Edmund Wilson
Encyclopedia
Edmund Wilson was an American writer and literary
and social critic
and noted man of letters.
. His father, Edmund Wilson, Sr.
, was a lawyer and served as New Jersey Attorney General
. Wilson attended The Hill School
, a college preparatory boarding school, in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, graduating in 1912. At Hill, Wilson served as the Editor-in-Chief of the school's literary magazine, The Record
. From 1912 to 1916, he was educated at Princeton University
. He began his professional writing career as a reporter for the New York Sun
, and served in the army during the First World War
. His family's summer home at Talcottville, New York
, known as Edmund Wilson House
, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
in 1973.
in 1920 and 1921, and later served as Associate Editor of The New Republic
and as a book reviewer for The New Yorker
and The New York Review of Books
. His works influenced novelists Upton Sinclair
, John Dos Passos
, Sinclair Lewis
, Floyd Dell
, and Theodore Dreiser
. He wrote plays, poems, and novels, but his greatest influence was literary criticism.
He played a recurring role throughout Edna St Vincent Millay's life, from the time she was a foreign correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine, 1921 to 1923, to the end of her life.
Axel's Castle: A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930
(1931) was a sweeping survey of Symbolism
. It covered Arthur Rimbaud
, Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam
(author of Axel), W. B. Yeats, Paul Valéry
, T. S. Eliot
, Marcel Proust
, James Joyce
, and Gertrude Stein
.
In his landmark book To the Finland Station
(1940), Wilson studied the course of European socialism
, from the 1824 discovery by Jules Michelet
of the ideas of Vico
culminating in the 1917 arrival of Lenin at the Finland Station of Saint Petersburg
to lead the Bolshevik Revolution.
In a celebrated essay on the work of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, "Tales of the Marvellous and the Ridiculous" (New Yorker
, November 1945; later collected in Classics and Commercials), Wilson condemned Lovecraft's tales as "hackwork".
Edmund Wilson is also well known for his heavy criticism of J. R. R. Tolkien
's work The Lord of the Rings
, which he referred to as "juvenile trash", saying "Dr. Tolkien has little skill at narrative and no instinct for literary form."
Wilson was interested in modern culture as a whole, and many of his writings go beyond the realm of pure literary criticism. His early works are heavily influenced by the ideas of Freud
and Marx
, reflecting his deep interest in their work.
Wilson lobbied for the creation of a series of classic U.S. literature similar to France's Bibliothèque de la Pléiade
. In 1982, ten years after his death, The Library of America series was launched.
Wilson's writing was included in the Library of America in two volumes published in 2007.
, John Dos Passos
, William Faulkner
, F. Scott Fitzgerald
, and Vladimir Nabokov
. He was instrumental in establishing the modern evaluation of the works of Dickens and Kipling. Wilson was a friend of the philosopher Isaiah Berlin
.
He attended Princeton with Fitzgerald, who referred to Wilson as his "intellectual conscience". After Fitzgerald's early death (at the age of 44) from a heart attack in December 1940, Wilson edited two books by Fitzgerald (The Last Tycoon and The Crack-Up
) for posthumous publication, donating his editorial services to help Fitzgerald's family. Wilson was also a friend of Nabokov, with whom he corresponded extensively and whose writing he introduced to Western audiences. However, their friendship was marred by Wilson's cool reaction to Nabokov's Lolita
and irretrievably damaged by Wilson's public criticism of what he considered Nabokov's eccentric translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin
.
Wilson had many marriages and affairs. His first wife was Mary Blair, who had been in Eugene O'Neill
's theatrical company. His second wife was Margaret Canby. After her death in a freak accident two years after their marriage, Wilson wrote a long eulogy to her and said later that he felt guilt over having neglected her. From 1938 to 1946, he was married to Mary McCarthy
who, like Wilson, was well known for her literary criticism. She admired enormously Wilson's breadth and depth of intellect, and they co-operated on numerous works. In an article in The New Yorker, Louis Menand
says "The marriage to McCarthy was a mistake that neither side wanted to be first to admit. When they fought, he would retreat into his study and lock the door; she would set piles of paper on fire and try to push them under it." He wrote many letters to Anaïs Nin
, criticizing her for her surrealistic style as opposed to the realism
that was then deemed correct writing, and ended by asking for her hand, saying he would "teach her to write", which she took as an insult. Except for a brief falling out following the publication of I Thought of Daisy, in which Wilson portrayed Edna St Vincent Millay as Rita Cavanaugh, Wilson and Millay remained friends throughout life. He later married Elena Mumm Thornton
(previously married to James Worth Thornton
), but continued to have extramarital relationships.
policies. He did not pay
his USA federal income tax
from 1946 to 1955 and was later investigated by the IRS
.
