Most Popular Books by Robert Penn Warren

In his sixth novel, The Cave (1959), Robert Penn Warren tells the story of a young man trapped in a cave in fictional Johntown, Tennessee. His predicament becomes the center of national attention as television cameras, promoters, and newscasters converge on the small town to exploit the rescue attempts and the thousands of spectators gathered at the mouth of the cave.

Selected Letters of Robert Penn Warren, Volume three, provides an indispensable glimpse of Warren the writer and the man, covering a crucial decade in his life. Edited by Randy Hendricks and James A. Perkins, and introduced by William Bedford Clark, this collection of largely previously unpublished letters and newly discovered material documents Warren''s time at the University of Minnesota, his writing and publication of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel All the King''s Men, his appointment as Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress, and his divorce from Emma “Cinina” Brescia and subsequent marriage to the writer Eleanor Clark. The period 1943–1952 also saw the publication of “A Poem of Pure Imagination”; World Enough and Time; The Ballad of Billie Potts; At Heaven''s Gate; and Selected Poems, 1923–1943. Warren''s letters shed new light on those works and on his close relationship with his editors Lambert Davis and Albert Erskine. Included too is correspondence concerning Warren''s collaboration with Robert Rossen on the movie production of All the King''s Men, which received the Academy Award for best picture in 1949. The list of friends and colleagues with whom Warren communicated reads like a roll call of major twentieth-century literary figures and clearly shows his ever-widening influence on the world of letters. Spanning a remarkable range in both style and tone, the letters disclose Warren''s attitudes toward his work as a teacher and his thoughts on the events of World War II, the Korean War, and the political conflicts in postwar Europe. Thoroughly annotated and scrupulously researched, Volume Three captures Warren in an extraordinary phase in his life and career, reaching his maturity and making many commitments at once yet pursuing them all with a seemingly boundless energy.

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 short stories and literary criticism.

A collection of poems inspired by the life and writings of the famous naturalist

"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.

Portrait of the tormented liberator by America''s first poet laureate.