Biography: writers Books

Book SynopsisOne should either wear a work or art, or be a work of art', Wilde once declared. In The Invention of Oscar Wilde, Nicholas Frankel explores Wilde's self-creation as a 'work of art' and a carefully constructed cultural icon. Frankel takes readers on a journey through Wilde's inventive, provocative life, from his Irish origins - and their public erasure - through his challenges to traditional concepts of masculinity and male sexuality, to his criminal conviction and final years of exile in France. Along the way, Frankel takes a deep look at Wilde's writings, paradoxical wit and intellectual convictions, as well as his marriage and affairs with a series of attractive young men, including his great love Lord Alfred Douglas.Trade Review‘Oscar the man, Oscar the life, Oscar the tragedy, Oscar the standard bearer for art, Irishness, queerness, intellect and wit we all know. But there is Oscar the idea too: the symbol, the representative, the totem, the global icon which looms above the other identities. It is an identity whose construction Wilde himself began, but on which subsequent generations build. There is no one better to unwrap the mystery and challenge of this Oscar than Nicholas Frankel, whose previous work has already established him as one of the world’s foremost Wildeans. This book is such an invaluable and permanent addition to the literature.’ – Stephen Fry

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Book SynopsisAldous Huxley was one of the twentieth century's most prescient thinkers. This new biography charts the phases of Huxley's life and writing: from the early satirist who depicted the glamorous despair of the postwar generation, to the committed pacifist of the 1930s, the spiritual seeker of the 1940s, the psychedelic sage of the 1950s who affirmed the spiritual potential of mescaline and LSD, to the New Age prophet. While Huxley is best-known as the author of Brave New World, Poller argues that it is The Perennial Philosophy, The Doors of Perceptionand Island- Huxley's blueprint for a utopian society- that have had the most impact on culture at large. A rich and lucid account of Huxley's life and work.Trade ReviewJake Poller, in his new biography of Aldous Huxley, does the impossible. He covers the ground revealed previously by other scholars, but also manages to add fresh details, knowledgeable insights and astute critiques-and in far fewer pages than in any earlier treatments. This book is not only a marvel of concise and readable scholarship but a welcome and necessary update of the life of one of the 20th century's most provocative intellectuals.-Dana Sawyer, professor of religion and philosophy, Maine College of Art and author of Aldous Huxley: A Biography (2015)

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Book SynopsisFord Madox Ford had a fascinating life, spent among several of the most important groups of artists and writers of his time. Friends with Henry James, H. G. Wells and above all Joseph Conrad, Ford was a leading figure of the avant-garde in pre-First World War London, publishing Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis and D. H. Lawrence in The English Review. After the warhe founded The Transatlantic Review in Paris, helping to launch Hemingway and Jean Rhys. A prolific writer in his own right, Ford’s best-known books are the modernist tour de force The Good Soldier (1915) and the Parade’s End tetralogy (1924–8). Drawing on recently discovered correspondence and photographs, this cogent new critical biography demonstrates Ford’s vital contribution to modern fiction, poetry and criticism.

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Book SynopsisH.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886–1961) was one of the first writers of free verse in English, best known for her sparse Imagist poems. For over forty years she wrote poetry that resurrected forgotten ancient goddesses, and autobiographical prose that explored her trauma, her desires, and the unique struggles of a twentieth-century woman writer. She was also a scholar of religion, mythology and history, a translator of ancient Greek, and worked in early avant-garde film. Dubbed the ‘perfect bi-’ by Sigmund Freud, she placed issues of sexuality and gender at the centre of her writings. This new biography explores the fascinating life and work of this important modernist figure, once written out of literary history but now receiving the attention she deserves.Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1: ‘Inexorably entangled’, 1886–1911 Chapter 2: ‘My pencil run riot!’, 1911–14 Chapter 3: 'The black cloud fell’, 1914–18 Chapter 4: ‘To make a self’, 1919–26 Chapter 5: ‘The perfect bi-’, 1927–39 Chapter 6: ‘This is not writing . . . this is burning’, 1939–46 Chapter 7: ‘Content, besieged with memories, like low-swarming bees’, 1946–61 References Select Bibliography Acknowledgements Photo Acknowledgements

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Book SynopsisA new portrait of Dylan Thomas, which reveals an inventive, dedicated writer.

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Book Synopsis'He was "not of an age, but for all time".' (Shakespeare's contemporary Ben Jonson) No writer, before or since, has matched Shakespeare in terms of influence, critical acclaim or popular success. His genius lay in his sheer dramatic skill, his powerful use of imagery and his astonishing ability to create richly imagined characters. Packed full of the Bard's clever insights, witty asides and timeless nuggets of wisdom, and complemented by fascinating facts about his life and talents, this Little Book showcases some of the most remarkable lines ever crafted in the English language.SAMPLE QUOTES: 'What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet.' - Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2'We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.' - The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1'Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.' - Julius Caesar, Act 2, Scene 2SAMPLE FACT: There is evidence that Shakespeare wrote a play called Cardenio, which was performed by the King's Men in 1613. No known copy of the play exists today.Table of ContentsLove and Friendship • Ambition • Loyalty and Betrayal • Revenge • Family • Wit and Wisdom

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Book Synopsis'The greatest writer of his time.' (George Orwell)The author of 20 much-loved novels and novellas, Charles Dickens combined humour and pathos to explore Victorian society in all its shades. Widely praised for his rich narratives and larger-than-life characters, he was not only a celebrity author but also an admired social reformer. Moving from the refined drawing rooms of the upper classes to the horrors of the workhouse or the filthy back streets of London, Dickens' writings shone a light on the harsh inequalities of the times.The Little Book of Charles Dickens showcases wonderful quotes from the author's writings, alongside fascinating facts about his life and achievements. By turns witty, comic, insightful and wise, this delightful volume is a fitting tribute to a literary giant.SAMPLE QUOTE: 'It is said that the children of the very poor are not brought up, but dragged up.' Bleak HouseSAMPLE FACT: When Dickens was 12 years old, his father was sent to a debtor's prison. Forced to become the family's main breadwinner, the young Dickens worked at Warren's Blacking Factory, where he was paid a pittance for pasting labels onto bottles of shoe polish.Table of ContentsPoverty and Social Class • Crime and Corruption • Loyalty and Betrayal • Innocence and Guilt • Relationships • Wit and Wisdom

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Book SynopsisThe writer who changed America's literary landscape.One of the great novelists of the 20th century, Ernest Hemingway's spare, precise prose captivated critics and readers alike, while his swaggering personality made him a star beyond the literary scene. The author's world was full of daring and danger: he drove an ambulance during the First World War, had a love of bullfighting and boxing, and rushed to see action in the Spanish Civil War. His travels and adventures fuelled his art, while his troubled and often chaotic life was central to his creativity. Packed full of insightful quotes and fascinating facts about Hemingway's life and work, this little book creates an intriguing portrait of the complex man behind the writer.Sample Quotes: 'But man is not made for defeat... A man can be destroyed but not defeated.' - The Old Man and The Sea, 1952'Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.' - Hemingway, in a personal letter to the publisher, Charles Scribner IV'But life isn't hard to manage when you've nothing to lose.' - A Farwell to Arms, 1929Sample Facts: While serving as an ambulance driver during the First World War, Hemingway was badly wounded by mortar fire. He managed to help an Italian soldier reach safety, an action that earned him an Italian Silver Medal of Valour.Hemingway was an avid hunter and fisherman. His zeal for both pursuits worked their way into his fiction, such as the prize-winning novel The Old Man and the Sea and the acclaimed short story 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber'.Table of ContentsThe Man and the Myth • Journalist and War Hero • Adventures Abroad • Boxing and Bullfighting • Literary Friendships • Wisdom and Wit.