After a settlement, Wilson received a $25,000 fine rather than the original $69,000 sought by the IRS. He received no jail time. In his book The Cold War and the Income Tax: A Protest
(1963), Wilson argued that, as a result of competitive militarization against the Soviet Union
, the civil liberties
of Americans were being paradoxically infringed under the guise of defense from Communism
. For these reasons, Wilson also opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War
.
Wilson's view of President Lyndon Johnson was decidedly negative. Historian Eric Goldman writes in his memoir The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson that when Goldman, on behalf of President Johnson, invited Wilson to read from Wilson's writings at a White House Festival Of The Arts in 1965: "Wilson declined with a brusqueness that I never experienced before or after in the case of an invitation in the name of the President and First Lady."
On December 6, 1963, Wilson was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom
by President Lyndon Johnson.
For the academic year 1964-1965, he was a Fellow on the faculty in the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University
.
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
and social critic
Social criticism
The term social criticism locates the reasons for malicious conditions of the society in flawed social structures. People adhering to a social critics aim at practical solutions by specific measures, often consensual reform but sometimes also by powerful revolution.- European roots :Religious...
and noted man of letters.
Early life
Wilson was born in Red Bank, New JerseyRed Bank, New Jersey
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 11,844 people, 5,201 households, and 2,501 families residing in the borough. The population density was 6,639.1 people per square mile . There were 5,450 housing units at an average density of 3,055.0 per square mile...
. His father, Edmund Wilson, Sr.
Edmund Wilson, Sr.
Edmund Wilson, Sr. was an American lawyer who served as the Attorney General of New Jersey from 1908 until 1914. He was the father of literary critic Edmund Wilson....
, was a lawyer and served as New Jersey Attorney General
New Jersey Attorney General
The Attorney General of New Jersey is a member of the executive cabinet of the state. The office is appointed by the Governor of New Jersey and term limited...
. Wilson attended The Hill School
The Hill School
The Hill School is a preparatory boarding school for boys and girls located in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, about 35 miles northwest of Philadelphia....
, a college preparatory boarding school, in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, graduating in 1912. At Hill, Wilson served as the Editor-in-Chief of the school's literary magazine, The Record
The Record
The Record may refer to:Printed publications:* Record , the weekly newsmagazine of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the South Pacific*The Philadelphia Record, a defunct daily newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...
. From 1912 to 1916, he was educated at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
. He began his professional writing career as a reporter for the New York Sun
New York Sun (historical)
The Sun was a New York newspaper that was published from 1833 until 1950. It was considered a serious paper, like the city's two more successful broadsheets, The New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune...
, and served in the army during the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. His family's summer home at Talcottville, New York
Talcottville, New York
Talcottville is a small community is southern Lewis County. It is also the seat for the Town of Leyden. Talcottville is considered a hamlet and has always been considered that....
, known as Edmund Wilson House
Edmund Wilson House
Edmund Wilson House is a historic home located at Port Leyden in Lewis County, New York. It was built over a four year period starting in 1789 and is a -story limestone building, three bays wide and four bays long...
, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
in 1973.
Career
Wilson was the managing editor of Vanity FairVanity Fair (American magazine 1913-1936)
Vanity Fair was an American society magazine published from 1913-1936. It was highly successful until the Great Depression led to it becoming unprofitable, and it was merged into Vogue magazine in 1936.-History:...
in 1920 and 1921, and later served as Associate Editor of The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
and as a book reviewer for The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
and The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
. His works influenced novelists Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...
, John Dos Passos
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...
, Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
, Floyd Dell
Floyd Dell
Floyd Dell was an American author and critic.-Biography:Floyd Dell was born in Barry, Illinois on June 28, 1887....
, and Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of...
. He wrote plays, poems, and novels, but his greatest influence was literary criticism.
He played a recurring role throughout Edna St Vincent Millay's life, from the time she was a foreign correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine, 1921 to 1923, to the end of her life.
Axel's Castle: A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930
Axel's Castle
Axel's Castle: A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930 is a 1931 book of literary criticism by Edmund Wilson on the Symbolist movement in literature.-Contents:...
