From the very beginning of his career in the mid-1950s, James Purdy has remained one of the most enigmatic figures of post-World War II American literature. Over the last 45 years he has regularly produced work across a variety of genres: nineteen novels, nine collections of short fiction (including, in several instances, works in other genres), nine collections of poetry, five published plays and six others that have been produced. His work has garnered him several literary prizes, including the Morton Dauwen Zabel Fiction Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for On Glory's Course (1984). Writers as diverse as Dame Edith Sitwell, John Cowper Powys, Dorothy Parker, Marianne Moore, Gore Vidal, and Jerome Charyn have

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First published 17 July 2001

Citation: Kich, Martin. "James Purdy". The Literary Encyclopedia. 17 July 2001.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3666, accessed 9 February 2010.]