| Edition |
First U.S. edition. |
| Description |
439 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [361]-429) and index. |
| Contents |
Old-fashioned American traditions -- A tough broad -- A serious playwright -- Politics without fear -- An American Jew -- The writer as moralist -- A self-made woman -- A known Communist -- The most dangerous hours -- Liar, liar -- Life after death. |
| Summary |
Lillian Hellman (1905-1984) was a brilliant playwright (The Children's Hour; The Little Foxes) and screenwriter, but today she is remembered mostly as a memoirist whose works have become drenched into controversy. Indeed, one critical biographer admitted that she provoked obsession in those who wrote about her. The latest and decisively best of those biographers is Alice Kessler-Harris, the Bancroft Prize-winning author of Out to Work. Her title description fits the stubborn, often abrasive Hellman, whose early support of Stalinism later made her the immovable center of widespread post-WWII attacks. Kessler-Harris treats her subject's life as inextricably linked to seismic shifts in American and world culture, an approach that makes Hellman no less difficult, but perhaps much more understandable. |
| Subject |
Hellman, Lillian, 1905-1984.
|
|
Dramatists, American -- 20th century -- Biography.
|
|
Hellman, Lillian, 1905-1984 -- Political and social views.
|
| ISBN |
9781596913639 hardback |
|
1596913630 hardback |
|
