Biography: writers Books

Book SynopsisThe sequel to I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS'A brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman' Barack ObamaMaya Angelou's volumes of autobiography are a testament to the talents and resilience of this extraordinary writer. Loving the world, she also knows its cruelty. As a black woman she has known discrimination and extreme poverty, but also hope, joy, achievement and celebration. In the sequel to her bestselling I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou is a young mother in California, unemployed, embarking on brief affairs and transient jobs in shops and night-clubs, turning to prostitution and the world of narcotics. Maya Angelou powerfully captures the struggles and triumphs of her passionate life with dignity, wisdom, humour and humanity.'She moved through the world with unshakeable calm, confidence and a fierce grace . . . She will always be the rainbow in my clouds' OPRAH WINFREY 'She was important in so many ways. She launched African American women writing in the United States. She was generous to a fault. She had nineteen talents - used ten. And was a real original. There is no duplicate' TONI MORRISONTrade ReviewA brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal womanThe poems and stories she wrote . . . were gifts of wisdom and wit, courage and graceShe moved through the world with unshakeable calm, confidence and a fierce grace . . . She will always be the rainbow in my clouds -- Oprah WinfreyShe was important in so many ways. She launched African American women writing in the United States. She was generous to a fault. She had nineteen talents - used ten. And was a real original. There is no duplicate -- Toni MorrisonThis is the story of a great heroine who knows the meaning of a struggle and never loses her pride or dignity. Indeed, her story makes me proud of the human race -- John Oliver KillensEngrossing and vital, rich and funny and wise . . . Angelou writes like a song, and like the truth * New York Times Book Review *Angelou's stature as a writer, a woman, a black, grows, walks tall * Kirkus Reviews *

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Book SynopsisMarcel Proust (1871 - 1922) spent fourteen years creating A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), his seven-volume magnum opus. He died when only half was in print, unable to see it become one of the most important literary works of the twentieth century. Over eighty years later, the work still garners extraordinary levels of critical attention, and Proust's habits, health, and sexual preferences keep commentators and fans occupied to this day. In this concise biography, Adam Watt explores the life of a writer whose every experience was stored, dissected and redeployed within a vast fictional work. Proust's narrator speaks of desire, of love and loss, the contemplation of beauty, memory, ageing and the possibility of happiness, his experiences intensified through a sensibility heightened by long periods of ill health and isolation. After a consideration of Proust's early years of personal and aesthetic experiment, Watt provides an engaging account of two intertwined processes taking place against the vibrant backdrop of the Belle Epoque and the coming of the First World War: the growth of A la recherche and the coterminous decline of its author. Drawing on Proust's immense correspondence, the accounts of his contemporaries and the insights of recent scholarship, Marcel Proust offers a rewarding new portrait of the novelist once described as 'the most complicated man in Paris'.

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Book SynopsisThis National Book Critics Circle Award is “an entrancing attempt to catch what falls between: the irreducibly personal, messy, even embarrassing ways reading and living bleed into each other, which neither literary criticism nor autobiography ever quite acknowledges (The New York Times). “Stories, both my own and those I’ve taken to heart, make up whoever it is that I’ve become,” Peter Orner writes in this collection of essays about reading, writing, and living. Orner reads and writes everywhere he finds himself: a hospital cafeteria, a coffee shop in Albania, or a crowded bus in Haiti. The result is a book of unlearned meditations that stumbles into memoir.Among the many writers Orner addresses are Isaac Babel and Zora Neale Hurston, both of whom told their truths and were silenced; Franz Kafka, who professed loneliness but craved connection; Robert Walser, who spent the last twenty-three years of his life in a Swiss insane asylum, working at being crazy; and Juan Rulfo, who practiced the difficult art of silence. Virginia Woolf, Eudora Welty, Yasunari Kawabata, Saul Bellow, Mavis Gallant, John Edgar Wideman, William Trevor, and Václav Havel make appearances, as well as the poet Herbert Morris--about whom almost nothing is known.An elegy for an eccentric late father, and the end of a marriage, Am I Alone Here? is also a celebration of the possibility of renewal. At once personal and panoramic, this book will inspire readers to return to the essential stories of their own lives.

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Book SynopsisThe seminal biography of a great poet, novelist and sacred figure in English writing, Thomas Hardy, from bestselling author Clare Tomalin. ''An extraordinary story, beautifully told. Tomalin is the most empathetic of biographers'' Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday Paradox ruled Thomas Hardy''s life. His birth was almost his death; he became one of the great Victorian novelists and reinvented himself as one of the twentieth-century''s greatest poets; he was an unhappy husband and a desolate widower; he wrote bitter attacks on the English class system yet prized the friendship of aristocrats. In the hands of Whitbread Award-winning biographer Claire Tomalin, author of the bestselling Charles Dickens: A Life and The Invisible Woman, Thomas Hardy comes vividly alive. ''Another triumph for a biographer who goes from strength to strength'' Melvyn Bragg, Guardian, Books of the Year ''Tomalin provides an

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Book SynopsisSharp tells the riveting stories of the fiercely intelligent, glamorous and iconoclastic twentieth-century women who made their way to Manhattan to forge spectacular literary careers, from Dorothy Parker to Joan Didion.Trade ReviewThere can't be enough cultural histories which make the point that a woman intellectual must represent her own mind, and not the collective mind of all her 'sisters.' Sharp is a brisk, entertaining, well-researched reminder that it's impossible to write - or think - without making life very messy for oneself, but to do so is an achievement well worth the pains -- Sheila Heti, author of How Should A Person Be?I have to recommend Michelle Dean's Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion, a delicious cultural history that comes out in April. It brings together some of the most influential social critics of the 20th century, including Dorothy Parker, Mary McCarthy, Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag and Joan Didion, and shows how these glamorous iconoclasts forged their singular careers. Dean makes the convincing argument that women's voices--if not necessarily feminist ones--did far more to define the last century's intellectual life than we realize -- Michelle Goldberg * New York Times *[A] stunning and highly accessible introduction to a group of important writers * Publishers Weekly *Michelle Dean has delivered an exquisite examination - both rigorous and compassionate - of what it has meant to be a woman with a public voice and the power to use it critically. This book is ferociously good -- Rebecca Traister, New York Times-bestselling author of All the Single LadiesThis is such a great idea for a book, and Michelle Dean carries it off, showing us the complexities of her fascinating, extraordinary subjects, in print and out in the world. Dean writes with vigor, depth, knowledge and absorption, and as a result Sharp is a real achievement -- Meg Wolitzer, author of The Female PersuasionThis is a great and worthy project: a primer for those for whom these names are new; a sustaining reminder for those already familiar with them. You put it down feeling steadier, more determined -- Rachel Cooke * Observer *Michelle Dean's Sharp, a portrait of 10 female writers and thinkers, is a bracing tribute to the life of the iconoclastic mind: a reminder, in our age of flashy hot takes, of the matchless power of sustained and elegant argument -- Pankaj Mishra * Guardian *A fascinating analysis of brilliant female writers. By the end you'll want to read something by all of them * Evening Standard *These crisp mini-portraits of some of 20th-century America's most brilliant women writers - like Joan Didion, Dorothy Parker and Nora Ephron - are so inspiring -- Carina Axelsson

