Lillian Hellman was a giant of twentieth-century letters and a groundbreaking figure as one of the most successful female playwrights on Broadway. Yet the author of The Little Foxes and Toys in the Attic is today remembered more as a toxic, bitter survivor and literary fabulist, the woman of whom Mary McCarthy said, Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.' In A Difficult Woman, renowned historian Alice Kessler-Harris undertakes a feat few would dare to attempt: a reclamation of a combative, controversial woman who straddled so many political and cultural fault lines of her time. Kessler-Harris renders Hellman's feisty wit and personality in all of its contradictions: as a non-Jewish Jew, a displaced Southerner, a passionate political voice without a party, an artist immersed in commerce, a sexually free woman who scorned much of the women's movement, a loyal friend whose trust was often betrayed, and a writer of memoirs who repeatedly questioned the possibility of achieving truth and doubted her memory. Hellman was a writer whose plays spoke the language of morality yet whose achievements foundered on accusations of mendacity. Above all else, she was a woman who made her way in a man's world. Kessler-Harris has crafted a nuanced life of Hellman, empathetic yet unsparing, that situates her in the varied contexts in which she moved, from New Orleans to Broadway to the hearing room of HUAC. A Difficut Woman is a major work of literary and intellectual history. This will be one of the most reviewed, and most acclaimed, books of 2012.

By:   Alice Kessler-Harris
Imprint:   Bloomsbury
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 38mm,  Width: 235mm,  Spine: 155mm
Weight:   653g
ISBN:  

9781596913639

ISBN 10:   1596913630
Pages:   448
Publication Date:   June 2012
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock at Abbey's Bookshop
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Winner of many awards: Joan Kelly Prize, Philip Taft Prize, Herbert Hoover Prize, Bancroft Prize. Has been a fellow at National Humanities Center and Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Past president of Labor and Working-Class History Association. Vice-president and president-elect of the Organization of American Historians. In Pursuit of Equity is a sensitive and illuminating exploration of the manifold ways in which gendered habits of mind shape social action. It is a contribution not just to the history of the past but to the history of the future From Arthur Schlesinger Jr Without a doubt the single best survey of transformation of women's paid and unpaid work from the colonial period to the present. American Historical Review on OUT TO WORK Poses hard, pressing questions about wage justice and provides the historical perspective that is needed to answer them NYTBR on A WOMAN'S WAGE

Kessler-Harris portrays a complex woman...Though much has been written about Hellman, readers will enjoy this reexamination of what Kessler-Harris calls a 'juicy character' in the rarefied New York literary set, one who led a life filled with sex, scandals, art, and ideas. This biography of one of the most controversial women of the twentieth century, written by an award-winning, renowned historian, sure to receive plenty of critical attention. -- Booklist (starred) It's been 25 years since the publication of William Wright's Lillian Hellman, the Image, the Woman ; now is time for a reassessment that will grab our imagination. --Library Journal This is more than the best biography ever written about a famous and famously controversial playwright and activist. With great empathy and authority, Alice Kessler-Harris uses Lillian Hellman's work and life to illuminate the intellectual and political conflicts of 20th-century America. The distinguished historian makes better sense of H