Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life: Difference between revisions

| image = Lillian Hellman An Imperious Life.jpg

| country = [[United States]]

| subject = [[Nonnon-fiction]], [[Biography]]biography

| media_type = Print ([[hardback]], [[paperback]])

'''''Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life''''' is a 2014 book by Dorothy Gallagher. It is a critical biography of the American [[playwright]] and [[writer]] [[Lillian Hellman]].

[[The ''New York Journal of Books]]'' gave a critical review of ''Lillian Hellman'' writing "it seems like a professional hit job." and, although aknowledgingacknowledging that Gallagher "is convincing" over the controversy of Hellman's [[Pentimento (book)|"Julia"]], concluded "It seems, indeed, that author Gallagher and her subject share more in common when it comes to the art of subterfuge."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/lillian-hellman-imperious-life-gallagher |title=Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life (Jewish Lives) |author=Lee Whittington |website=nyjournalofbooks.com |accessdate=May 3, 2017}}</ref> The ''[[Library Journal]]'' was also critical, highlighting, amongst other things, Gallagher's apparent selective sourcing, her emphasis on Hellman's "less admiral aspects" and that "Hellman's testimony at the McCarthy hearings is presented as more self-preserving than principled."<ref name=kcls/> It advised reading "instead Deborah Martinson's Lillian Hellman: A Life with Foxes."<ref name=kcls/>

Other reviews were less critical, with ''[[Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries|Choice]]'' writing " Drawing on four full-scale biographies as well as Hellman's three memoirs, this is a concise and useful overview of a tumultuous life. .. Highly recommended." and ''[[Booklist]]'' wrote "Gallagher pounces on and decisively dissects the choicest bits in Hellman's colorful and contrary life of artistic excellence and blinkered radicalism, self-mythologizing and egregious lies, creating a fast-flowing, deeply provocative portrait of a seductive, truculent, and audacious literary powerhouse."<ref name=kcls>{{cite webbook |url=https://kcls.bibliocommons.com/item/show/1380612082_lillian_hellman |title=Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life |website=kcls.bibliocommons.com |isbn=978-0-300-16497-8 |oclc=852488713 |accessdate=May 7, 2017}}</ref>

''Lillian Hellman'' has also been reviewed by ''[[Publishers Weekly]]'',<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-300-16497-8 |title=Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life |quote=Unafraid to question Hellman’sHellman's idealized memoirs, Gallagher (Hannah’sHannah's Daughters) meets the “unflaggingly"unflaggingly famous”famous" dramatist head on in this pithy biography. .. If Gallagher places an undue focus on Hellman’sHellman's “lack"lack of beauty”beauty" but “very"very active sexual life,”" she also struggles to maintain a line of critical distance from Hellman that reveals the author’sauthor's investment in the “dogmatic"dogmatic, irritable, mean, jealous, self-righteous, angry”angry" subject, a dance that mirrors Hellman’sHellman's own two-step with fact and truth. |date=November 25, 2013 |website=Publishers Weekly |publisher=PWxyz LLC|accessdate=May 3, 2017}}</ref> ''Pasatiempo'',<ref>{{cite journal |date=March 7, 2014 |title=Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life |author=Jonathan Richards |quote=It's an engaging, readable, gossipy, bitchy hatchet job. |url=http://www.santafenewmexican.com/pasatiempo/books/book_reviews/book-reviews-lillian-hellman-an-imperious-life-by-dorothy-gallagher/article_b0526025-2a49-5375-85e9-a79963b05249.html |journal=Pasatiempo |publisher=The Santa Fe New Mexican |accessdate=May 8, 2017}}</ref> ''[[The New York Times]]'',<ref>{{cite news |title=Sunday Book Review: The Shortlist – Writers on the Left: Dorothy Gallagher's 'Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life,' and More |date=February 28, 2014 |author=Michael Kazin |quote=This biography will be appreciated mainly by readers who already dislike its subject and are eager to have their opinion confirmed. .. Some biographers of authors exaggerate the mark their subjects left on their craft and their times. Gallagher reduces Hellman's to little more than a splotch of muck. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/books/review/dorothy-gallaghers-lillian-hellman-an-imperious-life-and-more.html?_r=1 |newspaper=New York Times |accessdate=May 8, 2017}}</ref> the [[Jewish Book Council]],<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/lillian-hellman-an-imperious-life |title=Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life |author=Bettina Berch |quote=In one slim volume, with a few carefully chosen examples, Gallagher manages to reduce an enormous cultural icon-a larger-than-life, scoundrel-fighting literary warrior-to sadly mortal proportions, a talented woman driven by self justification who ended in self-delusion. There's nothing even-handed about Gallagher's account, but it certainly balances out Hellman's own propaganda. |website=jewishbookcouncil.org |accessdate=May 8, 2017}}</ref> and ''[[Kirkus Reviews]]''.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/dorothy-gallagher/lillian-hellman-imperious/ |title=Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life |quote=The author has no personal ax to grind against her subject, as do many of the sources she quotes, but her portrait is all the more devastating since it seems so matter-of-fact. .. Less a conventional biography than a critical appraisal of the subject’ssubject's character, career and contradictions—not likely to add any luster to Hellman’sHellman's tarnished reputation. |date=November 26, 2013 |publisher=Kirkus Media LLC |accessdate=May 3, 2017}}</ref>

[[Category:2014 non-fiction books]]