Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic creates a rich panorama of twentieth-century London.
Anthony Powell was an only child, born in 1905. As a young man he worked for a crumbling publishing business whilst trying to find time to write novels. He moved in a bohemian world of struggling writers and artists, which was to provide the raw material for much of his fiction. During the Second World War he served in Military Intelligence Liaison. He subsequently became a fiction reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement and for five years he was the literary editor of the now-defunct magazine Punch. Meanwhile he continued to work on the twelve-novel sequence 'A Dance to the Music of Time'. He was the author of seven other novels, and four volumes of memoirs. His many reviews for the Daily Telegraph are also published in collected volumes. Anthony Powell died in March 2000.
One of the great novel-sequences in English Literature – a
wonderful portrait of society, full of insight into the
complexities of human behaviour, richly detailed and shrewdly
funny.
Discovering Anthony Powell’s “A Dance to the Music of Time” has
been one of the greatest pleasures of my reading life. The cool
elegance of the prose, the deliciously dry humour, the confident
choreography of his characters make for an incomparable treat.
*Michael Palin*
“A Dance To The Music of Time” is an epic, elegant masterpiece, so
full of lightness and comedy that you're unprepared for how it
quietly wrecks your heart.
*Lauren Groff*
Powell’s novel sequence is at once a rich chronicle of 20th-century
English social life and an intricately wrought work of art. It is
also extremely funny, in its sly fashion.
The novels of Powell’s “A Dance to the Music of Time” themselves
move hand in hand in intricate measure through the last century,
bearing wisdom and understanding for the present. In an
ever-quicker, ever-shallower world, his steadiness and wit reliably
escort the reader into depth and patience. Nobody gives pattern to
the spectacle of human existence like Powell.
*Louisa Young*
A masterful stylist and a wise, often hilarious observer of human
nature and his times, Anthony Powell is an under-appreciated
literary gem. The pleasures and dramas of the “Dance” continue to
illuminate daily life.
*Claire Messud*
Reading “A Dance to the Music of Time” was such a joyous
experience, I remember wishing there'd been more than twelve
volumes.
*Roddy Doyle*
I re-read the "Dance" every five years or so and always find
something new – the world has changed but the characters are
evergreen. Everybody has a Widmerpool in their life.
*Daisy Goodwin*
He has wit, style, and panache, in a world where those qualities
are in permanently short supply
*The New York Review of Books*
A book which creates a world and explores it in depth, which
ponders changing relationships and values, which creates
brilliantly living and diverse characters and then watches them
grow and change in their milieu ... Powell's world is as large and
as complex as Proust's.
*New York Times*
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