Graham Swift, Making an Elephant: Writing from within

Anastasia Logotheti (Deree-The American College of Greece)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 2009

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Autobiography (literary)
- Memoir

Resources

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Throughout a forty-year career as an award-winning author Graham Swift has insisted that "I am certainly not a writer who writes autobiographically . . . I don't write from my own experience", noting that the anthology

Making an Elephant: Writing from Within

is the "exception that proves the rule about not writing autobiographically" (McGlone). Swift even terms the collection “my

partly

autobiographical non-fiction book” (my emphasis; the quote occurs in an essay on creativity published in August 2014).

Making an Elephant

offers, as the author indicates in his three-page “Introduction” to the collection, “a glimpse or two” into the creative life without aiming at being “comprehensive” or memoir-like. Also in the “Introduction”, Swift highlights the distinction between…

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Citation: Logotheti, Anastasia. "Making an Elephant: Writing from within". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 September 2014; last revised 02 March 2020. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=26548, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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