Dawn Powell has often been overlooked since her death at 67 in 1965, but her brilliant novels, such as Angels On Toast, A Time to Be Born and The Wicked Pavilion are returning to print. And to accompany her rediscovery, The Diaries of Dawn Powell: 1931-1965 presents a wondrous evocation of the writing life. More than mere diaries, Powell's journals are at times a workbook presenting many fully-formed narratives. There are thoughtful pieces about why she feels compelled to write and gripes about how writers live. And scattered throughout are witty and gossipy essays about living in literary New York and socializing and working with such characters as John Dos Passos, her editor Max Perkins, and the woman to whom she was often unfairly compared,Dorothy Parker.


From Publishers Weekly
A prolific novelist, short-story writer and playwright from the 1930s through the '50s, Powell, who was forgotten for 25 years after her death, is now, with the republication of her best work, and praise from Gore Vidal and John Updike, becoming a name to be reckoned with again. Born in Ohio in 1897, she moved to New York City at age 21 and lived at the heart of its bohemian and literary life until she died of cancer in 1965. It was a hard life: her only son was mentally unstable and frequently institutionalized; her husband was a congenial but hard-drinking wastrel who seemed to understand nothing of Powell's talent and ambition; her health was often fragile; and money was nearly always tight. Her diaries, sometimes mere jottings, on occasion carefully crafted anecdotes, apothegms and character sketches, reflect a person capable of remarkable observation, steadfastness, courage?and much wit. Considering that she spent time with the likes of John Dos Passos, Edmund Wilson and Ernest Hemingway, however, there is comparatively lean pickings for literary gossips; and Powell's lack of interest in external events is startling: no mention of Pearl Harbor, the atom bombs, JFK's assassination. What is most winning here?despite the overgenerous, sometimes wearing selection of mundane entries by Page, music critic for the Washington Post?is the sense of a powerful, clear-sighted personality asserting an unsentimental vision despite myriad distractions and obstacles. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
"In diaries, revealing the innermost soul, the entries stop when anything interesting happens or whenever the writer is happy. Diaries tell nothing?chips from a heroic statue." That comment from Powell's diaries just about sums up Powell's diaries. The entries reveal little about her true self except that she was often drunk and depressed over her troubled family life and sluggish career. The lethal wit and piercing insight into human nature that she wields so expertly in her novels (The Locusts Have No King, 1948; A Time To Be Born, 1943) is absent here. The text is laden with friends' names, but only the famous (John Dos Passos, Dorothy Parker, Edmund Wilson) are recognizable, leaving the reader wondering who the others might have been. The publication of this volume is premature; editor Page is apparently at work on a full-scale literary biography, which should have been published first so fans would have an understanding of who the various players are. Collections specializing in women's literature may want this, but otherwise it is an unnecessary purchase, especially at this price.?Michael Rogers, "Library Journal"Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
The 1990s have seen a revival of interest in fiction writer Dawn Powell (1897^-1965). Several of her novels have been reissued, and in 1994, Dawn Powell at Her Best, a collection of two novels and nine short stories, appeared to critical acclaim. Although this publication of Powell's diaries will be of most interest to students of the period, even readers unfamiliar with Powell's fiction will enjoy encountering this intelligent, funny, bitchy, and bitter woman, whose friendships spanned the literary world from writers John Dos Passos and Margaret Widdemer to Edmond Wilson and Gerald and Sara Murphy. Recounting her constant worries over money, her emotionally ill son, ideas for novels, plays, and short stories, her alcoholic husband, and her frustration at not being appreciated by publishers, critics, or readers, Powell's diaries are full of intensely quotable treasures. In a particularly bleak period, Powell writes, "For no reason at all I hated this day as if it was a person--its wind, its insecurity, its flabbiness, its hints of an insane universe." These diary entries, witty, literary, and desperate, all illuminating the New York literary world, demonstrate why Powell's writing is often compared to that of Dorothy Parker. Nancy Pearl


From the Inside Flap
"The struggle chronicled in The Diaries of Dawn Powell is as brave and feisty a story as any to be found in the novels that made her Ernest Hemingway’s ‘favorite living writer."--James Wilcox, Elle Magazine
WHEN DAWN POWELL'S unpublished Diaries first appeared three years ago, the book was proclaimed on the front cover of the New York Times Book Review as "one of the outstanding literary finds of the last quarter-century . . . a book in a thousand." More praise followed from nearly every quarter, including Gore Vidal in The New York Review of Books, Daniel Aaron in The New Republic, and Bill Buford in The New Yorker ("reads like a mini-book of mini-stories – one compact, perfectly formed arrative followed by another").
Powell had a brilliant mind and a keen wit and her humor was never at a finer pitch than in her diaries. And yet her story is a poignant one – a son emotionally and mentally impaired, a household of too much alcohol and never enough money, and an artistic career that, if not a failure, fell far short of the success she craved. All is recorded here – along with working sketches for her novels, and often revealing portraits of her many friends (a literary who’s who of her period) – in her always unique style and without self-delusion.
With the publication of Tim Page’s biography of Powell planned for this fall, and with all of her best works now back in print, it would appear that Dawn Powell has clearly ‘arrived’ to take her deserved place in American letters. And her remarkable Diaries will stand as one of her finest literary achievements.


About the Author
Ten years after Steerforth launched the Dawn Powell revival, her five best-selling novels are being reissued in newly designed Zoland Books editions with Reading Group Guides inside.


