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Sign up todayThe Art of Youth
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Learn moreThe Art of Youth is a moving inquiry into the nature of artistic prodigies who did their major work at an early age. Renowned novelist Nicholas Delbanco gives us a triptych of indelible portraits: the American writer Stephen Crane (immortalized by The Red Badge of Courage), the British artist Dora Carrington (called โthe most neglected serious painter of her timeโ), and the legendary composer George Gershยญwin (Rhapsody in Blue, Porgy and Bess).
All three lived colorful, productive lives before dying early, at an average age of thirty-five. In this learned and elegant book, Delbanco discovers what it is we mourn in artists who pass away so young, and muses on his own lifeโone marked by both early success and longevity.
Nicholas Delbanco is the author of more than two dozen works of fiction and nonfiction — including, most recently, Lastingness: The Art of Old Age. He is the Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor of English at the University of Michigan, where he directs the Hopwood awards program and was for many years the director of the MFA program in creative writing.