Kirjahaku

Joyce Cary (1888-1957) is indisputably one of the finest English novelists of this century. His reputation at his death equaled those of such contemporaries as Aldous Huxley and Evelyn Waugh. His exuberant style allowed him to create a vivid array of men and women whose stories embody the conflicts of their day and whose characters are beautifully realized. Written in his last years, his "Second Trilogy" (Prisoner of Grace, Except the Lord, and Not Honour More) shows the mature Cary at his most brilliant, as he unfolds the tragicomedy of private lives compromised by politics and religion. While in his earlier trilogy (Herself Surprised, To Be a Pilgrim, and The Horse's Mouth) he pits the visionary artist against an indifferent but by no means dull world, in his masterful "Second Trilogy" he maps that gray landscape between good and evil where life is at its most dangerous. The concluding novel in Joyce Cary's "Second Trilogy," Not Honour More (1955) takes up at the point Prisoner of Grace (1952) ends. The setting is Palm Cottage, the remnant property of the Slapton-Latter family and now the scene of an unhappy m nage consisting of Captain Jim Latter (retired), his wife Nina (n e Woodville), and her former husband, Chester Nimmo. It is 1926, the year of the General Strike. Nimmo, once a Cabinet Minister, sees the situation as his chance for a political comeback, while Jim, head of the emergency civilian police, feels it his duty to take his stand, however desperate, against "the grabbers and tapeworms... sucking the soul out of England." For Nina, the trapped go-between, their inevitable clashes can lead nowhere but disaster. Not Honour More is Jim's book, "my statement, so help me, as I hope to be hung."

Originally published in 1958, this book by artist Joyce Cary examines 'the relation of the artist with the world as it seems to him, and to see what he does with it'. Cary speaks from practical experience when describing artistic inspiration and the ways in which varying arts present different forms of 'truth'. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in art and the psychology of the artist.

The Horse's Mouth is a searing portrait of the artistic temperament. As Gulley Jimson criss-crosses London in search of money and inspiration, the world as seen through his eyes appears with a wonderful lustre and a terrible beauty.

Herself Surprised is the story of Sara Monday, a former housemaid who tells of "her grand days" and of all her "coming down days since."Looking back from a prison cell on a life that covers the first half of the twentieth century, Sara introduces a gallery of vivid characters: her timid and doting husband, Mr. Monday; Rozzie, her hard-boiled friend; her various lovers including the brilliant but dangerously violent painter Gully Jimson and the miserly lawyer Tom Wilcher.In Sara, an irrepressible, sexually magnetic woman, at once manipulated and generous to a fault, Cary has created a complex and wonderfully realised character - one of the most memorable in twentieth-century fiction. Praise for Herself Surprised: 'There seems to be more truth of human nature, a profounder understanding of the springs of action than in any novel I have read for a long time' - L P Hartley'The life story of one of the most engaging and subtly realised heroines of recent fiction' - Atlantic Monthly'A remarkable novel... beautifully done' - Country Life'Acute, balanced, and at times brilliantly pure narrative, with a delicacy of insight that adorns everything he touches ... A very live and true story' - Times Literary SupplementJoyce Cary was born in 1888 into an old Anglo-Irish family and educated at Clifton. He studied art, first in Edinburgh and then in Paris, before going up to Trinity College, Oxford in 1909 to read law. On coming down he served as a Red Cross orderly in the Balkan War of 1912-13, the inspiration for Memoir of the Bobotes, before joining the Nigerian Political Service. He served in the Nigeria Regiment during the First World War, and his time in Africa provided the inspiration for his first four novels. Though he settled in Oxford as a full-time writer in 1920, it was not until 1932 that his first book was published. At the time of his death in 1957, he was recognised as one of the leading novelists in the world.

Tom Wilcher is a miserly lawyer, deeply at odds with the modern world. Approaching death, amidst a close-knit family that he both resents and loves, he reviews his life and times.Tom Wilcher, the hero of the second volume of Joyce Cary's First Trilogy, has been at various times a political activist, a tight-fisted lawyer, a self-sacrificing brother and a dirty old man. But as he faces death his spiritual yearnings are uppermost in his mind.Each volume of Cary's trilogy, which begins with Herself Surprised and continues in The Horse's Mouth, brings a single character to intense and memorable life and can be read entirely on its own. But when read together the three books, with their three strikingly different narrators, afford new and startling perspectives on each other.In the end, the trilogy offers a sweeping vision, at once funny and sad, sympathetic and satirical, of humanity in all its fallen and free glory. It is the work of a writer of dazzling insight and verbal resource, and among the landmarks of twentieth-century fiction. Praise for To Be a Pilgrim: 'I thought that this was a really fine book ... Tom is superbly drawn by Cary and there is a rich cast of characters, each one distinct in her/his own way. It is also a book about how England has changed over the years ... along the lines of Brideshead Revisited - The Modern Novel'Its excellence lies in the great skill with which a character is drawn in all its variety, in the minor portraits of members of his family with their subsidiary stories and in the unhesitating and illuminating detail of half a century of English life' - The ObserverJoyce Cary was born in the north of Ireland in 1888 into an Anglo-Irish family. He studied art, first in Edinburgh and then in Paris, before going up to Trinity College, Oxford in 1909 to read law. On coming down he served as a Red Cross orderly in the Balkan War of 1912-13, the inspiration for Memoir of the Bobotes, before joining the Nigerian Political Service. He served in the Nigeria Regiment during the First World War, and his time in Africa provided the inspiration for his first four novels. Though he settled in Oxford as a full-time writer in 1920, it was not until 1932 that his first book was published. At the time of his death in 1957, he was recognised as one of the leading novelists in the world.

Its protagonist, Gulley Gimson, is an impoverished painter who scorns conventional good behaviour. If a bad citizen, he is a good artist, so wholly preoccupied with his art that he is willing to endure any privation. For Gulley there is but one morality: to be a painter.