The Epic Strain in the English Novel

London England: Chatto & Windus, 1967. Hardback. The Epic Strain in the English Novel. Previous owners name and date to inside cover. Price clipped to D/J. Dr. Tillyard's new book carries into the field of the novel some of the principles which guided his The English Epic and its Background. Our conceptions of the novel are in a muddle, he thinks, and wae shall not get out of it 'till we make the word Novel as vague as the word Drama'. In prose fiction, as in poetry, 'the epic writer mjust express the feelings of a large group of people living in or near his own time': the epic kind demands also a certain largeness of scope, a variety and control of detail, and a sustained intensity. Dr. Tillyard finds these qualities in only a few English novels - Robinson Crusoe, three of Walter Scott's, Nostromo, and The Old Wives' Tale. He examines the workds of other writers - Fielding, Thackeray, Melville, Henry James, George Eliot, Joyce - in their relation to his theme. Dr. Tillyard's reassessment of Scott is timely, and his long chapter on Nostromo is particularly impressive. But throughout the book we feel the authority, the eaqse and the intellectual indeoendence of a great English scholar. 208 pp. (We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. academic and scholarly books and Modern First Editions, Reference books ,and all types of Academic Literature.) . 3rd Impression. Cloth. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" Tall Octavo. Hardback.