Extollager
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If a moderator could correct the typo in my thread title, I would be grateful. Also, in the "Copious" author thread, the title should use "prolific" rather than copious."
Recently there was a thread for discussion of notably prolific authors who are widely recognized as standard, canonical authors, and the question proposed was: Who are the ones worth reading in their entirety? (Some wiggle room was allowed. One could hold that Stevenson is worth reading in his entirety without intending to read all eight volumes of the Yale edition of the letters, for example.) The list included familiar names of prolific authors such as Shakespeare and Dickens. It was asked that the author should have been dead at least 50 years, so as to give time to establish that the author in question was a true standard, canonical author.
www.sffchronicles.com
(The thread title should have used "prolific" rather than the more ambiguous "copious.")
The present thread is intended for discussion of this same question: Who (if any) are the 20th century and even 21st century dead authors, recognized for their literary excellence, who are worthy of being read in their "entirety"? Really, more specifically, who are the ones you would consider reading in their entirety? To avoid duplication with other Chrons threads, everyone is asked, please, not to nominate authors who are widely known as authors of science fiction and fantasy, horror, children's books, or of mystery fiction-- so this isn't the place for Le Guin, Bradbury, Tolkien, etc., great as they may be. It would be good, too, if authors much of whose productivity was in the 19thC were discussed on the other thread, even if they wrote a lot in the 20C (e.g. Rudyard Kipling).
The thread is concerned with novelists, poets, playwrights, perhaps essayists and memoirists, but not people primarily known as historians, literary critics, etc. If the writer is widely recognized as a good letter writer, that output might be considered in reckoning up his or her prolificity.
Here are some prolific authors from the period whom I would be ready to read in their entirety and upon the reading of whose works I've made a good start:
Evelyn Waugh
V. S. Naipaul
Sigrid Undset
George Orwell
Some other authors who make it as prolific, as having attained widespread recognition for their literary achievement, and who died within the period include
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Graham Greene
Jean Giono
William Faulkner
C. P. Snow
Kingsley Amis (he did write in the sf, horror, and mystery genres, but that work is a relatively small portion of his overall productivity)
Thomas Mann
Rose Macaulay
Heinrich Böll
Iris Murdoch
Arthur Koestler
Saul Bellow
Halldor Laxness
William Golding
Anthony Burgess
Hermann Hesse
John Steinbeck
Virginia Woolf
Anthony Powell
Isaac Bashevis Singer --- he sure was prolific!
Joyce Carol Oates
Patrick O'Brian
Kurt Vonnegut
A. N. Wilson
I would consider reading "everything" by W. G. Sebald and Bruce Chatwin, but to me they do not seem to qualify as prolific authors. My rule of thumb for nominations is that the author in question (for this thread) must have written so much that it would take quite a few weeks to read everything. Sebald and Chatwin could be read pretty comfortably in a couple of weeks each, I suppose.
yalebooks.yale.edu
Recently there was a thread for discussion of notably prolific authors who are widely recognized as standard, canonical authors, and the question proposed was: Who are the ones worth reading in their entirety? (Some wiggle room was allowed. One could hold that Stevenson is worth reading in his entirety without intending to read all eight volumes of the Yale edition of the letters, for example.) The list included familiar names of prolific authors such as Shakespeare and Dickens. It was asked that the author should have been dead at least 50 years, so as to give time to establish that the author in question was a true standard, canonical author.
Prolific Authors: Who Are the Ones Worth Reading “Everything”?
I decided to start this thread. The idea is to focus on non-genre authors (so not Tolkien etc.) who are established as multi-generational standard, canonical authors, and who were copious. Here are examples of authors who, I’d say, qualify, and ones who don’t. I’m just trying to get a...
www.sffchronicles.com
(The thread title should have used "prolific" rather than the more ambiguous "copious.")
The present thread is intended for discussion of this same question: Who (if any) are the 20th century and even 21st century dead authors, recognized for their literary excellence, who are worthy of being read in their "entirety"? Really, more specifically, who are the ones you would consider reading in their entirety? To avoid duplication with other Chrons threads, everyone is asked, please, not to nominate authors who are widely known as authors of science fiction and fantasy, horror, children's books, or of mystery fiction-- so this isn't the place for Le Guin, Bradbury, Tolkien, etc., great as they may be. It would be good, too, if authors much of whose productivity was in the 19thC were discussed on the other thread, even if they wrote a lot in the 20C (e.g. Rudyard Kipling).
The thread is concerned with novelists, poets, playwrights, perhaps essayists and memoirists, but not people primarily known as historians, literary critics, etc. If the writer is widely recognized as a good letter writer, that output might be considered in reckoning up his or her prolificity.
Here are some prolific authors from the period whom I would be ready to read in their entirety and upon the reading of whose works I've made a good start:
Evelyn Waugh
V. S. Naipaul
Sigrid Undset
George Orwell
Some other authors who make it as prolific, as having attained widespread recognition for their literary achievement, and who died within the period include
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Graham Greene
Jean Giono
William Faulkner
C. P. Snow
Kingsley Amis (he did write in the sf, horror, and mystery genres, but that work is a relatively small portion of his overall productivity)
Thomas Mann
Rose Macaulay
Heinrich Böll
Iris Murdoch
Arthur Koestler
Saul Bellow
Halldor Laxness
William Golding
Anthony Burgess
Hermann Hesse
John Steinbeck
Virginia Woolf
Anthony Powell
Isaac Bashevis Singer --- he sure was prolific!
Joyce Carol Oates
Patrick O'Brian
Kurt Vonnegut
A. N. Wilson
I would consider reading "everything" by W. G. Sebald and Bruce Chatwin, but to me they do not seem to qualify as prolific authors. My rule of thumb for nominations is that the author in question (for this thread) must have written so much that it would take quite a few weeks to read everything. Sebald and Chatwin could be read pretty comfortably in a couple of weeks each, I suppose.
Book Details - Yale University Press
yalebooks.yale.edu
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