Harold Bloom

This comprehensive anthology attempts to give the common reader possession of six centuries of great British and American poetry. The book features a large introductory essay by Harold Bloom called The Art of Reading Poetry, which presents his critical reflections of more than half a century devoted to the reading, teaching, and writing about the literary achievement he loves most....

The great poems, plays, novels, stories teach us how to go on living. . . . Your own mistakes, accidents, failures at otherness beat you down. Rise up at dawn and read something that matters as soon as you can. So Harold Bloom, the most famous literary critic of his generation, exhorts readers of his last book: one that praises...

Our most revered critic returns to his signature theme "Literary criticism, as I attempt to practise it," writes Harold Bloom in The Anatomy of Influence, "is in the first place literary, that is to say, personal and passionate." For more than half a century, Bloom has shared his profound knowledge of the written word with students and readers. In this,...

The literary critic defends the importance of Western literature from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Kafka and Beckett in this acclaimed national bestseller. “An impressive work...deeply, rightly passionate about the great books of the past.”—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World Harold Bloom's The Western Canon is more than a required reading list—it is a “heroically brave, formidably learned” defense of...

A selection of the lively letters between one of the world’s greatest literary critics and the poets, novelists, and scholars he most admired Bringing together a collection of Harold Bloom’s letters to and from eight of his favourite contemporary writers, Heather Cass White provides an intimate view of one of the most famous literary critics of the last century. In...

The Bright Book of Life is America's most original and controversial literary critic's foray into the world of narrative fiction. Harold Bloom writes trenchantly about forty-eight masterworks spanning the Western tradition, from Don Quixote to Wuthering Heights to Invisible Man, in his first book devoted exclusively to narrative fiction. In this valedictory volume, Yale professor Harold Bloom—who was regarded for...