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Whit Burnett (1899–1973)

Författare till Fiction Writer's Handbook

47+ verk 708 medlemmar 6 recensioner

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Serier

Verk av Whit Burnett

Fiction Writer's Handbook (1975) 199 exemplar
This Is My Best (1942) — Redaktör — 186 exemplar
The World's Best (1944) 90 exemplar
Things With Claws (1961) 29 exemplar
The Seas of God: Great Stories of the Human Spirit (1944) — Redaktör; Förord; Bidragsgivare — 25 exemplar
Great Short Stories of the World (1965) — Redaktör; Bidragsgivare — 25 exemplar
The Story Pocket Book (1944) — Redaktör; Bidragsgivare — 13 exemplar
19 Tales of Terror (1957) 8 exemplar
Firsts of the Famous (1962) 7 exemplar
Time to Be Young: Great Stories of the Growing Years (1945) — Redaktör — 7 exemplar
The Flying Yorkshireman, [and other] novellas (1937) — Redaktör — 6 exemplar
The Modern Short Story in the Making (1964) — Redaktör — 4 exemplar
That's What Happened To Me (1970) 3 exemplar
The Tough Ones (1954) 3 exemplar
This is my best humor (1955) 3 exemplar
The Human Spirit 2 exemplar
Story, Autumn 1997 (1997) 2 exemplar
The Avon Annual: 18 Great Story of Today (1944) — Redaktör; Bidragsgivare — 1 exemplar
Story, Winter 2000 1 exemplar

Associerade verk

50 Best American Short Stories 1915-1939 (1939) — Bidragsgivare — 28 exemplar
The Fiend in You (1962) — Bidragsgivare — 26 exemplar
Famous Stories (1966) — Inledning — 8 exemplar
The Avon Annual 1945: 18 Great Modern Stories (1945) — Bidragsgivare — 1 exemplar

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Recensioner

A standard study guide to The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy.
 
Flaggad
smichaelwilson | Jan 24, 2020 |
The concept was that "105 greatest living authors" present the World's Best stories, humor, drama, biography, histry, essays, poetry. Burnett explains he had officers of PEN Clubs etc. vote --96 authors actually took patr. These are selections from the work of authors living at the time, chosen by authors living at the time. There are al;so interesting ballots on diferent groups choice of the ten best --overall, the top ten were Shaw, Thomas Mann, Eugene O'Neill, Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Sigrid Undset, George Santayana, T.S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, Robert Frost (as more voted from the US than elsewhere, there may be some bias)… (mer)
 
Flaggad
antiquary | 1 annan recension | Aug 25, 2011 |
Pretend it's 1950 and the so-called "105 greatest living authors," if we're to believe the title of this book, have hand picked themselves -- writers rating their fellow writers -- the best writers and writing that "the World" has to offer. If by "the World" they meant mostly U.S.A., then I'd say they did splendidly in selecting the best that "the World" had to offer in 1950. Any dead writers included? No, though a few, apparently, had died between the time of the balloting and the book's publication (Willa Cather was one) but thankfully, for the sake of the book (and Cather!) -- and since they'd already voted -- they considered her "alive" and included her.

105 Greatest Living Authors Present The World's Best: Stories, Humor, Drama, Biography, History, Essays, Poetry has got that nice musty old book smell that reminds me of my grandparent's house, and namely their World Book Encyclopedia set from the late 1940s they proudly displayed in its own cherrywood rack next to my grandfather's maroon wing back chair.

The writers included in this anthology were voted in by a decent percentage of their fellow contemporary writers. And that's the most fascinating aspect of this volume, I think (which I'll elaborate on later) seeing what a, say, Hemingway or E.M. Forster, personally considered in their minds to be the world's greatest living writers at the time, circa 1948-1950. In fact, ninety-six of the 105 authors featured in the book cast a ballot for whom they felt belonged in a book featuring the so-called, 'Greatest Living Authors.'

Note (and pardon the redundancy but I just want the premise behind this book made explicitly clear): This anthology did not attempt to answer, "Who the Greatest Authors of All Time" were, but instead only attempted to answer who the best writers writing today were; "today" being 1950. The book is a time capsule of literary tastes, sixty-three years old.

