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Improvised Europeans: American Literary Expatriates and the Siege of London
Improvised Europeans American Literary Expatriates and the Siege of London Author:Alex Zwerdling The lives of America's four most prominent expatriate modern writers-Henry Adams, Henry James, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot-are the subject of this fascinating and challenging work At the turn of the century, the United States was poised to overtake the great powers of Europe-economically, culturally, technologically-and claim the twentieth as t... more »he true American century. Why, then, did four of America's most brilliant writers choose to migrate to the Old World? What was happening in America that so repelled them? And why did they include in their most acclaimed writings such overt expressions of anti-Semitism, racism, and misogyny? Striving to answer these questions, Alex Zwerdling examines the world of turn-of-the-century America, including the influx of Southern and Eastern European immigrants, the end of slavery, and the women's suffrage movement. All these developments, Zwerdling argues, contributed to the flight of these four writers. Zwerdling then looks at the "safe" environment of Edwardian London, a place these men looked upon as a refuge and where they wrote some of the most enduring works of modern English literature.« less