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Book SynopsisMary Oliver, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, is one of the most celebrated poets in America. Molly Malone Cook, who died in 2005, was Oliver's partner for many years, a pioneer gallery owner and photographer. Our World weaves forty-nine of Cook's photographs and selections from her journals with Oliver's extended writings, both reminiscence and reflection, in prose and in poetry. The result is an intimate revelation of their lives and art. Within the art world, Molly Malone Cook made her reputation as an early advocate of photography as an art form; she was a champion of the work of now-famous photographers, including Edward Steichen, Eugene Atget, Berenice Abbott, Minor White, Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, and W. Eugene Smith. There are famous faces here as well, captured by Cook's camera, among them Walker Evans, Robert Motherwell and Henry Geldzahler, the first curator of twentieth-century art at the Metropolitan Museum.Cook and Oliver also lived among

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Book SynopsisThe first art book to explore Rossetti's art and poetry together, including her own artworks, illustrations to her writing, and art inspired by her Christina Rossetti (18301894) is among the greatest of English Victorian poets. The intensity of her vision, her colloquial style, and the lyrical quality of her verse still speak powerfully to us today, while her striking imagery has always inspired artists. Rossetti lived in an exceptionallyvisual environment: her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was the leading member of the avant-garde Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and she became a favorite model for the group. She sat for the face of Christ in William Holman Hunt's The Light of the World, while both John Everett Millais and Frederick Sandysillustrated her poetry. Later on, the pioneering photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and the great Belgian Symbolist Fernand Khnopff wereinspired by Rossetti's enigmatic verses. This engaging book explores the full artistic context of Rossetti's life aTrade Review“Handsome publication”— Ian Lipke, Queensland Reviewers Collective“This lovely-looking book explores Christina Rossetti’s artistic context in new and unexpected ways.” —Aileen Reid, World of Interiors“The catalogue for the recent exhibition at the Watts Gallery, Christina Rossetti: Poetry in art, brings together many surprising items from public and private collections to reveal unusual aspects of the poet's life and work. […] The scholarly work of the editors and contributors and the book's many illustrations greatly expand our knowledge of Christina Rossetti and her widening circle.” —Lindsay Duguid, Times Literary Supplement“The volume is abundantly illustrated and provides a satisfying contribution to the study of an immensely complex poet and an aspect of 19th century art with which she is unavoidably intertwined” —Tom Fleming, Apollo Magazine“Her influence on other artists is shown both in the exhibition and in the beautiful accompanying book – far more than a catalogue – Christina Rossetti: Poetry in Art. We see her impact in their illustrations for different editions of her books of poetry, and the many paintings inspired by her poems, such as Arthur Hughes’s The Mower, while in art photography, Julia Margaret Cameron based her charming The Minstrel Group on one of her poems.” —David V Barrett, Catholic Herald“Throughout, handsome design and well-placed illustrations make this a pleasing, fresh addition to the literature on Victorian art, poetry and aesthetics.” —Frances Spalding, Literary Review“Handsome book” —Jeremy Musson, Country Life“The volume now published by Yale University Press, in relation with an exhibition on display at the Watts Gallery in Compton does manage to shed some new light on a largely overlapping subject.” —Laurent Bury, Cercles“[A]n accessible, wide-ranging and beautifully presented introduction to the visual contexts of Rossetti’s work…[which] honours the established view that her poetry participates in a lively interplay with the visual arts, offering an alluring record of a beautiful exhibition.”—Fiona Macdonald, The Journal of Religious HistoryLong listed for the Historians of British Art Book Prize

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Book SynopsisThe first biography of the man who launched the self-help phenomenon. Based on contemporary sources, many previously unexamined. Addresses timeless questions - of progress and freedom, success and failure, work and happiness, the individual and the state. A story rich in present-day relevance - topical and controversial.Trade Review"This new biography of Samuel Smiles (1813-1904) is a widely researched, well-written account of a notable British writer and critic, which has been attractively priced by the publishers . . . Hunter certainly manages to convey the sheer dedication and hard work of a writer who did much to legitimise the efforts of the modernising Victorians." --Terry Gourvish, Journal of Transport History "This is a rounded-portrait of the man that has been carefully compiled by mining not only Smiles' publications but also a wide range of contemporary published and archival material . . . It is the most comprehensive and fair-minded study yet of its subject and a book that everyone interested in early Victorian Leeds will want to read." --Malcolm Chase, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal "John Hunter patiently teases out the complexity of Smiles's context and character: the chippy provincial, the literary lion, the prosperous, pompous man who still looks over his shoulder and fears failure. It is a densely rich and rewarding picture." --Trev Broughton, Times Literary Supplement "This excellent new biography . . . John Hunter has done an excellent job in restoring Samuel Smiles's complexities." --Lucy Lethbridge, The Oldie // "People needed reassurances that there was a way up from poverty, and that diligence and virtue, if proffered, would be rewarded. Smiles' books provided these reassurances by the carriage load... He was disgusted by anyone who would amass wealth without helping their neighbour, and extolled wealth only as a means of societal betterment, not as a personal accomplishment." Bob Janis-Dillon, Faith and Freedom // "There are few books in history which have reflected the spirit of their age more faithfully and successfully than Self-Help." --Asa BriggsTable of ContentsIntroduction, Prologue, 1. The smiling country, 2. A learning game, 3. Doctor in waiting, 4. Doctor in doubt, 5. Beautiful undulations, 6. The fabricators of our greatness, 7. Sidestep, 8. Many more strings, 9. Seeds of Self-Help, 10. Twin tracks, 11. A very productive quiet, 12. Double act, 13. "A successful author!", 14. Enthusiasm on all fronts, 15. The enticing warmth, 16. An engineering pantheon, 17. The books keep coming, 18. The vale of years, 19. New direction, 20. The publishers believe in me, 21. In the company of Homer, 22. Yesterday afternoon, Afterword

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Book SynopsisThe long-awaited volume on Hunter S. Thompson's life - as nuts and bewitching as the legend himself.

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Book SynopsisThe Letters of Robert Frost, Volume 3 collects 601 letters, covering 1929–1936. The letters chronicle Frost’s negotiation of life as a public figure and as the head of a family enduring tragedy. Fully annotated and accompanied by biographical material, the letters reveal the mind of an artist at the height of his powers.Trade ReviewReading The Letters of Robert Frost is as indispensable as reading the poems, for revealed in these pages are the layers of thinking that buttressed the great poet’s talent. What emerges into view is a fuller individual—at times humane, empathetic, avuncular—whose complexity and art were utterly responsive to the political and aesthetic ferment of his times. -- Major Jackson, author of The Absurd Man and guest editor of The Best American Poetry 2019With every volume of his letters that appears, Frost grows more vivid…We are lucky to have this beautifully edited volume of Frost’s letters, the third of five, from a time when everything in his life broke. -- Dan Chiasson * New York Review of Books *Masterfully edited within an inch of its life…No free verser, [Frost] believed that poetry was ‘measured feet’ but ‘more important still it is a measured amount of all we could say an we would.’ All the more striking, then, are moments in the correspondence when his experience was such that it could not be held back for pressure, but issued rather in words and sentences testing the limits of his measuring. -- William H. Pritchard * Wall Street Journal *[A] monumental enterprise…[We] have many reasons to be grateful to the editors…who have added greatly to our knowledge of the poet’s life, his family ties, and his various friendships—as well, of course, as his thoughts on his own art…These letters do much to cancel the impression given by Frost’s official biographer, Lawrance Thompson, of the poet as a monstrous egotist who drove his son to suicide by crushing his poetic ambitions. -- Gregory Dowling * Los Angeles Review of Books *‘I believe in survival. That is my fundamental doctrine,’ Frost wrote to a friend in 1936. The first two volumes of his letters showed how Frost survived early poverty and obscurity to become a great poet and an American institution. This third volume reveals how his ironic wit and artistic devotion enabled him to survive the personal tragedy of his daughter’s death and the national crisis of the Depression, as well as the more ambiguous perils of fame. -- Adam Kirsch, author of The Modern Element: Essays on Contemporary PoetryHere Frost’s bracingly wide-ranging letters are illuminated. Through notes that capture even the most elusive of references, the editors have produced a book that is impressively thorough, rigorous, and generous—a pleasure to read page by page, event by event. -- Calista McRae, coeditor of The Selected Letters of John BerrymanRobert Frost emerges as a struggling father and a poet at the height of his career in the intimate latest addition to the five-volume collection of his letters…Frost’s fans and anyone with a deep interest in poetry will find this a treasure trove of emotion and insights. * Publishers Weekly *Meticulously edited…A richly detailed portrait of Frost in his own words. * Kirkus Reviews (starred review) *The man in the letters is very much the man in the poems—flinty, funny, and dark. Despite his classical knowledge and sophistication, he comes across as a rugged individual, unspoiled by niceties of Autocorrect, with a syntax entirely his own. One would never mistake Robert Frost for anyone else. -- David Mason * Hudson Review *

