PHILIPPA PULLAR - Frank Harris

London England, Hamish Hamilton, 1975. First Edition, Binding: Cloth, Very Good/Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall 024189185x Hardback Hardback Almost from the moment of his birth in Galway in 1856, Frank Harris was surrounded by myth and exggeration, very often perpetrated by himself, but also embroidered by detractors and fanatical supporters. James Thomas, as he was christened, suffered from a withdrawn, puritanical, insensitive father and his notorious sexual adventures were partly an effort to get the love and praise that he lacked. He could not live without the reassurance and excitement of constant affairs. it is as a sexual athlete and liar that posterity has classed him. The author in her deeply researched and compulsive biography shows that this was only one facet of a diverse and richly layered personality. Frank Harris was a man of literary and political enterprise as his contributions to the Spectator and his editorship of the Fortnightly and Saturday Reviews demonstrate. He was a reformer, traveller, interviewer and financial intriguer; a loyal friend, risking his reputation to support Oscar Wilde, obsessed totally by his wife Nellie, a catalyst of young writers. Almost single-handed, it seems, he set himself to destroy the self-satisfaction and hypocrisy of Victorian and Edwardian England, only to see his own political ambitions shattered. He had a magnetic personality and his life which encompassed a span of great change was full of adventures and misadventures. His character was crucially divided, the one side melancholy and private, the other the flamboyant performer the world knows. He was always his own worst enemy. In the end he progressed from the role of the pantaloon to that of a genuine tragic figure. Philippa Pullar has produced a remarkable example of biography at its truest and most entertaining. The myths and the clutter of prejudices have been removed and a man of extraordinary fascination who knew everyone and went everywhere parades once more before the audience which he always loved.Illustrated. Price clipped. Some wear and tear to D/J.