Here's a summary of who participated in the voting: A total of 643 individuals cast their ballots, made up of, besides the aforementioned ninety-six of 105 authors, officers of both the P.E.N. Clubs (Poets, Editors, and Novelists) of Europe (30) and the United States (36); editors of the Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature (70); magazine and literary journal editors (24); book reviewers (31) -- peons like so many of us!; U.S. college presidents (121), U.S. librarians (108), booksellers (23), subscribers to The Saturday Review of Literature (82) -- more anonymous peons, and some other miscellaneous sources (22). Published in 1950, the ballots overwhelmingly favored, as can be expected considering the chauvinist, mid-Twentieth century zeitgeist, male authors, and mostly U.S. or British male authors. Here's the statistical breakdown (since I'm a data freak) by nation:

U.S.A...32 authors (29 men, 3 women)
England...20 (17 men, 3 women)
France...13 (12 men, 1 woman)
Ireland...5 (4 men, 1 woman)
Germany...4 (all men)
Spain...4 (' ')
Russia...3 ( ' ')
Canada...2 (1 woman and man)
Chile...2 (both men)
China...2 (both men)
Denmark...2 (1 woman and man)
Hungary...2 (both men)
India...2 (both men)
Italy...2 (both men)
Norway...2 (1 woman and man)
Argentina....1 man
Finland....1 man
Greece...1 man
Holland...1 man
Iceland...1 man
Mexico...1 man
Scotland...1 man
Switzerland...1 man

TOTAL.............94 men, 11 women.

Australia, Japan (WWII had just ended), Africa (the entire continent!), Brazil, Israel & the Middle East and Eastern Europe received no votes.

The above itemization seems familiar to me, like the medal count for any given Olympics? Except Russia and China are usually up there closer to the top.

And since I absolutely love lists, here's how the top 50 authors fared in the vote. Keep in mind the voting was circa 1950, and only writers who were alive at the time of voting were considered.

01. George Bernard Shaw (Ire.)...539
02. Thomas Mann (Ger.)...524
03. Eugene O'Neil (U.S.)...508
04. Ernest Hemingway (U.S.)...466
05. Sinclair Lewis (U.S.)...453

(My what 60 years can do to a writer's visibility. Would Sinclair Lewis have even made the top 500 if a vote were taken by contemporary writers today?)

06. Sigrid Undset (Nor.)...452
07. George Santayana (Sp.)...436
08. T.S. Eliot (Eng.)...435
09. Aldous Huxley (Eng.)...434
10. Robert Frost (U.S.)...432
11. John Steinbeck (U.S.)...427
12. W. Somerset Maugham (Eng.)...424
13. Carl Sandburg (U.S.)...414
14. Willa Cather (U.S.)...409

(As mentioned above, Willa Cather died just after the ballots were cast ... perhaps from shock over her position on the list, below Steinbeck and overrated Hemingway?)

15. Edna St. V. Millay (U.S.)...403
16. John Masefield (Eng.)...393
17. André Gide (Fr.)...382
18. Maurice Maeterlinck (Bel.)....377
19. Thornton Wilder (U.S.)...373
20. John Dewey (U.S.)...368
21. John Dos Passos (U.S.)...365
22. Jules Romains (Fr.)...358
23. Benedetto Croce (It.)...342
24. Pearl Buck (U.S.)...332
25. E.M. Forster (Eng.)...328

(Let's see, Sinclair Lewis in the 5 slot, and Forster in the 25th? What were these people smoking in 1950?)

26. Van Wyck Brooks (U.S.)...324
27. Arnold J. Toynbee (Eng.)...318
28. Erich Maria Remarque (Ger.)...313
29. Bertrand Russell (Eng.)...311
30. Charles and Mary Beard (U.S.)...307
31. H.L. Mencken (U.S.)....306
32. Sholem Asch (U.S.)...305
33. Walter de la Mare (Eng.)...300
34. Knut Hamsun (Nor.)...293
35. André Maurois (Fr.)...290
36. William Faulkner (U.S.)...287

(Hard to imagine that even as late as 1950, Charles and Mary Beard were more respected by their professional colleagues than William Faulkner!)

