Wallace Stevens, who died in 1955, was one of the most original, prolific, serious, and rewarding of twentieth-century American poets. This is a detailed critical study of his poetry, identifying its concerns, from the point of view of a convinced admirer. Lucy Beckett presents Sevens as a contemplative poet, engaged on a long enquiry into the nature of the relationship between the creative imagination and the world it illuminates and recreates. Steven's achievement is seen as one of the great monuments in English of the endeavour to find and sustain a connection between poetry and belief.

Wallace Stevens

Literature & Fiction

Beckett, Lucy

History & Criticism

Cambridge University Press

In this book Lucy Beckett gives a comprehensive account of Wagner's last and strangest opera. The literary sources of this work, its many links with Wagner's life and thought, its libretto, music and stage history, are all thoroughly examined. There is a full commentary, with extensive quotation, on the work's critical history, and finally, a fresh assessment of its place in the Wagner canon and of its unique quality as a music drama that is both modern and Christian. Full references, a bibliography and a discography are provided. A special chapter of musical analysis is contributed by Arnold Whittall.

Richard Wagner: Parsifal (Cambridge Opera Handbooks)

Arts & Photography

Music

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

The Year of Thamar's Book is set in the months from the spring of 2015 to the summer of 2016. An elderly recluse living in a quiet village in Burgundy discovers he is not as alone in the world as he has for many years assumed. His grandson, well-educated but ignorant, comes to the village to help the old man make a book of the pile of chaotic manuscript that tells the story of a difficult,  painful yet luminous life. As he writes, and listens, the young man learns a good deal, and begins to comprehend not only how French colonial history and the horrors of war in Algeria formed and hurt his grandfather, but also how their lasting consequences are still damaging his country and his own family. At the same time he begins to understand his grandfather's faith.

The Year of Thamar's Book

Genre Fiction

Gracewing

Physical description; 96p. : ill.(some col.), 1 plan ; 28cm. 1995 reprint. Subjects; York Minster. Church architecture - England - York. York (England) - Buildings, structures, etc. North Yorkshire - York - Cathedrals - York Minster - Visitors' guides. York Minster. Guidebooks.

York Minster

Hornak, Angelo

Architecture

Scala Books

The Time Before You Die: A Novel of the Reformation

Ignatius Pr

The good, the true and the beautiful―it is for these that our souls long. Though they reside in unity and perfection in God alone, the written word is one place we can discover glimmers of divine light. The writings of great souls can turn our gaze toward God as he is revealed in Jesus Christ. Even authors who do not know Christ or who reject Christ can still point to him, for anyone who seeks the truth finds it; and any one who turns his back on the truth turns away from a someone whose presence can often be more keenly felt in his absence. In this volume, Lucy Beckett illuminates some of the finest writings in the Western tradition and trains our eye to discover in them the Christian vision of God. She masterfully guides us through Sophocles, Plato, Augustine, Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky and many others, deftly demonstrating each author's worth as a bearer of truth.

In the Light of Christ: Writings in the Western Tradition

Ignatius Press

Beginning in 1914 and ending on the eve of World War II, this epic story follows the coming of age and early manhood of the Prussian aristocrat, Max von Hofmannswaldau. From the idyllic surroundings of his ancestral home to the streets of cosmopolitan Breslau menaced by the Nazi SS, Hofmannswaldau uncovers the truth about his own identity and confronts the modern ideologies that threaten the annihilation of millions of people.
A Postcard from the Volcano opens with the outbreak of World War I and the Prussian pride and patriotism that blind the noble von Hofmannswaldau family to the destruction that lies ahead for their country. The well-researched narrative follows the young count as he leaves home to finish his education and ends up a stranger in the land of his birth.
Both intelligent and sensitive, Beckett’s prose explores the complex philosophical and political questions that led Europe into a second world war, while never losing sight of a man whose life is shaped by his times. A deeply moving historical novel that shows the horrific impact that two world wars had on whole countries, and how individuals struggled to deal with the incredible challenges presented by such devastation.

A Postcard from the Volcano: A Novel of Pre-War Germany

Contemporary

An octogenarian bookseller living alone in London has found a description of his father, as a young doctor in 1920s Breslau, in a story about Weimar Germany. Perhaps his own story might be worth telling? In 1945, as a sixteen-year-old boy rescued from the ruins of Europe, he arrives at a Yorkshire farmhouse. Working on the farm for two years in the strange atmosphere of rural England immediately after World War II, he learns to deal with his memories of what happened to him and to his family and to trust, up to a point, those around him in a foreign country. London in 1947 is stranger still. But he is lucky, as he has been since 1941, when marksmen tried to shoot him into a pit full of corpses in a Lithuanian forest. The year before, different executioners in a different forest further east had shot and killed his father. Those who faced the worst atrocities of World War II, which were inflicted on people in the bloodlands of eastern Poland and western Russia, knew that there was little to choose between the two mighty machines, Nazi and Soviet. How was it possible for the individual to survive the crushing wheels of ideology, terror, and mass murder with his integrity intact? The Leaves Are FallingI, a sequel to A Postcard from the Volcano but a stand-alone story, explores this question. This novel is beautifully written and deeply felt. It is an unabashed roman philosophique et historique, an elucidation of and reflection upon the predicament of the Jewish community in Poland-Lithuania during World War II.--Piers Paul Read, Author, ALIVE

The Leaves Are Falling: A Novel

Literary

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Books by Beckett, Lucy

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Beckett, Lucy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Wallace Stevens

Richard Wagner: Parsifal (Cambridge Opera Handbooks)

Wallace Stevens

Richard Wagner: Parsifal (Cambridge Opera Handbooks)

The Year of Thamar's Book

York Minster

The Time Before You Die: A Novel of the Reformation

In the Light of Christ: Writings in the Western Tradition

A Postcard from the Volcano: A Novel of Pre-War Germany

The Leaves Are Falling: A Novel