Synopses & Reviews
On its initial publication in 1962, Eudora Welty said of
A Long and Happy Life, "Reynolds Price is the most impressive new writer I've come across in a long time. His is a first-rate talent and we are lucky that he has started so young to write so well. Here is a fine novel."
From its dazzling opening page, which announced the appearance of a stylist of the first rank, to its moving close, this brief novel has charmed and captivated millions of readers since its publication twenty-five years ago and its subsequent translation into fifteen languages. On the triumphant publication of Kate Vaiden, his most recent novel, in 1986, there was almost no review that -- praising the new book to the skies -- didn't also mention in glowing terms the reviewer's fond recollection of the marvelous first novel, the troubled love story of Rosacoke Mustian and Wesley Beavers and its beautifully evoked vision of rural North Carolina. It is a pleasure now to restore to print the clothbound edition of this truly enduring work as a companion volume to his brilliant book of essays, A Common Room, published simultaneously.
Synopsis
Here is the 25th Anniversary edition of one of the most famous and best-loved novels of our time--the troubled love story of Rosacoke Mustian and Wesley Beavers and a beautiful evocation of rural North Carolina.
About the Author
Born in Macon, North Carolina in 1933,
Reynolds Price attended North Carolina schools and received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Duke University. As a Rhodes Scholar he studied for three years at Merton College, Oxford, receiving the Bachelor of Letters with a thesis on Milton. In 1958 he returned to Duke where he is now James B. Duke Professor of English. His first novel
A Long and Happy Life appeared in 1962. A volume of stories
The Names and Faces of Heroes appeared in 1963. In the years since, he has published
A Generous Man (a novel),
Love and Work (a novel),
Permanent Errors (stories),
Things Themselves (essays and scenes),
The Surface of Earth (a novel),
Early Dark (a play),
A Palpable God (translations from the Bible with an essay on the origins and life of narrative),
The Source of Light (a novel),
Vital Provisions (poems),
Private Contentment (a play),
Kate Vaiden (a novel) and
The Laws of Ice (poems). His first two novels and the story "A Chain of Love" are now collected in a single volume
Mustian. His books have been translated into fifteen languages.