A literary non-fiction that has its roots in Harrison Solow's own search as a student for a jumble of seemingly unrelated facts or principles can coalesce into a magnificently unified microcosm. Felicity is the silent student who exists with happy disregard of centuries of interrelated scholarship intrinsic to a liberal arts education, including a disregard for the tools of study and a blithe preoccupation with the present.
************************************ A splendid book! Original, controversial, academic, readable, serious, light-hearted, sensible, charming... the treasures of a cultured mind...everyone who has ever found enjoyment in reading, will be grateful for this delightful work. I loved it... Hazel Holt, Literary Executor of the Barbara Pym Estate, author of the Barbara Pym's biography, A Lot to Ask: A Life of Barbara Pym and editor (with Hilary Pym) of Barbara Pym's unpublished work, Civil to Strangers and Other Writings; leading crime novelist, best known for her 20 Mrs Malory books and her recent epistolary novel, My Dear Charlotte, based on Jane Austen's letters.
It should be mandatory reading for all undergraduate students of English Literature; no American students of English Literature should be allowed to set foot upon campus without having proved that they have read it... Peter Miles, Emeritus Fellow of the English Association
Dryden, a great writer as well as a great critic, created a work of art about works of art. Harrison Solow, in her incisive and delightful study of the novels of Barbara Pym has accomplished a similar feat. Mayo Simon, New York playwright, writer of Academy Award winning film, Why Man Creates, lecturer in drama and film writing at Columbia University and California Institute of the Arts, author of The Audience & The Playwright, Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2005
A terrific piece of writing - I would order it for all first year and second year English students Dr. Thomas Strychacz, Full Professor, Former Dean of Letters, Chair, English Department, Mills College, Former Lecturer at Princeton University, Author of Modernism, Mass Culture, and Professionalism, Cambridge University Press, 1993.
these ruminations offer unexpected insights that would escape a more mundane critic... a dazzling performance and it fills me with the most exquisite professional envy! Thomas Vinciguerra, Deputy Editor of The Week, New York; Contributing Writer, The New York Times.
... a dramatic monologue which reveals how a life spent reading and thinking about literature has directed consciousness and informed the content of the thinking mind...A fascinating, intriguing presentation, which demands a sequel Dr. Christopher Terry, Examiner for Cambridge University, Scholar at Downing College Cambridge, reviewer for the Times Higher Education Supplement, author of The Ogre of Downing Castle, Revisited: Recollections of Dr F. R. Leavis and Morris Shapira, Libertas Publishing, 2009. -- Publisher: Cinnamon Press