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Book SynopsisIn this second volume of his major work on Bunin, the neglected master of Russian letters, Thomas Marullo recreates his life in exile, chiefly in Paris, after escaping from his newly bolshevized country in 1920. Drawing from Bunin's correspondence, his diaries, and his stories, and translating most of these materials into English for the first time, Mr. Marullo gives us a vivid picture of a man suddenly and agonizingly without a country. Bunin's life and art, which depended so heavily on traditional Russian values, seemed to be overthrown in a moment, and the writer found himself marooned amidst Western culture, clinging to his old ideals. Through his writings we are also provided a window on the lively but despairing and often fractious community of Russian emigrés in Paris in the twenties, which included Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff Chafiapin, Prokofiev, Chagall, Kandinsky, Pavlova, Diaghilev, and Zamyatin. The volume ends in 1933, when Bunin became the first Russian to receive the Nobel Prize in literature. Mr. Marullo's first volume, Ivan Bunin: Russian Requiem, was widely acclaimed. Gary Saul Morson of Northwestern wrote: "It engages the reader from the first page ...Marullo has an eye for the perfect quotation." Ruth Rischin, in the Russian Review, described the book as "elegantly crafted... a serious achievement."Trade ReviewElegantly crafted and handsomely produced...a serious achievement. -- Ruth Rischin * The Russian Review *A highly skillful and scholarly compilation. -- John Bayley * The New York Review *A scintillating and insightful mosaic panorama...Marullo recreates the total atmosphere of Bunin's private life as well as the Èmigre milieu in which he lived. -- Marc Raeff, distinguished Russian historian and professor emeritus, Columbia University * Library Journal *

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Book SynopsisThis book includes essays, unpublished sketches, Woolf's social realist 1919 novel Night and Day, and her final, visionary novel Between the Acts. This approach to Woolf's writing takes an integrated view, incorporating her juvenilia and foregrounding Woolf's critically neglected early novels.

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Book SynopsisUntil the posthumous publication of the Millennium Trilogy, Stieg Larsson was probably best known for his commitment to left-wing causes, and his tireless work as an anti-fascist activist. Horrified by the rise of far-right extremism in Sweden, he threw himself into monitoring and exposing these often shadowy and violent groups and gained an international reputation for the depth of his achievements and knowledge. However his work carried substantial risks and he and his partner Eva Gabrielsson lived in constant fear for their lives. Jan Erik-Pettersson shows how Stieg's activism and energetic championing of social justice and women's rights characterised his life, as well as demonstrating how these concerns animated his huge-selling Millennium Trilogy, in particular the unforgettable character of Lisbeth Salander. He also persuasively establishes Stieg's place within the explosion of Scandinavian crime with which his novels are so closely associated, showing that in many ways his fiction stands somewhat apart from the work of other authors in this tradition. In Stieg: From Activist to Author, Jan Erik-Pettersson portrays a man willing to put his life at risk in order to fight for the things in which he believed, and an author whose inimitable work was energized by the causes to which he was so strongly committed.Table of ContentsForeword by Mikael Ekman, Expo. Author's Preface. Activist: Excursion to Bjursele; Umea; Vietnam; Out into the World; TT Press Agency; Dreams of Revolution; Feature Writer. Mapmaker: Charles XII and White Supremacy; Investigative Anti-Racist; The New Generation; A Very Little Magazine; The Last Year of the Millennium; The Sweden Democrats; A New Era, a New Magazine; 9 November 2004. Crime Writer: Writing Thrillers is Easy; From Maria Lang to Henning Mankell; Female Readers Demand Their Heroines; Debut and Demise; An International Phenomenon; Cyberpunk Pippi; Coming in from the Cold; The Inheritance Dispute. Index.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A remarkable book, Manon’s World brilliantly evokes an extraordinary set of individuals in an urgent time and place: Austria during and after the First World War. Reidel’s sure hand weaves together the stories of the people surrounding and interacting with Manon. The result is a dazzling narrative that transports us to a lost world peopled by some of the remarkable characters in recent history. A story so compelling it is hard to put down." -- Mary Dearborn, biographer and author"Everyone in 1930s Vienna seemed to be agreed that Manon Gropius was an angel... Her stepfather was the poet, playwright and novelist Franz Werfel. She died at eighteen of polio and its complications. And she was not an angel. The figure who emerges in James Reidel's impressionistic biography is altogether less exalted and far more ordinary." * Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisThis book will reveal the real Jane: bitchy, gossipy, badly behaved at times as well as show the side we all love: the writer, sister, true romantic.

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Book SynopsisThe biographer Winifred Gerin (1901-81), who wrote the lives of all four Bronte siblings, stumbled on her literary vocation on a visit to Haworth, after a difficult decade following the death of her first husband. On the same visit she met her second husband, a Bronte enthusiast twenty years her junior. Together they turned their backs on London to live within sight of the Parsonage, Gerin believing that full understanding of the Brontes required total immersion in their environment. Gerin's childhood and youth, like the Brontes', was characterised by a cultured home and intense imaginative life shared with her sister and two brothers, and by family tragedies (the loss of two siblings in early life). Strong cultural influences formed the children's imagination: polyglot parents, French history, the Crystal Palace, Old Vic productions. Winifred's years at Newnham College, Cambridge were enlivened by eccentric characters such as the legendary lecturer Quiller-Couch (Q'), Lytton Strachey's sister Pernel and Bloomsbury's favourite philosopher, G.E. Moore. Her happy life in Paris with her Belgian cellist husband, Eugene Gerin, was brought to an abrupt end by the Second World War, in which the couple had many adventures: fleeing occupied Belgium, saving Jews in Nice in Vichy France, escaping through Spain and Portugal to England, where they did secret war work for Political Intelligence near Bletchley. After Eugene's death in 1945 Winifred coped with bereavement through poetry and playwriting until discovering her true literary metier on the trip to Haworth. She also wrote about Elizabeth Gaskell, Anne Thackeray Ritchie and Fanny Burney. The book is based on her letters and on her unpublished memoir.Trade Review"In an original and revealing biography ... Helen MacEwan presents not just a fascinating study of Gerins long and at times very personal preoccupation with the Brontes, but the story of a highly individual character ... Using much previously unknown and unpublished material, MacEwan has painstakingly put together a portrait of one woman and her times that adds significantly to Bronte studies and literary biography, while her deftly-told narrative brings Gerins private, feeling, thoughtful character to life with unerring sympathy." - Claire Harman, biographer and critic, author of the major new biography Charlotte Bronte: A Life and of Janes Fame."In this beautifully written and carefully researched biography of a biographer, Helen MacEwan shows us something of the European dimension of Gerins experience and understanding, as well as revealing the deeply emotional character of her subject, in her joys, passions and losses ... Helen MacEwan shines a fascinating light, not only on a remarkable woman of letters, but on a reader and writer of exceptional integrity." - Stevie Davies, critic and novelist, author of Emily Bronte: Heretic and Four Dreamers and Emily."For anyone, like me, who knows Winifred Gerin only as the biographer of the Brontes, this book will come as a revelation. Not only did Gerin have an astonishingly adventurous life, but Helen MacEwan has brought it before us in vivid and enthralling detail ... MacEwans book draws on extensive original research into unpublished papers and records, but she wears her erudition lightly and always gives a sense of the lived moment rather than the dry facts. She achieves, in fact, that balance between sense and sensibility which friends appreciated in Gerins own work. This is a thrilling book to read, a page-turner, offering through specific vignettes important glimpses into the social history of the twentieth century. It will appeal to an audience well beyond Bronte devotees."Patsy Stoneman is Emeritus Reader in English, University of Hull, and Acting President of the Bronte Society. She is the author of Charlotte Bronte in the Writers and their Work series, Northcote House Publishers.

