To mark James Gould Cozzen's seventy-fifth birthday, is August 178, the Southern Illinois University Press in conjunction with Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. takes exceptional pride in publishing this rich sampling of the work of a master novelist.
James Gould Cozzens, whose literary career has spanned 13 novels and 54 years, was born in Chicago in 1903. After graduation from Kent School in Connecticut he entered Harvard University in 1922. which he left in 1924 to devote his full time to writing. His excellence as a writer has been recognized by critics and the public alike. Six of his books were Book-of-the-Month Club selections, Guard of Honor was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and By Love Possessed - one of the notable best sellers in contemporary fiction-won the Howella Medal of The American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Cozen's dedication to his craft has produced a body of fiction unsurpassed in its fidelity to lie and its hard intelligence. Since the 1930s he has been unchallenged in his ability to portray the professional man in American society and has written the best American novels about clergymen, lawyers, and military men.
The complete novel, the selections from six of Cozzen's major novels, and the stories, essays, and reviews, include here furnish a comprehensive overview of and an introduction to the cannon of a major American novelist. The book provides a permeantly usable collection for new readers of James Gould Cuzzens as well as an omnibus for the initiated.