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Book SynopsisThe Blue Light is an autobiographical novel in chapters and vignettes that travels through memory, time, and language. Hussein Bargouthi tells his story with Bari, a Turkish American Sufi, during Bargouthi’s years as a graduate student at the University of Washington in the late 1980s. The Blue Light has several beginnings and many returns—from Beirut’s traumatic sea to musings on color and identity, from Buddhist paths to Rajneesh disciples, from military rule to colonial insanity, from drug addiction to sacred rock. Written and lived between Arabic and English, this is a unique book whose depth is as clear as its surface. It will tempt you to dismiss it as it compels you to devour it for illumination. Merging memoir with fiction, and the hallowed with the profane, The Blue Light is a meditation on and liberation from madness—a brilliant, inimitable literary achievement.Trade Review"The Blue Light is philosophically capacious: Barghouthi explores spirituality and sociality, as well as knowledge, creativity, and writing." * Full Stop *

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Book Synopsis'Theirs was a pre-urban world in the glow of its last sunset, without a care or doubt, in which it seemed as if nothing could ever come to harm. Here was their version of that ideal world that has haunted the dreamer, rebel and pastoral poet for centuries.'Between 1850 and 1939 such well-known writers as Rudyard Kipling, Virginia Woolf and Richard Jefferies came to Sussex, a county already home to the likes of Wilfrid Blunt, Hilaire Belloc and others. The result was an explosion of literary creativity which rejected modernity and the London scene, and instead developed writing imbued with a sense of nature and landscape.In this, his last book, Peter Brandon (1927–2011) has drawn on his vast knowledge of the Sussex landscape to show how such writers, seeking a foil to London, were inspired by their surroundings and found peace and a tranquillity which existed in few other places.

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Book SynopsisThis is the story of a home. A story rooted in love. The story of a poet born of an Irish jazz musician and a Jamaican go-go dancer, an absent father and a resilient mother. In Springfield Road, Salena Godden evokes an era when oranges seemed bigger and summers were longer, a world of half-penny sweets, free school milk, hand-me-downs and Thatcher''s Britain, for those too young to remember and for those old enough to know. For Salena, it was a time for learning that life can be brutal with first betrayals and first losses, but also that there are endless riches to uncover in the world. In equal parts powerful, tender and fearless, Springfield Road shows us where, in a world full of shadows, hope is to be found.

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Book SynopsisA holistic approach to the monumental modernist writer Christopher Isherwood.

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Book SynopsisThink you already know the story of Charles Dickens' life? Think again.Almost everything you're familiar with was first mentioned in an authorised biography written by Dickens' close friend John Forster 150 years ago. It's the version of events that Dickens himself chose to make public, and newly accessible archives reveal that it's crammed with gaps, inconsistencies, and outright lies. There's the sister whose existence Dickens kept secret and the Jewish relations whose faith he strove to conceal. There's plagiarism, fraud, and suicide.And that's only for starters. Helena Kelly, author of the acclaimed Jane Austen, the Secret Radical, retells Dickens' story from his childhood to his deathbed, uncovers the truths he tried to keep hidden, and offers a fresh - and deeply troubling - perspective on the man who remains one of Britain's best-known novelists.You won't be able to look at him - or his work - in the same way again.Trade ReviewA literary bio that deftly untangles truth from untruth. Diligent research and incisive close readings of Dickens' writings ground Kelly's investigation into the gaps, contradictions, and inconsistencies in the manipulated, self-serving story that many subsequent biographers have repeated. -- Kirkus ReviewsSpeaking of his fiction, when it comes to literary analysis, Kelly isn't just unimpeachable - she's energizing * The New York Times *As this fascinating book reveals, we don't actually know the truth at all ... for the real story, check out Helena Kelly * Daily Express *Praise for Jane Austen, the Secret Radical:"Bracing. Plausible and vivid."-- "The Atlantic""Jane Austen, The Secret Radical is wonderful; a revelation. It's difficult to stand out from the crowd when writing about such an influential figure, but Helena Kelly has certainly achieved that with this smart, knowing, perceptive book."--Amanda Foreman, author of A World on Fire"A fresh take on the life and work of the beloved writer Jane Austen. Reveals the subversive rebel soul behind such towering classics as Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Mansfield Park."-- "Elle""A thoroughly engaging read." - The Times Literary Supplement"An important revisionary work. Helena Kelly provokes."-- "The New York Times""Amply shows her deep research. She exposes a depth beyond what at first may seem to be silly characters. A fine-grained study that shows us how to read between the lines to discover the remarkable woman who helped transform the novel from trash to an absolute art form." - Kirkus Reviews"Ambitious. Illuminating, provocative. Kelly offers a salutary argument for reading Austen's novels with the serious attentiveness they invite and deserve."-- "The Spectator""Do we read Jane Austen's novels as she intended? In this riveting literary-biographical study, the answer is a resounding no. An interpretive coup that is dazzling and dizzying . . . You won't read Austen the same way again."-- "The New Yorker""Essential. What this radical re-reading of the novels does so brilliantly is to exhort us all to chuck out the chintz, and the teacups, and all the traditional romantic notions about Austen's work that have been fed to us for so long."-- "The Bookseller (London)""Helena Kelly makes the case for Austen as an author steeped in the fear of war and revolution. Meticulously researched. Kelly shows us that the novels were about nothing more or less than the burning political questions of the day. A sublime piece of literary detective work that shows us once and for all how to be precisely the sort of reader that Austen deserves."-- "The Guardian (London)""Kelly argues passionately and engagingly. Her critical method is . . . generating meaning from the smallest details of the novels."-- "The Washington Post" * Praise for Jane Austen, A Secret Radical *Helena Kelly's book presents a fresh view of Dickens, just as her previous book, Jane Austen the Secret Radical, did for Austen * The Sunday Times *

