“Mr. Linney continues to be one of our most perceptive chroniclers of the folkways of rural America, finding humanity and nobility in the most remote of places.” –Mel Gussow, New York Times“Linney’s words do it all, summoning up vistas of scary beauty and passions of elemental force.” –David Richards,Washington Post“His output was dazzling in its variety and exceptional for its depth as well as its breadth of scope. Goering at Nuremberg, Lord Byron’s daugh...

Based on Ernest J. Gaines’ National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel, A Lesson Before Dying is set in a small Louisiana Cajun community in the late 1940’s. Jefferson, a young illiterate black man, is falsely convicted of murder and is sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins, the plantation schoolteacher, agrees to talk with the condemned man. The disheartened Wiggins had once harbored dreams of escaping from his impoverished youth, yet he returned to his home town after university, to tea...

This unique collection of lectures honors the pioneering work in Byron studies of Leslie Alexis Marchand, who has had an enduring influence on the appreciation and study of Lord Byron for sixty years. Generations of readers and writers have come to Byron through his biographies and his edition of the poet’s letters and journals. All admirers of Byron respond to the verve, dash, and immediacy of his correspondence, which lies at the heart of Marchand’s biographies and offers us a portrait b...