America has known few writers capable of the comic élan and full-bodied portraiture that abound in the novels of Dawn Powell, yet for decades her work was out of print, cherished only by a small band of admirers. Now the Library of America gathers the best of the writer Edmund Wilson compared to Muriel Spark, Anthony Powell, and Evelyn Waugh. My Home is Far Away, a fictionalized memoir of Powell's difficult childhood in small-town Ohio, is one of the most moving books ever written about childhood. The other three novels collected here reveal the other side of Powell's unique talent: in The Locusts Have No King, The Wicked Pavilion and The Golden Spur; her satirical flair and rich sense of character create an unparalleled fresco of postwar New York in all its pretensions and glamour, as her brilliantly observed characters - artists and writers, publishers and show people, businessmen and socialites - try to come to terms with their illusions of love and success. Her New York novels are exactly what she wanted them to be: "crystal in quality, sharp as the skyline, and relentlessly true." A companion volume, Novels 1930-1942, gathers the greatest of Powell's early work.

Contents

• My Home is Far Away (1944)
• The Locusts Have No King (1948)
• The Wicked Pavilion (1954)
• The Golden Spur (1962)