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Book Synopsis'Puts Cavendish back into the literary history books where she belongs' Kate Mosse 'Scholarly, articulate, and never less than fascinating' Alice Loxton A biography of the remarkable, and in her time scandalous, seventeenth-century writer Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. ‘My ambition is not only to be Empress, but Authoress of a whole world.’ Margaret Cavendish, then Lucas, was born in 1623 to a wealthy family. In 1644, as England descended into civil war, she joined the court of the formidable Queen Henrietta Maria at Oxford, before following the court into exile in France. It was there that she met her much older lifelong partner, William Cavendish, Marquess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Cavendish was a revolutionary writer. At a time when literature was dominated by men, she wrote passionately on gender, science and philosophy, defied convention by publishing under her own name, and advocated for women in work that predates the feminist movement. In 1666, she published The Blazing World, a brilliant, trail-blazing proto-novel thought to be one of the earliest works of science fiction. But her legacy divides opinion. And history has largely forgotten her. In Pure Wit, Francesca Peacock shines a spotlight on the fascinating, pioneering, yet often complex and controversial life of Margaret Cavendish.Trade ReviewIt’s a gripping read, wonderfully researched and puts Cavendish back into the literary history books where she belongs. I loved it. * Kate Mosse *Fascinating * William Boyd *Well-written, well-researched, interesting and peppy. * The Observer *5 STARS... Margaret Cavendish was a woman out of time. This blazing biography does her proud * The Telegraph *[An] erudite and entertaining book * The Spectator *Scholarly, articulate, and never less than fascinating, this is a sensational debut. * Alice Loxton *[A] sparky celebration of a remarkable woman * Financial Times *Pure Wit is thorough and scholarly * Literary Review *A stellar debut. Francesca Peacock is as bold, bright and witty as her subject. Margaret Cavendish sears through every page and so does her blazing world. * Jessie Childs *This is historical biography as it should be written: intelligent and nuanced, witty and thoroughly riveting. * Lucasta Miller *A fascinating book on a fascinating woman, who was not the “crazy duchess” of hostile legend, but a daring feminist pioneer. * Penelope Corfield *Francesca Peacock adroitly recounts Cavendish’s ordeals as a monarchist under Cromwell, her years in exile in Paris, her supportive marriage, her ennoblement and fame. * New Statesman *[Peacock's] enjoyable book is enriched by accounts of other women who lived remarkably in those remarkable times. * The Times *Perceptive and nuanced. A blazing account of a blazing woman. * Holly Kyte *

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Book SynopsisThis is the first full-scale biography of Osip Mandelstam to combine an analysis of his poetry with a description of his personal life, from his beginnings as a young intellectual in pre-revolutionary Russia to his final fate as a victim of Stalinism.The myth has grown up that Mandelstam was a gloomy, miserable figure; Dutli deconstructs this, stressing Mandelstam's enjoyment of life. There are several underlying themes here. One is Mandelstam's Jewish background in pre-1914 Russia, which he rejected as a young man, but reaffirmed in later life. Another is the inescapable impact of Russia's political and social transformation.His evolution as a poet naturally occupies a large place in the biography, which quotes many of his most famous poems, including his devastating anti-Stalin epigram. He produced wonderful poetry before the October Revolution, but did not reach his full poetic stature until the 1930s when in exile in Voronezh. He was never an official Soviet poet, and it was only thanks to the intervention of Bukharin that he was brought back from utter impoverishment.The biography gives full weight to his emotional life, beginning with his friendship with two other Russian poets, Marina Tsvetaeva and Anna Akhmatova, followed by love and marriage to Nadezhda Khazina."One of the century's greatest lyric poets." - Elaine Feinstein, Sunday Times"Mandelstam's poems are both bold and delicate. His imagery can seem both profoundly startling yet entirely natural". - Robert Chandler"Mandelstam was a tragic figure. Even while in exile in Voronej, he wrote works of untold beauty and power. And he had no poetic forerunners. In all of world poetry, I know of no other such case. We know the sources of Pushkin and Blok, but who will tell us from where that new, divine harmony, Mandelstam's poetry, came from?" - Anna Akhmatova"Russia's greatest poet in the twentieth century." - Joseph BrodskyTrade ReviewA timely reminder of both the long history of repression in Russia and the powerful role that literature can play. Dutli's rounded portrait of a Russian poet unafraid to speak truth to power brings to life the man and his time. -- Carl Wilkinson, Best Books of the Year * Financial Times *Likely to become the standard reference work for the English reader ... enlightening -- Donald Rayfield * Literary Review *Deftly examines [Mandelstam's] literary legacy and explains why, in the opinion of the Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky, [he] can be considered the greatest Russian poet of the 20th century -- John Thornhill * Financial Times *[Dutli's] understanding of his subject is profound and his assessments informed ... his sympathetic grasp of Mandlestam's artistic genius should yet be enough to encourage readers to explore some of the greatest poetry of the 20th century. -- Mark Glanville * Jewish Chronicle *Compelling ... [Dutli] provides a vibrant, deeply informed guide to the life, the writing and the tumultuous age that shaped them. -- Clare Cavanagh * Times Literary Supplement *The author, Ralph Dutli, approaches the poet unobtrusively and sensitively. He deconstructs the myths that have surrounded him, such as the notion that he was a restless ascetic who never put down any roots or settled anywhere. It was sheer necessity that forced him to move from place to place. Dutli brings out the sensual and witty side of Mandelstam, who was full of the joys of life. -- Marion Lülte * Die Tageszeitung *This biography crowns Dutli's work as editor of the poet's oeuvre. Thanks to Ralph Dutli, the German public now have the best conceivable access to Mandelstam's work. Dutli hasn't just told the story of Mandelstam's life; he has included in an appendix a range of comments by other poets, the most remarkable of them being that by Pasolini. -- Christoph Bartmann * Süddeutsche Zeitung *This is a biography written with insight and precision, which can be recommended unreservedly. The aim of the book is to explain how Mandelstam managed to retain his enjoyment of life and clarity of vision despite all his suffering. This is a successful biography written with empathy, sobriety and a wealth of information. -- Renate Wiggershaus * Frankfurter Rundschau *A model biography by Dutli, who is better qualified than anyone else to do this, because he has a precise knowledge of every facet of the poet's life and work. He corrects the picture presented by Celan, whose translations overemphasised the tragic, elegiac aspect of Mandelstam's poetry. -- Ulrich M. Schmid * Neue Zürcher Zeitung *The details of the road that led to Mandelstam's death have never been presented to the German public so precisely and with so much tact, as here. Dutli's language is muscular, warm and colourful. -- Andreas Isenschmid * Die Zeit *Dutli is able to illuminate the interaction between the poet's life and his work in a masterly fashion, without reducing his poems to a mere reflection of aspects of his biography. -- Michael Braun * Deutschlandfunk *

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Book Synopsis'You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.' Such were the words of the master detective Sherlock Holmes to Dr Watson, as he noted how his friend failed to implement Holmes's techniques. In How to think like Sherlock you will learn how to increase your powers of observation, memory, deduction and reasoning using the tricks and techniques of the world's most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes. The book incorporates the latest techniques and theories across a range of topics: NLP, memory mapping, body language, information shifting and speed reading - this is a supremely practical book that will make you look at the world in a new light, and more importantly, impress those around you. Packed full of case studies, quotes and trivia from Arthur Conan Doyle's original novels and short stories, How to think like Sherlock also includes a series of fun tasks and games for you to complete that will ensure that when you reach the end of the book you will be thinking like Sherlock Holmes, the master of the science of deduction. You will never look at a shirt cuff, trouser hem or scuff of dirt on a shoe in the same way again!Other books in the series include: How to Think Like Stephen Hawking, How to Think Like Churchill and How to Think Like Steve JobsTrade Reviewideal present or stocking filler... gives you the chance to improve your deductive powers * Choice *A supremely practical book that will make you look at the world in a new light, and more importantly, impress those around you * Sherlockology *Smith is obviously a man who knows his Holmes and he uses Holmes' strengths to tutor his readers * The Bookbag *

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Book SynopsisEmily Dickinson is regarded as one of the greatest poets of all time, but she has come to us as an odd and helpless woman living a life of self imposed seclusion. Lyndall Gordon sees instead a volcanic character living on her own terms and with a steely confidence in her own talent; a woman whose family feuded over a hothouse of adultery and devastating betrayal and a woman who had her own secret. After her death the fight for possession of Emily and her poetry became the feud's focus.'Lives Like Loaded Guns has cracked one of poetry's most enduring enigmas . . . It rescues Dickinson from the image of the passive, heart-broken recluse. It is a worthy monument to a poet even more extraordinary than we realised' Olivia Cole, Financial TimesFrom the acclaimed biographer of Mary Wollstonecraft, T.S. Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Virginia Woolf and Henry James.

