‘A massive indispensable book ... He is a fabulously erudite man, his article and lectures on the masterpieces of world literature being the most magisterial and sparkling ever delivered ... The Power of Delight is a testament to his genius ’ Daily Express
‘An undeniably serious estimation of the last 250 years of European and American literature ... [Bayley] is the master of all he surveys ... Where deep logic and logical examination come together he excels ... Literature is where many of us go to live, and Bayley has been before us to some of its more commanding territories’ The Spectator
Beginning his career at Oxford in the 1950s, the ever-incisive John Bayley has been one of the great bulwarks—in the tradition of William Hazlitt and Edmund Wilson— of twentieth-century world literature. His distinctive sensibility has transformed tastes and theories. Here, in The Power of Delight, a volume that has been assembled with the assistance of New Yorker editor Leo Carey, we see at last the full range of Bayley’s life and work, divided into eight sections that include ‘English Literature,’ ‘Russian Novels,’ and ‘American Poetry.’ A wide-ranging guide to essential reading, The Power of Delight examines classics, neglected gems and masterpieces of our time—from Jane Austen to Milan Kundera, Leo Tolstoy to John Ashbery, and from Robert Lowell’s messy persona to George Orwell’s self-canonization.
