Joyce Cary (1888–1957) was born in Ireland. He studied to be a painter before serving in the British military and civil service in West Africa. In 1920 he returned to England and devoted himself to writing. »

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The Horse's Mouth

By Joyce Cary
Introduction by Brad Leithauser

The Horse's Mouth, the third and most celebrated volume of Joyce Cary's First Trilogy, is perhaps the finest novel ever written about an artist. Its painter hero, the charming and larcenous Gulley Jimson, has an insatiable genius for creation and a no less remarkable appetite for destruction. Is he a great artist? a has-been? or an exhausted, drunken ne'er-do-well? He is without doubt a visionary, and as he criss-crosses London in search of money and inspiration the world as seen though his eyes appears with a newly outrageous and terrible beauty.

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Reviews

A master among the English novelists of his time.
— Madison Smartt Bell

Also see:

Herself Surprised By Joyce Cary Introduction by Brad Leithauser Herself Surprised, the first volume of Joyce Cary's remarkable First Trilogy, introduces Sara Monday, a woman at once dissolute and devout, passionate and sly.

To Be a Pilgrim By Joyce Cary Introduction by Brad Leithauser Tom Wilcher, the hero of the second volume of Joyce Cary's First Trilogy, has been at various times a political activist, a closefisted lawyer, a self-sacrificing brother, and a dirty old man. But as he faces death his unfulfilled spiritual yearnings are uppermost in his mind.

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