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Book SynopsisNancy Durrell was a woman famous for her silences. Anaïs Nin said 'I think often of Nancy's most eloquent silences, Nancy talking with her fingers, her hair, her cheeks, a wonderful gift. Music again.' As the first wife Lawrence Durrell, author of The Alexandria Quartet, it is perhaps surprising that she is an unknown entity, a constant presence in the biographies of Durrell and others in the Bloomsbury set, yet always a shadowy figure, beautiful and enigmatic. But who was the woman who was with Durrell during the most important years of his development as a writer? Joanna Hodgkin decides to retrace her mother's fascinating story: the escape from her toxic and mysterious family; the years in bohemian literary London and Paris in the 1930s; marriage to Durrell and their discovery of the 'Eden' of pre-war Corfu and her desperate struggle to survive in Palestine alone with a small child as the British Mandate collapsed. Amateurs in Eden is a fascinating biography of a literary marriage and of an unusual woman struggling to live an independent life.Trade ReviewFrank and captivating . . . rich in charm and pathos . . . Hodgkin has done both Nancy and herself proud with this fresh portrait of a marriage we thought we knew, and of a woman we have never known well enough -- Miranda Seymour * Sunday Times *It's a cracking story, and Hodgkin is a meticulous researcher -- Olivia Laing * Observer *The animating spirit that pulses through this joint biography is to be thoroughly applauded -- D.J Taylor * Literary Review *This is not just a memoir of her mother. This is the history of a literary wife. On both counts, Hodgkin succeeds beautifully . . . Her story is not a footnote; it is absolutely central * Independent *A truly fascinating account of one of those many women, the wives and the girlfriends and the sisters of famous literary men, who have lived a twilight existence in the shadows of the historical canon. A particularly rich and honest account * Scotland on Sunday *An enjoyable, revisionist account of a bohemian marriage -- Blake Morrison * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisCharlotte Brontes years in Belgium (184243) had a huge influence both on her life and her work. It was in Brussels that she not only honed her writing skills but fell in love and lived through the experiences that inspired two of her four novels: her first, The Professor, and her last and in many ways most interesting, Villette. Her feelings about Belgium are known from her novels and letters her love for her tutor Heger, her uncomplimentary remarks about Belgians, the powerful effect on her imagination of living abroad. But what about Belgian views of Charlotte Bronte? What has her legacy been in Brussels? How have Belgian commentators responded to her portrayal of their capital city and their society? Through Belgian Eyes explores a wide range of responses from across the Channel, from the hostile to the enthusiastic. In the process, it examines what The Professor and Villette tell Belgian readers about their capital in the 1840s and provides a wealth of detail on the Brussels background to the two novels. Unlike Paris and London, Brussels has inspired few outstanding works of literature. That makes Villette, considered by many to be Charlotte Brontes masterpiece, of particular interest as a portrait of the Belgian capital a decade after the country gained independence in 1830, and just before modernisation and expansion transformed the city out of all recognition from the villette (small town) that Charlotte knew. Her view of Brussels is contrasted with those of other foreign visitors and of the Belgians themselves. The story of Charlotte Brontes Brussels legacy provides a unique perspective on her personality and writing.Trade ReviewWhile we may know plenty about what Charlotte Bronte made of Brussels and its people, what about the other way round? What did Brussels, and indeed Belgium as a whole, make of the shy young Englishwoman who, having been rejected by one of their countrymen, unleashed a stream of invective against their country? This is the question that long-time resident and Bronte scholar Helen MacEwan attempts to answer in this fascinating and important book [She] skilfully decentres the Bronte myth and re-reads it, this time through Belgian eyes.Kathryn Hughes, Times Literary Supplement, 18 May 2018

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Book SynopsisThe first ever book about Mary Lavin's 16-year working relationship with The New Yorker and a fascinating insight into the lives of two brilliant 20th-century literary women.

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Book SynopsisElizabeth Jane Howard (1923-2014) wrote brilliant novels about what love can do to people, but in her own life the lasting relationship she sought so ardently always eluded her. She grew up yearning to be an actress; but when that ambition was thwarted by marriage and the war, she turned to fiction. Her first novel, The Beautiful Visit, won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize - she went on to write fourteen more, of which the best-loved were the five volumes of The Cazalet Chronicle. Following her divorce from her first husband, the celebrated naturalist Peter Scott, Jane embarked on a string of high-profile affairs with Cecil Day-Lewis, Arthur Koestler and Laurie Lee, which turned her into a literary femme fatale. Yet the image of a sophisticated woman hid a romantic innocence which clouded her emotional judgement. She was nearing the end of a disastrous second marriage when she met Kingsley Amis, and for a few years they were a brilliant and glamorous couple - until that marriage too disintegrated. She settled in Suffolk where she wrote and entertained friends, but her turbulent love life was not over yet. In her early seventies Jane fell for a conman. His unmasking was the final disillusion, and inspired one of her most powerful novels, Falling.Artemis Cooper interviewed Jane several times in Suffolk. She also talked extensively to her family, friends and contemporaries, and had access to all her papers. Her biography explores a woman trying to make sense of her life through her writing, as well as illuminating the literary world in which she lived.Trade ReviewHugely absorbing * Guardian *A careful and accurate portrait * Daily Telegraph *Cooper has assiduously gathered material from everyone involved, and the details and perspectives are tantalizingly fresh * The Times *Looks set to be the literary biography of the autumn * Good Housekeeping *In this fascinating biography, Artemis Cooper paints a picture of a complex and tricky woman * Sunday Express *A careful portrait of a fascinating woman * Sunday Telegraph *Compelling * Sunday Times *An unexpected treasure . . . It is as compelling and unified as a novel, while recounting a full, messy, complex human story . . . Cooper is respectful but never sycophantic, clear-eyed but never mocking. Familiar stories are retold but also reconsidered, and set in context. And the book pays the literary biography's ultimate compliment - it will send even those most familiar with the novels back to their bookshelves to revisit them * Financial Times *Elegant, sympathetic but clear-sighted * Mail on Sunday *I inhaled every blissful word. A sad, revelatory, brilliantly written account of one remarkable woman's life in writing, cooking, and having sex. An unexpected triumph -- Rachel Johnson * Daily Mail *Artemis Cooper's biography of Howard asserts the importance of Howard the writer, but also paints a painful portrait of a woman whose emotional life was often determined by the approval and attention of men * Guardian Review *Cooper's biography is a careful portrait of a woman bursting with every talent except the capacity to inspire enduring love * Daily Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisA reader-friendly, fully illustrated colour guide to Robert Burns' time in Edinburgh, with fresh research, maps and illustrations of the key people Burns met, with 27 relevant poems by Burns throughout. With over 100 illustrations by David Alexander and 80 photographs by Jerry Brannigan of key people and places Burns encountered. Easy to follow routes and walking guides in Edinburgh arranged by area and place/people. Tourist information about each site. Robert Burns came to Edinburgh in November 1786 and stayed for 14 months. His book, Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, Kilmarnock Edition , went on sale on July 31, 1786 and was an immediate success throughout Scotland. Suddenly,he was being spoken of the length and breadth of the land. His plan to emigrateto Jamaica with any profit from the sales of the book was abandoned. Burns's life was about to change! Dr Thomas Blacklock, known as the Blind Poet, came to know of the book. Blacklock was a much respected poet and critic, acquainted with the cream of literary society in Scotland and he advised Burns to travel to the nation's capital where a larger edition was promised. Blacklock was sure it would have a more universal circulation than "anything else that had been published within his memory". So it was that on November 27, 1786 that Robert Burns, on a borrowed pony, set off on the two-day journey to Edinburgh. It was at the peak of the Scottish Enlightenment. Edinburgh at the time was home to great philosophers, world-renowned economists, engineers, scientists, writers and poets. Enterprise and industry were flourishing. Robert Burns was to find himself thrust into the midst of the social and academic whirlpool that was Edinburgh in 1786, establishing him as a vital part of the Scottish Enlightenment. This book chronicles the places he visited and the brilliant, eccentric, but always fascinating people he met during his stay. Places including Lodge Canongate Kilwinning No. 2, The Kirk of the Canongate, Old Calton Burial Ground, St. Cecilia's Hall, Pear Tree House, The Luckenbooths and many more. People including, The Duchess of Gordon, Lord Monboddo, James (Balloon) Tytler, Bishop John Geddes, (Indian) Peter Williamson and a host more. Learn of his meeting with a young Sir Walter Scott, and - let's not forget - Mrs Agnes McLehose, his Clarinda, and inspiration for Ae Fond Kiss. Robert Burns left Edinburgh on March 24, 1788. He was only 29. He was to die in Dumfries eight years later at the age of 37.

