Encyclopedia of Literature: Tama Janowitz Biography to P(atrick) J(oseph Gregory) Kavanagh Biography
Literature Reference: American Literature, English Literature, Classics & Modern Fiction
Randall Jarrell Biography - (1914–65), Poetry and the Age, A Sad Heart at the Supermarket, The Third Book of Criticism
American poet and critic, born in Nashville, Tennessee, educated at Vanderbilt University. He also wrote essays, a novel, children's stories, and translated Chekhov, Goethe, and Rilke. His academic career began in 1937 at Kenyon College, where he was a close friend of Robert Lowell and became influenced by J. C. Ransom and the New Criticism; from 1947 until his death in a road accident, he taught …
Jazz Poetry - Red Bird Dancing on Ivory, Jazzetry, Façade
a form established in the 1950s in the USA involving the reading of poetry to jazz accompaniments. Kenneth Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac, and Kenneth Patchen were among the leading exponents of the idiom, which was established in San Francisco in 1957. The Black Mountain poets' emphasis on the importance of the vocal aspects of poetry and the increased interest in readings fostered …
Robinson Jeffers (John Robinson Jeffers) Biography - (1887–1962), (John Robinson Jeffers), Tamar and Other Poems, Oresteia, Medea, Tamar
American poet, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, educated at Occidental College in California. In 1913 he settled at Carmel, California, its mountainous coastal landscape becoming the principal source of imagery for his verse. Central to much of his work is the philosophy he termed ?Inhumanism?, the belief in the superiority of nature to man; ?I'd sooner ? kill a man than a hawk? in ?Hurt Hawks? i…
Ann Jellicoe (Patricia Ann Jellicoe) Biography - (1927– ), (Patricia Ann Jellicoe), The Sport of My Mad Mother, The Knack
British playwright, born in Middlesborough; she trained as an actress at the Central School of Speech and Drama, and worked as a theatre director before turning to writing. She made her name with The Sport of My Mad Mother (1958), a fantasy about teenage violence, and The Knack (1962), a whimsical comedy about sexual prowess, male rivalries, and the limitations of a young English Casanova eventual…
Robin Jenkins (John Robin Jenkins) Biography - (1912–2005), (John Robin Jenkins), Dust on the Paw, The Sardana Dances, The Holy Tree
Scottish novelist, born in the village of Flemington in Lanarkshire, educated at Hamilton Academy and Glasgow University. After working as a schoolteacher in Scotland, he taught from 1957 to 1968 in Afghanistan, Spain, and the East Indies, which respectively provide the settings for his novels Dust on the Paw (1961), The Sardana Dances (1964), and The Holy Tree (1969). So Gaily Sings the Lark (195…
Jennie Gerhardt
a novel by Theodore Dreiser, published in 1911. Jennie's poor immigrant family is characterized by her father's Lutheranism and her mother's brave attempts to sustain the home. Whilst working in a hotel in Columbus, Ohio, Jennie meets Senator George Brander, who becomes infatuated with her. He helps her family and declares his wish to marry her; Jennie, grateful for his benevolence, agrees to slee…
Elizabeth Jennings Biography - (1926–2001), A Way of Looking, The Mind Has Mountains, Moments of Grace, Extending the Territory
British poet, born in Boston, Lincolnshire, educated at St Anne's College, Oxford. Before becoming a freelance writer in 1961, she worked as an assistant at the Oxford City Library and as a publisher's reader. Her first substantial collection of poetry, A Way of Looking (1956), was followed by numerous subsequent volumes including The Mind Has Mountains (1966), Moments of Grace (1979), Extending t…
Jerome K. Jerome (Jerome Klapka Jerome) Biography - (1859–1927), (Jerome Klapka Jerome), On Stage and Off, The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
British writer, born in Walsall, educated at Marylebone Grammar School, leaving at 14 to become a railway clerk. Later he worked as a schoolmaster, actor, and journalist. On Stage and Off (1884) and The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886) were both collections of humorous essays. Three Men in a Boat (1889), about a trio of young men and their dog on a boating holiday on the Thames, was immediat…