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Book SynopsisAgatha Christie was the most famous female crime writers of all time, and yet in December 1926 when she was 35 years old, became the subject of a mystery: her disappearance for a period of eleven days. Questions arose such as why did she abandon her motorcar on such a bitterly cold winter's night with her fur coat inside it? Why did Christie adopt a false name and claim that she originated from Cape Town, South Africa? Why did she not recognise either a photograph of her own daughter or husband when she was finally reunited with him? Some accused her of playing a deliberate hoax on the police in an attempt to generate publicity as a crime writer. Others declared that this was an attempt to embarrass her unfaithful husband Archie (whom she knew was about to leave her) and gain sympathy at the same time. But was there another far more profound reason for her behaviour whereby she became the innocent victim of circumstances completely beyond her control? Norman agrees with the "Fugue state" theory, suggesting that she had no conscious knowledge of her actions. All this and more can be revealed for the first time in Andrew Norman's gripping Agatha Christie: The Disappearing Novelist.

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Book SynopsisOn 17th September 1820, accompanied by his friend Joseph Severn, John Keats left London for Italy on board the Maria Crowther in a desperate bid to restore his health. Anguished at the thought of having to part, possibly for ever, from his fiancee and his friends, troubled by money worries and broken in body and mind, the young poet launched on his last journey on earth with both a sense of hope and a deep foreboding that his efforts would be in vain. Despite Keats's own assertion that by then he no longer felt a citizen of the world and was leading a "posthumous life", his final five months were filled with events of great biographical interest, and deserve to be examined much more carefully. Using exclusively primary sources and first-hand accounts, Keats's editor and translator Alessandro Gallenzi has pieced together all the available material - adding newly discovered and previously unpublished documents - to help the reader follow the poet step by step from his departure and tumultuous voyage to Naples, through to his arduous journey to Rome and harrowing death in his lodgings by the Spanish Steps in February 1821. The result is a gripping narrative packed with detail and new revelations, one that invites us to strip away the Romantic patina that has formed over the story of Keats's short life, offering a wider picture that enhances our understanding of both poet and man.Trade ReviewEnthralling and original... Gallenzi’s meticulous commitment to his subject shines through. Although he presents himself as something of an embattled outsider, he is working within, and contributing to, a long tradition of Keats scholarship. There’s no doubt that all Keatsians will appreciate the new details and insights he adds to our picture of the poet’s last five months. -- Lucasta Miller * The Spectator *Superbly researched… crisply written… a work of vivid and absorbing scholarship, [which] serves as a stringent corrective to the mass of lazy scholarship that proliferates on Keats by the day. Anyone interested in Rome and the Romantic poets will gain much from reading it. Terrific. -- Ian Thomson * The Tablet *Anyone who relishes the chance to spend a little more time with John Keats (I’m one) will find this an affecting read. -- Suzi Feay * he London Magazine *Focusing on the last five months of John Keats's life, and proceeding with solid method and original research, Alessandro Gallenzi's biography of the poet extends, without stretching, our knowledge of his 'posthumous existence'. Old beliefs are dismissed and new discoveries are made, which raise more questions. An indispensable work of scholarship – and a great read too. -- Dr Luca Caddia * Keats-Shelley House, Rome *His integrity as a researcher is a welcome addition to scholarship. -- Christy Edwall * TLS *Every single fragment of primary knowledge we had is expanded into a coherent narrative in which facts are ascertained and minor characters brought to life * The Keats-Shelley Review *Written in Water provides a long overdue vetting of the available evidence as well as unearthing new facts and it is sure to become an indispensable resource for future Keats biographers and scholars. * European Romantic Review *

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Book SynopsisManhattan is the tale of a young French scholar who travels to the United States in 1965 on a Fulbright Fellowship to consult the manuscripts of beloved authors. In Yale University’s Beinecke Library, tantalized by the conversational and epistolary brilliance of a fellow researcher, she is lured into a picaresque and tragic adventure. Meanwhile, back in France, her children and no-nonsense mother await her return. A young European intellectual’s first contact with America and the city of New York are the background of this story. The experience of Manhattan haunts this labyrinth of a book as, over a period of thirty-five years, its narrator visits and revisits Central Park and a half-buried squirrel, the Statue of Liberty and a never again to be found hotel in the vicinity of Morningside Heights: a journey into memory in which everything is never the same. Traveling from library to library, France to the United States, Shakespeare to Kafka to Joyce, Manhattan deploys with gusto all the techniques for which Cixous’s fiction and essays are known: rapid juxtapositions of time and place, narrative and description, analysis and philosophical reflection. It investigates subjects Cixous has spent her life probing: reading, writing, and the “omnipotence-other” seductions of literature; a family’s flight from Nazi Germany and postcolonial Algeria; childhood, motherhood, and, not least, the strange experience of falling in love with a counterfeit genius.Table of ContentsPrologue | vii Certes a Sacrifice | 1 The Eye-Patch | 23 A yellow Folder | 35 I Will Not Write This Book | 41 The Evidence | 53 I Loved Above All Literature | 59 The Necropolis | 71 More and More Notebooks | 83 I Am Naked | 95 The Charm of the Malady | 103 Folly usa | 115 Donne Is Done | 125 Room 91 | 133 The Vroom Vroom Period | 147 Elpenor’s Dream | 161 After the End | 177 Translator’s Notes | 185

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Book SynopsisA glimpse inside a magical Tuscan villa--rustic yet urbane, old-world elegant yet bohemian, accessible yet personal--that nurtures the world's finest literary talents.In the hills above Florence, Santa Maddalena is like a secret garden where writers hone their craft and meet like-minded people. Paired with evocative images, these essays by 27 acclaimed authors invite readers to understand how the spirit of this restored villa, its owners and resident pets have inspired creative writing and creativity among so many.Monti della Corte and her late husband, Gregor von Rezzori, transformed a ruin into the ultimate retreat where they would write, garden, and entertain friends and fellow artists--Pedro Almodóvar, Bernardo Bertolucci, David Hockney, Isabella Rossellini. This gracious weaving together of hospitality and creativity became the Santa Maddalena Foundation and writers' fellowship program in 2000.

