Edmund Wilson, at Last

Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature, by Lewis M. Dabney (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 656 pp., $35)

THIS splendid biography of Edmund Wilson, decades in preparation, was worth waiting for. Author Lewis Dabney met Wilson during the 1960s and admires him, even to the point of identifying with his sense of being the citizen of “an older America.” The biographer has done prodigious research: Here we have the great man of letters, and the man as he was. No previous biography compares to it, and none could possibly supersede it.

About the Author

Jeffrey Hart

Jeffrey Hart is a contributor to National Review.

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Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature, by Lewis M. Dabney (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 656 pp., $35)

THIS splendid biography of Edmund Wilson, decades in preparation, was worth waiting for. Author Lewis Dabney met Wilson during the 1960s and admires him, even to the point of identifying with his sense of being the citizen of “an older America.” The biographer has done prodigious research: Here we have the great man of letters, and the man as he was. No previous biography compares to it, and none could possibly supersede it.