Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Hamilton, Ian - William Pratt (review date summer 1983)

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William Pratt (review date summer 1983)

SOURCE: Pratt, William. Review of Robert Lowell: A Biography, by Ian Hamilton. World Literature Today 57, no. 3 (summer 1983): 463-64.

[In the following review, Pratt discusses Hamilton's Robert Lowell: A Biography, and Robert Lowell: Nihilist as Hero, by Vereen M. Bell. Pratt asserts that Hamilton's biography is “the fullest presentation of Lowell's life so far.”]

“I go over my life trying to understand it—I think in a way I never understood it,” Robert Lowell admitted to Peter Taylor, many years after they had begun their writing careers together at Kenyon College, and he agreed with George Santayana's saying that “I have enjoyed writing about my life more than living it.” Certainly Lowell's life was desperately unhappy much of the time, though it is not certain whether his catastrophic personal existence drove him to be a writer, or his writing drove him to...

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   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)
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   19. Tom Dardis (review date 2 March 1991)
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   23. J. L. Carr (review date 7 March 1992)
   24. Paul Binding (review date 16 October 1992)
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   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)
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   46. Robert Potts (review date 1 April 2002)
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   48. Karl Miller (review date 20 April 2002)
   49. Hugo Williams (essay date 11 October 2003)
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