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V.S. Pritchett: A Working Life
Long considered the English Chekhov, V. S. Pritchett was described by Eudora Welty as “one of the great pleasure-givers in our language.” Here is a true literary event: the first major biography of this extraordinary writer, who for most of a century ennobled the ordinary, and the affecting story of the two tumultuous marriages that fueled his art.
He would become universally known as V.S.P., but he began life as Victor–named for Queen Victoria–in 1900. His imagination was both an inheritance from and an inoculation against his unpredictable father: a charming spendthrift who went bankrupt in a variety of businesses. For Victor, writing ultimately became a way to turn the pain of his past into security.
As a reporter in the 1920s, Pritchett was posted to some of the trouble spots of Europe, including pre-Civil War Spain, but he preferred travel to politics, honing the acute perception of common people that he used to great effect in his fiction. His youthful marriage to a better-born aspiring actress was his first crisis, leaving him in sexual misery, comforted only by the “inner riot” of his imagination.
His affair with and marriage to Dorothy Roberts, in his mid-thirties, changed his life. Passionate and forceful, she became Pritchett’s support and secretary, helping him to develop his voice in short stories, novels, literary journalism, and memoirs. His work dramatized the world of his native lower middle class, showing how “every life is interesting.” Their union produced two children and a cache of stunning erotic letters, published in part here for the first time.
But as Pritchett’s international fame as an author and critic grew, so did the couple’s separations. Already a serious drinker, Dorothy became an alcoholic. Pritchett took an American mistress while in residence at Princeton, causing a painful and prolonged domestic crisis.
Illuminating the connections between events in his life and famous works such as his novel Mr. Beluncle, dramatizing the friendships Pritchett forged with other writers, particularly Gerald Brenan, and cogently analyzing the undeserved eclipse his reputation would suffer immediately after his death, Jeremy Treglown’s V. S. Pritchett is the complete story of a popular, influential, deceptively simple author, a man to whom, he once misleadingly claimed, “nothing continues to happen.”
He would become universally known as V.S.P., but he began life as Victor–named for Queen Victoria–in 1900. His imagination was both an inheritance from and an inoculation against his unpredictable father: a charming spendthrift who went bankrupt in a variety of businesses. For Victor, writing ultimately became a way to turn the pain of his past into security.
As a reporter in the 1920s, Pritchett was posted to some of the trouble spots of Europe, including pre-Civil War Spain, but he preferred travel to politics, honing the acute perception of common people that he used to great effect in his fiction. His youthful marriage to a better-born aspiring actress was his first crisis, leaving him in sexual misery, comforted only by the “inner riot” of his imagination.
His affair with and marriage to Dorothy Roberts, in his mid-thirties, changed his life. Passionate and forceful, she became Pritchett’s support and secretary, helping him to develop his voice in short stories, novels, literary journalism, and memoirs. His work dramatized the world of his native lower middle class, showing how “every life is interesting.” Their union produced two children and a cache of stunning erotic letters, published in part here for the first time.
But as Pritchett’s international fame as an author and critic grew, so did the couple’s separations. Already a serious drinker, Dorothy became an alcoholic. Pritchett took an American mistress while in residence at Princeton, causing a painful and prolonged domestic crisis.
Illuminating the connections between events in his life and famous works such as his novel Mr. Beluncle, dramatizing the friendships Pritchett forged with other writers, particularly Gerald Brenan, and cogently analyzing the undeserved eclipse his reputation would suffer immediately after his death, Jeremy Treglown’s V. S. Pritchett is the complete story of a popular, influential, deceptively simple author, a man to whom, he once misleadingly claimed, “nothing continues to happen.”
- GenresNonfiction
352 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
21 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 8, 2012
A good read, explains a lot about this writers life and background; he lead a very interesting and varied life.
July 29, 2022
Read this to learn more about VSP after reading (and most thoroughly savouring) A Cab at the Door and The Midnight Oil. Well researched and pulled together biography and one gets a real flavour of the person he was with all his greatness and his flaws. A people person who observed closely and was passionate over the written word. What a career and what a wonderful legacy of works he leaves....
December 3, 2014
pritchett had huge output of writing: numberless book reviews (and other magazine and newspaper writings), travel books, and short stories. all this as a result of making a living writing? or if he were rich, would he still have been so driven? this bio doesnt really answer that, but interesting and well written. this bio a balance of v s p's family and home life and his art and his 'business'. has great end notes, some pics, seemingly comprehensive bibliography.
author treglown was tls editor 1982-1990, and has just recently written a great book about spain of 20th century Franco's Crypt: Spanish Culture and Memory Since 1936
pritchett and hofer, a photographer, did a series of great cities books, like this one of london that really helped him financially London Perceived
author treglown was tls editor 1982-1990, and has just recently written a great book about spain of 20th century Franco's Crypt: Spanish Culture and Memory Since 1936
pritchett and hofer, a photographer, did a series of great cities books, like this one of london that really helped him financially London Perceived
February 8, 2017
Pritchett is a treasure and this book helps us know him better.
July 2, 2007
Jeremy Treglown is one of the best literary biographers out there.
May 1, 2017
Competent biography of VSP, and likely the only one we will ever get. Largely free of the uppishness that derailed Treglown's biography of Roald Dahl. I don't see, though, what he has against VSP's story 'The Nest Builder', or what he has for 'Many are Disappointed.'
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews