Books Do Furnish A Room
  • Published: 15 July 2005
  • ISBN: 9780099472490
  • Imprint: Arrow
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $22.99

Books Do Furnish A Room

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EBook
11 Jan 2011
Paperback
15 Jul 2005
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The tenth novel in Anthony Powell's brilliant twelve-novel sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time

'He is, as Proust was before him, the great literary chronicler of his culture in his time.' GUARDIAN
'A Dance to the Music of Time' is universally acknowledged as one of the great works of English literature. Reissued now in this definitive edition, it stands ready to delight and entrance a new generation of readers.
In this tenth volume, Nick Jenkins and his circle of friends are re-establishing their lives in the wake of war. With the London literary scene starting to find its feet again, things begin to look up for Nick as old acquaintance Quiggin offers him a position at the literary magazine he is launching. Meanwhile, there already seems to be trouble in paradise for the newly married Widmerpool, whose wife, Pamela Flitton, has caught the eye of writer X. Trapnel – a man who exudes in equal measure mystery, talent and an air of self-destruction.
  • Published: 15 July 2005
  • ISBN: 9780099472490
  • Imprint: Arrow
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $22.99
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About the author

Anthony Powell

Anthony Powell was an only child, born in 1905. As a young man he worked for a crumbling publishing business whilst trying to find time to write novels. He moved in a bohemian world of struggling writers and artists, which was to provide the raw material for much of his fiction. During the Second World War he served in Military Intelligence Liaison. He subsequently became a fiction reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement and for five years he was the literary editor of the now-defunct magazine Punch. Meanwhile he continued to work on the twelve-novel sequence ‘A Dance to the Music of Time’. He was the author of seven other novels, and four volumes of memoirs. His many reviews for the Daily Telegraph are also published in collected volumes. Anthony Powell died in March 2000.

Also by Anthony Powell

Agents And Patients
Journals 1990-1992
Temporary Kings
Hearing Secret Harmonies
The Valley Of Bones
The Soldier's Art
The Military Philosophers
See all

Praise for Books Do Furnish A Room

He has wit, style, and panache, in a world where those qualities are in permanently short supply

The New York Review of Books

[A] comic masterpiece

Irish Times

Comic, satisfying, thought-provoking, addictive

The Telegraph

Discovering Anthony Powell’s "A Dance to the Music of Time" has been one of the greatest pleasures of my reading life. The cool elegance of the prose, the deliciously dry humour, the confident choreography of his characters made for an incomparable treat. Twelve volumes was simply not enough.

Michael Palin

One of the great novel-sequences in English Literature – a wonderful portrait of society, full of insight into the complexities of human behaviour, richly detailed and shrewdly funny.

William Boyd

Powell’s novel sequence is at once a rich chronicle of 20th-century English social life and an intricately wrought work of art. It is also extremely funny, in its sly fashion.

John Banville

"A Dance To The Music of Time" is an epic, elegant masterpiece, so full of lightness and comedy that you're unprepared for how it quietly wrecks your heart.

Lauren Groff

I re-read the "Dance" every five years or so and always find something new – the world has changed but the characters are evergreen. Everybody has a Widmerpool in their life.

Daisy Goodwin

A masterful stylist and a wise, often hilarious observer of human nature and his times, Anthony Powell is an under-appreciated literary gem. The pleasures and dramas of the "Dance" continue to illuminate daily life.

Claire Messud

The novels of Powell’s "A Dance to the Music of Time" themselves move hand in hand in intricate measure through the last century, bearing wisdom and understanding for the present. In an ever-quicker, ever-shallower world, his steadiness and wit reliably escort the reader into depth and patience. Nobody gives pattern to the spectacle of human existence like Powell.

Louisa Young

It's his supreme skill in mastering a lengthily interwoven chronicle, the evolution of such a range and variety of pin-point characters, the wit and the cultural ambition that give the novel a unique place in English literature.

Melvyn Bragg

Reading "A Dance to the Music of Time" was such a joyous experience, I remember wishing there'd been more than twelve volumes.

Roddy Doyle