Martin Seymour-Smith defies easy classification as an author. He has written a considerable amount of toughly elegant lyric poetry that can be both tender and ironic. He produced the first monograph, as well as the earliest critical biography on his friend Robert Graves. His controversial 1989 biography of Rudyard Kipling is a necessary touchstone for all subsequent approaches to that writer. He has edited works by William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other Renaissance poets. He collaborated with James Reeves on editions of Andrew Marvell and Walt Whitman. He has produced satire and extensive works of what may only be called social anthropology. He is equally remarkable for the encyclopedic erudition that informs his Guide to Modern World Literature (1973) and Who's Who in Twentieth-Century Literature (1976). This impressive output in books has been accompanied by a stream of reviews and articles in various periodicals.

In his Bluff Your Way in Literature...