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Book SynopsisUnderstands Nietzsche in the light of his activity as a creative writer from his juvenilia through the publication of The Birth of Tragedy, providing the first extensive study in English of his early literary works. The name Friedrich Nietzsche resonates around the world. Although known primarily as a philosopher, Nietzsche began his writing career while still a boy with literary texts: poetry, prose, and dramas. The present book is the first extensive study in English of these early literary works. It understands Nietzsche in the light of his activity as a creative writer from his juvenilia through his first two years as professor of classical philology at the University of Basel, that is, through the 1872 publication of his first major work, The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music. Knowledge of Nietzsche's early literary writings further underscores the value of The Birth of Tragedy as a work of world literature. The present study makes available almost all of Nietzsche's early poetry and extensive excerpts from his early prose works and dramas - much of it in English for the first time - along with commentary. A final, extensive chapter on The Birth of Tragedy treats it as the culmination of the early literary works. The book contains many new insights into Nietzsche and his work and essential source material for future research. All quotations from Nietzsche are given in both the original German and in English.Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction: Early Nietzsche 1: The Early Poetry 2: The Early Prose Works 3: The Dramas and Drama Fragments 4: The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music 5: Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisCelebrate the King of Horror’s 75th birthday with Stephen King, which explores the connections between Stephen King’s life and his body of work.Trade Review"Holy smokes, what an awesome book…It’s a must read for any fan." * Being Fictional *"...noted King chronicler Bev Vincent’s spent years delving into the undoubtedly haunted halls of King’s archives, unearthing letters, notes, outlines and photos that shed light on the novelist’s inspirations and frustrations. The resulting encyclopedic account of the novelist’s life and career, with pitstops in such terrifying towns as Castle Rock and Derry, is a (trick or) treat for all of us Constant Readers." -- Marcus Errico * Yahoo! *"Frankly, it’s a beautiful book, designed with character and creepiness that enhance the experience without becoming a gimmick or nuisance to reading." * Horror Obsessive *"Vincent consistently displays that same knack for expertly tucked-away nuggets amidst a more conventional narrative paved on book publications and career milestones. Vincent writes about King in a direct and simple style that allows King, often quoted verbatim, to rise to the fore. The volume, ‘‘published on the occasion of Stephen King’s seventy-fifth birthday,’’ transcends the simple marketing tool or hagiographic indulgence it might have been by combining studious knowledge with accessibility and insight." -- Alvaro Zinos-Amaro * Locus Mag *"Less than a dozen pages in and I knew this was everything I had hoped for. Bev Vincent has found a way to celebrate King’s complete body of work in a way that feels both academic and casual." * Derry Public Radio - Constant Readers *"This is a great reference book that the casual reader of King’s books will learn a lot from and in which, even we King nerds that read everything he has written still find new things." * Lilja's Library *"The almost conversational tone of the book is engaging and accessible, with extensive footnotes, credits, and appendices to extend readers’ experience with the topic." * Library Journal *"Bev Vincent did an amazing job putting this book together. It has everything you need to know about Stephen King. If you are about to delve into Stephen King, I recommend you start with Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work Life, and Influences by Bev Vincent." * Sandbox World *"...takes fans on an in-depth look at exactly what it is that makes the King of Horror tick. Vincent knows his material and delivers the sort of depth and detail that many ‘behind the scenes’ books promise, but rarely deliver." * FilmJuice *"When it comes to expounding on King’s work, Vincent knows his stuff, through and through. Whether writing about King’s radio station or time with the Rock-Bottom Remainders, Vincent is curious in his approach and thorough in his results." -- Michael Berry * Portland Press Herald *"It’s a blast to open the book at random and dive in, and Vincent ensures every King text receives its just due." * TheFilmStage.com *Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1 THE FUTURE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN (1950–1969) INTERLUDE: THE POETRY OF STEPHEN KING CHAPTER 2 THE DOUBLEDAY YEARS (1970s) INTERLUDE: STEPHEN KING AS RICHARD BACHMAN INTERLUDE: WELCOME TO CASTLE ROCK CHAPTER 3 MIDAS TOUCH (1980s) INTERLUDE: THE DARK TOWER INTERLUDE: UNSEEN KING INTERLUDE: WELCOME TO DERRY CHAPTER 4 EXPERIMENTATION AND CHANGE (1990s) INTERLUDE: THE ACCIDENT CONTENTS CHAPTER 5 AFTER THE ACCIDENT (2000s) INTERLUDE: THE STEPHEN KING UNIVERSE CHAPTER 5 KING OF CRIME (2010 AND BEYOND) CONCLUSION THE TEST OF TIME SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY APPENDIX I BOOKS APPENDIX II SHORT STORIES AND NOVELLAS APPENDIX III ADAPTATIONS ENDNOTES IMAGE CREDITS ABOUT THE AUTHOR ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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Book SynopsisBy turns reflective, entertaining and moving, this book reveals how some of the most influential and best loved writers of our time were shaped by their inspirational teachers. Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee, Margaret Drabble, Stephen Greenblatt, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Andrew Motion, Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina and Paul Theroux are among the twenty contributors of original essays to this landmark volume celebrating masters of the teaching profession.What makes a good teacher? What lights the writer's creative fire? How can the teacher shape the writer? This book answers these questions and more, describing the powerful influence of mentors at an impressionable time of life, portraying the heart-warming transition from pupil to friend, and exploring the lasting impact that truly great teachers can have on their students.To have teachers who care, and to have such notable writers capture their spirit, is ample reason to read Dale Salwak''s elegant celebration of the noble profession' and Trade ReviewAll the essays deserve high praise. Seldom does one encounter such a wealth of good prose within the covers of a single volume. The book is itself inspirational, teaching much about writing and teaching, thinking and living. -- Éilís Ní Dhuibhne * The Irish Times *The best are excellent, memorializing through striking detail teachers – some exceptionally charismatic – who understood their pupils as well as they did the importance of all they were passing on to them. -- Catharine Morris * Times Literary Supplement *I found myself pleasurably immersed in the recollections of a network of individuals for whom writing became not only the centre of their universe but a necessary condition for living. ... [A] delightfully entertaining collection. * Bennett Arnold Society Newsletter *Celebrates how some of the leading writers of our time have been shaped by inspirational teachers. * Choice *Dale Salwak has created a collection that should be required reading for all prospective teachers. Elegant praise for their teachers comes from Jay Parini, Margaret Drabble, Dana Gioia, and many others. -- Linda Wagner-Martin, Hanes Professor, University of North Carolina, USAThere is no model, no formula. Chance encounters, dusty school teachers, maverick professors, illiterate grandfathers. Twenty authors ruminate on the relationships that lit the first steps of their careers. Nothing could be more fascinating. -- Tim Parks, author of 'Where I'm Reading From, the Changing World of Books'Writers and their Teachers offers a thought-provoking read to anyone interested in understanding the myriad ways a young writer's wish to write can be massaged from dormancy, their capacities strengthened, by encountering the "right" teacher in their youth. The best among the 20 essays describe the enhanced mastery of writing made possible when two people pay careful attention to each other. -- Janna Malamud Smith, author of 'An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make Their Way to Mastery'The gifts are different — legitimacy, confidence, the value of hard work, skepticism, provocation — but the gratitude is the same. A collection of moving tributes to the often mysterious figures who have, firmly, gently, and at times unconsciously made literature seem possible. -- Stacy Schiff, author of 'The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams'Table of ContentsPreface Notes on Contributors Part I School 1 Teachers We Remember: Gerrit Gouws J. M. Coetzee 2 Mabel Morrill Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina 3 Learning Curve Catherine Aird 4 A Way with Words Michael Scammell 5 Peter Way Andrew Motion 6 My Grandfather and My Other Teachers Ngugi wa Thiong’o 7 Il Miglior Fabbro George Howe Colt Part II College 8 The Perilous Balance of Marvin Eisenberg Jeffrey Meyers 9 W. Edward Brown: Many Years of Mentoring Jay Parini 10 David Milch and the Strategies of Indirection in Fiction William Logan Part III Graduate School and After 11 My Doktorvater Stephen Greenblatt 12 A Far Cry from Oxbridge Margaret Drabble 13 The Right Words Carl Rollyson 14 Remembering Allen Mandelbaum Paul Mariani 15 Sketch of a Professor: Roger Gilliatt Michael J. Aminoff 16 How Lucky I Was . . . Ann Thwaite 17 J. P. Stern: The Professor from Prague Daniel Johnson 18 George Steiner: Enchantment and Dissent Robert Boyers 19 Class Struggle: Donald Davie at Stanford Dana Gioia 20 V. S. Naipaul, the Drill Sergeant Paul Theroux

