Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life

Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life is a 2014 book by Dorothy Gallagher. It is a critical biography of the American playwright and writer Lillian Hellman.

Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life
EditorDorothy Gallagher
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Subjectnon-fiction, biography
Published2014 (Yale University Press)
Media typePrint (hardback, paperback)
Pages224
ISBN9780300164978
OCLC865109879

Reception

The New York Journal of Books gave a critical review of Lillian Hellman writing "it seems like a professional hit job." and, although acknowledging that Gallagher "is convincing" over the controversy of Hellman's "Julia", concluded "It seems, indeed, that author Gallagher and her subject share more in common when it comes to the art of subterfuge."[1] The Library Journal was also critical, highlighting, amongst other things, Gallagher's apparent selective sourcing, her emphasis on Hellman's "less admiral aspects" and that "Hellman's testimony at the McCarthy hearings is presented as more self-preserving than principled."[2] It advised reading "instead Deborah Martinson's Lillian Hellman: A Life with Foxes."[2]

Other reviews were less critical, with Choice writing " Drawing on four full-scale biographies as well as Hellman's three memoirs, this is a concise and useful overview of a tumultuous life. .. Highly recommended." and Booklist wrote "Gallagher pounces on and decisively dissects the choicest bits in Hellman's colorful and contrary life of artistic excellence and blinkered radicalism, self-mythologizing and egregious lies, creating a fast-flowing, deeply provocative portrait of a seductive, truculent, and audacious literary powerhouse."[2]

Lillian Hellman has also been reviewed by Publishers Weekly,[3] Pasatiempo,[4] The New York Times,[5] the Jewish Book Council,[6] and Kirkus Reviews.[7]

References
  1. Lee Whittington. "Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life (Jewish Lives)". nyjournalofbooks.com. Retrieved May 3, 2017.
  2. "Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life". kcls.bibliocommons.com. Retrieved May 7, 2017.
  3. "Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life". Publishers Weekly. PWxyz LLC. November 25, 2013. Retrieved May 3, 2017. Unafraid to question Hellman's idealized memoirs, Gallagher (Hannah's Daughters) meets the "unflaggingly famous" dramatist head on in this pithy biography. .. If Gallagher places an undue focus on Hellman's "lack of beauty" but "very active sexual life," she also struggles to maintain a line of critical distance from Hellman that reveals the author's investment in the "dogmatic, irritable, mean, jealous, self-righteous, angry" subject, a dance that mirrors Hellman's own two-step with fact and truth.
  4. Jonathan Richards (March 7, 2014). "Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life". Pasatiempo. The Sante Fe New Mexican. Retrieved May 8, 2017. It's an engaging, readable, gossipy, bitchy hatchet job.
  5. Michael Kazin (February 28, 2014). "Sunday Book Review: The Shortlist – Writers on the Left: Dorothy Gallagher's 'Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life,' and More". New York Times. Retrieved May 8, 2017. This biography will be appreciated mainly by readers who already dislike its subject and are eager to have their opinion confirmed. .. Some biographers of authors exaggerate the mark their subjects left on their craft and their times. Gallagher reduces Hellman's to little more than a splotch of muck.
  6. Bettina Berch. "Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life". jewishbookcouncil.org. Retrieved May 8, 2017. In one slim volume, with a few carefully chosen examples, Gallagher manages to reduce an enormous cultural icon-a larger-than-life, scoundrel-fighting literary warrior-to sadly mortal proportions, a talented woman driven by self justification who ended in self-delusion. There's nothing even-handed about Gallagher's account, but it certainly balances out Hellman's own propaganda.
  7. "Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life". Kirkus Media LLC. November 26, 2013. Retrieved May 3, 2017. The author has no personal ax to grind against her subject, as do many of the sources she quotes, but her portrait is all the more devastating since it seems so matter-of-fact. .. Less a conventional biography than a critical appraisal of the subject's character, career and contradictions—not likely to add any luster to Hellman's tarnished reputation.
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