Poems Was Published in 1968

Society of Young Nigerian Writers Edward Abbey Edward Abbey (1927-1989), American writer, best known for his work focusing on the ecology and management of the American West, particularly its deserts. Abbey first won wide acclaim for Desert Solitaire (1968), a collection of nonfiction essays that reveal his strong narrative voice and his deep passion for the environment. The essays also analyze the impact of tourism, industrialization, and government practices on the environment. Born in Home, Pennsylvania, Abbey grew up in the Appalachian mountains of Pennsylvania and was the eldest of five children. At age 17 he traveled alone to the West, where he became enamored with the desert. After being drafted into the United States Army and serving in Italy from 1945 to 1947, Abbey received his B.A. degree in philosophy and English from the University of New Mexico in 1951. He then studied at Edinburgh University in Scotland as a Fulbright scholar. He was a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellow at Stanford University in 1957, and he received his M.A. degree in philosophy from the University of New Mexico in 1960. In the late 1950s Abbey worked as a National Park Service ranger in what is now Arches National Park in Utah. His notes on this experience became the basis for Desert Solitaire. From the late 1970s until his death, Abbey lived in Tucson, Arizona, and he taught English at the University of Arizona until 1988. Abbey’s early books reveal his lifelong interests in social criticism and anarchy. His second book, The Brave Cowboy (1956), features an individualist with anarchist tendencies. In defiance of the government practice of leasing public land to cattle ranchers in the Western states, the main character systematically cuts down the barbed-wire fencing the ranchers use to mark their leased property. Two of Abbey’s works of popular fiction, The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975) and Hayduke Lives (1989), depict a pro-environment group that sabotages equipment owned by commercial land developers. Abbey’s semiautobiographical book The Fool’s Progress: An Honest Novel (1988) features a character who returns to Appalachia in search of his personal roots. Abbey’s other works of nonfiction include Slickrock (1971) and The Journey Home (1977). Abbey won a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction writing in 1974. He also won the 1987 Academy of Arts and Letters Creative Achievement Award but declined it because he was unable to attend the award ceremony. Instead he went on a previously planned river-rafting trip. George Abbott George Abbott (1887-1995), American actor, playwright, producer, and director, born in Forestville, New York, and educated at the University of Rochester and Harvard University. He became an actor in 1913, and he later was a film director (1927-30) before embarking on a career as a theatrical director. Abbott directed and produced the comedies Boy Meets Girl (1935) and Kiss and Tell (1943) and the musicals Pal Joey (1940), On the Town (1944), Call Me Madam (1950), Wonderful Town (1953), and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962). He wrote and directed the musicals The Boys from Syracuse (1938; adapted from Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors), Where's Charley? (1948), and New Girl in Town (1957). He was coauthor and director of the comedy Three Men on a Horse (1934) and the musicals The Pajama Game (1954), Damn Yankees (1955), and Fiorello! (1959; Pulitzer Prize, 1960). James Adair James Adair (1709?-1783?), American trader and writer, born in Ireland. He lived for almost 40 years among the Native Americans, primarily the Chickasaw, in the region now constituting the southeastern United States. His book The History of the American Indians (1775), although it insists on the Jewish origin of the Native American race, is one of the best firsthand accounts of the habits and character of the tribes of the region. The work contains an incomplete but valuable vocabulary of various Native American dialects. Samuel Hopkins Adams Samuel Hopkins Adams (1871-1958), American journalist and author, born in Dunkirk, New York, and educated at Hamilton College. From 1891 to 1900 he was a newspaper writer on the staff of the New York Sun; from 1903 to 1905 he was on the staff of McClure's Magazine. As a journalist he played an important role in the muckraking movement, an attempt to expose corruption in business and politics. His most notable disclosure was a series of magazine articles on the evils of the patent- medicine industry. His novel Revelry (1926) deals with corruption in the administration of President Warren G. Harding. He also wrote biographies, short stories, and several film scripts. Mortimer Adler Mortimer Adler (1902-2001), American scholar and author. Mortimer Jerome Adler was born in New York City and educated at Columbia University. He taught psychology at Columbia (1923-1929) and philosophy of law at the University of Chicago (1930-1952). In 1945 he became associate editor, with the American educator Robert Hutchins, of Great Books of the Western World (54 volumes, 1945-1952). He resigned from the University of Chicago in 1952 to head the newly established Institute for Philosophical Research at San Francisco. Adler published numerous books, including How to Read a Book (1940), The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes (1967), and Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography (1977). He was editor in chief of The Annals of America (20 vol., 1969) and served as director of planning for the 15th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, which appeared in 1974. James Agee James Agee (1909-1955), American writer, known for his delicate and moving prose. Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, Agee was educated at Harvard University. His first book, the poetry collection Permit Me Voyage, was published in 1934. In 1936 Agee traveled to the Southern United States with American photographer Walker Evans to document the lives of sharecroppers (see Peonage) for an article in Fortune magazine. The article never appeared, but Agee and Evans later collaborated on a book on the subject, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). In the 1940s Agee worked as a film critic for the magazines Time and The Nation. Beginning in 1948 he worked as a motion-picture scriptwriter. His best-known works are The African Queen (1951) and The Night of the Hunter (1955). In 1951 his novelette The Morning Watch, about the religious struggles of a young boy, was published. A Death in the Family (1957; Pulitzer Prize, 1958) is generally regarded as Agee's masterpiece. The novel recounts the effects of a man's death on his family. The book was dramatized under the title All the Way Home as a play (1960; Pulitzer Prize, 1961) and a motion picture (1963). Agee's film criticism was collected in two volumes, Agee on Film (1958, 1960). The publication of the volume Letters of James Agee to Father Flye (1962), correspondence between Agee and a friend, revealed Agee's inner turmoil. The work helped to establish his place in American letters. Agee’s Collected Poems was published in 1968. Conrad Aiken Conrad Aiken (1889-1973), American poet and novelist. Conrad Potter Aiken was born in Savannah, Georgia, and educated at Harvard University. His first volume of verse, Earth Triumphant and Other Tales in Verse (1914), reveals his talent for sensuous imagery and flowing rhythms. His Selected Poems won the 1930 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, and his Collected Poems won the 1954 National Book Award. Later volumes of his poetry include Cats and Bats and Things with Wings (1965), Preludes (1966), Selected Poems (1969), and Thee (1971). Aiken wrote numerous novels and short stories, many of them based on psychoanalytic theory (see Psychoanalysis). One of his most notable stories is “Silent Snow, Secret Snow,” published in his Among the Lost People (1934). The Short Stories of Conrad Aiken was published in 1950; the autobiographical Ushant appeared in 1952; his Collected Novels was published in 1964; and Collected Criticism appeared in 1968. Aiken's work most consistently explores the difficulty in achieving a stable personal identity in a constantly changing world. In recognition of his literary achievement, Aiken held the Chair of Poetry of the Library of Congress from 1950 to 1952 and was awarded the Gold Medal for Poetry by the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1958. Edward Albee Edward Albee, born in 1928, American playwright, whose most successful plays focus on familial relationships. Edward Franklin Albee was born in Washington, D.C., and adopted as an infant by the American theater executive Reed A. Albee of the Keith-Albee chain of vaudeville and motion picture theaters. Albee attended a number of preparatory schools and, for a short time, Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He wrote his first one- act play, The Zoo Story (1959), in three weeks. Among his other plays are the one-act The American Dream (1961); Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962); The Ballad of the Sad Café (1963), adapted from a novel by the American author Carson McCullers; Tiny Alice (1964); and A Delicate Balance (1966), for which he won the 1967 Pulitzer Prize in drama. For Seascape (1975), which had only a brief Broadway run, Albee won his second Pulitzer Prize. His later works include The Lady from Dubuque (1977), an adaptation (1979) of Lolita by the Russian American novelist Vladimir Nabokov, and The Man Who Had Three Arms (1983). In 1994 he received a third Pulitzer Prize for Three Tall Women (1991). Albee won a Tony Award in 2002 for The Goat, or Who is Sylvia (2002), a play about a happily married architect who falls in love with a goat.

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