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Book Synopsis** Chosen as a New Statesman, Financial Times, Observer and Sunday Times Book of the Year **A riveting account of the making of T. S. Eliot's celebrated poem The Waste Land on its centenary.A rattling good story' Sunday TelegraphA work of art' Times Literary SupplementThe Waste Land has been called the World's Greatest Poem'. It is said to describe the moral decay of a world after war, to find meaning in a meaningless era. It has been labelled the most truthful poem of its time; it has been branded a masterful fake. A century after its publication in 1922, T. S. Eliot's enigmatic masterpiece remains one of the most influential works ever written, and yet one of the most mysterious.In a remarkable feat of biography, Matthew Hollis reconstructs the intellectual creation of the poem and brings the material reality of its charged times vividly to life. Presentin

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Book SynopsisFrom the acclaimed author of The Most Dangerous Book, the incredible true story behind the creation of a masterpiece of world literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky''s Crime and PunishmentIn the summer of 1865, the former exile Dostoevsky found himself trapped in a cheap hotel in Wiesbaden, unable to leave until he''d paid the bill. Having lost the last of his money at the roulette table, his debts hung heavy over his head, his epileptic seizures were worsening, and his wife and beloved brother were dead. Desperate, a story came to him, a way to write himself out of his predicament: the murderer Raskolnikov, the hot, disorienting swirl of St Petersburg, the axe, the terrible crime, and the murderer''s paranoia. The book was Crime and Punishment, and from the moment it was published it was a sensation. But how did this haunting tale of guilt come to be, and why does it still hold such a sway over us all these years later? The Sinner and th

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Book SynopsisWinner of the 2021 IACP Award for Literary or Historical Food Writing Longlisted for the 2021 Plutarch Award How a leading writer of the Lost Generation became America's most famous farmer and inspired the organic food movement.Trade Review"Heyman applies keen narrative skills to tell the story of Bromfield’s celebrity-studded life—two lives, really—as an author and farmer. The result is a rattling good yarn." -- Barry Estabrook - The Wall Street Journal"The Planter of Modern Life is an inspiriting read in its entirety—the kind that restores your faith in the humans that make humanity." -- Maria Popova - The Marginalian"Inspirational...Bromfield’s original insight was seeing the crucial importance of soil health before science really understood why this matters, or how to build it." -- David R. Montgomery - Nature"Mesmerizing. Abounding in wit, insight, elegance, and narrative talent, The Planter of Modern Life is at once terribly entertaining and subtly illuminating—rather like Bromfield himself, a man at ease in the most rarified Parisian gatherings and bumping along on a tractor on his Ohio farm. This original, ardent visionary of the American environmental future still has much to teach us." -- Victoria Johnson, author of American Eden"This is more than a sparkling biography; it’s a botanical adventure story of a full, plant-based bohemian life, following the journey of a modern Johnny Appleseed from Ohio to World War I France to Hollywood to our dinner plates." -- Michael W. Twitty, author of The Cooking Gene"The astounding tale of Louis Bromfield, a rare and accomplished figure who has vanished from collective memory, despite his importance to issues ranging from organic food to the ephemeral nature of fame. An engaging and fascinating book on many levels." -- Mark Kurlansky, author of Cod and Salt"If Stephen Heyman had written Louis Bromfield’s life as a novel, readers would have found the tale too tall to believe." -- Deirdre Bair, author of Parisian Lives"A brilliant, engaging read about the life of a literary icon and, until now, unrecognized founder of the organic movement." -- Dan Barber, chef of Blue Hill at Stone Barns, author of The Third Plate"I couldn’t put this book down. In this wonderful biography, Stephen Heyman pulls the curtain back so those of us who practically idolized this bigger-than-life soil spokesman can finally understand the complicated man behind the legend." -- Joel Salatin, founder of Polyface Farm, author of Folks, This Ain’t Normal"Heyman turns the story of this novelist, screenwriter, nonfiction author, and pioneering farmer into an utterly engrossing account of both his life and his times…[The Planter of Modern Life] is a biography of dual landscapes—literary and pastoral—as much as a chronicle of a man…An outstanding debut." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"In this delightful and exhilarating page-turner…Heyman does an impressive job of combining all of Bromfield’s interests into a cohesive narrative that captivates as both intriguing history and a significant look at early environmentalism." -- Booklist (starred review)

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Book SynopsisDefinitive life of the author of CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, journalist, political commentator and biographer.Trade ReviewRobert Morrison's biography is astute and revealing, quarrying new sources. -- John Carey * Sunday Times 22.11.09 *I knew that I was on to a good thing with ths book before the page numbers were even out of roman numerals... This was a lively life, and this is a lively life... -- Sam Leith * The Spectator 5.12.09 *Morrison writes... with a combination of perspicacity and generous puzzlement... Thanks to Morrison... The life is clearer than it has ever been. -- James Purdon * The Observer 6.12.09 *Robert Morrison's biography is impressive, the first biography of De Quincey in almost thirty years, and is the first to use all his published and unpublished works. -- Tom Paulin * The Literary Review Dec 09 *The time was ripe for a new biography and Morrison has done his man proud. This is an exceptionally well-balanced account. -- Jonathan Bate * Book of the Week - Sunday Telegraph - 13.12.09 *Morrison provides a compelling survey of De Quincey's work as a biographer, satirist, economist, political commentator, translator, linguist and classicist. -- Duncan Wu * The Independent 08.01.10 - Book of the Week *a book which is full of insight and careful reasoning... Morrison does a superb job of literary detection going through a life of lies, procrastination and deceit, and teasing out whatever truth there is to be had. -- Jad Adams * The Guardian 09.01.10 *This isn't a debunking biography, just a properly sceptical one, and it's clear that Morrison's enthusiasm for the man and his writings does not obscure his judgement. -- Suzi Feay * The Tablet 04.03.10 *