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Book Synopsis'For we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door And Leerie stops to light it, as he lights so many more...' The picture of a small boy peering from a window at dusk to watch the lamplighter in the street is one of the enduring images of 19th-century Edinburgh, and the child probably the most famous ever brought up there. Robert Louis Stevenson loved to conjure up a dashing, romantic lineage for himself, dreaming that he was descended from the colourful outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor. The reality was less flamboyant but no less remarkable and he would learn that the street lamps of Edinburgh owed their brilliance to the scientific work of his own great-grandfather. This welcome addition to the Robert Louis Stevenson canon gives a concise account of his life - his family background, childhood and adolescence in a Calvinist, hard-working household in Scotland, his travels in three continents and his final years in the South Seas.It examines his relationships with his parents and his nurse, with English and American friends, particularly the family into which he married, and with the Samoan islanders among whom he died at the age of 44. Stevenson's childhood experiences and Scottish identity fed his fertile imagination wherever he found himself. His legacy includes travel writing, essays and poetry, and novels such as "Treasure Island", "Kidnapped", "The Master of Ballantrae", "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", "St Ives" and "Weir of Hermiston", still read and enjoyed more than one hundred years after his death. "Robert Louis Stevenson: The Travelling Mind" is an insightful introduction to the life and work of one of the world's best-loved writers.Trade Review' ... it seems we still have to remind ourselves how wonderful a writer Stevenson was. Dunlop's new biography does the honours with appealing brevity and elegance.' The Scotsman A concise, well-written chronological narrative of Stevenson's life, which, though it makes no new contribution to our knowledge, tells the story well and offers convincing interpretations of key moments (quarrels with father and Henley, family relations on Samoa.' ... Professor Richard Drury, RLS website ' ... a stimulating text, particularly useful for young scholars and those interested in learning more about Stevenson. Dunlop's enthusiasm about her subject will certainly encourage readers to revisit Stevenson's writings and to investigate further into his life.' Journal of Stevenson StudiesTable of ContentsThe Engineer's ChildThe Cummy YearsThe Education of a WriterWork ExperienceIn Two WorldsNorth and SouthThe Pains of LoveR.L. Stevenson, AdvocateBeside the StoveThe Travelling MindFamiliesSkerryvoreBreaking CirclesIn the South SeasA Laird in SamoaThe Myth of Robert Louis StevensonPostscriptSelect BibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisDavid Jones's In Parenthesis is the greatest poem to emerge from the First World War, and indeed one of the greatest to emerge from any war. It could have been written only by someone who had not only experienced the war in all its horror, but who was himself soaked in both poetry and history and for whom that war deepened his understanding of both. Thomas Dilworth's biography takes us through the intellectual development of a patriotic young Welshman from the London lower- middle classes who joined up at the beginning of the war, served throughout on the Western Front, and learned, through living through the sodden misery of the winter of 1915-16 and the nightmares both of the Somme and then of Passchendaele, that war could be not only terrible but also, through the comradeship it brought with it, deeply fulfilling. This was this strange paradox that lies at the heart of In Parenthesis. Anyone who seeks to understand that poem should first read this book. But so should anyone who seeks to understand how David Jones's generation endured the Great War. Professor Sir Michael Howard, OM MC Accompanying the biography are photographs of Jones and his wartime sketches and drawings, many previously unpublished. The quickly drawn sketches of infantrymen, landscapes, ruined villages and still-lifes bring the story to life as works of documentary realism.Trade ReviewPraise for Reading David Jones: Thomas Dilworth, one of the foremost contemporary Jones scholars, has taken infinite time and trouble to produce this exemplary guide to Jones's major works - the author's intense and thoughtful focus on this difficult poetry bears rich rewards. Those of us who, like Auden, have persisted with the task of "reading David Jones" owe Dilworth a substantial debt. THE TLS 'Dilworth is capable, patient, hugely knowledgeable and always informative.' THE REVIEW OF ENGLISH STUDIES

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Book SynopsisNearly 100 years after Franz Kafka's death, his works continue to intrigue and haunt us. Even for those who are only fleetingly acquainted with his unfinished novels, or his stories, diaries, and letters, `Kafkaesque' has become a byword for the menacing, unfathomable absurdity of modern existence and bureaucracy. Yet for all the universal significance of his fiction, Kafka's writing remains inextricably bound up with his life and work in Prague, where he spent every one of his 40 years. Klaus Wagenbach's account of Kafka's life in the city is a meticulously researched insight into the author's family background, his education and employment, his attitude toward the town of his birth, his literary influences, and his relationships with women. The result is a fascinating portrait of the 20th century's most enigmatic writer and the city that provided him with so much inspiration; W.G. Sebald recognised that `literary and life experience overlap' in Kafka's works, and the same is true of this book.Trade Review`A useful addition to any thinking person's library... Wagenbach's volume on Kafka includes reproductions of Kafka's letters, original book covers and a well-drawn map of Prague showing the places mentioned in the text'- New Statesman; `Wonderful... Wagenbach is the doyen of Kafka scholars, and this is easily the best guide to his life and work: succinct, handsomely produced, and endlessly informative' - New York Sun