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Biography - (1927– ), To Whom She Will, The Nature of Passion, Esmond in India, The Householder, Shakespeare Wallah
British novelist, born in Cologne of Polish parents. She emigrated to England as a refugee in 1939, and was educated at Queen Mary College, London. Between 1951 and 1975 she lived in India and has since lived in New York. Her first two novels, To Whom She Will (1955) and The Nature of Passion (1956), express the author's fascination with the country of her adoption, exploring Western traditions an…
John Bull's Other Island
a play by G. B. Shaw, first performed in 1904, mainly set in its author's native Ireland. Larry Doyle, an Irish civil engineer settled in London, returns to his own island with his business partner, a sentimental, self-satisfied, but practical Englishman named Thomas Broadbent. Doyle, who regards Ireland as a land of frustrated dreamers and futile cynics, is at first seen by the priest and other c…
Amryl Johnson Biography - (c.1948– ), Long Road to Nowhere, Tread Carefully in Paradise, Gorgons
British poet, born in Tunapuna, Trinidad; she has lived in Britain since the age of 11. She was educated at the University of Kent, became a teacher of arts education at the University of Warwick, and is a popular performance poet. Many of the poems in Long Road to Nowhere (1985) make extensive use of imagery inspired by the Trinidad Carnival. Whether politically charged, or more personal, her poe…
B. S. Johnson (Bryan Stanley William Johnson) Biography - (1933–73), (Bryan Stanley William Johnson), Travelling People, Albert Angelo, Trawl, The Unfortunates
British writer and film-maker, born in London, educated at King's College, London. His first novel, Travelling People (1963), was an experimental work employing a diversity of styles; the influences of J. Joyce, S. Beckett, F. O'Brien, and L. Sterne can be discerned in the deliberate fragmentation of the narrative and in the use of typographical devices to suggest breaks in continuity. This playfu…
Charles R. Johnson (Charles Richard Johnson) Biography - (1948– ), (Charles Richard Johnson), Black Humor, Half-Past Nation Time, Faith and the Good Thing
African-American novelist, essayist, short-story writer, and screenwriter, born in Evanston, Illinois, educated at Southern Illinois University and the State University of New York. He began his artistic career as a cartoonist, and published two collections of comic art: Black Humor (1970) and Half-Past Nation Time (1972). His writings, both fiction and non-fiction, reflect his assiduous study of …
James Weldon Johnson Biography - (1871–1938), God's Trombones, Fifty Years and Other Poems
American poet, songwriter, and critic, born in Jacksonville, Florida, educated at Jacksonville and Columbia Universities. In 1901 he and his brother, John Rosamond, moved to New York, where they collaborated on successful musical comedies. He was General Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1920 to 1930, and served as a US diplomat in Venezuela and Nicar…
Linton Kwesi Johnson Biography - (1952– ), Voices of the Living and the Dead, Dread Beat an' Blood
British poet, born in Chapeltown, Jamaica; he moved to London in 1963, and was educated at Goldsmiths' College, University of London. Among other posts, he has worked as an Education Officer. Together with Benjamin Zephaniah and John Agard, he is one of the foremost dub poets, all of whom write poetry primarily for performance. Political and social protest, with accompanying demotic rhetoric and a…
Louis Johnson Biography - (1924–88), Numbers, Stanza and Scene
New Zealand poet, born in Wellington; he grew up in the rural areas of the North Island, and was educated at the Teachers' Training College in Wellington. Johnson spent some time in America during the 1970s, and in Melbourne, as a freelance writer, before returning to New Zealand in the 1980s. In the 1950s his poetry was important for its affirmation of the value and validity of ordinary suburban …
Pamela Hansford Johnson Biography - (1912–81), This Bed Thy Centre, Blessed Above Women, Girdle of Venus, Too Dear for My Possessing
