GRANVILLE  HICKS  TITLES

Orders can be combined with orders for American history and  books. 

  Granville Hicks, prominent author, literary critic, and early socialist, was born in Exeter, NH, September 9, 1901 and died at Franklin Park, NJ, June 18, 1982. After graduating from Harvard University, Hicks married Dorothy Dyer in 1925 and taught briefly at Smith College at Northampton, Massachusetts, before accepting a position as an English Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy in 1929. The remainder of his life was devoted to literary pursuits, and he was a frequent visitor to (and once the interim Director of) Yaddo, an artist's and writer's haven in Saratoga Springs. He counted many literati as his friends and colleagues, including Newton Arvin, Malcolm Cowley, Bernard Malamud, Carson McCullers, Wright Morris, Richard Rovere and John Unterecker.

Hicks joined the Communist Party in 1935 and was subsequently dismissed from the R.P.I. faculty. He renounced Communism in 1939 after the Soviet signing of the Warsaw Pact with Nazi Germany. During this period he served as Literary Editor of the New Masses and authored The Great Tradition (1933) and Figures of Transition (1939), which presented a Marxist approach to American and British literature respectively. In I Like America (1935) Hicks he demonstrated that a Marxist was not necessarily un-American in his beliefs. He became fascinated with and authored two biographical works on the contemporary activist, John Reed.

Hicks purchased an old farm house in Grafton in 1932 where he remained until his health failed in 1978. He was instrumental in founding the Town's first library in 1943 and wrote the popular social study Small Town (1946) as well as four novels based on his relationships with Town residents.

His other works included Where We Came Out (1954), a retrospective look at his former interest in Communism, and his honest yet unapologetic autobiography, Part of the Truth (1965.) During these years Hicks also authored two significant works of modern literary criticism, The Living Novel (1957) and Literary Horizons (1970). During his career, the prolific Hicks contributed many articles and reviews to a wide variety of magazines and journals.

Granville Hicks, FIGURES OF TRANSITION: A STUDY OF BRITISH LITERATURE AT THE END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.  (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1969 [1939])  326 pp.  In the manner of The Great Tradition, this work presents a fascinating Marxist approach to British literature from Victorian times to the 1930s.  a v.g. copy in light brown cloth binding.  $2

Granville Hicks, FIGURES OF TRANSITION: A STUDY OF BRITISH LITERATURE AT THE END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.  (NY: Macmillan, 1939)  326 pp.  In the manner of The Great Tradition, this work presents a fascinating Marxist approach to British literature from Victorian times to the 1930s.  owner's name, o/w a v.g. copy in blue cloth binding.  $2

Granville Hicks, PART OF THE TRUTH: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.  (New York City: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965)  314 pp., index.  The objective,  honest and unassuming autobiography of Granville Hicks recalls his Communist years, his literary career, and his personal life, especially his love for the small town.  v.g. copy in worn d.j.  $15

Leah Levenson & Jerry Natterstad, GRANVILLE HICKS: THE INTELLECTUAL IN MASS SOCIETY.  (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993)   303 pp.,  index, notes, bibliography.  Ill. with b&w photos.  The highly recommended definitive biography of Granville Hicks, which is now out-of-print.  fine copy in d.j.  $10

Granville Hicks, ONLY ONE STORM.  (NY: Macmillan, 1942)  second printing.  427 pp.  One of the author's lesser known novels, set in a small town like Grafton, New York, where he lived.  end-papers darkened, b.s. wear beginning, o/w a v.g. copy.  $2

Granville Hicks, WHERE WE CAME OUT.  (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1954)  the uncommon English edition.  250 pp.   Granville Hicks (1901-1982), prominent twentieth-century American author, literary critic and socialist, had joined the Communist Party and had become a well-known activist and a literary editor of the New Masses. His public resignation from the Communist Party, following the signing of the Warsaw Pact, made national as well as local headlines.  a v.g. copy in slightly worn d.j.  $10  

Granville Hicks and Lynd Ward [illustrator], ONE OF US: THE STORY OF JOHN REED.  (NY: Equinox Cooperative Press, 1935)  unpaginated work of 60 pp. with 30 striking full page engravings by Lynd Ward.  a stunningly attractive small press production on the life of an early American Communist intellectual who died tragically in Moscow in 1920.  Hicks would later pen the definitive biorgaohy of Reed which has never been superseded.  end-papers a trifle foxed, o/w a v.g. copy in red and black contrasting cloth binding in a striking pictorial d.j. featuring a Ward lithograph.  The d.j. is somewhat sunned and is protected by the early, possibly original lamination often found with this work.  Rarely is a better copy of this scarce work offered for sale.  $100

updated Nov., 2008