Penfriends from Porlock: Essays and Reviews, 1977-1986

x, 278 pp. "From a noted biographer and essayist comes a collection of writing on diverse people and places, from the romantic poets to T.V. journalists, and from Cicil Beaton to Henry James." CONTENTS: Venice - Browning's Parrots: Vencie and the English Poets; Publishing Scoundrels: Novelists in Venice; Johnson, Boswell, Wilson - Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language; James Boswell; The Scotch Plato; Victorian - Lord Macaulay; A Verse Life of Queen Victoria; The Triumph of Pio Yes-Yes; Alfred Lord Tennyson I; Alfred Lord Tennyson II; Henry James in his Letters I; Henry James in His Letters II; William Barnes; Six English Novelists - David Lodge; Iris Murdoch; John Braine; Barbara Pym; C.P. Snow; Ivy Compton-Burnett; Sketches for Portraits - L.B.J.; C.S. Lewis; Rainer Maria Rilke; Arthur Ransome; Cecil Beaton; Bernard Walke; The Gloomy Dean; Philip Larkin; J.R.R. Tolkien; Anthony Crosland; Lionel Brett; A Fabulous Griffin: G.K. Chesterton; Montague Summers; The Lost Leader; British Satire - Peter Simple; Two Talks on Satire: I. Satire and the Novel; II. Satire in Contemporary Journalism; Last Things - Celestial Salem; The Facts of Death.