(1931) was a sweeping survey of Symbolism
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
. It covered Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
, Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam
Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam
Jean-Marie-Mathias-Philippe-Auguste, comte de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam was a French symbolist writer.-Life:Villiers de l'Isle-Adam was born in Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, to a distinguished aristocratic family...
(author of Axel), W. B. Yeats, Paul Valéry
Paul Valéry
Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath...
, T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
, James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, and Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
.
In his landmark book To the Finland Station
To the Finland Station
To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History is a book by American critic and historian Edmund Wilson. The work presents the history of revolutionary thought and the birth of socialism, from the French Revolution through the collaboration of Marx and Engels to the arrival...
(1940), Wilson studied the course of European socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, from the 1824 discovery by Jules Michelet
Jules Michelet
Jules Michelet was a French historian. He was born in Paris to a family with Huguenot traditions.-Early life:His father was a master printer, not very prosperous, and Jules assisted him in the actual work of the press...
of the ideas of Vico
Giambattista Vico
Giovanni Battista ' Vico or Vigo was an Italian political philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist....
culminating in the 1917 arrival of Lenin at the Finland Station of Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
to lead the Bolshevik Revolution.
In a celebrated essay on the work of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, "Tales of the Marvellous and the Ridiculous" (New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, November 1945; later collected in Classics and Commercials), Wilson condemned Lovecraft's tales as "hackwork".
Edmund Wilson is also well known for his heavy criticism of J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
's work The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...
, which he referred to as "juvenile trash", saying "Dr. Tolkien has little skill at narrative and no instinct for literary form."
Wilson was interested in modern culture as a whole, and many of his writings go beyond the realm of pure literary criticism. His early works are heavily influenced by the ideas of Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
and Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, reflecting his deep interest in their work.
Wilson lobbied for the creation of a series of classic U.S. literature similar to France's Bibliothèque de la Pléiade
Bibliothèque de la Pléiade
The Bibliothèque de la Pléiade is a French series of books which was created in the 1930s by Jacques Schiffrin, an independent young editor. . Schiffrin wanted to provide the public with reference editions of the complete works of classic authors in a pocket format...
. In 1982, ten years after his death, The Library of America series was launched.
Wilson's writing was included in the Library of America in two volumes published in 2007.
Context and relationships
Wilson's critical works helped foster public appreciation for several novelists: Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, John Dos Passos
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...
, William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
, F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
, and Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
. He was instrumental in establishing the modern evaluation of the works of Dickens and Kipling. Wilson was a friend of the philosopher Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
Sir Isaiah Berlin OM, FBA was a British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas of Russian-Jewish origin, regarded as one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century and a dominant liberal scholar of his generation...
.
He attended Princeton with Fitzgerald, who referred to Wilson as his "intellectual conscience". After Fitzgerald's early death (at the age of 44) from a heart attack in December 1940, Wilson edited two books by Fitzgerald (The Last Tycoon and The Crack-Up
The Crack-Up
The Crack-Up is a collection of essays by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. It consists of previously unpublished letters, notes and also three essays originally written for and published first in the Esquire magazine during 1936...
) for posthumous publication, donating his editorial services to help Fitzgerald's family. Wilson was also a friend of Nabokov, with whom he corresponded extensively and whose writing he introduced to Western audiences. However, their friendship was marred by Wilson's cool reaction to Nabokov's Lolita
Lolita
Lolita is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris and 1958 in New York, and later translated by the author into Russian...
and irretrievably damaged by Wilson's public criticism of what he considered Nabokov's eccentric translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin
Eugene Onegin
Eugene Onegin is a novel in verse written by Alexander Pushkin.It is a classic of Russian literature, and its eponymous protagonist has served as the model for a number of Russian literary heroes . It was published in serial form between 1825 and 1832...
.
Wilson had many marriages and affairs. His first wife was Mary Blair, who had been in Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
's theatrical company. His second wife was Margaret Canby. After her death in a freak accident two years after their marriage, Wilson wrote a long eulogy to her and said later that he felt guilt over having neglected her. From 1938 to 1946, he was married to Mary McCarthy
Mary McCarthy (author)
Mary Therese McCarthy was an American author, critic and political activist.- Early life :Born in Seattle, Washington, to Roy Winfield McCarthy and his wife, the former Therese Preston, McCarthy was orphaned at the age of six when both her parents died in the great flu epidemic of 1918...
who, like Wilson, was well known for her literary criticism. She admired enormously Wilson's breadth and depth of intellect, and they co-operated on numerous works. In an article in The New Yorker, Louis Menand
Louis Menand
Louis Menand is an American writer and academic, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Metaphysical Club , an intellectual and cultural history of late 19th and early 20th century America....
says "The marriage to McCarthy was a mistake that neither side wanted to be first to admit. When they fought, he would retreat into his study and lock the door; she would set piles of paper on fire and try to push them under it." He wrote many letters to Anaïs Nin
Anaïs Nin
Anaïs Nin was a French-Cuban author, based at first in France and later in the United States, who published her journals, which span more than 60 years, beginning when she was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death, her erotic literature, and short stories...