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Book SynopsisWhen Stoner was published in 1965, the novel sold only a couple of thousand copies before disappearing with hardly a trace. Yet John Williams’s quietly powerful tale of a Midwestern college professor, William Stoner, whose life becomes a parable of solitude and anguish eventually found an admiring audience in America and especially in Europe. The New York Times called Stoner “a perfect novel,” and a host of writers and critics, including Colum McCann, Julian Barnes, Bret Easton Ellis, Ian McEwan, Emma Straub, Ruth Rendell, C. P. Snow, and Irving Howe, praised its artistry. The New Yorker deemed it “a masterly portrait of a truly virtuous and dedicated man.”The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel traces the life of Stoner’s author, John Williams. Acclaimed biographer Charles J. Shields follows the whole arc of Williams’s life, which in many ways paralleled that of his titular character, from their Trade Review[An] engrossing short biography. * The New Yorker *An excellent biography. * Wall Street Journal *Shields…hoovers up the available evidence and shapes it into an episodic narrative without giving much sense of what he makes of his subject…Shields's book is a handy corrective for anyone who's nostalgic for the days when American writers and publishers routinely ran up large bar tabs. * London Review of Books *A fine biography of Williams by Charles J. Shields, published by University of Texas Press * Texas Monthly *This rich biography gives new insight into the enigmatic man behind Stoner, a novel quickly forgotten after its 1963 publication but more recently recognized as a midcentury American classic. * Publishers Weekly, “The Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2018” *The Williams that emerges is not unlike Stoner himself: self-obsessed, given to petty feuds, and insecure about his abilities...It is to Shields’s credit that by the end of this finely crafted biography readers will feel they have some insight into this talented, troubled enigma of a man. * Publisher's Weekly, Starred Review *Despite obvious parallels with his fictional university protagonist, John Williams is both different and interesting enough to merit a book of his own, Charles J. Shields's The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel. It certainly helps that, like Williams, Shields know how to tell a good story, one that will appeal especially to those interested in the ins and outs of the publishing industry and the ups and downs of a writer's life. * Los Angeles Review of Books *Charles Shields has done us all a service by pointing up and pointing out the novelist's unyielding ambition and rigor. * New York Journal of Books *[An] exemplary biography, the first devoted to the life of one of America's most unusual writers. * Financial Times *[A] sharp-eyed biography. * Booklist *Through exhaustive research and sharp prose, Shields has composed a portrait of the complicated author and the particular darknesses that drove Williams to write, to overcompensate, to philander, to mansplain. * The Millions *Brief but compelling...The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel is a welcome reminder that even in the rarefied world of literature, good sometimes prevails. * Waterbury Republican-American *Shields' writing is captivating and reveals much about the wounded psyches of the GI Bill generation of American (male) authors. * Shepherd Express *Shields describes Williams's development and motivations and explains persuasively why a writer hungry for fame didn't go in for the postmodernist experiments of his time. * New Criterion *Shields accomplishes an admirable feat of objectivity in a biography published during our riven age of identity and tribal politics. * American Book Review *[John Williams's Stoner] has in recent decades become the sort of book that people adore, give to their friends, fiercely identify with, and dub 'the perfect novel.' And full credit to Charles Shields for going behind the scenes to fill in the picture of Williams's own—somewhat similarly miserable—life…Stoner's rediscovery reflects well on the artisanship of John Williams, a novelist whose accomplishments and foibles Charles Shields has brought ably into view. * Western American Literature *Charles Shields's biography of John Williams invites us to enrich our understanding of Stoner—and Williams's other writings as well—in The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel. Through his accessible style, his scrupulous attention to detail, and his use of source material and interviews, Shields provides us with a balanced study of a writer whose work has the power to transform the unremarkable into the astonishing. * Journal of American Culture *Charles J. Shields' subtitle accurately captures the scope, purpose, and content of the book. It's a biography of John Williams. It's a description of how Williams's major work came to be, and it's a reflection on the writing life, as lived by John Williams. I found Shields to be fair in his approach to all three. * Concho River Review *Table of Contents Introduction Part I. Nothing But the Night Chapter One: He Comes from Texas Chapter Two: “Ho, Ho! Wasn’t I the Character Then?” Chapter Three: Rough Draft Chapter Four: Key West Chapter Five: Alan Swallow Chapter Six: Love Part II. Butcher’s Crossing Chapter Seven: The Winters Circle Chapter Eight: “Natural Liars Are the Best Writers” Chapter Nine: Butcher’s Crossing Chapter Ten: Fiasco Part III. Stoner Chapter Eleven: “It Was That Kind of World” Chapter Twelve: “The Williams Affair” Chapter Thirteen: Stoner Part IV. Augustus Chapter Fourteen: Bread Loaf and “Up on the Hill” Chapter Fifteen: The Good Guys Chapter Sixteen: “Long Life to the Emperor!” Part V. The Sleep of Reason Poem: “An Old Actor to His Audience” Chapter Seventeen: “How Can Such a Son of a Bitch Have Such Talent?” Chapter Eighteen: In Extremis Epilogue. John Williams Redux Acknowledgments Notes Works Consulted A John Williams Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisSelected as a Book of the Year in The Times Literary Supplement''This lucid and riveting new biography at once rescuses Kierkegaard from the scholars and shows why he is such an intriguing and useful figure'' ObserverSøren Kierkegaard, one of the most passionate and challenging of modern philosophers, is now celebrated as the father of existentialism - yet his contemporaries described him as a philosopher of the heart. Over about a decade in the 1840s and 1850s, writings poured from his pen analysing love and suffering, courage and anxiety, religious longing and defiance, and forging a new philosophical style rooted in the inward drama of being human.As Christianity seemed to sleepwalk through a changing world, Kierkegaard dazzlingly revealed its spiritual power while exposing the poverty of official religion. His restless creativity was spurred on by his own failures: his relationship with the young woman whom he promised to marryTrade ReviewThis lucid and riveting new biography at once rescues Kierkegaard from the scholars and makes it abundantly clear why he is such an intriguing and useful figure -- Adam Phillips * Observer *She wonderfully conveys how, pelican-like, Kierkegaard tore his philosophy from his own breast -- Jane O'Grady * Telegraph *Philosopher of the Heart enacts Kierkegaard's audacity and verve in thinking and writing, his "new way of doing philosophy", in a thrillingly inward and intimate style -- Boyd Tonkin * Arts Desk *One of the best biographies of modern masters by a new generation -- Daniel Johnson * Standpoint *Superb... the sort of biography Kierkegaard himself might have written, thematic in structure rather than chronological, lucid in its narrative but not exhaustive in detail. ... Carlisle's book has its own beauty, reminding us that Kierkegaard sympathized with our own troubles, our own desires to live decent lives -- David Mason * The Hudson Review *

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Book SynopsisThe first biography of one of the twentieth century's most respected and accomplished historians.Trade ReviewSuperbly researched -- Noel Malcolm * Sunday Telegraph *The great accomplishment of Richard J Evans's brilliantly crafted Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History is how he takes us into the private, inner world of the master historian -- Gavin Jacobson * New Statesman *A Life in History tells the inside story of [Hobsbawm's] now classic works -- Neal Ascherson * Observer *A superbly researched biography * Sunday Telegraph *Affectionate and fascinating . . . A full and generous biography of a man who was constantly aware that he lived in interesting, if fractured, times -- Allan Massie * Scotsman *Fascinating . . . This is an excellent book. Like Hobsbawm's own works, it should be read by anyone with a serious interest in history - though those of us with a frivolous interest in the rackety life of Bohemian London will also enjoy it -- Richard Vinen * Evening Standard *Richly detailed . . . This is an immensely impressive biography . . . Evans, a distinguished historian of modern Germany, provides clear and well informed accounts of the various historiographical and other controversies thatHobsbawm was involved in -- Stefan Collini * Guardian *Revelatory * London Review of Books *Deeply researched and humane -- Christopher Hale * History Today *

