David Jones

Praise

Praise for David Jones

Shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize

“While his life was hard and never entirely free of post–traumatic stress disorder, David Jones now has—thanks to Thomas Dilworth—a biography worthy of his originality and genius.” —The Washington Post

“Nobody alive knows more about David Jones than Thomas Dilworth.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

“It’s ever so rarely you get a perfect biography, a marvellous match of subject and writer—but Thomas Dilworth’s biography of David Jones is just that.” —Evening Standard

“An overdue biography . . . [Jones’s] achievements as a Modernist writer rank him alongside T. S. Eliot and James Joyce.” —The Economist

“Lavishly illustrated and wonderfully well written… Dilworth is that rare thing: a scholar who has the capacity for great clarity.” —Rachel Cooke, The Guardian

“Dilworth’s book is a splendid example of biography–making . . . Dilworth has researched his man properly; and as importantly, he has selected and shaped the fruits of his research into a gracefully written and fitly proportioned whole . . . I cannot recommend it highly enough, both as an adjunct to an appreciation of Jones’s literary and visual achievements, and as a literary achievement in its own right.” —Notre Dame Review

“As Professor Dilworth makes the backgrounds of Jones’s writing clearer and more comprehensible, he confirms the power, depth, and relevance of his work as a whole.”
—W.S. Merwin

“Dilworth is deft at tracing two of the essential ingredients in Jones’s life and work… [A] wonderful book.”” —The Spectator

“Dilworth is a brilliant describer and analyst of the art; his descriptions would make individual works vivid to the reader even if they weren’t reproduced in this richly illustrated book.” —The Guardian

“Thomas Dilworth’s welcome (and superbly produced) biography will clearly be the point of reference for Jones’s life for a long time to come.” —New Statesman

“Dilworth’s narrative sympathetically illuminates the workings of a troubled, original mind, its interplay with mid–20th century English intellectual life, and its continuing resonance.” —Financial Times