37. Lin Yutang (China)...280
38. Maxwell Anderson (U.S.)...278
39. Rebecca West (Eng.)...277
40. André Malraux (Fr.)...276
41. Arthur Koestler (Hun.)...268
42. Edgar Lee Masters (U.S.)...264
43. Archibald MacLeish (U.S.)...255
44. Hilaire Belloc (Eng.)...253
45. Jacques Maritain (Fr.)...250
46. W.H. Auden (Eng.)...249
47. Lord Dunsany (Ire.)...247
48. José Ortega y Gasset (Sp.)...245
49. Noel Coward (Eng.)...243
50. Upton Sinclair (U.S.)...237

The system of voting used for this anthology I won't even attempt describing, other than to say it sounds as complicated and convoluted a procedural matrix as the B.C.S. College Football rankings employed by the NCAA. Mystifying.

What sets this anthology apart from others, besides its endless lists, is this unique feature: the writers who made it into the anthology got to pick their own poems, stories, essays, or novel excerpts for inclusion in the anthology (instead of an editor's or advisory board's selections); with the only editorial criteria mandated being that the writer should include the piece of writing that "best represented their aims and ambitions of their work."

The writer's choices, sometimes, are surprising. Sinclair Lewis, for instance (I seem to be picking on him, even though I adore Elmer Gantry), choosing Cass Timberlane over Main Street, Elmer Gantry, Babbitt, or Arrowsmith, speaks, if such a dubious choice can be understood, to a writer's tendency to favor their most recent work written as being their best, rather than recognizing what is or will be their most enduring.

105 Greatest Living Authors Present The World's Best: Stories, Humor, Drama, Biography, History, Essays, Poetry.

Maybe not the World's best, but switch out "World" for "North America and Great Britain," and you've got a good sketch of what mid-Twentieth Century writers perceived as being the finest writers of their time.
… (mer)
24 rösta
Flaggad
absurdeist | 1 annan recension | Nov 5, 2010 |
A bit uneven for my interests, but surprisingly full of writerly gems.
 
