From Library Journal
Powell was a noteworthy novelist of mid-20th-century America whose satirical observations and keen sense of the complexities of social relationships unfolded into a perceptive chronicle of the two milieus she knew so well the melancholy frustrations of small-town life in Ohio and the brutal sophistication of uptown Manhattan. She enjoyed a reputation in Greenwich Village literary circles for her wit, humor, compassion, and somewhat hedonistic lifestyle. And yet, despite a steady stream of publications throughout her career, she never achieved the popularity, critical acclaim, and financial security she so richly deserved and so desperately sought. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Page (Dawn Powell: A Biography, LJ 9/15/98), Powell's writings have been rescued from literary obscurity and added to the prestigious Library of America series. Collected here are nine novels spanning her prolific career. Volume 1 includes Dance Night; Come Back to Sorrento; Turn, Magic Wheel; Angels on Toast; and A Time To Be Born. Included in Volume 2 are My Home Is Far Away, The Locusts Have No King, The Wicked Pavilion, and The Golden Spur. Page's chronology of Powell's career and his extensive chapter notes promote a deeper understanding of this distinctive literary voice. Together with her diaries and selected letters, these volumes firmly establish Powell's contribution to American literature. Each novel is fairly short, making this set an attractive option for book club members seeking new material. For all serious literature collections. Denise S. Sticha, Murrysville Community Lib., PA Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
"Wittier than Dorothy Parker, dissects the rich better than F. Scott Fitzgerald, is more plaintive than Willa Cather in her evocation of the heartland and has a more supple control of satirical voice than Evelyn Waugh, the writer to whom she's most often compared." (Lisa Zeidner, The New York Times)

For decades after her death, Dawn Powell's work was out of print, cherished by a small band of admirers. Only recently has there been renewed awareness of the novelist who was such a vital presence in literary Greenwich Village from the 1920s to the 1960s.

Dawn Powell was the tirelessly observant chronicler of two very different worlds: the small-town Ohio of her childhood and the sophisticated Manhattan to which she gravitated. If her Ohio novels are more melancholy and compassionate in their depiction of often frustrated lives, her Manhattan novels, with their cast of writers, show people, businessmen, and hustling hangers-on, are more exuberant and incisive. But all show rich characterization and a flair for the gist of social complexities. A playful satirist, an unsentimental observer of failed hopes and misguided longings, Dawn Powell is a literary rediscovery of rare importance.

Edited by Tim Page.


From the Inside Flap
American literature has known few writers capable of the comic élan and full-bodied portraiture that abound in the novels of Dawn Powell. Yet for decades after her death, Powell's work was out of print, cherished by a small band of admirers. Only recently has there been a rediscovery of the writer Gore Vidal calls "our best comic novelist," and whom Edmund Wilson considered to be "on a level with Anthony Powell, Evelyn Waugh, and Muriel Spark." With these two volumes, The Library of America presents the best of Powell's quirky, often hilarious, sometimes deeply moving fiction. Dawn Powell—-a vital part of literary Greenwich Village from the 1920s through the 1960s—-was the tirelessly observant chronicler of two very different worlds: the small-town Ohio where she grew up and the sophisticated Manhattan to which she gravitated. If her Ohio novels are more melancholy and compassionate, her Manhattan novels, exuberant and incisive, sparkle with a cast of writers, show people, businessmen, and hustling hangers-on. All show rich characterization and a flair for the gist of complex social situations. A playful satirist, an unsentimental observer of failed hopes and misguided longings, Dawn Powell is a literary rediscovery of rare importance. The first of two volumes, this volume contains Dance Night (1930), Powell's own favorite among her works; Come Back to Sorrento (1932), orginally published as The Tenth Moon, a compelling study of frustrated aspirations; Turn, Magic, Wheel (1936), a whirlwind tour of Manhattan's literary life; Angels on Toast (1940), whose farcical pace recalls screwball comedy; and A Time To Be Born (1942), with its evocation of wartime mass media. Tim Page, the volumes' editor, is the author of Dawn Powell: A Biography and the editor of The Diaries of Dawn Powell and Selected Letters of Dawn Powell. He won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1997, and is a culture critic at the Washington Post.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

American literature has known few writers capable of the comic elan and full-bodied portraiture that abound in the novels of Dawn Powell. Yet for decades after her death, Powell's work was out of print, cherished only by a small band of admirers. Only recently has there been a rediscovery of the writer Gore Vidal calls "our best comic novelist," and whom Edmund Wilson considered to be "on a level with Anthony Powell, Evelyn Waugh, and Muriel Spark." In a two-volume set, The Library of America presents the best of Powell's brilliant, often hilarious, sometimes deeply moving fiction.

Dawn Powell -- a vital part of literary Greenwich Village from the 1920s through the 1960s -- was the observant chronicler of two very different worlds: the small-town Ohio where she grew up and the sophisticated Manhattan where she lived for nearly fifty years. If her Ohio novels are more melancholy and compassionate, her Manhattan novels, exuberant and incisive, sparkle with a cast of writers, show people, businessmen, and hangers-on -- all caught with Powell's uniquely sharp yet compassionate eye. A playful satirist, an unsentimental observer of failed hopes and misguided longings, Dawn Powell is a literary rediscovery of rare importance.

Dance Night (1930), Powell's own favorite among her works, is a surprisingly frank treatment of obsessive longing set in an Ohio factory town during the 1920s. Come Back to Sorrento (1932), a compelling study of frustrated aspirations, tells the story of a woman whose friendship with a music teacher awakens her to a sense of her life's wasted potential. With Turn, Magic Wheel (1936), a whirlwind tour of New York's literary world, Powell reinvented herself as a satirical writer. Her treatment of the "city of perpetual distraction" captures the allure of Manhattan with a lightness and wit to be found in all her New York novels. Angels on Toast (1940), whose farcical pace recalls screwball comedy, is a shrewd treatment of the adulterous misadventures of two salesmen. In A Time To Be Born (1942), set during the dizzying months before America's entry into World War II, Powell portrays the monstrously egotistical Amanda Keeler Evans -- one of her most wickedly barbed creations.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal