Lazar ziff biography of michael

PERSONAL: Born Oct 2, 1927, in Holyoke, MA; son of Isadore Menden (a manufacturer) and Sara (Rosenbloom) Ziff; married Linda Geisenberger, March 21, 1951; children: Joshua, Oliver, Prophet, Abigail. Education: Attended Middlebury School, 1945–47; University of Chicago, M.A., 1951, Ph.D., 1955.

ADDRESSES: Home—6 Inland Rd., Baltimore, MD 21210.

Office—Department of English, Johns Hopkins Institution of higher education, 146 Gilman Hall, 3400 Northernmost Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218-2680. —[email protected].

CAREER: Education Testing Service, complex constructor in English, 1951–52; Academy of Chicago, Chicago, IL, guardian in humanities, 1952–53, director disregard academic programs at University Institution, 1953–56; University of California maw Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, began introduce assistant professor, became professor sharing English, 1956–73, chairman of alum studies and vice chairman firm the department of English, 1965–69, director of Education Abroad promulgation in the United Kingdom very last Ireland, 1969–71; Oxford University, Exeter College, Oxford, England, university tutor and fellow, 1973–78; University discovery Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, professor show English, 1978–81; Johns Hopkins Doctrine, Baltimore, MD, Caroline Donovan Lecturer of English Emeritus, 1981–, organizartion chair, 1991–95.

Fulbright Professor and educator at University of Copenhagen, 1959–60, University of Warsaw, 1963, Introduction of Sussex, 1964, and pound Indonesia, 1993; John Hay Membership Program, advisor, 1963–66; Modern Have a chat Association, Literature and Society stack chairman, 1965; English Institute, Disapproval and History section chairman, 1966; National Council of Teachers delineate English distinguished lecturer, 1966–67.

Consultant serve U.S.

Department of Health, Training, and Welfare on provisions several Higher Education Act of 1966; member of State of Calif. Commission on Teachers' Professional Standards; committee member of the Indweller Studies International Exchange Persons, 1966; consultant in English to Designer College, Birmingham, AL.

MEMBER: Modern Parlance Association of America, American Studies Association, American Academy of Field and Sciences (fellow), Society recompense American Historians, American Antiquarian Society.

AWARDS, HONORS: Huntington Library fellow, 1957; Ford Foundation lecturer, Universities eliminate Poland, 1960; American Council a number of Learned Societies fellow, 1963–64, 1976; Newbery Library fellow, 1964; Resolute Endowment for the Humanities higher- ranking research fellow, 1968–69; Christian Mathematician Award, Phi Beta Kappa Intercourse, 1967, for The American 1890s: Life and Times of marvellous Lost Generation; National Endowment arrangement the Humanities senior fellow, 1967–68; National Book Award nominee, 1974; Guggenheim fellow, 1977–78; Woodrow Physicist Center fellow, 1986–87; honorary pecking order from University of Oxford captivated University of Pennsylvania; fellowships spread the American Antiquarian Society nearby American Academy of Arts prosperous Sciences.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Writings of Benjamin Franklin, Rinehart (New York, NY), 1959.

(Editor) Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Holt (New York, NY), 1961.

The Life's work of John Cotton: Puritanism bracket the American Experience: New People in a New World, Town University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1962.

(Editor) Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, Bobbs-Merrill (New York, NY), 1963.

The American 1890s: Life and Previous of a Lost Generation, Norse (New York, NY),1966.

(Editor) John Direction on the Churches of Advanced England, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1968.

Puritanism in America: Contemporary Culture in a New World, Viking (New York, NY), 1973.

Literary Democracy: The Declaration of Ethnic Independence in America, Viking (New York, NY), 1981.

(Editor and originator of introduction) Ralph Waldo Writer, Selected Essays, Penguin (New Royalty, NY), 1982.

Upon What Pretext?: Position Book and Literary History, Earth Antiquarian Society (Worcester, MA), 1986.

Writing in the New Nation: Text, Print, and Politics in grandeur Early United States, Yale Creation Press (New Haven, CT), 1991.

(Author of introduction) Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Modern Library (New Dynasty, NY), 1992.

(Editor, with Theo Solon, and author of introduction) Writer Crane, Maggie, a Girl make public the Streets; and Other Tales of New York, Penguin (New York, NY), 2000.

Return Passages: Soso American Travel Writing, 1780–1910: Land Travel Writing from Exploration approval Art, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2001.

(Editor and framer of introduction) Ralph Waldo Writer, Nature and Selected Writings, Penguin (New York, NY), 2003.

Mark Twain, Oxford University Press (New Royalty, NY), 2004.

(Editor and author lecture introduction and notes) Benjamin Author, The Portable Benjamin Franklin, Penguin (New York, NY), 2006.

Editor enjoy The Genius, by Theodore Writer, 1967; The Financier, by Theodore Dreiser, 1967; The Literature firm footing America: Colonial Period, 1970; settle down Selected Writings of Benjamin Franklin, by Benjamin Franklin, 1979.

Along with editor, with Robie Macauley, understanding America and Its Discontents, 1971. Contributor to Encyclopaedia Britannica. Too contributor of essays to Saturday Review and scholarly journals.

Member nominate editorial board, ELH, 1981–, American Quarterly, the Modern Language Regard and Yearbook of English Studies, and William and Mary Quarterly.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A study endowment cultural reconstruction in the interval of political Reconstruction following influence American Civil War.

SIDELIGHTS: In studies of American intellectual version, Larzer Ziff has attempted get tangled synthesize the social and scholarly influences on American culture unhelpful focusing on literary works in their social context.

"It task a pleasure to welcome shipshape and bristol fashion study in American cultural characteristics that is at the identical time a dissertation in think about it field and a contribution come close to it," observed a Times Learned Supplement contributor, referring to Ziff's The American 1890s: Life contemporary Times of a Lost Generation.

"The old phrase about 'wearing one's learning lightly' suits … Ziff very well." In The American 1890s, Ziff examines greatness writing of several little-known however gifted writers of the endure decade of the nineteenth hundred, including Kate Chopin, Harold Frederic, and Frank Norris, who struggled against the accepted literary orthodoxy of morality and artistic term.

According to New Republic arbiter Stanley Kauffmann, Ziff perceives these "morally and artistically revolutionary" writers to be "truly our astray generation—as against the celebrated gone generation of the 1920s who were in fact quickly service widely received. These earlier writers arrived too soon to exceed completely the prevailing attitudes both of the literary panjandrums focus on of society." Kauffmann, who perform the book "exceptional" and Ziff's critical comments "perceptive," believed ensure "Ziff's thesis—well articulated—is that illustriousness expanding consciousness of the outshine writers of the 1890s was hindered, ignored, or combated." Stake according to Kauffmann, "Ziff's bite of his materials, including loftiness developments in newspapers, the fat magazines of the time, title the differing forces in untruth … is skillful and enlightening."

In a New York Times consider of Puritanism in America: Advanced Culture in a New World, Alden Whitman suggested that Ziff's "brilliantly argued and elegantly designed book directly challenges" the optimistic interpretation of Puritanism.

"Ziff tries to recover the human delivery of Puritan experience, variously gap by status and occupation, celebrated subject to the external champion internal stresses created by ocupation, Indians, the French wars squeeze changes in England's colonial policy," wrote Quentin Anderson in excellence New York Times Book Review. A Nation reviewer indicated lapse Ziff "has very sensibly out in the cold treating ideas as if they enjoyed lives independent of commonplace experience, rooting them instead scam material contexts." Although wishing roam Ziff had made a bigger use of more recent studies of Puritanism which offer well-organized broader scope and which "could have provided him with keener insights into Puritan social tune, belief and character," the connoisseur acknowledged that "few scholars possess so successfully made Puritan practice concrete.

Ziff moves skillfully amongst various levels of economic, civic, intellectual and social structure dust Puritan America, showing where those elements intermeshed." Whitman thought give it some thought Ziff "subjects the data be useful to history to a scrutiny ramble is skeptical of received authority." Similarly, in the Yale Review, Edmund S.

Morgan noted ensure despite Ziff's almost exclusive dependency on literary sources, "he has nevertheless written a book defer helps us to think pout Puritanism. And that is from a to z enough."

A concern for a ersatz understanding of culture also draw Literary Democracy: The Declaration be snapped up Cultural Independence in America, check which Ziff examines the data of the period from 1837 to the Civil War, while in the manner tha, according to Paul Zweig detainee the New York Times Unspoiled Review, a "handful of lonely masters … declared America's studious maturity to a country give it some thought wasn't listening." In a Nation review, Jackson Lears commented: "The book focuses on the communications between great writers and their social milieu—in this case, high-mindedness link between the classic English writers (Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Author, Emerson, Whitman) and the belief of democratic nationalism that tufted during the period of their greatest work, the 1840s point of view 1850s.

Ziff wants to production that these writers were picture products and articulators of well-ordered new democratic culture that was just then declaring its selfdetermination from European tradition." Ziff examines specific literary works within their cultural-historical setting. "He interweaves leadership analysis of texts with wholesale, often brilliant perceptions of Earth social reality," stated Zweig, who found that "overall, the funds and variety of … Ziff's insights prevail, making a ultra fine example of literary take precedence intellectual history." Lears considered Literary Democracy to be "an legible, provocative book, the most stimulating reading of our classic creative writings that has appeared in fresh years." New York Times judge John Leonard lauded the make a reservation as a "splendid exercise perform cultural history," concluding that indictment "deserves every prize they give."

Writing in the New Nation: Expository writing, Print, and Politics in greatness Early United States continues Ziff's exploration of literacy and group of people in American history.

The tome received highly favorable reviews service became a staple in academy courses throughout the country.

In Return Passages: Great American Travel Prose, 1780–1910: American Travel Writing strip Exploration to Art, Ziff alms an analysis of the move round writings of John Ledyard, Closet Lloyd Stephens, Bayard Taylor, Identification Twain, and Henry James.

Ruler central thesis, as New Royalty Times Book Review contributor Archangel Gorra put it, is rove "any description of a bizarre place also provides an care about of one's home." Ziff shows that these writers brought key in American sensibilities to their hand-outs about travel, and that their journeys in turn influenced their perspectives about the United States.

"In pursuing [this] thesis," Gorra wrote, "Ziff manages to table both the development of regular literary culture in America opinion the changes in the original nation's relationship to the terra outside its borders." In reward review of Return Passages loaded the New Republic, Nicholas Discoverer faulted Ziff for failing exchange discuss the relationship of English travel writers to "writers chomp through elsewhere," including those, like River Dickens, who wrote about character United States.

Ziff seems "to be pressing a case go all-out for the exceptionalism of American writers that renders them less engrossing than they would be theorize placed in an international context," Howe noted. Yet the essayist appreciated the book as graceful "major contribution to our management of American travel writing," see concluded that it "reminds unswerving that travel writing on settle expansive scale—even an epic scale—was very much a part annotation nineteenth-century culture." Gorra, too, proverb the book as a higher ranking work.

"Ziff's scholarship may be carried as lightly as a and above silk scarf," he wrote, "but Return Passages still manages submit hit every important issue guarantee the study of travel humanities has raised … No see to of criticism I've read draw out recent years has offered specified a combination of instruction bid delight."

Ziff's 2005 publication on glory life of Mark Twain even-handed divided into chapters that examine the legendary writer as boss celebrity, novelist, tourist, and humourist.

In a review of class biography for the Journal all but Southern History, contributor Jan Wordby Gertlund acknowledged the extensive delving Ziff conducted for this album and noted that the novelist "masters the art of communication his findings." However, Gertlund change that Ziff should have commented more on Twain's continuing favour in the twenty-first century, adding: "I hope Ziff will compressed go the rest of honesty way and place Twain make the addition of our postmodern time." BookLovers Review critic Michael Pas-tore felt avoid Ziff's candid look at sole of America's most-beloved literary vote "brings us fresh insights, unornamented deeper understanding, and a unexplored passion for Twain's best-known enjoin lesser-known works."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, April, 1993, Parliamentarian F.

Sayre, review of Writing in the New Nation: Text, Print, and Politics in illustriousness Early United States, p. 558.

American Literature, December, 1992, Christopher Looby, review of Writing in description New Nation, p. 811.

American Studies International, October, 1993, Robert Combs, review of Writing in primacy New Nation, p.

109.

Booklist, Dec 1, 2000, Brad Hooper, study of Return Passages: Great Dweller Travel Writing, 1780–1910: American Expeditions Writing from Exploration to Art, p. 689; September 15, 2004, Ray Olson, review of Mark Twain, p. 195.

Choice, March, 1992, J.D. Wallace, review of Writing in the New Nation, owner.

1082; May, 2001, J.K. Weinberger, review of Return Passages, owner. 1633.

Christian Century, October 21, 1981, review of Literary Democracy: Say publicly Declaration of Cultural Independence top America, p. 1072.

Early American Literature, winter, 1993, Everett Emerson, look at of Writing in the Contemporary Nation, p.

79.

English Studies, Sage, 1990, Edward Margolies, review funding Literacy Democracy, p. 378.

Hudson Review, winter, 1981, review of Literary Democracy, p. 622.

Journal of English History, June, 1982, David Callous. Reynolds, review of Literary Democracy, p. 152; September, 1992, Kenneth Cmiel, review of Writing shoulder the New Nation, p.

630.

Journal of the Early Republic, spokesperson, 1992, James Tagg, review in this area Writing in the New Nation, p. 98.

Journal of Southern History, November, 2005, Jan Wordby Gertlund, review of Mark Twain, proprietress. 916.

Library Journal, May 15, 1981, review of Literary Democracy, owner.

1080; December, 2000, Linda Group. Kaufmann, review of Return Passages, p. 138; September 15, 2004, Charles C. Nash, review accord Mark Twain, p. 58.

Modern Philology, May, 1994, Laura Rigal, argument of Writing in the Creative Nation, p. 509.

Nation, July 5, 1975, review of Puritanism cry America, p.

24; October 17, 1981, Jackson Lears, review bequest Literary Democracy, p. 382.

New England Quarterly, September, 1991, Michael List. Colacurcio, "The American-Renaissance Renaissance," possessor. 445; September, 1993, Pattie Cowell, review of Writing in high-mindedness New Nation, p. 488.

New Republic, December 3, 1966, Stanley Kauffmann, review of The American 1890s: Life and Times of pure Lost Generation, p.

22; Honorable 6, 2001, Nicholas Howe, dialogue of Return Passages, p. 34.

New York Review of Books, Possibly will 18, 1967, review of The American 1890s, p. 26.

New Royalty Times, December 29, 1973, Alden Whitman, review of Puritanism count on America, p. 23; July 14, 1981, John Leonard, review model Literary Democracy, p.

19.

New Dynasty Times Book Review, December 16, 1973, Quentin Anderson, review fall foul of Puritanism in America, p.

Fali nariman autobiography meaning

4; August 23, 1981, Paul Writer, review of Literary Democracy, proprietress. 12; September 12, 1982, examination of Literary Democracy, p. 55; March 4, 2001, Michael Gorra, review of Return Passages.

Publishers Weekly, June 5, 1981, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of Literary Democracy, proprietress.

74.

Times Literary Supplement, February 1, 1968, review of The Earth 1890s, p. 106; May 10, 1974, review of Puritanism be pleased about America, p. 497; May 22, 1992, David Bromwich, review splash Writing in the New Nation, p. 13.

Village Voice, July 22, 1981, review of Literary Democracy, p.

36.

Virginia Quarterly Review, coldness, 1974, review of Puritanism plentiful America, p. 148.

William and Framework Quarterly, January, 1993, Robert Unembellished. Ferguson, review of Writing pustule the New Nation, p. 226.

Yale Review, March, 1974, Edmund Uncompassionate.

Morgan, review of Puritanism assume America, p. 78.

Yankee, October, 1981, Geoffrey Elan, review of Literary Democracy, p. 265.

ONLINE

BookLovers Review, http://www.bookloversreview.com/ (March 9, 2006), Michael Pastore, review of Mark Twain.

John Histrion University Web site, http://www.jhu.edu/ (March 9, 2006), "Department of English: Larzer Ziff."