Articles Written by:    CHRISTOPHER BENFEY     

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Renaissance Men

“Try always,” says the worldly Cardinal Wolsey in “Wolf Hall,” ­Hilary Mantel’s fictional portrait of Henry VIII’s turbulent court, “to find out what people wear under their clothes.” Katherine of Aragon, the queen who can’t produce an heir, wears a ...

From CHRISTOPHER BENFEY, The New York Times,  30 Oct 2009
Related Topics: Hilary Mantel,  Thomas More,  Thomas Cromwell,  Frick Collection,  Robert Bolt

Watteau at the Met.

Christopher Benfey is Mellon professor of English at Mount Holyoke. His latest book, A Summer of Hummingbirds, about writers and artists in Gilded Age America, has just been published by the Penguin Press. What did you think of this article? ...

From CHRISTOPHER BENFEY, Slate,  30 Sep 2009

Science and the Sublime

In this big two-hearted river of a book, the twin energies of scientific curiosity and poetic invention pulsate on every page. Richard Holmes, the pre-eminent biographer of the Romantic generation and the author of intensely intimate lives of Shelley ...

From CHRISTOPHER BENFEY, The New York Times,  17 Jul 2009
Related Topics: Richard Holmes,  Joseph Banks,  Benjamin Franklin

Biographical Fever

iterary biography of the Anglo-American variety has its roots in Samuel Johnson’s terse lives of the English poets and James Boswell’s garrulous life of Johnson. Curiosity about the tangled loves of the Romantic generation of Byron and the Shelleys ...

From CHRISTOPHER BENFEY, The New York Times,  10 Jul 2009
Related Topics: Samuel Johnson,  James Boswell,  Virginia Woolf,  Anglo American plc,  Julian Barnes

A New Biography Tries To Do Justice To Do The Life Of Flannery O'Connor

'I am one of those people who could die for his religion sooner than take a bath for it," Flannery O'Connor wrote during the spring of 1958, after her rich Savannah cousin Katie Semmes had paid for a pilgrimage to the healing waters of Lourdes for ...

From CHRISTOPHER BENFEY, The New Republic,  28 May 2009
Related Topics: Flannery O'Connor,  Elizabeth Bishop,  Stephen Crane,  Henry James

Francis Bacon at the Met.

Christopher Benfey is Mellon professor of English at Mount Holyoke. His latest book, A Summer of Hummingbirds, about writers and artists in Gilded Age America, has just been published by the Penguin Press. What did you think of this article? I believe ...

From CHRISTOPHER BENFEY, Slate,  27 May 2009
Related Topics: Francis Bacon,  NASA

Horror lurks within

THE 14 noirish narratives of novelist Joyce Carol Oates, gathered with a title story that might be summarized as "Dear Husband, I'm afraid I've killed the kids," imply that American family life, especially of the upscale white suburban variety, is no ...

From CHRISTOPHER BENFEY, Shanghai Daily,  11 Apr 2009
Related Topics: Joyce Carol Oates,  Sylvia Plath,  Derek Walcott,  Eudora Welty

Hard-Knock Lives

What does Joyce Carol Oates, a novelist, poet and critic of ­Scheherazade-like versatility, bring to the claustrophobic confines of the short story? These 14 noirish narratives, gathered with a title story that might be summarized as “Dear Husband, I’m ...

From CHRISTOPHER BENFEY, The New York Times,  3 Apr 2009
Related Topics: Joyce Carol Oates,  Sylvia Plath,  Derek Walcott,  Eudora Welty

Charles Darwin, the unsung abolitionist

CHARLES Darwin, a 22-year-old dropout from medical school who subsequently considered becoming a priest, boarded the Beagle in late 1831 and spent five years on the ship, traveling the world and collecting natural specimens. Despite its cuddly name, ...

From CHRISTOPHER BENFEY, Shanghai Daily,  7 Feb 2009
Related Topics: Herbert Spencer

Book review: Darwin’s Sacred Cause and Angels and Ages

Charles Darwin, a 22-year-old dropout from medical school who subsequently considered becoming a priest, boarded the Beagle in late 1831 and spent five years on the ship, traveling the world and collecting natural specimens. Two arresting new books, ...

From CHRISTOPHER BENFEY, International Herald Tribune,  2 Feb 2009
Related Topics: Charles Darwin,  Herbert Spencer

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