Late in life, out of luck and fashion, Henry James predicted a day when all of his neglected novels would kick off their headstones, one after another. As the twentieth century came to an end, the works of Dawn Powell managed the same magnificent task.
When Powell died in 1965, virtually all her books were out of print. Not a single historical survey of American literature mentioned her, even in passing. And so she slept, seemingly destined to be forgotten – or, to put it more exactly, never to be remembered.
How things have changed! Twelve of Powell’s novels have now been reissued, along with editions of her plays, diaries, letters, and short stories. She has joined the Library of America, admitted to the illustrious company of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Adams, Frederick Douglass, and Edith Wharton. She is taught in college and read with delight on vacation. For the contemporary poet and novelist Lisa Zeidner, writing in The New York Times Book Review, Powell “is wittier than Dorothy Parker, dissects the rich better than F. Scott Fitzgerald, is more plaintive than Willa Cather in her evocation of the heartland, and has a more supple control of satirical voice than Evelyn Waugh.” For his part, Gore Vidal offered a simple reason for Powell’s sudden popularity: “We are catching up to her.”


Tim Page, Powell’s biographer, from his new foreword to My Home Is Far Away,
Dawn Powell was born in Mt. Gilead, Ohio, on November 28, 1896, the second of three daughters. Her father was a traveling salesman, and her mother died a few days after Dawn turned seven. After enduring great cruelty at the hands of her stepmother, Dawn ran away at the age of thirteen and eventually arrived at the home of her maternal aunt, who served hot meals to travelers emerging from the train station across the street. Dawn worked her way through college and made it to New York. There she married a young advertising executive and had one child, a boy who suffered from autism, then an unknown condition.
Powell referred to herself as a “permanent visitor” in her adopted Manhattan and brought to her writing a perspective gained from her upbringing in Middle America. She knew many of the great writers of her time, and Diana Trilling famously said it was Dawn “who really says the funny things for which Dorothy Parker gets credit.” Ernest Hemingway called her his “favorite living writer.” She was one of America’s great novelists, and yet when she died in 1965 she was buried in an unmarked grave in New York’s Potter’s Field.


Her books live, and with these newly designed editions, with their reading group guides inside, more people than ever before will be able to hear Dawn’s distinctive voice.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When Dawn Powell's unpublished Diaries first appeared three years ago, the book was proclaimed on the front cover of the New York Times Book Review as "one of the outstanding literary finds of the last quarter-century ... a book in a thousand". All of her best works are now back in print, and her remarkable Diaries will stand as one of her finest literary achievements.

FROM THE CRITICS

John Updike

She is too good a fiction writer -- too deft, funny, knowing, compassionate, and poetic -- to be forgotten. -- The New Yorker

Publishers Weekly

A prolific novelist, short-story writer and playwright from the 1930s through the '50s, Powell, who was forgotten for 25 years after her death, is now, with the republication of her best work, and praise from Gore Vidal and John Updike, becoming a name to be reckoned with again. Born in Ohio in 1897, she moved to New York City at age 21 and lived at the heart of its bohemian and literary life until she died of cancer in 1965. It was a hard life: her only son was mentally unstable and frequently institutionalized; her husband was a congenial but hard-drinking wastrel who seemed to understand nothing of Powell's talent and ambition; her health was often fragile; and money was nearly always tight. Her diaries, sometimes mere jottings, on occasion carefully crafted anecdotes, apothegms and character sketches, reflect a person capable of remarkable observation, steadfastness, courage-and much wit. Considering that she spent time with the likes of John Dos Passos, Edmund Wilson and Ernest Hemingway, however, there is comparatively lean pickings for literary gossips; and Powell's lack of interest in external events is startling: no mention of Pearl Harbor, the atom bombs, JFK's assassination. What is most winning here-despite the overgenerous, sometimes wearing selection of mundane entries by Page, music critic for the Washington Post-is the sense of a powerful, clear-sighted personality asserting an unsentimental vision despite myriad distractions and obstacles.

Library Journal

"In diaries, revealing the innermost soul, the entries stop when anything interesting happens or whenever the writer is happy. Diaries tell nothing-chips from a heroic statue." That comment from Powell's diaries just about sums up Powell's diaries. The entries reveal little about her true self except that she was often drunk and depressed over her troubled family life and sluggish career. The lethal wit and piercing insight into human nature that she wields so expertly in her novels (The Locusts Have No King, 1948; A Time To Be Born, 1943) is absent here. The text is laden with friends' names, but only the famous (John Dos Passos, Dorothy Parker, Edmund Wilson) are recognizable, leaving the reader wondering who the others might have been. The publication of this volume is premature; editor Page is apparently at work on a full-scale literary biography, which should have been published first so fans would have an understanding of who the various players are. Collections specializing in women's literature may want this, but otherwise it is an unnecessary purchase, especially at this price.-- Michael Rogers
-- Janet M. Coggan, Univ. of Florida Libraries, Gainesville

Library Journal

"In diaries, revealing the innermost soul, the entries stop when anything interesting happens or whenever the writer is happy. Diaries tell nothing-chips from a heroic statue." That comment from Powell's diaries just about sums up Powell's diaries. The entries reveal little about her true self except that she was often drunk and depressed over her troubled family life and sluggish career. The lethal wit and piercing insight into human nature that she wields so expertly in her novels (The Locusts Have No King, 1948; A Time To Be Born, 1943) is absent here. The text is laden with friends' names, but only the famous (John Dos Passos, Dorothy Parker, Edmund Wilson) are recognizable, leaving the reader wondering who the others might have been. The publication of this volume is premature; editor Page is apparently at work on a full-scale literary biography, which should have been published first so fans would have an understanding of who the various players are. Collections specializing in women's literature may want this, but otherwise it is an unnecessary purchase, especially at this price.-- Michael Rogers

BookList - Nancy Pearl