Book description
Ian Hamilton's last book, published posthumously in 2002, is a
typically brilliant revisiting of the concept of Samuel Johnson's
classic Lives of the English Poets, wherein Hamilton considers 45
deceased poets of the twentieth century, offering his personal
estimation of what claims they will have on posterity and 'against
oblivion.' Examples of each poet's verse accompany Hamilton's text,
making the book both a provocative primer and a kind of critical
anthology. 'The affective power of this book... lies in its
understatement and its understanding of what we might care about. From
a century of Manifestoes and Movements, Hamilton works as a corrective
for the local and particular... his idea of poetry, of what made
greatness in poetry, emerges intact from each measured sentence. His
criticism always pointed you towards all that he could find that was
true in a piece of writing.' Tim Adams, Observer
Ian Hamilton was born in 1938, in King's Lynn, Norfolk, and educated
at Darlington Grammar School and Keble College, Oxford. In 1962, he
founded the influential poetry magazine, the Review, and he was later
editor of the New Review. He also wrote biographies and journalism,
mainly about literature and football. He died in 2001.
