Robert Penn Warren Books In Order

Novels

  1. Night Rider (1939)
  2. At Heaven’s Gate (1943)
  3. All the King’s Men (1946)
  4. World Enough and Time (1950)
  5. Band of Angels (1955)
  6. The Cave (1959)
  7. Flood (1964)
  8. Meet Me in the Green Glen (1971)
  9. A Place to Come to (1977)

Collections

  1. The Circus in the Attic (1947)
  2. A Robert Penn Warren Reader (1987)
  3. Selected Poems of Robert Penn Warren (2001)

Chapbooks

  1. Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce (1983)

Anthologies edited

  1. 60 Years of American Poetry (1996)

Non fiction

  1. John Brown (1929)
  2. Remember the Alamo! (1958)
  3. How Texas Won Her Freedom (1959)
  4. Understanding Poetry (1960)
  5. The Legacy of the Civil War (1961)
  6. Wilderness (1961)
  7. Who Speaks for the Negro? (1965)
  8. Faulkner (1966)
  9. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Faulkner (1966)
  10. Homage to Theodore Dreiser (1971)
  11. Democracy and Poetry (1975)
  12. Time to Hear and Answer (1977)
  13. Modern Rhetoric (1979)
  14. Katherine Anne Porter (1979)
  15. Robert Penn Warren Talking (1980)
  16. Jefferson Davis Gets His Citizenship Back (1980)
  17. The Essential Melville (1982)
  18. Portrait of a Father (1988)
  19. New and Selected Essays (1989)
  20. Talking with Robert Penn Warren (1990)
  21. Literary Correspondence (1998)
  22. Selected Letters of Robert Penn Warren (2000)

Novels Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Chapbooks Book Covers

Anthologies edited Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

Robert Penn Warren Books Overview

Night Rider

Warren’s first novel, set during the ‘tobacco wars’ that raged in Kentucky and Tennessee in the early part of this century. Percy Munn is one of Warren s innocent idealists whose delusions become murderous as he attempts to define himself by action in the unfolding violence around him. Southern Classics Series.

At Heaven’s Gate

Plot summary Sue Murdock searches for redemption throughout the novel. Her father repeatedly laments his inability to relate to his daughter. Sue rejects his assistance because she believes he is trying to control her. She has a stormy relationship with Jerry Calhoun, who, perhaps because he is profoundly naive and not particularly bright, is unable to understand her. Jerry clings to quaint notions of Southern honor and is respectful of the power and authority Bogan Murdock represents. Therefore, Sue can never be happy with him. Sue rejects Jerry and soon finds herself with Slim Sarrett, a writer with a room full of pseduo intellectual friends. Sue falls for Slim, who rejects honor and power in a way Jerry never could. In the end, however, nothing about Slim is real: he is a dedicated liar, deceitful to the last detail. As Sue discovers the depths of his lies about his past and sexuality she also discovers that he is not even, in fact, a particularly talented writer. After rejecting Slim, and his artist’s pose, she falls into a tepid relationship with Sweetwater. Sweetwater is a cynic, unlike Jerry, and a realist, unlike Slim. Sweetwater is also profoundly honest and struggles to maintain true to himself. Sweetwater falls in love with Sue, but she never loves him in return. One can read Sue to represent the Southern lower class, abused and controlled for generations. Who can help the lower class escape its shackles? Not the lower class man who tastes a bit of success and abandons his class to serve selfish interests, as Jerry does. Not the intellectual, the artist, who poses at everything and is unable to fight for anything. The seduction is great, but the reward is small. Perhaps the honest man, Sweetwater’s labor organizer, can save the class he to raise up even as he is betrayed and rejected by it. Perhaps Sue knows that Sweetwater’s realism and devotion to cause can save her, but she is little interested in it. Nashville background At Heaven’s Gate can be definitely linked to Warren’s residence in Nashville, Tennessee during his time at Vanderbilt University. Scandals surrounding a Nashville bond trading house, Caldwell & Company, in the 1930s provide a close parallel to some of the machinations of the Murdock empire. Several Caldwell linked banks were declared insolvent, and the state government itself became embroiled in the matter. Too, Private Porsum is visibly based on Alvin C. York, Tennessee’s most famous war hero, although in real life York had nothing to do with the bond scandal. News reports have indicated that in later years Warren acknowledged the link between his story and Nashville events during the Great Depression. source: Wikipedia

All the King’s Men

One of the great classics of American fiction reissued as it was originally written.

