William Alexander Percy

Author : Benjamin E. Wise
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 0807869953
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book William Alexander Percy written by Benjamin E. Wise and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2012-03-12 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this evocative biography, Benjamin E. Wise presents the singular life of William Alexander Percy (1885-1942), a queer plantation owner, poet, and memoirist from Mississippi. Though Percy is best known as a conservative apologist of the southern racial order, in this telling Wise creates a complex and surprising portrait of a cultural relativist, sexual liberationist, and white supremacist. We follow Percy as he travels from Mississippi around the globe and, always, back again to the Delta. Wise's exploration brings depth and new meaning to Percy's already compelling life story--his prominent family's troubled history, his elite education and subsequent soldiering in World War I, his civic leadership during the Mississippi River flood of 1927, his mentoring of writers Walker Percy and Shelby Foote, and the writing and publication of his classic autobiography, Lanterns on the Levee. This biography sets Percy's life and search for meaning in the context of his history in the Deep South and his experiences in the gay male world of the early twentieth century. In Wise's hands, these seemingly disparate worlds become one.

Author : William Alexander Percy
Publisher : Knopf
ISBN 13 : 0307820270
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Lanterns On The Levee written by William Alexander Percy and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2012-09-05 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born and raised in Greenville, Mississippi, within the shelter of old traditions, aristocratic in the best sense, William Alexander Percy in his lifetime (1885–1942) was brought face to face with the convulsions of a changing world. Lanterns on the Levee is his memorial to the South of his youth and young manhood. In describing life in the Mississippi Delta, Percy bridges the interval between the semifeudal South of the 1800s and the anxious South of the early 1940s. The rare qualities of this classic memoir lie not in what Will Percy did in his life—although his life was exciting and varied—but rather in the intimate, honest, and soul-probing record of how he brought himself to contemplate unflinchingly a new and unstable era. The 1973 introduction by Walker Percy—Will's nephew and adopted son—recalls the strong character and easy grace of "the most extraordinary man I have ever known."

Author : Walker Percy
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1453216251
Total Pages : 199 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Moviegoer written by Walker Percy and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2011-03-29 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this National Book Award–winning novel from a “brilliantly breathtaking writer,” a young Southerner searches for meaning in the midst of Mardi Gras (The New York Times Book Review). On the cusp of his thirtieth birthday, Binx Bolling is a lost soul. A stockbroker and member of an established New Orleans family, Binx’s one escape is the movie theater that transports him from the falseness of his life. With Mardi Gras in full swing, Binx, along with his cousin Kate, sets out to find his true purpose amid the excesses of the carnival that surrounds him. Buoyant yet powerful, The Moviegoer is a poignant indictment of modern values, and an unforgettable story of a week that will change two lives forever. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Walker Percy including rare photos from the author’s estate.

Author : Gerald Brenan
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 480 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A History of the House of Percy written by Gerald Brenan and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The House of Percy is one of the most illustrious in English history and the Percy family has controlled the Earldom (later Dukedom) of Northumberland with very few breaks since the time of William the Conqueror.

Author : Bertram Wyatt-Brown
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198022301
Total Pages : 499 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The House of Percy written by Bertram Wyatt-Brown and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1996-11-21 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The novels of Walker Percy--The Moviegoer, Lancelot, The Second Coming, and The Thanatos Syndrome to name a few--have left a permanent mark on twentieth-century Southern fiction; yet the history of the Percy family in America matches anything, perhaps, that he could have created. Two centuries of wealth, literary accomplishment, political leadership, depression, and sometimes suicide established a fascinating legacy that lies behind Walker Percy's acclaimed prose and profound insight into the human condition. In The House of Percy, Bertram Wyatt-Brown masterfully interprets the life of this gifted family, drawing out the twin themes of an inherited inclination to despondency and an abiding sense of honor. The Percy family roots in Mississippi and Louisiana go back to "Don Carlos" Percy, an eighteenth-century soldier of fortune who amassed a large estate but fell victim to mental disorder and suicide. Wyatt-Brown traces the Percys through the slaveholding heyday of antebellum Natchez, the ravages of the Civil War (which produced the heroic Colonel William Alexander Percy, the "Gray Eagle"), and a return to prominence in the Mississippi Delta after Reconstruction. In addition, the author recovers the tragic lives and literary achievements of several Percy-related women, including Sarah Dorsey, a popular post-Civil War novelist who horrified her relatives by befriending Jefferson Davis--a married man--and bequeathing to him her plantation home, Beauvoir, along with her entire fortune. Wyatt-Brown then chronicles the life of Senator LeRoy Percy, whose climactic re-election loss in 1911 to a racist demagogue deply stung the family pride, but inspired his bold defiance to the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. The author goes on to tell the poignant story of poet and war hero Will Percy, the Senator's son. The weight of this family narrative found expression in Will Percy's memoirs, Lanterns on the Levee--and in the works of Walker Percy, who was reared in his cousin Will's Greenville home after the suicidal death of Walker's father and his mother's drowning. As the biography of a powerful dynasty, steeped in Sou8thern traditions and claims to kinship with English nobility, The House of Percy shows the interrelationship of legend, depression, and grand achievement. Written by a leading scholar of the South, it weaves together intensive research and thoughtful insights into a riveting, unforgettable story.