English novelist, critic, and playwright, born in London, educated at Clapham School and the Soci?t? Europ?enne de Culture. She subsequently taught at various universities, including Yale. London is the background for several of her works, including her first novel, This Bed Thy Centre (1935), which was published when she was 22 and was followed by more than twenty others, including Blessed Above …
Terry Johnson Biography - (1955– ), Insignificance, Unsuitable for Adults, Cries from the Mammal House, Tuesday's Child, Hysteria
British playwright, born in Hillingdon, Middlesex, educated at Birmingham University; he was brought up in Watford, near London, where his father was a builder. His first successful play, later made into a film, was Insignificance (1982), a satiric fantasy which brings Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, the baseball player Joe DiMaggio, and the politician Joseph McCarthy into the same New York hotel room. …
Sir Charles Johnson (Sir Charles Hepburn Johnson) Biography - (1912–86), (Sir Charles Hepburn Johnson), Towards Mozambique, For Leagros and Other Poems, Eugene Onegin
British poet, born in London, educated at Balliol College, Oxford. In 1936 he began his career in the British Diplomatic Service. After a succession of postings in various capitals, including Tokyo, Cairo, Madrid, and Bonn, he became High Commissioner in Australia in 1965. Much of his poetry draws richly on the landscapes of his diplomatic experiences. During the war he was interned by the Japanes…
Denis Johnson (William Denis Johnson) Biography - (1901–84), (William Denis Johnson), Nine Rivers from Jordan, The Moon in the Yellow River
Irish dramatist, born in Dublin, educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, and the Harvard Law School. He was a member of the Board of the Dublin Gate Theatre (1931?6). His experiences as war correspondent for the BBC in the Middle East and Europe (1942?5) are chronicled in Nine Rivers from Jordan (1953). His most celebrated play, The Moon in the Yellow River (1932), produced at the Abbey Theatre i…
Mudrooroo (formerly known as Colin Johnson, he has also adopted the names Mudrooroo Narogin and later the name Mudrooroo Nyoongah) Biography - (1938– )
part-Aboriginal Australian novelist, born in Beverley, Western Australia, and brought up in an orphanage. He spent several years from 1965 in India, part of the time as a Buddhist monk. Wild Cat Falling (1965), the first published novel by an Aboriginal writer, presented a stark portrait of the problems for Aboriginal people in modern Australian society. The novel Long Live Sandawara (1979) follow…
George Henry Johnston Biography - (1912–70), Sun, My Brother Jack, Clean Straw For Nothing, A Cartload of Clay
Australian novelist, born in Melbourne. A journalist, reporting from several battle zones, he wrote five books about different aspects of the Second World War. He was appointed European editor for the Sydney Sun in 1950, and from 1954 he spent ten years in Greece. The trilogy of novels published at the end of his career constitute his best work; largely autobiographical, they also show an importan…
Jennifer Johnston Biography - (1930– ), The Captains and the Kings, The Gates, The Old Jest, Fool's Sanctuary
Irish novelist, born in Dublin into a theatrical family (her father was Denis Johnston), educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Her first novel, The Captains and the Kings (1972), established Johnston as one of the foremost chroniclers of the Northern Irish experience. Issues of class and religion, the decaying fortunes of the Anglo-Irish gentry, and the conflicting loyalties of successive Irish gen…
Elizabeth Jolley Biography - (1923–2007), Stories, Woman in a Lampshade, Palomino, The Newspaper of Claremont Street
Australian short-story writer and novelist, born in Birmingham; she went to Western Australia in 1959. After early success as a radio dramatist she published two volumes of short stories later collected in Stories (1984). In Woman in a Lampshade (1983) the stories reveal Jolley's growing interest in odd characters and disconcerting situations. Her first novel, Palomino (1980), was followed by two …
David Jones (Walter David Michael Jones) Biography - (1895–1974), (Walter David Michael Jones), In Parenthesis, The Anathemata, The Sleeping Lord and Other Fragments
