James Joyce was born on 2 February 1882 and died on 13 January 1941. These dates were important to Anthony Burgess, who began writing Here Comes Everybody, the first of his critical books about Joyce, on 13 January 1964. Following the plan he had drawn up in advance, Burgess typed the final page of Here […]

Born on 24 November 1920, Llewela ‘Lynne’ Wilson, Anthony Burgess’s first wife, had a short but influential life. Despite Burgess’s characterisation of Lynne as ‘unliterary’ in his autobiography, she had a rich interest in literature and not only contributed to Burgess’s own writing, but collaborated with him directly on a series of translations. Burgess’s anxiety […]

The Worm and the Ring is remarkable, not so much for Anthony Burgess taking a crack at his former colleagues at Banbury Grammar School, but rather for his creativity in animating a school serving ‘drearily picturesque towns’. Burgess had already written about school-teaching in The Malayan Trilogy, but the birth of independent Malaysia, being a […]

We are very sorry to learn of the death of Professor Harold Bloom, who was an honorary patron of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation. Harold Bloom was one of the most distinguished literary critics of the last century, with his works The Anxiety of Influence (1973) and The Western Canon (1994) informing several generations of […]

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Anthony Burgess enjoyed comparing himself to other novelists, poets and playwrights. He sometimes spoke of himself as belonging to a group of writers who had emerged from provincial cities and had, through talent and persistence, made their mark on the British literary establishment. In his biography of Shakespeare, for example, Burgess suggests that, like Shakespeare, […]

Here Comes Everybody, subtitled ‘An Introduction to James Joyce for the Ordinary Reader’, was commissioned by Joyce’s own publishers, Faber and Faber, in 1963. Burgess’s original title was ‘James Joyce and the Common Man’, and he introduces the book with a provocative statement: ‘If ever there was a writer for the people, Joyce was that […]

Anthony Burgess came of age as modernism was approaching its peak, and the movement influenced much of his writing and music. As a young man, Burgess was inspired by writers such as James Joyce and T.S. Eliot; and, as a musician, he was excited by the revolutionary compositions of Stravinsky, Berg, Honneger and Mossolov. Reacting […]

“My book does not pretend to scholarship, only to a desire to help the average reader who sees all his works available in paperback and is scared more of their content then their price.” Anthony Burgess on Here Comes Everybody Two newly reissued biographies by Anthony Burgess cast light on two of the most influential […]

Throughout his career, Anthony Burgess emphasised his status as a Mancunian who defined himself in opposition to the London literary establishment. In his biography of Shakespeare (1970), he draws parallels between himself and the playwright’s childhood and education away from the capital. Yet, like Shakespeare, Burgess was drawn to London from the provinces, and the […]