Author : Kieran Quinlan
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807141427
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Walker Percy, the Last Catholic Novelist written by Kieran Quinlan and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : William Alexander Percy
Publisher : Knopf
ISBN 13 : 0385352409
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Collected Poems of William Alexander Percy written by William Alexander Percy and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2013-11-20 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nothing would have given Will Percy greater delight—he died in January 1942—than this Collected Poems, for although he was lawyer, soldier, cosmopolitan, plantation-owner, and patriot, it was as a poet that he chose to think himself. And indeed this is a volume to be treasured by those whose memories go fondly back to days of quieter, more contemplative living. For Percy was not in any sense a modernist; his love of tradition is as evident in these poems as it was in his prose. Here again is the same gentle quality of nostalgia which has made Lanterns on the Levee one of the most charming and authentic pictures of the old South at its best. Percy’s first book of poems, Sappho in Levkas, was issued in 1905 and was followed by three others: In April Once (1920), Enzio’s Kingdom (1924), and Selected Poems (1930). In all of his poetry, Percy’s phrasing is lyric and dramatic; his verse forms subtly musical and finely regular—truly the work of a man who dreamed of the past and feared—all too prophetically—a dark and ominous future.

Author : Jennifer Jensen Wallach
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820335029
Total Pages : 194 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Closer to the Truth Than Any Fact written by Jennifer Jensen Wallach and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although historians frequently use memoirs as source material, too often they confine such usage to the anecdotal, and there is little methodological literature regarding the genre’s possibilities and limitations. This study articulates an approach to using memoirs as instruments of historical understanding. Jennifer Jensen Wallach applies these principles to a body of memoirs about life in the American South during Jim Crow segregation, including works by Zora Neale Hurston, Willie Morris, Lillian Smith, Henry Louis Gates Jr., William Alexander Percy, and Richard Wright. Wallach argues that the field of autobiography studies, which is currently dominated by literary critics, needs a new theoretical framework that allows historians, too, to benefit from the interpretation of life writing. Her most provocative claim is that, due to the aesthetic power of literary language, skilled creative writers are uniquely positioned to capture the complexities of another time and another place. Through techniques such as metaphor and irony, memoirists collectively give their readers an empathetic understanding of life during the era of segregation. Although these reminiscences bear certain similarities, it becomes clear that the South as it was remembered by each is hardly the same place.

Author : Bernadette A. Lear
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN 13 : 0822988631
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Made Free and Thrown Open to the Public written by Bernadette A. Lear and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Made Free and Thrown Open to the Public charts the history of public libraries and librarianship in Pennsylvania. Based on archival research at more than fifty libraries and historical societies, it describes a long progression from private, subscription-based associations to publicly funded institutions, highlighting the dramatic period during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when libraries were “thrown open” to women, children, and the poor. Made Free explains how Pennsylvania’s physical and cultural geography, legal codes, and other unique features influenced the spread and development of libraries across the state. It also highlights Pennsylvania libraries’ many contributions to the social fabric, especially during World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. Most importantly of all, Made Free convincingly argues that Pennsylvania libraries have made their greatest strides when community activists and librarians, supported with state and local resources, have worked collaboratively.

Author : Bertram Wyatt-Brown
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 9780820316659
Total Pages : 140 pages
Book Rating : 4.52/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Literary Percys written by Bertram Wyatt-Brown and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few families in America can claim so many gifted writers as the Percys. This examines the role of gender and family history in the writings of this exceptional lineage.