Winner of the 1947 Pulitzer Prize, All the King’s Men is one of the most famous and widely read works in American fiction. Its original publication by Harcourt catapulted author Robert Penn Warren to fame and made the novel a bestseller for many seasons. Set in the 1930s, it traces the rise and fall of demagogue Willie Talos, a fictional Southern politician who resembles the real life Huey ‘Kingfish’ Long of Louisiana. Talos begins his career as an idealistic man of the people, but he soon becomes corrupted by success, caught between dreams of service and a lust for power. All the King’s Men is as relevant today as it was fifty years ago.

In a momentous publishing event, Robert Penn Warren’s masterpiece has been restored and reintroduced by literary scholar Noel Polk, whose work on the texts of William Faulkner has proved so important to American literature. Polk presents the novel as it was originally written, and without the deletions required by its original editors. The result restores Warren’s complexity and subtlety to an already near perfect work, charging the characters with an energy and a more tangled web of relationships than previously was available. All the King’s Men is a landmark in letters. This new edition brings it fully to life.

‘The publication of a new, corrected edition of All the King’s Men is welcome
news for all who care about American literature. Robert Penn Warren’s
prize winning novel has remained a classic since its publication more than half
a century ago. Editor Noel Polk has studied the manuscript and all other
available versions of Warren’s finest novels, eliminating errors and retrieving deleted material. The result has been to enrich the character of narrator
Jack Burden and his protagonist, Willie Talos, in this story of tumultuous Louisiana politics which also has implications for morals and manners in the modern world.’ Joseph Blotner, author of Robert Penn Warren: A Biography

/Content /EditorialReview EditorialReview Source Amazon. com Review /Source Content This landmark book is a loosely fictionalized account of Governor Huey Long of Louisiana, one of the nation’s most astounding politicians. All the King’s Men tells the story of Willie Stark, a southern fried politician who builds support by appealing to the common man and playing dirty politics with the best of the back room deal makers. Though Stark quickly sheds his idealism, his right hand man, Jack Burden who narrates the story retains it and proves to be a thorn in the new governor’s side. Stark becomes a successful leader, but at a very high price, one that eventually costs him his life. The award winning book is a play of politics, society and personal affairs, all wrapped in the cloak of history.

World Enough and Time

Plot summary Sue Murdock searches for redemption throughout the novel. Her father repeatedly laments his inability to relate to his daughter. Sue rejects his assistance because she believes he is trying to control her. She has a stormy relationship with Jerry Calhoun, who, perhaps because he is profoundly naive and not particularly bright, is unable to understand her. Jerry clings to quaint notions of Southern honor and is respectful of the power and authority Bogan Murdock represents. Therefore, Sue can never be happy with him. Sue rejects Jerry and soon finds herself with Slim Sarrett, a writer with a room full of pseduo intellectual friends. Sue falls for Slim, who rejects honor and power in a way Jerry never could. In the end, however, nothing about Slim is real: he is a dedicated liar, deceitful to the last detail. As Sue discovers the depths of his lies about his past and sexuality she also discovers that he is not even, in fact, a particularly talented writer. After rejecting Slim, and his artist’s pose, she falls into a tepid relationship with Sweetwater. Sweetwater is a cynic, unlike Jerry, and a realist, unlike Slim. Sweetwater is also profoundly honest and struggles to maintain true to himself. Sweetwater falls in love with Sue, but she never loves him in return. One can read Sue to represent the Southern lower class, abused and controlled for generations. Who can help the lower class escape its shackles? Not the lower class man who tastes a bit of success and abandons his class to serve selfish interests, as Jerry does. Not the intellectual, the artist, who poses at everything and is unable to fight for anything. The seduction is great, but the reward is small. Perhaps the honest man, Sweetwater’s labor organizer, can save the class he to raise up even as he is betrayed and rejected by it. Perhaps Sue knows that Sweetwater’s realism and devotion to cause can save her, but she is little interested in it. Nashville background At Heaven’s Gate can be definitely linked to Warren’s residence in Nashville, Tennessee during his time at Vanderbilt University. Scandals surrounding a Nashville bond trading house, Caldwell & Company, in the 1930s provide a close parallel to some of the machinations of the Murdock empire. Several Caldwell linked banks were declared insolvent, and the state government itself became embroiled in the matter. Too, Private Porsum is visibly based on Alvin C. York, Tennessee’s most famous war hero, although in real life York had nothing to do with the bond scandal. News reports have indicated that in later years Warren acknowledged the link between his story and Nashville events during the Great Depression. source: Wikipedia

The Cave

In his sixth novel, The Cave 1959, Robert Penn Warren tells the story of a young man trapped in a cave in fictional Johntown, Tennessee. His predicament becomes the center of national attention as television cameras, promoters, and newscasters converge on the small town to exploit the rescue attempts and the thousands of spectators gathered at the mouth of The Cave.

