about the book.

This work consists of five chapters. Chapter 1, "The Life," is a serviceable but brief (12 page) biography that summarizes the life and accomplishments of the author. While containing no obvious errors, it offers no more (and perhaps less) than one might find at Wikipedia or other online sources. Chapter 2 "The Writer" focuses on the historical context of his fiction. I enjoyed and learned from the brief account of the literary mileu in which Maugham was writing. Of particular note is how many of the writers who were highly regarded during Maugham's career (including Meredith, Galsworthy, Wells, and Kipling) are seldom read today. However, I was surprised at how little attention was given in this book to the content of Maugham's work, and the fact that his travel writing and other non-fiction was ignored.

Chapter 3, "The Playwright" deals with Maugham's career writing for the theatre. Knowing relatively little about drama, I learned from this chapter as well. I enjoyed Ivor Brown's sardonic comments about how the pretensions of capital- D "Drama" evolved from "plays," a trend resisted by Maugham (who saw the theatre as a form of entertainment, not education). One excellent feature of this chapter is the included photographs of the characters on stage for each of a number of the plays. On some pages, the author juxtaposed photos of a single play or film as shown in different productions over the years. Thus, on one page we can see "Rain" in the 1928 version with Glora Swanson in the leading role, the 1932 version starring Joan Crawford, and the 1953 film with Rita Hayworth.

Chapters 4 and 5 are respectively entitled "Belief and Opinion" and "The Man". These are the weakest chapters in the book. Mr. Brown engages in too much amateur psychologizing, seeking to explain Somerset Maugham's personality by reference to his early life, and trying to read his fiction as autobiographical. I found his attempts at analysis pretentious and even arrogant (he judges Maugham as wretched and miserable from his appearance in photographs and paintings; he informs us that in Maugham, "emotional disturbance" was a lifelong condition; and so on). What's more, he informs us about Mr. Maugham's sexuality (which in 1970 was not widely known). The final pages of the book are of no value; they contain an extremely brief "Summary of Events" that fails to mention Maugham's literary accomplishments, a haphazard list of his books and plays, and a minuscule bibliography.

Whether the few positive elements of this small work balance the negative ones will be a matter of opinion. There are more definitive sources of information available, although the photographs herein are rather good.
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danielx | Jun 13, 2012 |
A selective, and illustrated, encycolpaedia of predominantly English beer and brewing terms.
 
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VictorTrevor | Dec 25, 2011 |
Doof, frisgig, fribble, muffishness, oddling, stolchy and lots more but not componentised or monetised or ambiant findability.
 
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jon1lambert | Sep 25, 2009 |

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Werke
80
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710
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#35,709
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½ 3.7
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5
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49
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