British poet and graphic artist, born in Brockley, Kent, educated at Camberwell School of Art and Westminster School of Art. He enlisted for military service in 1915 and was wounded in 1916 at Mametz Wood, the setting for the conclusion of In Parenthesis (1937), his first publication of note, which was acclaimed by T. S. Eliot as ?a work of genius?. Parts of the book, which develops chronologicall…
Gayl Jones (Gayl Amanda Jones) Biography - (1949– ), (Gayl Amanda Jones), Corregidora, Eva's Man, White Rat, Song for Anninho
African-American novelist and poet, born in Lexington, Kentucky, educated at Connecticut College and Brown University; she later taught at the University of Michigan. Her disturbing first novel, Corregidora (1975), like her subsequent fictions Eva's Man (1976) and the short-story collection White Rat (1977), explores the psychology and sexual identity of her characters, often women doubly oppresse…
Henry Arthur Jones Biography - (1851–1929), A Clerical Error, The Silver King, The Case of Rebellious Susan
British dramatist, born in Grandborough, Buckinghamshire, the son of a farmer; he left school early to become a draper's assistant and a commercial traveller. In 1878 he gave up regular employment to try his luck as a writer, had A Clerical Error performed in London the following year, and scored a huge success with the melodrama The Silver King in 1882. Gradually, he established himself as a majo…
James Jones Biography - (1921–77), From Here to Eternity, The Pistol, The Thin Red Line, The Merry Month of May
American novelist, born in Robinson, Illinois. Jones served in the US Army in the Pacific during 1939?44, an experience which informs his most famous novel, From Here to Eternity (1951), and two later novels, The Pistol (1958) and The Thin Red Line (1962). From 1958 to 1974 he lived in Paris, and wrote a novel about the May 1968 riots, The Merry Month of May (1971). Jones was never to match the au…
Madison Jones (Madison Percy, Jr. Jones) Biography - (1925– ), (Madison Percy, Jr. Jones), The Innocent, Forest of the Night, A Buried Land
American novelist, born in Nashville, Tennessee, educated at Vanderbilt University and the University of Florida. Jones was influenced by the ideology of regionalism of the Agrarians, especially Donald Davidson and Andrew Lytle. In the 1940s he was a farmer and a horsetrainer, and in 1956 became a teacher at Auburn University, Alabama. The regionalism is most evident in his first novel, The Innoce…
Mervyn Jones Biography - (1922– ), Tribune, New Statesman, No Time To Be Young, The Last Barricade, John and Mary
British novelist, short-story writer, and journalist, son of Ernest Jones, the biographer of Freud; he is a former assistant editor of Tribune (1955?60) and of the New Statesman (1966?8). The background of his fiction reflects twentieth-century social and political issues, which are examined from a left-wing perspective, whilst the stories themselves focus on human relationships. A prolific writer…
Erica Jong Biography - (1942– ), Fear of Flying, How To Save Your Own Life, Parachutes and Kisses
American novelist and poet, born in New York City, and educated at Barnard College (New York), Columbia University, and Columbia School of Fine Arts. She has since held a number of academic posts. Fear of Flying (1973), her first, and most famous, novel, focuses on the sexual fantasies of the heroine, Isadora Wing, writer and New Yorker. Her frustrated, but adventurous, open-ended, and sexually ex…
June Jordan Biography - (1936–2002), Some Changes, Things That I Do in the Dark, Living Room
American poet and essayist, born in New York City, where she was educated at Barnard College. Since the 1960s, when she was active in the civil rights movement, she has taught at various colleges throughout the USA and became Professor and Afro-American Studies and Women's Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1989. Jordan's work testifies to her belief in the inseparability of per…
Neil Jordan Biography - (1951– ), Night in Tunisia and Other Stories, The Past, The Dream of a Beast
Irish short-story writer, novelist, and film director, born in Sligo, educated at University College, Dublin. He worked as a labourer and a teacher until he founded the Irish Writers' Co-operative in Dublin in 1974. Although more widely known for his films, Jordan has made significant contributions to contemporary Irish writing. His first collection of short stories, Night in Tunisia and Other Sto…