, criticizing her for her surrealistic style as opposed to the realism
Literary realism
Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." In the spirit of...
that was then deemed correct writing, and ended by asking for her hand, saying he would "teach her to write", which she took as an insult. Except for a brief falling out following the publication of I Thought of Daisy, in which Wilson portrayed Edna St Vincent Millay as Rita Cavanaugh, Wilson and Millay remained friends throughout life. He later married Elena Mumm Thornton
Elena Mumm Thornton
Elena Mumm Thornton Wilson was born into an unusual, wealthy, aristocratic European family and was the fourth wife of the famed American writer Edmund Wilson. Elena was a central figure in Wilson's life from the time they met until his death in 1972. She was the literary executrix of his estate...
(previously married to James Worth Thornton
James Worth Thornton
James Worth Thornton was a businessman and scion of the politically and socially connected Thorntons of Indiana. Thornton was the son of Sir Henry Worth Thornton and Lady Virginia Blair, daughter of banker and steel magnate George Dike Blair...
), but continued to have extramarital relationships.
The Cold War
Wilson was also an outspoken critic of U.S. Cold WarCold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
policies. He did not pay
Tax resistance
Tax resistance is the refusal to pay tax because of opposition to the government that is imposing the tax or to government policy.Tax resistance is a form of civil disobedience and direct action...
his USA federal income tax
Income tax
An income tax is a tax levied on the income of individuals or businesses . Various income tax systems exist, with varying degrees of tax incidence. Income taxation can be progressive, proportional, or regressive. When the tax is levied on the income of companies, it is often called a corporate...
from 1946 to 1955 and was later investigated by the IRS
Internal Revenue Service
The Internal Revenue Service is the revenue service of the United States federal government. The agency is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, and is under the immediate direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue...
.
After a settlement, Wilson received a $25,000 fine rather than the original $69,000 sought by the IRS. He received no jail time. In his book The Cold War and the Income Tax: A Protest
The Cold War and the Income Tax: A Protest
The Cold War and the Income Tax: A Protest is a book written by Edmund Wilson and published in 1963.- Edmund Wilson :Wilson was an American literary critic and author who followed the familiar political arc of being an idealistic communist sympathizer who came to be disillusioned and horrified the...
(1963), Wilson argued that, as a result of competitive militarization against the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, the civil liberties
Civil liberties
Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right...
of Americans were being paradoxically infringed under the guise of defense from Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. For these reasons, Wilson also opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
.
Wilson's view of President Lyndon Johnson was decidedly negative. Historian Eric Goldman writes in his memoir The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson that when Goldman, on behalf of President Johnson, invited Wilson to read from Wilson's writings at a White House Festival Of The Arts in 1965: "Wilson declined with a brusqueness that I never experienced before or after in the case of an invitation in the name of the President and First Lady."
On December 6, 1963, Wilson was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Presidential Medal of Freedom
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with thecomparable Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award in the United States...
by President Lyndon Johnson.
For the academic year 1964-1965, he was a Fellow on the faculty in the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...
.
Edmund Wilson Regrets
Throughout his career, Wilson would often answer fan mail and outside requests for his time with a printed postcard which read:Books
- Poets, Farewell!, New York, NY: Charles Scribners's Sons, 1929
- Axel's CastleAxel's CastleAxel's Castle: A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930 is a 1931 book of literary criticism by Edmund Wilson on the Symbolist movement in literature.-Contents:...
: A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930, New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1931 - The Triple Thinkers: Ten Essays on Literature, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1938
- To the Finland StationTo the Finland StationTo the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History is a book by American critic and historian Edmund Wilson. The work presents the history of revolutionary thought and the birth of socialism, from the French Revolution through the collaboration of Marx and Engels to the arrival...
