Authors

by Karl Miller

This book is a defense of authorship--authorship whose public works proceed from and incorporate private lives. Examining the question of the presence of authors in their writings, and of certain authors in the writings of others, Miller focuses on the memorial writings of Louisa Stuart
(1757-1851) and Primo Levi, and the work of a wide variety of other authors, including Cervantes, Samuel Richardson, V.S. Naipaul, Kingsley Amis, Peter Ackroyd, Milan Kundera, Ryszard Kapuscinski, and James Kelman. Originally published to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the London Review of
Books , the book also touches on the opinions and idiosyncrasy of authors; imitation, replication, and pastiche; ghosts; Hamlet and its enduring popularity; recent authorial crises and case histories; and literary journalism.

244 pages, Paperback

First published July 25, 1989

About the author

Karl Fergus Connor Miller FRSL was a Scottiish literary editor, critic and writer. He was educated at the Royal High School of Edinburgh and Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied English; he was a Cambridge Apostle. He became literary editor of The Spectator and the New Statesman. Miller resigned from the latter over a disagreement with the magazine's editor Paul Johnson, over the extent to which the literary pages treated difficult subjects and also Johnson's disapproval of The Beatles and their fans.

He was then editor of The Listener (1967–73) and subsequently of the London Review of Books, which he founded, from 1979 to 1992. He was also Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature and head of the English Department at University College London from 1974 to 1992.