Gabriel Josipovici (Gabriel David Josipovici) Biography - (1940– ), (Gabriel David Josipovici), The Inventory, Words, The Present, Contre-Jour, The Big Glass
British writer, born in France; he grew up in Egypt and moved to England in 1956. He became a lecturer in literature at Sussex University in 1963, and a part-time professor in 1984. In both his novels and his plays he is concerned with identity, memory, and the nature of perception. Often abandoning the traditional fictional structures, his work reconstructs the world rather than imitating it. His…
Journey's End
a play by R. C. Sherriff, first performed in 1928. It is set in the trenches late in the First World War, in which the author himself served as a subaltern. Captain Stanhope returns from leave, to find to his dismay that a new lieutenant, Raleigh, who hero-worshipped him at school, has inveigled his way into his company. But it is soon apparent to the boy, as to everybody else, that the heavy drin…
James Joyce (James Augustine Aloysius Joyce) Biography - (1882–1941), (James Augustine Aloysius Joyce), Stephen Hero, Chamber Music, Des Imagistes, Pomes Penyeach
Irish novelist, short-story writer, and poet, born in Dublin, educated, despite his father's declining fortunes, at Jesuit schools: Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare, and Belvedere College, Dublin where he, in turn, considered the priesthood and rejected the Roman Catholic faith. Attending University College, Dublin, to read modern languages, he wandered from the curriculum, developed an aesthet…
July's People - July's People, Burger's Daughter
a novel by Nadine Gordimer, published in 1981. To escape from a situation of siege, a white South African couple, Bam and Maureen Smales, leave their urban home with their children to seek refuge with their erstwhile servant, July, in his remote village. Their encounter with the realities of black South African life transforms entirely their hitherto limited perspective, forcing them to examine th…
Jumpers - chanteuse
a play by Tom Stoppard, performed and published in 1972. Perhaps Stoppard's most original attempt to reconcile intellectual ideas with what he has called ?the theatre of audacity?, this play begins with a song, some striptease by a girl on a chandelier, and dogged acrobatics by yellow-suited university dons, one of whom is shot dead as he piles into a human pyramid. What follows, though packed wit…
Jungle, The - The Jungle
a novel by Upton Sinclair, published in 1906. The Jungle is Sinclair's best-known novel and one of the most tractarian works of fiction in American literature. It tells the story of Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant, and of his family and their life in Chicago, particularly the ?Packingtown? district of the city which borders Chicago's infamous stockyards. The great power of the novel lies in …
Juno and the Paycock - The Shadow of a Gunman, Two Plays
a play by Sean O'Casey, performed in 1924, published with The Shadow of a Gunman in Two Plays (1925). The plot, set in a Dublin tenement during the civil war of 1922, involves the disintegration of the Boyle family. Jack Boyle, the ?paycock?, is the wastrel father told he has inherited ?2,000. The family gets heavily into debt, only to discover that a fault in the will's wording means it will rece…
Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice - Jurgen, cause célèbre
a novel by James Branch Cabell, published in 1919. Jurgen is the best-known novel from the ambitious, 18-volume ?Biography of the Life of Manuel?, also known as the ?Poictesme cycle?, that occupied Cabell from 1905 until 1929. The novel tells the story of Jurgen, a poetical pawnbroker, whose marriage to Dame Lisa is a distinctly soulless affair. Dame Lisa is spirited away to a cave by the Devil; J…
Justice - Saturday Review, Justice
a play by John Galsworthy, first performed in 1910. It involves a weak young lawyer's clerk, William Falder, who steals money from his employers in order to run off with a married woman, and is apprehended, convicted, and sent to prison for three years. On his release he finds it impossible to obtain work, commits a new crime by forging a reference, and, on being traced by the police, defenestrate…