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Book SynopsisFew novelists have written so intimately about a city in the way that Charles Dickens wrote about London. A near-photographic memory made his contact with the city indelible from a very young age and it remained his constant focus. Virginia Woolf maintained that, `we remodel our psychological geography when we read Dickens,’ as he produces `characters who exist not in detail, not accurately or exactly, but abundantly in a cluster of wild yet extraordinarily revealing remarks.’ But the `character’ he was drawn back to throughout his novels was London itself, all aspects of the capital from the coaching inns of his early years to the taverns and watermen of the Thames; these were the constant cityscapes of his life and work. Based on five walks in central London, Peter Clark illuminates the settings of Dickens’s London, his life, his journalism and his fiction. He also explores `The First Suburbs’ (Camden Town, Chelsea, Greenwich, Hampstead, Highgate and Limehouse) as they feature in Dickens’s writing.Trade Review`This is a small, delightful book, handsomely produced and shaped to fit an overcoat pocket, describing walks around parts of London associated with Dickens’s life and writings.’– The Literary Review; `gives us a splendidly clear and illuminating view, not only of the streets and the architecture, but of the sounds, smells, and intense human activity that both Dickens and Clark enjoy about London.’ – New Horizons

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Book SynopsisErnest Hemingway is most often associated with Spain, Cuba and Florida, but Italy was equally important in his life and work. This book, the first full-length study on the subject, explores Hemingway’s visits throughout his life to such places as Sicily, Genoa, Rapallo, Cortina and Venice. Richard Owen describes how Hemingway first visited Italy during the First World War, an experience that set the scene for A Farewell to Arms. The writer then returned after the Second World War, and found inspiration for Across the River and into the Trees. When Men Without Women was published, some reviewers declared Hemingway to be at heart a reporter preoccupied with bullfighters, soldiers, prostitutes and hard drinkers, but their claims failed to note that he also wrote sensitively and passionately about love and loss against an Italian backdrop. Owen highlights the significance of Italy in the writer’s life. Showing how the Italian landscape, from the Venetian lagoon to the Dolomites and beyond, deeply affected one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Hemingway in Italy demonstrates that this country stands alongside Spain as a key influence on his writing — and why the Italians themselves took Hemingway and his writing to heart.Trade Review‘An exceptionally lively study... Hemingway’s adoration of Italy never waned’. — Times Literary SupplementTable of ContentsErnest Hemingway is most often associated with Spain and Cuba, but Italy was equally important in his life and work. This book, the first full-length study on the subject, explores the many visits Hemingway made throughout his life, to Sicily, Genoa, Rapallo, Cortina and Venice. Owen describes how Hemingway first visited Italy during the First World War, an experience that set the scene for A Farewell to Arms. After the Second World War, it was in Italy that he found inspiration for Across the River and into the Trees. Again and again, the Italian landscape – from the Venetian lagoon to the Dolomites and beyond – deeply affected one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Hemingway in Italy demonstrates that Italy stands alongside Spain as a key influence on his work – and why the Italians themselves held Hemingway and his writing close to their hearts.

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Book SynopsisEdward Thomas ranks as one of the foremost poets of the twentieth century, both in his own poetry and in his influence on subsequent poets. 'He is the father of us all,' asserted Ted Hughes.This book combines the story of his life until his death at the Battle of Arras in 1917 with numerous illustrations, including photographs, printed material and original letters, many of which have never been published before. The book will add to what is already known of Thomas and his family before and after his death by putting his biography into a visual and historical context.

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Book SynopsisIn 1888, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche moved to Turin. This would be the year in which he wrote three of his greatest works: Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, and Ecce Homo; it would also be his last year of writing. He suffered a debilitating nervous breakdown in the first days of the following year. In this probing, elegant biography of that pivotal year, Lesley Chamberlain undoes popular clichés and misconceptions about Nietzsche by offering a deeply complex approach to his character and work. Focusing as much on Nietzsche's daily habits, anxieties and insecurities as on the development of his philosophy, Nietzsche in Turin offers a uniquely lively portrait of the great thinker, and of the furiously productive days that preceded his decline.Trade Review'A major intellectual event... simply the best book I have read in a very long time on the greatest philosopher of the modern age' - John Banville'This brilliant book should be a great relief for anyone condemned to read the run of contemporary Nietzsche commentaries; and for anyone who isn't, it could be an introduction which is hard to imagine being surpassed in passion and lucidity' - The Times'Lesley Chamberlain has a rare gift for animating philosophy through intensely human stories' - Sunday Telegraph

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Book SynopsisH. Rider Haggard (18561925), author of King Solomon's Mines, Allan Quatermain and She, was no stranger to the continent where his bestsellers were set. He lived in southern Africa from 1875 to 1881, a period that witnessed Britain's attempted confederation of the sub-continent, the Anglo- Zulu War of 1879, and the final subjugation of its indigenous peoples. In this new biography, the South African aspect of Haggard's life is explored in hitherto unrecorded detail. The success of King Solomon's Mines saw him relinquish a legal career to write full-time; he also became a respected agricultural expert and social commentator, receiving a knighthood for his public service.Haggard wrote over seventy books, fiction and non-fiction. His African adventure stories feature strong black characters, and the majority of his novels assertive female ones, not least She. Haggard's unwitting expression of the Victorian sub-conscious attracted the interest of both Freud and Jung. Haunted by a lost love, the tragic death of his only son and frequent bouts of depression, he endlessly probed the conundrums of life and death.Containing much new material, this biography explores Haggard's personal and public life to resurrect the writer whom Graham Greene, an admirer, called the buried man'.

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Book Synopsis'He [Harwood] is the sole Horatio known to me in this age of Hamlets...' - C. S. Lewis, from Surprised by Joy --- Cecil Harwood (1898-1975) - lecturer, Waldorf teacher, writer, editor and anthroposophist - pioneered and developed the first Rudolf Steiner (Waldorf) school in the United Kingdom (the New School in London, now Michael Hall School in Sussex). He also led the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain for some 37 years. In 1922, at the age of 24, Harwood attended a festival of English folk song and dance in Cornwall, alongside his life-long friend Owen Barfield. It was here - and not in the academic citadel of Oxford University, where they were both part of the literary circle known as the Inklings - that Harwood and Barfield were to encounter the work of Rudolf Steiner through meeting Daphne Olivier. Sun King's Counsellor provides an intricate picture of the human connections, cultural movements and spiritual background that contributed to what came together in Cornwall in 1922, leading to Harwood's life's work. Featuring a colour plate section and full index, it documents Harwood's early years and antecedents, marriages to Daphne Olivier and Margaret Lundgren, friendships with Barfield and C.S. Lewis, his life-changing meeting with anthroposophy and Rudolf Steiner, teaching and educational work, and Harwood's critical role in healing divisions within the Anthroposophical Society. Based on extensive research of primary sources, Blaxland-de Lange's biography reveals the multi-faceted, flexible and sacrificial nature of this unique personality. Alfred Cecil Harwood - he preferred 'Cecil' instead of Alfred, with its meaning of 'wise counsellor' - began his career with the hope of becoming a writer, and had neither the intention nor ambition to become a teacher or the head of a national organization. Yet he became both an exemplary teacher and leader, as well as a celebrated author, editor, translator and lecturer.Table of ContentsIntroduction - PART ONE: 1. Ralph Vaughan Williams, Rudolf Steiner, and a Meeting in Cornwall - 2. Family Backgrounds: Lord Olivier and Minister Harwood - 3. Personal and Professional Engagement - 4. Marriage and the Founding Years of Michael Hall - 5. Early Writings - 6. Waldorf Translator, Editor, Playwright and Author - 7. Prelude to Chairmanship of the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain - PART TWO: 1. The Minehead Years - 2. The Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain in a Time of War - 3. Family Man, Advocate and Adviser - PART THREE: 1. The Destiny of Britain within Europe and the Wider World and the Individual Human Spirit - 2. The Anthroposophical Society and the Healing of Divisions - 3. Anthroposophia, New Friendships and the Role of Eurythmy - Conclusion - Notes - Index