: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1940 - The Wound and the Bow: Seven Studies in Literature, Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1941
- (editor) The Shock of Recognition: The Development of Literature in the U.S. Recorded by the Men Who Made It, New York, NY: Modern Library, 1943
- Volume I. The Nineteenth Century
- Volume II. The Twentieth Century
- Memoirs of Hecate CountyMemoirs of Hecate CountyMemoirs of Hecate County is a work of fiction by Edmund Wilson, first published in 1946, but banned in the United States until 1959, when it was reissued with minor revisions by the author....
, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1946 - The Triple Thinkers: Twelve Essays on Literary Subjects, New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Co., 1948
- Classics and Commercials: A Literary Chronicle of the Forties, New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Co., 1950
- The Shores of Light: A Literary Chronicle of the Twenties and Thirties, New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1952
- The Scrolls from the Dead SeaDead Sea scrollsThe Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of 972 texts from the Hebrew Bible and extra-biblical documents found between 1947 and 1956 on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, from which they derive their name...
, Fontana Books, 1955 - Red, Black, Blond and Olive: Studies in Four Civilizations: Zuni; Haiti; Soviet Russia; Israel, London: W. H. Allen, 1956
- A Piece of My Mind: Reflections at Sixty, New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1956
- The American Earthquake: A Documentary of the Twenties and Thirties (A Documentary of the Jazz Age, the Great Depression, and the New Deal), Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958
- Apologies to the Iroquois, New York, NY: Vintage, 1960
- Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War, New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1962. Title "Patriotic Gore" was taken from the song "Maryland, My MarylandMaryland, My Maryland"Maryland, My Maryland" is the official state song of the U.S. state of Maryland. The song is set to the tune of "Lauriger Horatius" and the lyrics are from a nine-stanza poem written by James Ryder Randall...
". - The Cold War and the Income Tax: A protest, New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Co., 1964
- The Bit Between My Teeth: A Literary Chronicle of 1950-1965, New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966
- Europe without Baedeker: Sketches among the Ruins of Italy, Greece and England, with Notes from a European Diary: 1963-64: Paris, Rome, Budapest, London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1967
Posthumous books
- The Twenties: From Notebooks and Diaries of the Period, ed. Leon EdelLeon EdelJoseph Leon Edel was a North American literary critic and biographer. He was the elder brother of North American philosopher Abraham Edel....
, New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975 - The Thirties: From Notebooks and Diaries of the Period, ed. Leon Edel, New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980
- The Forties: From Notebooks and Diaries of the Period, ed. Leon Edel, New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983
- The Fifties: From Notebooks and Diaries of the Period, ed. Leon Edel, New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986
- The Sixties: The Last Journal 1960-1972, ed. Lewis M. Dabney, New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993
- Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Nabokov-Wilson Letters, 1940-1971, ed. Simon Karlinsky, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1979; "Revised and Expanded Edition," 2001
- Edmund Wilson: The Man in Letters, ed. Janet Groth and David Castronovo, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1992
- Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1920s & 30s: The Shores of Light / Axel's Castle / Uncollected Reviews Lewis M. Dabney, ed. (New York: Library of AmericaLibrary of AmericaThe Library of America is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature.- Overview and history :Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LoA has published over 200 volumes by a wide range of authors from Mark Twain to Philip...
, 2007) ISBN 978-1-59853-013-1 - Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s & 40s: The Triple Thinkers, The Wound and the Bow, Classics and Commercials, Uncollected Reviews Lewis M. Dabney, ed. (New York: Library of AmericaLibrary of AmericaThe Library of America is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature.- Overview and history :Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LoA has published over 200 volumes by a wide range of authors from Mark Twain to Philip...
, 2007) ISBN 978-1-59853-014-8
Articles
- "Books: Two Russian Exiles: Paul Chavchavadze and Oksana Kasenkina" The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
25/46 (7 January 1950): 74, 77-79. Reviews Chavchavadze's Family Memoirs and Kasenkina's Leap to Freedom.
Sources
External links
- Works by Edmund Wilson at Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
- Edmund Wilson Papers Photographs, artifacts, and documents from Wilson's personal papers from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University
- Edmund Wilson papers Some of Wilson's personal papers and private library are housed at the Department of Special Collections and University Archives, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa.
- Missionary: Edmund Wilson and American culture by Louis Menand New Yorker 8 August 2005
- Photo
- Wilson, Reuel, "Edmund Wilson's Cape Cod Landscape", Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 2004
- Ramsey, Richard Davidhttp://www.selu.edu/future_students/choose_selu/faculty/archive/ramsey.html Edmund Wilson: A Bibliography (New York: David Lewis, 1971). ISBN 091201203X / ISBN 978-0912012032