Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Hamilton, Ian - Helen Vendler (review date 21 June 1999)

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Helen Vendler (review date 21 June 1999)

SOURCE: Vendler, Helen. “The Unburied Life.” New Republic 220, no. 25 (21 June 1999): 48-52.

[In the following review of A Gift Imprisoned, Vendler questions Hamilton's assessment of Arnold's life and work.]

The provocative case of Matthew Arnold is raised again in this new but truncated life of that extraordinary man. By entitling his account A Gift Imprisoned: The Poetic Life, Ian Hamilton (a poet himself, and the author of the first full biography of Robert Lowell) gives short shrift to the last thirty-five years of his subject's life, during which Arnold's poetic composition declined while his writing of critical prose increased. Those latter three and a half decades of strenuous work occupy only the last fifth of Hamilton's book, which in effect ends when Arnold is thirty-one. One can imagine an antithetical twin to this new biography: it would be called A Gift Released:...

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2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Michael Fried (review date 22 August 1970)
   2. James Fenton (review date 12 January 1973)
   3. Douglas Dunn (review date 3 March 1973)
   4. V. S. Pritchett (review date 27 August 1976)
   5. Francis King (review date 4 September 1976)
   6. Richard Eder (review date 28 November 1982)
   7. Victor Howes (review date 3 December 1982)
   8. Phoebe Pettingell (review date 13 December 1982)
   9. John Simon (review date 27 December 1982)
   10. John Lucas (review date 13 May 1983)
   11. Anthony Thwaite (review date 14 May 1983)
   12. William Pratt (review date summer 1983)
   13. Robert Richman (review date spring 1984)
   14. Michael Hofmann (review date 25 March 1988)
   15. Robert Ward (review date 1 April 1990)
   16. Frederic Hunter (review date 21 May 1990)
   17. Sean French (review date 15 June 1990)
   18. John Mortimer (review date 23 June 1990)
   19. Tom Dardis (review date 2 March 1991)
   20. Albert E. Kalson (review date summer 1991)
   21. Patrick McGilligan (review date fall 1991)
   22. Martin Fletcher (review date 21 February 1992)
   23. J. L. Carr (review date 7 March 1992)
   24. Paul Binding (review date 16 October 1992)
   25. Rupert Christiansen (review date 5 December 1992)
   26. Philip Horne (review date October 1993)
   27. Michael Horovitz (review date 11 February 1994)
   28. Thomas Mallon (review date June 1994)
   29. Ann Hulbert (review date 22 August 1994)
   30. Victoria Glendinning (review date 23 October 1994)
   31. James L. W. West III (review date winter 1995)
   32. John Simon (review date January 1997)
   33. Peter Firchow (review date summer 1997)
   34. Sanford Pinsker (review date fall 1997)
   35. D. J. Taylor (review date 13 March 1998)
   36. William Scammell (review date 21 March 1998)
   37. Hugo Williams (essay date 24 April 1998)
   38. Lavinia Greenlaw (review date 26 April 1999)
   39. Helen Vendler (review date 21 June 1999)
   40. Dorothy Mermin (review date June 1999)
   41. Bevis Hillier (review date 25 September 1999)
   42. Hallman Bryant (review date fall 2000)
   43. Edward Butscher (review date spring 2001)
   44. William H. Pritchard (essay date winter 2002)
   45. Peter Porter (essay date 18 January 2002)
   46. Robert Potts (review date 1 April 2002)
   47. Mick Imlah (review date 19 April 2002)
   48. Karl Miller (review date 20 April 2002)
   49. Hugo Williams (essay date 11 October 2003)
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