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Book SynopsisEverybody knows Charlotte Brontë. World-famous for her novel Jane Eyre, she’s a giant of literature and has been written about in reverential tones in scores of textbooks over the years. But what do we really know about Charlotte? 
As the famous siblings celebrate their bicentenaries, Charlotte Brontë Revisited looks at Charlotte through 21st-century eyes. Discover the real Charlotte: her private world of convention, rebellion and imagination, and how they shaped her life and writing – including the paranormal, nature, feminism and politics. It’s an indispensable guide for students and literature lovers, and emphatically shows why Charlotte is as relevant today as she ever was.Trade Review`Interweaves biography and reference to scholarly material with [Franklin’s] own take on pertinent aspects of Charlotte’s oeuvre ... [Her] witty tone makes the calibration of these two things — the pleasure of the literary enthusiastic and the scholarly — both easy and enjoyable. Franklin deftly mixes contemporary humour with reflectivity ... superbly written, exuberant.’
 Brontë Studies Journal

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Book SynopsisA series of chronological entries documenting Lawrence Durrell's life (1912-1990) and writing career, preceded by "Antecedents" (1851-1910), and followed by "Aftermath" (1991-2019), listing the main events connected with his reputation since his death. There is a 16-page "Index of Persons".

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Book SynopsisIs there anything new to say about Robert Burns? John Cairney says it''s time to trash Burns the Brand and come on the trail of the real Robert Burns. He is the best of travelling companions on this entertaining journey to the heart of the Burns story. Internationally known as ''the face of Robert Burns'', John Cairney believes that the traditional Burns tourist trail urgently needs to find a new direction. In an acting career spanning forty years he has often lived and breathed Robert burns on stage. On the Trail of Robert Burns shows just how well he has got under the skin of Burn''s complex character. This fascinating journey around Scotland is a rediscovery of Scotlands national bard as a flesh and blood genius. On the Trail of Robert Burns outlines five tours, mainly in Scotland. Key sites include: Alloway - Burn''s birthplace. Tam O'' Shanter draws on the Alloway Kirk witch-stories first heard by Burns in his childhood; Mossgiel - Between 1784 and 1786 in a p

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Book SynopsisThis book weaves in all the reasons why the residents of Scotland love to live here; landscape, beautiful scenery, an air of mystery and the great history of the land. Thompson conveys Verne''s deep fascination with Scotland and takes the reader on a journey with Verne from his beloved Heart of Midlothian to exploring in the Highlands. This book also explains how Verne''s love for Scotland flooded into his literature. Jules Verne, pioneer in the science fiction genre, wrote world- famous books including Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Around the World in 80 Days. His literary legacy is still celebrated today, his books have scarcely been out of print and have spawned a host of films and TV adaptations.

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Book SynopsisComprehensive and exciting biography of Jim Corbett, the man who tracked and hunted down the man-eating tigers and leopards which killed hundreds of defenceless field workers in the 1920s and 30s, throughout the jungles of Kumaon.

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Book SynopsisBorn in London in 1890, Angela Thirkell was Sir Edward Burne-Jones’s granddaughter, J.M. Barrie’s goddaughter and a cousin of Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin. John Collier painted her portrait and she was drawn by John Singer Sargent and Thea Proctor. Between 1931 and her death in 1961, Angela published more than thirty books in a variety of genres. She began with the acclaimed family memoir Three Houses and later settled on her amusing Barsetshire series, inspired by Anthony Trollope but set in the present day. Angela Thirkell: A Writer’s Life tells the author’s story from her Kensington childhood to her two marriages and the birth of three sons, Graham McInnes, Colin MacInnes and Lance Thirkell, all of whom also entered the literary world. The book traces her decade in Australia where she wrote for magazines and newspapers and made radio broadcasts, followed by her return to London and her fortuitous meeting with a young publisher called Jamie Hamilton, which lead to her bestselling Barsetshire novels.Trade Review"[A] careful and sympathetic biography." * Times Literary Supplement *“[A] concise yet lavishly illustrated biography.” * New Criterion *"This is the book all Angela Thirkell enthusiasts have been wishing for. It illustrates so many instances of how she translated her own life into the fictional world of Barsetshire, and for those who haven't yet discovered her it will make them want to make that journey for themselves." -- Penny Alred, former chair of the Angela Thirkell Society"Hall's new biography of Angela Thirkell is detailed, highly readable, and revealing. Her wide-ranging research and a gallery of illustrations not seen before thoroughly revise our understanding of the formative influences on Thirkell's writing and life." -- Kate Macdonald, author of Novelists Against Social Change: Conservative Popular Fiction, 1920-1960

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Book SynopsisThis edition celebrates the centenary of Williams's birth. RAYMOND WILLIAMS (1921-1998) was the most influential socialist writer and thinker in post-war Britain. Now, for the first time, making full use of Williams's private and unpublished papers and by placing him in a wide social and cultural landscape, Dai Smith, in this highly original and much praised biography, uncovers how Williams's life to 1961 is an explanation of his immense intellectual achievement. "It is Smith's ambition to set out the lonely, almost monastic path Raymond took through childhood, army and adult education towards his deserved eminence. But the biographer's greatest achievement is to find his own discerning route through what often seems to be a jungle of contradiction... This is a worthwhile book and a very good one." - David Hare, The Guardian "It is a remarkable piece of work and will henceforth be essential to the understanding of the making of Raymond Williams." - Eric Hobsbawm "Becomes at once the authoritative account... Smith has done all that we can ask the historian as biographer to do." - Stefan Collini, London Review of Books "Carrying an impressive deal of intensive research lightly... the portraiture throughout is graphic, richly detailed and subtly shaded... in these packed, lucidly written pages..." - Terry Eagleton, New Welsh ReviewTrade Review"It is Smith's ambition to set out the lonely, almost monastic path Raymond took through childhood, army and adult education towards his deserved eminence. But the biographer's greatest achievement is to find his own discerning route through what often seems to be a jungle of contradiction... This is a worthwhile book and a very good one." David Hare, The Guardian; "It is a remarkable piece of work and will henceforth be essential to the understanding of the making of Raymond Williams." Eric Hobsbawm; "Becomes at once the authoritative account... Smith has done all that we can ask the historian as biographer to do." Stefan Collini, London Review of Books; "Carrying an impressive deal of intensive research lightly... the portraiture throughout is graphic, richly detailed and subtly shaded... in these packed, lucidly written pages..." Terry Eagleton, New Welsh Review

