Frank Harris

by Hugh Kingsmill

Overview

Hugh Kingsmill wrote over thirty books, and his highly praised biography of Frank Harris is one of four of his books to be reissued by Faber Finds, to mark the sixtieth anniversary of his death.

'An extremely fine piece of work ... out of this candid recognition of weakness there comes a living portrait which has made at least one reader who found Frank Harris's personality violently antipathetic understand why a great many people adored him and forgave him.' Rebecca West Daily Telegraph

'Hugh Kingsmill's biography of Frank Harris ... is adroit, rather malicious and very entertaining. Little did poor Harris realise, when he was busy roaring his own praises at this young man, that he would be served up with such sauce.' J. B. Priestley Evening Standard

'Kingsmill's biography is neither an adulation nor an attack: it is a record of a 'queer cuss', flashy, magnetic, enormously gifted with everything save principle ...[Harris] skilfully hunts down the spoor of probable fact in the extraordinary tangle of romantic make-believe which Harris planted over his own tracks.' Observer

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780571255047
Publisher:	Faber and Faber
Publication date:	10/28/2009
Pages:	178
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.41(d)

About the Author

Hugh Kingsmill (1889-1949) was a novelist, a biographer of note and a talker of outstanding verve and brilliance. In his introduction to The Best of Hugh Kingsmill, Michael Holroyd wrote, 'Behind the big names of twentieth-century literature there stands a shadow cabinet of writers waiting to take over once the Wind of Change has blown. My own vote goes to High Kingsmill as leader of this opposition'. Hugh Kingsmill wrote over thirty books, and Faber Finds, to mark the sixtieth anniversary of his death, is reissuing four of them: After Puritanism, Frank Harris, Samuel Johnson, and his anthology Johnson Without Boswell.