The Circus in the Attic

A collection of Penn Warren’s best short fiction: two novelettes and twelve stories that skillfully handle a variety of themes and styles. Worth reading for their craftsmanship and variety Charles Poore, New York Times.

Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce

Blue paper over boards backed with purple cloth, gilt letters. 64 pp.

John Brown

Warren’s first book, a biography that foreshadows the themes developed in novels like All the King’s Men, portrays the flawed idealist whose violent seizure of the Harper’s Ferry arsenal led to the greater violence of the Civil War. Southern Classics Series.

Remember the Alamo!

Remember the Alamo! is the acclaimed classic accounts of one of the most thrilling moments in the history of the United States frontier. The battle for the Alamo was an epic event in the fight for Texas independence from Mexico. Davy Crockett, Colonel Jim Bowie and Colonel Travis are just three of the legendary and colorful heroes whose courageous and doomed defense of the Alamo against an overwhelming Mexican army led by General Santa Anna earned them immortality. Their valiant stand and death inspired the rallying cry, ‘Remember the Alamo! that inspired Texans to continue their struggle and ultimate win their independence from Mexico.

Understanding Poetry

The fourth edition of Understanding Poetry is a re inspection of poetry. Keeping it teachable and flexible, the material allows for full and innocent immersion as well as raising inductive questions to develop critical and analytical skills. Students will be led to understand poetry as a means of imaginatively extending their own experience and indeed, probing the possibilities of the self. This latest incarnation of the landmark text facilitates a thorough study of poetry.

The Legacy of the Civil War

In this elegant book, the Pulitzer Prize winning writer explores the manifold ways in which the Civil War changed the United States forever. He confronts its costs, not only human six hundred thousand men killed and economic beyond reckoning but social and psychological. He touches on popular misconceptions, including some concerning Abraham Lincoln and the issue of slavery. The war in all its facets grows in our consciousness, arousing complex emotions and leaving a gallery of great human images for our contemplation.

Wilderness

This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

Democracy and Poetry

In these two essays, one of America’s most honored writers fastens on the interrelation of American Democracy and Poetry and the concept of selfhood vital to each. I really don t want to make a noise like a pundit, Mr. Warren declares, What I do want to do is to return us and myself most of all to a scrutiny of our own experience of our own world. Indeed, Democracy and Poetry offers one of the most pertinent and strongly personal meditations on our condition to have appeared in recent letters. Our native poetry, that is, literature and art, in general, is a social document, is diagnostic, and has often been a corrosive criticism of our democracy, Mr. Warren argues. Persuasively, and movingly, he shows that all of art and all that goes into the making of democracy require a free and responsible self. Yet the American experience has been one of the decay of the notion of self. Our astounding success jeopardized what we promised to create the free man. For a century and a half the conception of the self has been dwindling, separating itself from traditional values, moral identity, and a secure relation with community. Lonely heroes in a bankrupt civilization, then protest, despair, aimlessness, and violence, have marked our literature. The anguish of Robert Penn Warren s own poetic vision of art and democracy is soothed only by his belief that poetry the making of art can nourish and at least do something toward the rescue of democracy; he shows how art can be come a healer, can be therapeutic. In the face of disintegrative forces set loose in a business and technetronic society, it is poetry that affirms the notion of the self. It is a model of the organized self, an emblem of the struggle for the achieving self, and of the self in a community. More and more as our modern technetronic society races toward the abolition of the self, and diverges from a culture created to enhance the notion of selfhood, poetry becomes indispensable. Compelling, resonant, memorable, Democracy and Poetry is a major testament not only to the vitality of poetry, but also to a faith in democracy.