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Book SynopsisGwyn Thomas was born, the last of twelve children, into a Rhondda mining family in 1913. After a childhood marked by the strikes of the 1920s, he went off to study Spanish at Oxford University and in Madrid, where he met the poet Federico Garcia Lorca and witnessed the turmoil which would lead to the Spanish Civil War. On his return, amidst the economic mire of the 1930s and his own burgeoning teaching career in Barry in the 1940s, he picked up his pen and began to write. For more than forty years, until his death in 1981, as novelist, screenwriter, master of the short story, and prizewinning playwright, Gwyn Thomas delivered compelling and comedic portraits of his world of South Wales. His creative genius earned enduring fame on both sides of the Atlantic and on both sides of the European Cold War divide. As a provocative and insightful broadcaster, he embraced the possibilities of radio and television, whilst leaving his hosts and guests alike in fits of knowing laughter. This landmark biography, enriched with unrivalled access to private papers and international archives, tells the remarkable story of one of modern Wales's greatest literary voices.Trade Review'This punchy portrait of a real Welsh literary heavyweight hits home with the brutal realism of Thomas' jabbing prose and mordant wit.' - Jon Gower, Nation.Cymru; 'Leeworthy knows his subject intimately, sympathises with him entirely, and locates him globally in such a way as to leave the reader with no doubt as to his importance as a writer' - Bethan Jenkins, Wales Arts Review

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Book SynopsisThis fascinating book tells the story of Thomas Hardy's Wessex. Accompanying a multi-venue exhibition, it explores Hardy's life and work.Internationally-acclaimed writer Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) is best known for his evocative depictions of the West Country landscape and its people, a region that he called 'Wessex'. What is less well-known is that this landscape also inspired him in many other aspects of his life, from campaigning for animal welfare to questioning the way society viewed women. This publication accompanies a blockbuster, multi-venue exhibition of the largest collection of Thomas Hardy memorabilia ever to be displayed at once.  Hardy was born in the West Country, a few years after Queen Victoria came to the throne, and spent most of the rest of his life among its landscapes and people. When he turned writer, these landscapes and people re-emerged as his 'partly-real, partlydream country' of Wessex, in novels like Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd and Jude the Obscure.Hardy's Wessex now conjures up a range of mental images: from raging seas on the coast to haunting ancient monuments, Victorian towns packed with life to peaceful hillsides grazed by sheep. However, through Hardy's 87-year life span, the West Country changed dramatically. Ideas of the role of women, humans' responsibility to animals, the realities of war, love and courtship, superstition, social structure, religion and how people related to the world around them altered fundamentally. Through his stories and campaigning, Hardy was keen to show not only the rural idyll, but also the tensions and difficulties that lay beneath these views.These dramatic landscapes were the lens through which Hardy presented his worldview to his readership. From the tragedy of a woman saying farewell to her sailorlover on the end of Portland Bill, to a shepherd losing his flock and facing ultimate ruin on the chalky hills. The landscapes shape his characters, whose stories in turn convey his messages of social change to his readers.This publication will explore the impact that Wessex had on Hardy's works, and how living there shaped his views on the often divisive social issues of the period. Uniting beautiful landscape imagery with a selection of personal items from Hardy's life, this book will show you the man behind the literature.

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Book SynopsisPhilip K. Dick, the visionary author behind Blade Runner, is the most adapted science fiction writer in cinema history. Though he struggled to make a living during his lifetime, his work has since served as a deep seam of ideas to be mined by filmmakers such as Ridley Scott, Paul Verhoeven, Steven Speilberg, John Woo and Richard Linklater, resulting in some of the most successful and influential SF movies of all time. For the still-unequalled future world of Blade Runner to the mind-bending A Scanner Darkly, via the blockbusting action/adventure of Total Recall, Paycheck and Minority Report – not to mention the debt of gratitude films like The Matrix and The Truman Show owe to his work – the legacy of Philip K. Dick has revolutionised Hollywood. Illustrated with rare photos, Counterfeit Worlds is the first book to trace the history of Philip K. Dick screen adaptations, both in cinema and on television.

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Book SynopsisThis is a memoiristic book and a dual portrait, built around intense friendships with two leading public intellectuals who achieved celebrity status—Susan Sontag on a global scale, George Steiner principally in Europe, though also for a time in the US. For audiences at Woody Allen movies Sontag was the prime embodiment of the term “intellectual,” whose famous 1965 essay “Notes on Camp” won her an enormous following. For viewers of French, German and British television over decades Steiner was the primary interview show talking head, igniting controversy on many fronts, while also commanding a loyal audience for thirty years as a book critic at The New Yorker. To know Sontag and Steiner, as this memoir suggests, was often to feel overmatched and yet also bemused and awe-struck. Both of them gave off an air of omniscience and self-confidence, as if they had taken to heart the words of the Nobel laureate Elias Canetti, who wrote, “I cannot become modest; too many things burn in me.”Maestros & Monsters is the work of a well-known public intellectual who was close to Sontag and Steiner over a half century, and who managed to bring them together on several occasions—the only times they ever met. Those encounters are among the most bizarre episodes in this narrative, which also features extended encounters with such literary figures as Arthur Koestler, Edward Said, Phillip Rieff, James Wood and others.Trade ReviewA delicious portrait of two difficult, brilliant intellectuals, and a spirited vindication of criticism as a noble calling.--Garth GreenwellThis superb book takes us back to the last moments of the golden age of American letters. --Cornel WestRobert Boyers has been in close contact with every seismic shift in literary, intellectual, artistic, and academic quarters.--Joyce Carol OatesA moving contribution to the history of our intellectual culture.--Darryl PinckneyA thrillingly generous book ... in the grand tradition of Samuel Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," Sainte-Beuve's biographical sketches, and Turgenev's "Literary Reminiscences."--Philip Lopate Table of ContentsIntroductionPart One: The Fascination of What's Difficult: Susan Sontag Chapter 1 Seriously Uncool? 21Chapter 2 Is This Rude? 34Chapter 3 Disappointments and Dismissals 44Chapter 4 Authority Figure. 58Chapter 5 Turn of the Cultural Wheel 70Chapter 6 The Therapeutic 80Chapter 7 To Teach or Not 90Chapter 8 Motherhood and Sexuality. 99Chapter 9 Rhapsode 106Part Two: Impossible to Tell: George SteinerChapter 1 A First Meeting. 113Chapter 2 I Had a Good Time 120Chapter 3 Under Attack 128Chapter 4 Master Teacher 139Chapter 5 An Evening with Arthur Koestler. 151Chapter 6 A Brave Beginning 162 Chapter 7 Creative Distortion. 170Chapter 8 I Wish You Hadn't Done That. 182Chapter 9. An Academy of One 195Part ThreeAfterword 203Notes 209Names Index 217About The Author 219Photographs 221

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