Most Popular Books by Robert Penn Warren

In his latest gathering of poems, Warren continues to work variations on his favorite subjects examining time, the elements, the gifts of nature, the blessed accident of fate and what they all mean to a man of advancing years and few illusions. Throughout, a "nameless apprehension" underlies the speaker''s reflections on "the mystery of time and happiness and death."

A narrative poem based upon the heroic life of the great chief of the Nez Perce Indians, is told partly in the first person by Joseph, partly in the voice of the poet.

In 1979 Robert Penn Warren returned to his native Todd Country, Kentucky, to attend ceremonies in honor of another native son, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, whose United States citizenship had just been restored, ninety years after his death, by a special act of Congress. From that nostalgic journey grew this reflective essay on the tragic career of Jefferson Davis—"not a modern man in any sense of the word but a conservative called to manage what was, in one sense, a revolution." Jefferson Davis Gets His Citizenship Back is also a meditation by one of our most respected men of letters on the ironies of American history and the paradoxes of the modern South.

Robert Penn Warren''s 1946 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel All the King''s Men is one of the undisputed classics of American literature. Fifty years after the novel''s publication, Warren''s characters still stand as powerful representations of the moral dilemmas faced by individuals in positions of power. All the King''s Men had its genesis in Warren''s stage play Proud Flesh, unpublished in his lifetime. He also wrote a subsequent unpublished play titled Willie Stark: His Rise and Fall and a later dramatic version of the novel that shared the title All the King''s Men. This volume is the first to collect all three dramatic texts and to publish Proud Flesh and Willie Stark. Proud Flesh is particularly fascinating for what it reveals about the development of All the King''s Men and Warren''s changing perceptions of its characters and themes. The other plays, as post-novel writings, provide a forum for Warren to clarify his intentions in the novel. The editors'' introduction to this collection reviews the composition history of the works and their relationship to the novel and to each other. The new perspectives on Warren''s writing presented in Robert Penn Warren''s "All the King''s Men": Three Stage Versions provide a glimpse into a creative mind struggling with a compelling story and offer readers another way of looking at this American classic. This book is an essential reference in Warren studies that will give students of All the King''s Men another context from which to consider Warren''s novel.

A collection of Robert Penn Warren''s poetry, including ten new poems that have never appeared in book form and the works in previous volumes: "Selected Poems: 1923-1966," "Or else," "Incarnations," and "Audubon."

The second novel by Robert Penn Warren, author of the Pulizter-Prize-winning All The King''s Men, is a tour de force and a neglected classic. At Heaven’s Gate, Robert Penn Warren’s second novel, is a neglected classic of twentieth-century fiction. First published in 1943, it grew out of the author’s years in Nashville during a period of political and financial scandals much like those later so memorably portrayed his Pulitzer-Prize-winning All The King’s Men. Other formative elements, as he has said, "came originally out of Dante by a winding path." During the winter of 1939-40 in Rome, where the first half of the book was written, one of the most touching characters, a "Christ-bit mountaineer," and his part of the story literally came full-blown to the author in a typhus-induced delirium. At Heaven’s Gate is a novel of violence, of human beings struggling against a fate beyond their power to alter, of corruption, and of honor. It is the story of Sue Murdock, the daughter of an unscrupulous speculator who has created a financial empire in the South, and the three men with whom she tries to escape the dominance of her father and her father’s world. The background is the capital of a Southern state in the late twenties and the promoters and politicians, the aristocrats and poor whites, the labor organizers and the dispossessed farmers, the backwoods prophets and university intellectuals who are drawn into its orbit. Warren’s picture of the South is as fresh, dramatic, and powerful today as it was when the book was first published. Its plot structure is a tour de force.

John Greenleaf Whittier''s Poetry was first published in 1971. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. In this volume Robert Warren Penn, the noted critic, poet, and novelist, provides a major new appraisal of the once enormously popular New England port, John Greenleaf Whittier, along with his selection of 36 of Whittier''s poems. Through Warren''s perceptive and illuminating discussion, the significance of Whittier as a writer for our time becomes clear. In his introduction Warren shows that Whittier''s deep commitment to his fellowman, especially his devotion to the cause of abolition, profoundly influenced his writing. In his estimate of Whittier''s place in literature, Warren invokes the questions What does the past mean to an American? and in this context he compares Whittier with Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville, and Faulkner. He finds that Whittier''s "star belongs in their constellation. If it is less commanding than any of theirs it yet shines with a clear and authentic light."

A collection of Penn Warren''s best short fiction: two novelettes and twelve stories that skillfully handle a variety of themes and styles."Worth reading for their craftsmanship and variety" (Charles Poore, New York Times).

Thirty-seven of Warren''s poems written between 1976 and 1978, presented in reverse chronological order.

"Originally published in 1963, this powerful novel spools a rewarding, dramatic storyline while it probes the deeper philosophical search for self-definition in modern life and the symbolic demise of the agrarian South from technological progress. Flood begins with the arrival of two men in a small Tennessee town - Brad Tolliver, long-absent native son and successful screenwriter, and Yasha Jones, famous director and stranger to the region. Their purpose is to create a great film about the town, which will soon vanish when the massive dam being built downriver is completed. The town''s inhabitants come vividly to life as past and present forces prepare them for a climactic new beginning to their world."--BOOK JACKET.