Jefferson Davis Gets His Citizenship Back

‘ In 1979 Robert Penn Warren returned to his native Todd Country, Kentucky, to attend ceremonies in honor of another native son, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, whose United States citizenship had just been restored, ninety years after his death, by a special act of Congress. From that nostalgic journey grew this reflective essay on the tragic career of Jefferson Davis ”not a modern man in any sense of the word but a conservative called to manage what was, in one sense, a revolution.” Jefferson Davis Gets His Citizenship Back is also a meditation by one of our most respected men of letters on the ironies of American history and the paradoxes of the modern South. Robert Penn Warren 1905 1989, born in Guthrie, Kentucky, was one of America’s most revered writers, producing fiction, poetry, history, and criticism, much of it focusing on the moral dilemmas of the South. He served as America’s first poet laureate. He received the Pulitzer Prize three times, for his novel All the King’s Men and for his books of poetry Promises and Now and Then. He is also the author of Portrait of a Father.

Portrait of a Father

‘ One of America’s great poets writes of his father, lost through death and discovered again through insistent recollection. A death in the family forces a re sorting and reshaping of all that we can recall of times and people gone from us as we measure our identities by their remembered images. While prowling in the past, Warren is drawn to likenesses between himself and his father, between himself and others of his family. The poet finds that his father too, in his long silent youth, ventured into the writing of poetry, as have so many, but in time put it away for other things. Gradually this elegy for his father becomes Warren’s reverie on the many Warrens and Penns who live now only in his memory. We encounter his mother and his mother’s mother, his father’s Warren line thrown back over three generations, as he draws forth sameness, giving shape and full form and then sharp recognition to family members who were and must yet remain mysteries. Then we see that Warren is delineating the tenuous threads of all our many unsettled and fragmentary American family histories, that he is tracing all our steps from the coast over mountain trails into the dark wilderness to the west. With him, when we stop to consider our loved and lost ones, we realize the delicacy of our accepted relationships. In this autobiographical essay and the accompanying poem sequence that echoes it, ”Mortmain,” Warren’s look into the mystery of the past evokes for us the loss and recovery and wonder that death brings.

New and Selected Essays

24 conversations with Robert Penn Warren including a self-interview, television appearances and discussions with writers such as Flannery O’Connor, Ralph Ellison and William Styron. The conversations cover a wide range of subjects – history, politics, race, technological change and teaching.

Literary Correspondence

James A. Grimshaw, Jr., brings together for the first time more than 350 letters exchanged by two scholars who altered the way literature is taught in this country. The selected letters focus on the development of their five major textbooks the rationale for selections, the details involved in obtaining permissions and preparing indexes, and the demands of meeting deadlines. More important, these letters reveal their attitudes toward literature, teaching, and scholarship. Providing insight into two of the most influential literary minds of this century, these letters show two men who were deeply involved in research and writing, and who were committed to a life of travel, conversation, and learning. Their zest for life and their love of literature explain, in part, their uncanny ability to persevere and to succeed. Yet their human qualities are also present in the letters, which bring Brooks and Warren to life as rare individuals able to sustain a deep, lifelong friendship. Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren will help readers better understand the critical work of Brooks and the creative work of Warren. Students and teachers of American literature will find this book indispensable.

Selected Letters of Robert Penn Warren

Volume four of the Selected Letters of Robert Penn Warren covers a crucial time of personal and professional rejuvenation in Warren’s life. During the fifteen year period spanned by this correspondence, he completed Brother to Dragons, Segregation: The Inner Conflict in the South, and Who Speaks for the Negro? As these titles suggest, these years were marked by Warren’s immersion in American history and his maturing interest in race relations. They also saw his return to lyric poetry, after a ten year hiatus, with the publication of the Pulitzer Prize winning collection Promises. Along with seeing the completion of some of his most successful work, this period was a time of momentous change in Warren’s life, including his move to Yale University, his marriage to his second wife, Eleanor, and the birth of his two children. As a chronicle of Warren’s thoughts on his family, his work, his friends, the state of literary studies, and the culture at large, these letters are invaluable.

Unlike many writers, Warren rarely drafted his correspondence with future readers and scholars in mind; he typically saved his prepared statements about the human condition and the state of the world for his poetry, fiction, and social commentary. His letters offer a candid and personal glimpse of Warren’s relationships as well as his personal views on literature, politics, and social trends. Their recipients include Ralph Ellison, Allen Tate, Saul Bellow, Robert Lowell, Eudora Welty, and Louis Rubin, as well as Warren’s editors, reviewers, collaborators, and other friends.

Providing an unusually vivid and personal account of Warren’s rich and fully realized life, these missives are equally revealing of his thoughts on the state of contemporary American culture during this dynamic time in American history.

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