Twentieth Century American Literature: Maxwell Anderson

By Chelsea House

The landmark Chelsea House Library of Literary Criticism, first published in the 1980s, is one of the most impressive collections of literary criticism ever produced. It is now available in digital format for the first time. This volume of the series provides excerpts and full-length critical essays on the playwright Maxwell Anderson.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chelsea House
• Release date: Feb 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685661229

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Twentieth Century American Literature: Maxwell Anderson

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Contents

Chapters

Anderson, Maxwell

The Dancing Firefly Years (excerpt on Maxwell Anderson)

Poetry and the Theatre (excerpt on Maxwell Anderson)

The Tired Deans (excerpt on Maxwell Anderson)

Anderson's Winterset (excerpt)

The Poetic Drama: Maxwell Anderson (excerpt)

Core of Belief: An Interpretation of the Plays of Maxwell Anderson (excerpt)

Prize-Winning Blank Verse (on Maxwell Anderson)

Chapters

Anderson, Maxwell

(b. 1888–d. 1959)

Maxwell Anderson was born on December 15, 1888, in Atlantic, Pennsylvania. His father was a Baptist minister who moved from pulpit to pulpit, taking his family with him. In 1911 Anderson graduated from the University of North Dakota and married Margaret Haskett. He earned an M.A. from Stanford University in 1914, then taught high school and college for several years. A committed pacifist, he refused to fight in World War I. From 1918 to 1924 Anderson wrote for magazines and newspapers in New York, and in 1921 co-founded and edited Measure.

His first play, White Desert (1923), was unsuccessful, but his second became an enormous hit the following year. Written with Laurence Stallings, What Price Glory? was a sharp, savage satire on war that made its authors famous. Anderson had his first solo success, Outside Looking In, in 1925, the year he published his only book of poetry,