Books by John Rodden

Is George Orwell the most influential writer who ever lived? Yes, according to Rodden's provocative book about the transformation of a man into a myth. He charts the astonishing passage of a litterateur into a legend.

Featuring conversations with nine authors, including poets Richard Howard and Gerald Stern, novelist Isabel Allende, and scholar-intellectual Camille Paglia, this book gives a look at literary interview as performance art. Interviews with poets, fiction writers, and intellectuals enable the author to identify a range of rhetorical strategies.

The making of literary reputations is as much a reflection of a writer's surrounding culture and politics as it is of the intrinsic quality and importance of his work

John Rodden uses the concept of reception history to shed new light on the way the memory of George Orwell has shaped and been shaped by the intellectuals of the last fifty years.

The making of literary reputations is as much a reflection of a writer's surrounding culture and politics as it is of the intrinsic quality and importance of his work

Continuing his masterful investigation of the ongoing reception and continual reinvention of George Orwell six decades after his death, Rodden delves into numerous aspects of Orwell's legacy that have been surprisingly neglected.

Following a literary analysis of "Animal Farm", this text then examines the historical, political and literary issues raised by the novel to basic tenets of Marxism, the Russian Revolution and Josef Stalin, and the relation of George Orwell's life to the writing of the novel.

Lionel Trilling was not only a subtle critic but an elusive and protean writer. This book presents a collection of reviews and essays, and an introduction, that traces the arc of Trilling's reputation and sheds light on many significant facets of his work.

Wide-ranging anthology of criticism devoted to the literary, cultural and political work of the writer Irving Howe.