Donald Justice (Donald Rodney Justice) Biography - (1925–2004), (Donald Rodney Justice), The Summer Anniversaries, Night Light, Departures, Selected Poems, The Sunset Maker
American poet, born in Miami, Florida, educated at the University of Miami, the University of North Carolina, Stanford University, California, and the University of Iowa. From 1955 onward he held a succession of senior posts at various American universities and became Professor of English at the University of Florida, Gainsville, in 1982. The Summer Anniversaries (1960), his first collection of ve…
Kailyard School, The - Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush, The Stickit Minister, The House with the Green Shutters
originally referring to the work of a number of Scottish novelists, notably J. M. Barrie, Ian Maclaren (pseudonym of John Watson, 1850?1907), and S. R. Crockett (1859?1914), the term ?Kailyard? has latterly been descriptive of the tendency to sentimentally hackneyed Scottishness in books, newspapers, and other media. The expression, which means ?cabbage-patch? in the Scots vernacular, was first us…
Nicholas Kaldor Biography - (1908–86), An Expenditure Tax, Causes of the Slow Rate of Economic Growth of the United Kingdom
Hungarian-born economist; he became Baron Kaldor of Newnham in 1974. Kaldor taught at the London School of Economics and at Cambridge University, where he became a Fellow of King's College and Professor of Economics. In addition to his major theoretical contributions?principally to the theory of economic growth and to monetary and fiscal policy?Kaldor was an active and influential economic adviser…
Kangaroo - Kangaroo, nom-deguerre, Aaron's Rod, The Plumed Serpent, The Rainbow
a novel by D. H. Lawrence, published in 1923. Kangaroo was written at great speed during Lawrence's three-month stay in Australia in 1922. The book is set in and around Sydney but its central characters, Richard Somers, a writer, and his wife Harriet, are English. Indeed, the main issues in the book are transposed versions of European concerns, and in ?The Nightmare?, one of the most powerfully wr…
George S. Kaufman (George Simon Kaufman) Biography - (1889–1961), (George Simon Kaufman), Merton of the Movies, Beggar on Horseback, June Moon, The Royal Family
American playwright and director, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, educated at the Pennsylvania Law School. Kaufman gave the Broadway musical an air of sophistication and urbanity. He was also an important figure in a distinctively Jewish-American tradition of comic writing. His collaborations include Merton of the Movies (1922) and Beggar on Horseback (1924), with Marc Connelly; June Moon (1929)…
Anna Kavan, pseudonym of Helen Wood) Biography - (1901–68), pseudonym of Helen Wood), Let Me Alone, A Stranger Still, Change the Name, Asylum Piece
British novelist, born in Cannes, France, of English parentage. She spent her childhood in Europe, California, and England, and began writing novels under her married name, Helen Ferguson, while living with her first husband in Burma. These novels, later dismissed as merely competent examples of the predominant ?home counties? feminine novel, contain some sensitively reworked autobiographical mate…
Patrick Kavanagh Biography - (1905–67), The Irish Statesman, Ploughman and Other Poems, The Green Fool, Tarry Flynn, The Great Hunger
Irish poet, born near Iniskeen, County Monaghan; he left school at 14 and worked on farms in his native locality. In 1929 his poetry attracted the attention of George ?A E? Russell and began appearing in The Irish Statesman, which Russell edited. Ploughman and Other Poems (1936), Kavanagh's first collection of verse, drew in some measure on the idealized rural idioms of the Irish Revival, but freq…
P. J. Kavanagh (Patrick Joseph Gregory Kavanagh) Biography - (1931– ), (Patrick Joseph Gregory Kavanagh), One and One, The Perfect Stranger, Edward Thomas in Heaven
British poet and novelist, born in Worthing, educated at Merton College, Oxford. He lectured in Barcelona and Jakarta in the 1950s; from 1959 to 1970 he worked as an actor. One and One, his first collection of poems, appeared in 1960. The Perfect Stranger (1966), his prize-winning autobiography, is an account of his life until 1958, when his first wife Sally, the daughter of Rosamond Lehmann, died…