Stories and Essays of Mina Loy (British Literature Series)

Mina Loy

Aug 2011 · Dalkey Archive Press

About this ebook

Marjorie Perloff writes: “Among the great modernist poets, Mina Loy was surely the greatest wit, the most sophisti- cated commentator on the vagaries of love, the one whose brittle and sardonic laughter continues . . . to pursue us.”Stories and Essays of Mina Loy is the first book-length volume of Mina Loy’s narrative writings and critical work ever published. This volume brings together her short fiction, as well as hybrid works that include modernized fairy tales, a Socratic dialogue, and a ballet. Loy’s narratives address issues such as abortion and poverty, and what she called “the sex war” is an abiding theme throughout. Stories and Essays of Mina Loy also contains dramatic works that parody the bravado and misogyny of Futurism and demonstrate Loy’s early, effective use of absurdist technique. Essays and commentaries on aesthetics, historical events, and religion complete this beguiling collection, cementing Mina Loy’s place as one of the great writers of the twentieth century.

About the author

Mina Loy was born in London, England in 1882. A central figure in the history of modernism, her writing commanded the attention of Ezra Pound and Yvor Winters in the Little Review and the Dial respectively, era-defining journals that published Joyce’s Ulysses and Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” Aligning herself with Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism, Loy influenced pivotal figures such as Marcel Duchamp and Djuna Barnes.

Sara Crangle is a lecturer and director of the Centre for Modernist Studies at the University of Sussex, UK. Her books include Prosaic Desires: Modernist Knowledge, Boredom, Laughter, and Anticipation and On Bathos: Literature, Art, Music.