Flaggad
wktarin | Nov 17, 2008 |

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Associerade författare

Hallie Burnett Editor, Contributor
Martha Foley Contributor, Editor
Hallie Southgate Burnett Contributor, Editor
William Saroyan Contributor
William Faulkner Contributor
Erskine Caldwell Contributor
H. L. Mencken Contributor
John Steinbeck Contributor
Langston Hughes Contributor
Robert Benchley Contributor
Dorothy Parker Contributor
Luigi Pirandello Contributor
Richard Wright Contributor
Carl Sandburg Contributor
Edna Ferber Contributor
Lillian Hellman Contributor
John Dos Passos Contributor
John Gunther Contributor
Van Wyck Brooks Contributor
Muriel Rukeyser Contributor
Conrad Aiken Contributor
Thornton Wilder Contributor
Ogden Nash Contributor
Eugene O'Neill Contributor
Upton Sinclair Contributor
E. B. White Contributor
Hendrik Van Loon Contributor
Willa Cather Contributor
Ellen Glasgow Contributor
Morley Callaghan Contributor
Ludwig Bemelmans Contributor
Sherwood Anderson Contributor
Irwin Shaw Contributor
Jesse Stuart Contributor
Kay Boyle Contributor
Warren Beck Contributor
Clarence Day Contributor
Manual Komroff Contributor
Eric Knight Contributor
Lord Dunsany Contributor
Cornell Woolrich Contributor
Thomas Wolfe Contributor
Aldous Huxley Contributor
William Fifield Contributor
Ernest Hemingway Contributor
Eudora Welty Contributor
Anton Chekhov Contributor
Ivan Bunin Contributor
Bernardine Kielty Contributor
Pearl S. Buck Contributor
Michael Fessier Contributor
Stoyan Christowe Contributor
Zora Neale Hurston Contributor
Eddie Cohen Contributor
Ferenc Molnár Contributor
Max Brod Contributor
Sholem Asch Contributor
, Hallie Southgate Contributor
Stuart Cloete Contributor
Brian Glanville Contributor
Jerome Weidman Contributor
Seán Ó Faoláin Contributor
Mary Brinker Post Contributor
A.E. Shandeling Contributor
Dana Burnet Contributor
Edmund Ware Smith Contributor
Stanley Kauffmann Contributor
Joan Vatsek Contributor
W. R. Johnson Contributor
Pierre van Paassen Contributor
William Zukerman Contributor
Evan Hunter Contributor
Lloyd Douglas Contributor
Louis Paul Contributor
Isaac Peretz Contributor
Honore de Balzac Contributor
John Cournos Contributor
Jack Iams Contributor
Ruth Domino Contributor
Marcel Ayme Contributor
Clara Laidlaw Contributor
Mary Austin Contributor
Glennyth M. Woods Contributor
Rainer Maria Rilke Contributor
Henry Treece Contributor
Sigrid Undset Contributor
Peter De Vries Contributor
Frank O'Connor Contributor
Jean Toomer Contributor
Tennessee Williams Contributor
Norman Mailer Contributor
Kahlil Gibran Contributor
Robert Payne Contributor
Mary O'Hara Contributor
Carson McCullers Contributor
John Cheever Contributor
August Strindberg Contributor
Mary Webb Contributor
Selma Lagerlöf Contributor
Thomas Mann Contributor
Graham Greene Contributor
Howard Nemerov Contributor
Nancy Wilson Ross Contributor
Franz Kafka Contributor
Emily Hahn Contributor
Liam O'Flaherty Contributor
Frederic Prokosch Contributor
Franz Werfel Contributor
Olive Schreiner Contributor
Truman Capote Contributor
Leo Tolstoy Contributor
Edmund Ware Contributor
James Thurber Contributor
Frances Eisenberg Contributor
Richard Hehman Contributor
William C. White Contributor
Mary Medearis Contributor
Sylvia Thompson Contributor
Dean Fales Contributor
Mark Twain Contributor
Helen R. Hull Contributor
I. J. Kapstein Contributor
W.E. Fishbaugh Contributor
Kenneth Grahame Contributor
Jeanne Singer Contributor
Albert Maltz Contributor
Marcel Proust Contributor
Rachel Maddux Contributor
Alice Farnham Contributor
Marjorie Marks Contributor
Havelock Ellis Contributor
Victoria Lincoln Contributor
Sally Benson Contributor
George Jean Nathan Contributor
Brendan Gill Contributor
Irwin Edman Contributor
Frank Brookhouser Contributor
James H. Street Contributor
Dorothy Canfield Contributor
MacKinlay Kantor Contributor
Bertha Damon Contributor
Helen Keller Contributor
George Santayana Contributor
Robert Traver Contributor
Booth Tarkington Contributor
Walt Grove Contributor
Wolcott Gibbs Contributor
Frederick Scribner Contributor
Ruth Blodgett Contributor
Lyford Moore Contributor
T.R. Carskadon Contributor
H.M. LeTissier Contributor
Alan Marshall Contributor
Wayne Grover Contributor
Peter Neagoe Contributor
Eric Howard Contributor
Daniel Fuchs Contributor
Nelson Algren Contributor
Mary Heaton Vorse Contributor
Gertrude Stein Contributor
H. E. Bates Contributor
Eugene Jolas Contributor
Herzl Fife Contributor
Michael Bruen Contributor
Martha Dodd Contributor
Mikhail Zostchenko Contributor
Dorothy McCleary Contributor
Edgar Calmer Contributor
John Fante Contributor
John Peale Bishop Contributor
Elizabeth Wagner Contributor
Dorothy Thompson Contributor
Vicki Baum Contributor
Guido D'Agostino Contributor
J. D. Salinger Introduction

Statistik

Verk
47
Även av
8
Medlemmar
708
Popularitet
#35,797
Betyg
½ 3.4
Recensioner
6
ISBN
11

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