Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men": Three Stage Versions - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0820320978 ISBN 13: 9780820320977

Publisher: University of Georgia Press, 2000

Synopsis

Robert Penn Warren's 1946 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel All the King's Men is one of the undisputed classics of American literature. Fifty years after the novel's publication, Warren's characters still stand as powerful representations of the moral dilemmas faced by individuals in positions of power. All the King's Men had its genesis in Warren's stage play Proud Flesh, unpublished in his lifetime. He also wrote a subsequent unpublished play titled Willie Stark: His Rise and Fall and a later dramatic version of the novel that shared the title All the King's Men.

This volume is the first to collect all three dramatic texts and to publish Proud Flesh and Willie Stark. Proud Flesh is particularly fascinating for what it reveals about the development of All the King's Men and Warren's changing perceptions of its characters and themes. The other plays, as post-novel writings, provide a forum for Warren to clarify his intentions in the novel. The editors' introduction to this collection reviews the composition history of the works and their relationship to the novel and to each other.

The new perspectives on Warren's writing presented in Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men": Three Stage Versions provide a glimpse into a creative mind struggling with a compelling story and offer readers another way of looking at this American classic. This book is an essential reference in Warren studies that will give students of All the King's Men another context from which to consider Warren's novel.

About this title

About the Author:

James A. Grimshaw Jr. (Editor)
JAMES A. GRIMSHAW JR. is Regents Professor of English at Texas A&M University-Commerce.

James A. Perkins (Editor)
JAMES A. PERKINS is a professor of English at Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania.

Review:

Robert Penn Warren’s "All the King's Men": Three Stage Versions edited by James A. Grimshaw, Jr., and James A. Perkins, represents an engaging and valuable contribution to Robert Penn Warren scholarship. Significant research opportunities will be provided with the first-time publication of the texts of Proud Flesh and Willie Stark: His Rise and Fall, together with the second-time publication of All the King's Men: (A Play), in a volume that is expertly, indeed authoritatively edited and complete with an astute and illuminating introductory essay, careful documentary notes, and a meticulous consideration of textual emendations.

(Lewis Simpson Boyd Professor of English, Emeritus, Louisiana State University)

Offers us a long-needed look at what had been the blank spaces in the twenty-year evolution of Warren’s most celebrated story. (Keith Pery South Atlantic Review)

Grimshaw and Perkins imply that it is high time for scholars to acknowledge and address the specifically dramatic dimension of Warren’s achievement, and this volume will make that task much easier. (William Bedford Clark Sewannee Review)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0820320978
• ISBN 13: 9780820320977
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 264
• Editor: Grimshaw Jr. James A., Perkins James A.