Edward Mendelson

Edward Mendelson is a professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University.cite web
url = http://www.bookforum.com/archive/feb_07/jones.html
title=The Geography of His House] He is the literary executor of the Estate of W. H. Auden and the author or editor of several books about Auden's work, including "Early Auden" (1981) and "Later Auden" (1999). [cite book
last = Davenport-Hines
first = Richard
title = Auden
authorlink = Richard Davenport-Hines
publisher = Heinemann
location = London
year = 1995
isbn = 0-434-17507-2] He is also the author of a book about nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels, "The Things That Matter: What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say About the Stages of Life" (2006). [cite book
last = Mendelson
first = Edward
title = The Things That Matter: What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say About the Stages of Life
authorlink =
publisher = Pantheon
location = New York
year = 2006
isbn = 0375424083]

He has edited standard editions of works by W. H. Auden, including "Collected Poems" (1976; 2nd edn. 1990; 3rd edn., 2007), "The English Auden" (1977), "Selected Poems" (1979, 2nd edn., 2007), "As I Walked Out One Evening" (selected light verse, 1995), and the continuing "Complete Works of W. H. Auden" (1986- ).

His work on Thomas Pynchon includes "Pynchon: A Collection of Critical Essays" (1978) and numerous essays, including "The Sacred, the Profane, and "The Crying of Lot 49" (1975; reprinted in the 1978 collection) and "Gravity's Encyclopedia" (in "Mindful Pleasures: Essays on Thomas Pynchon," ed. by David Leverenz and George Levine, 1976). The latter essay introduced the critical category of "encyclopedic narrative, further elaborated in a later essay, "Encyclopedic Narrative from Dante to Pynchon" ("MLN," vol. 91, 1976). [cite web
url = http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/pmc/v009/9.3rasula.html
author = Jed Rasula
title=Textual Indigence in the Archive]

He is the editor of annotated editions of novels by Thomas Hardy, George Meredith, Arnold Bennett, H. G. Wells, and Anthony Trollope. With Michael Seidel he co-edited "Homer to Brecht; The European Epic and Dramatic Traditions" (1977).

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. [cite web
url = http://www.rslit.org/fellows.htm
title=Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature]

Before teaching at Columbia, he was an associate professor of English at Yale University and a visiting associate professor of English at Harvard University.

Since 1986 he has written about computing, software, and typography and is a contributing editor of "PC Magazine."

Publications

Books

* (as editor) W. H. Auden. "Collected Poems". Faber & Faber, 1976; Random House, 1976. Revised edition: Vintage Books, 1991; Faber & Faber, 1991; further revised edition: Modern Library, 2007; Faber & Faber 2007.
* (as co-editor) "Homer to Brecht: The European Epic and Dramatic Traditions". Yale University Press, 1977. In collaboration with Michael Seidel.
* (as editor) "". Prentice‐Hall, 1978.
* (as editor) W. H. Auden. "The English Auden: Poems, Essays and Dramatic Writings", 1927-1939. Faber & Faber, 1977; Random House, 1978.
* (as editor) W. H. Auden. "Selected Poems: New Edition". Vintage Books, 1978; Faber & Faber, 1978; expanded edition: Vintage Books, 2007.
* "Early Auden". Viking, 1981; Faber & Faber, 1981; revised paperback edition: Harvard University Press, 1983; Faber & Faber, 1999; Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000.
* (as editor) "The Complete Works of W. H. Auden" (five vols). Princeton University Press, 1986- ; Faber & Faber, 1986- .
* "Later Auden". Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999; Faber & Faber, 1999; revised paperback edition: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000.
* "The Things That Matter: What Seven Classic Novels Have To Say About the Stages of Life". Pantheon, 2006; with new afterword, Anchor Books, 2007.

elected essays

* "The Sacred, the Profane, and "The Crying of Lot 49". "Individual and Community: Variations on a Theme in American Literature", ed. Kenneth H. Baldwin and David K. Kirby. Duke University Press, 1975; revised version in "Pynchon: A Collection of Critical Essays" (see above),
* "Gravity's Encyclopedia". "Mindful Pleasures: Essays on Thomas Pynchon", ed. George Levine and David Leverenz. Little, Brown, 1976.
* "Encyclopedic Narrative, from Dante to Pynchon". "MLN", 91 (December 1976).
* "The Word & the Web". "New York Times Book Review", 2 June 1996.
* [http://www.lctreview.org/article.cfm?id_article=31521284&page=1&id_issue=10018106 "Clarissa Dalloway Remembers Cymbeline".] "Lincoln Center Theater Review", Fall 2007.
* [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20875 "Auden and God".] "New York Review of Books", 6 December 2007.
* [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21497 "New York Everyman".] "New York Review of Books", 12 June 2008.

Popular Culture

In Alexander McCall Smith's novel "The Right Attitude to Rain" (2006), the main character exchanges letters with Mendelson about W.H. Auden and Robert Burns.

References

* "Contemporary Authors" (Gale Research), vol. 65-68
* "Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series" (Gale Research), vols. 11, 87
* "The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English," ed. by Jenny Stringer (1996)

External links

* [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5755318 Interview with Scott Simon, NPR]
* [http://www.bookforum.com/archive/feb_07/jones.html Profile in "Bookforum," February 2007]
* [http://www.nybooks.com/authors/4454 Mendelson author page and archive] from "The New York Review of Books"