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Anthony Burgess

Author

Bio

John Anthony Burgess Wilson (1917–93) was an industrious writer. Through over fifty published books, thousands of essays, and countless other drafts and fragments, he articulated the struggles, freedoms and changes that he saw around him, and predicted many more to come. Perhaps his most famous example is A Clockwork Orange (1962), originally an indifferently-received novella which was later adapted into a controversial film by Stanley Kubrick, and provided Burgess with plentiful opportunities to explain his particular artistic vision. The linguistic innovations of that novel, the strict formal devices used to contain them, and its remarkable range of themes are all firmly present in Burgess's poetry.

Now he no longer appears on our screens, it is easy to forget that Burgess was an irrepressible international literary figure whose work was disseminated through the mass media of the 1970s and 1980s. He was many things at once, some of them seemingly irreconcilable. There are in fact many Burgesses to choose from: novelist, composer, teacher, drinker, linguist, husband, rebel, journalist, diarist, extrovert, family man, cook, smoker, art critic, literary critic, television critic, television personality, collector of matchbooks, and - last but not least - poet. His flair for words, formal discipline, experimentalism, and fondness for variousness echoes equally through his music, his novels, his journalism and his literary criticism. These aesthetic competences are abundantly represented in this book.

Anthony Burgess Books

Unidos en Propósito, Diversos en Expresión Reflexiones sobre la Belleza de la Unidad en la Iglesia book cover

Unidos en Propósito, Diversos en Expresión Reflexiones sobre la Belleza de la Unidad en la Iglesia

Arthur W. Pink
Chatsky & Miser, Miser! Two Plays by Anthony Burgess book cover

Chatsky & Miser, Miser! Two Plays by Anthony Burgess

Anthony Burgess
The Black Prince book cover

The Black Prince

Adam Roberts
Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements book cover

Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements

Anthony Burgess
The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard book cover

The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard

J. G. Ballard
Nothing Like the Sun book cover

Nothing Like the Sun

Anthony Burgess
Honey for the Bears book cover

Honey for the Bears

Anthony Burgess
Tremor of Intent book cover

Tremor of Intent

Anthony Burgess
A Clockwork Orange (Restored Text) book cover

A Clockwork Orange (Restored Text)

Anthony Burgess
A Clockwork Orange book cover

A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess
Titus Groan book cover

Titus Groan

Mervyn Peake
The Book of Spies book cover

The Book of Spies

Alan Furst
The Doctor Is Sick book cover

The Doctor Is Sick

Anthony Burgess
The Wanting Seed book cover

The Wanting Seed

Anthony Burgess
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