Christopher Isherwood, Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties

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Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties (1938) is a semi-fictionalised memoir by the English novelist Christopher Isherwood, in which he looks back with self-mocking irony upon his development between the ages of seventeen and twenty-four as an early stage in “the education of a novelist” (Isherwood 2013: xv). Isherwood warns us in his prefatory note that he has employed “a novelist’s licence” and portrayed his friends as “caricatures” under fictional names (xv), but his account is in broad outline biographically reliable, with a few qualifications. Significant background facts, principally Isherwood’s own homosexuality, are suppressed, while some important figures, …

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Citation: Baldick, Chris. "Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 September 2020 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3932, accessed 28 March 2024.]

3932 Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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