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Book SynopsisThe biography of one of the world's most influential African-American writersTrade Review'Finally, the James Baldwin we've been waiting for: the revolutionary, fierce internationalist, queer theorist, anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, and perhaps the most dangerous thinker of the 20th century. If you want to know the real Baldwin, this is the book to read' -- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of 'Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original''A fresh, incisive, and uplifting biography' -- Kirkus'A clear, incisive writer, Mullen succeeds with providing a fresh perspective on an author he so obviously admires. Recommended for readers seeking a broader understanding of the opinions of one of the great writers of the 20th century' -- Library Journal'A smart, concise introduction, well worth a read' -- Guardian'A remarkable biography' -- Le Monde Diplomatique'One of the most important publishing events of this political age. Lucidly and compellingly written, it updates and recontextualizes our knowledge of the complex, humane brilliance of Baldwin, drawing out his importance not only for the ages, but most urgently for our present day. It is a book that angers, moves, and inspires. An indispensable weapon for any activist fighting today's ranging fires' -- David Palumbo-Liu, Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University and author of 'The Deliverance of Others''A welcome contribution to a portrait of the radical Baldwin, untamed by liberal platitudes' -- Jacobin'A scrupulous biography' -- Publishers Weekly'A truly fresh, exciting, comprehensive biography that richly appreciates Baldwin's profound relevance both historically and in this moment' -- Michele Elam, William Robertson Coe Professor at Stanford University and editor of 'The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin''An important addition to the ongoing assessment and examination of a writer whose legacy remains vital to this day' -- Pop Matters'An incisive, timely exposition of Baldwin's political and intellectual evolution. The historically grounded account of Baldwin's critical synthesis of the major strains of black radicalism that we have long needed' -- James Smethurst, Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of 'The Black Arts Movement''An admirably tempered appraisal, in clear and sturdy prose, that will vivify for a new generation the strength and moral clarity of Baldwin and his writing' -- Alan Wald, author of 'The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s''A truly internationalist and radical reading of an author whose work is only today being fully appreciated. It takes a radical sensibility like Bill Mullen's to draw out the revolutionary potential of the love promised by Baldwin [...] this biography is a step on that road to radical love as a way of life' -- Stefano Harney, co-author of 'The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study''Mullen gives us a fresh view of an iconic American literary and revolutionary figure, particularly when it comes to his solidarity with Palestine – a dangerous and unpopular position at the time – which underscores the depth of Baldwin's courage and moral fortitude. This book is an essential contribution to the body of literature examining James Baldwin's extraordinary life' -- Susan Abulhawa, author of 'Mornings in Jenin''Powerful' -- CounterfireTable of ContentsIllustrations Preface to the Paperback Edition Introduction: James Baldwin—A Revolutionary For Our Time 1. Baptism by Fire: Childhood and Youth, 1924–42 2. Dissidence, Disillusionment, Resistance: 1942–48 3. Political Exile and Survival: 1948–57 4. Paying His Dues: 1957–63 5. Baldwin and Black Power: 1963–68 6. Morbid Symptoms and Optimism of the Will: 1968–79 7. Final Acts Postscript: Baldwin’s Queer Legacies Notes Acknowledgments Index

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Book SynopsisThe Whitbread Prize-winning biography of Vita Sackville-West.Vita Sackville-West was a vital, gifted and complex woman. A dedicated writer, she made her mark as poet, novelist, biographer, travel writer, journalist and broadcaster. She was also one of the most influential English gardeners of the century, creating with her husband the famous gardens at Sissinghurst. Glendinning documents Vita''s extraordinary life, focusing on her relationships with Violet Trefusis, Virginia Woolf, her husband Harold Nicolson, and her two sons together with her unpublicised love affairs.Vita was determined to be more than just a married woman and mother; her passionate, secretive character, and the strains, mistakes and achievements of her remarkable life makes this an absorbing and disturbing book.Trade ReviewWhat each of us would look for in an ideal future biographer is what each of us looks for in an ideal doctor: sympathy, trustfulness and acute powers of diagnosis. All these three qualities are here present. Vita would undoubtedly have shared our approval and gratitude * Sunday Telegraph *A biography that conceals nothing... gives her life in fact the strangeness, subtlety, complexity and ambivalence missing from her fiction * Observer *Surely the definitive biography. -- Harold ActonSuperb... much more than just a record of events but an opening up of understanding and experience -- Fiona McCarthy * The Times *It required both literary skill of the highest order and a rare imaginative compassion to fashion a work of art out of life... superb -- Dervla Murphy * Irish Times *Her modest, masterly, well-written treatment of a subject so absorbing in both intimate detail and public ramification is as good as it could be * Country Life *Again and again, I found myself turning to my battered paperback of Victoria Glendinning's Whitbread prize-winning biography of Sackville-West * Guardian *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Introduction to the New Edition Acknowledgements Family Tree of Sackvilles and Nicolsons Prologue Part I: Knole 1892–1913 Part II: Change and Challenge 1913–21 Part III: Explorations 1921–30 Part IV: Sissinghurst 1930–45 Part V: The Enclave and the Tower 1945–62 Notes and Sources Books by V. Sackville-West Index

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Book SynopsisFiona MacCarthy makes a breakthrough in interpreting Byron''s life and poetry drawing on John Murray''s world-famous archive.She brings a fresh eye to his early years: his childhood in Scotland, embattled relations with his mother, the effect of his deformed foot on his development. She traces his early travels in the Mediterranean and the East, throwing light on his relationships with adolescent boys - a hidden subject in earlier biographies.While paying due attention to the compelling tragicomedy of Byron''s marriage, his incestuous love for his half-sister Augusta and the clamorous attention of his female fans, she gives a new importance to his close male friendships, in particular that with his publisher John Murray. She tells the full story of their famous disagreement, ending as a rift between them as Byron''s poetry became more recklessly controversial.Byron was a celebrity in his own lifetime, becoming a ''superstar'' in 1812, after the publication ofTrade ReviewA magisterial account of Byron's life as a poet, public figure and serial shagger, this 674- page biography is both scholarly and readable . . . MacCarthy also pays due attention to the poetry, and charts his posthumous influence on figures as diverse as Disraeli, Oscar Wilde and W H Auden * Irish Independent *Fiona McCarthy deserves huge credit for uncovering so much new and illuminating information. This impressive biography was originally published in 2002 and has now been updated after MacCarthy undertook new research . . . entertaining and easy-to-read * Irish Examiner *

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Book SynopsisA New York Times Bestseller There aren't many books more beloved than The Tale of Peter Rabbit and even fewer authors as iconic as Beatrix Potter. Her characters-Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle Duck, and all the rest-exist in a charmed world filled with flowers and gardens. In Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life, bestselling author Marta McDowell explores the origins of Beatrix Potter's love of gardening and plants and shows how this passion came to be reflected in her work. The book begins with a gardener's biography, highlighting the key moments and places throughout her life that helped define her. Next, follow Beatrix Potter through a year in her garden, with a season-by-season overview of what is blooming that truly brings her gardens alive. The book culminates in a traveller's guide, with information on how and where to visit Potter's gardens today.Trade Review'There are photographs here that I have never seen before of Beatrix and her gardens, and delicious watercolours of rose hips, violets, clematis and honeysuckle, snapdragons and waterlilies.' (Alan Titchmarsh, The Telegraph)

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Book SynopsisDavid Plante''s dazzling portraits of three influential women in the literary world, now back in print for the first time in decades.Difficult Women presents portraits of three extraordinary, complicated, and, yes, difficult women, while also raising intriguing and, in their own way, difficult questions about the character and motivations of the keenly and often cruelly observant portraitist himself. The book begins with David Plante’s portrait of Jean Rhys in her old age, when the publication of The Wide Sargasso Sea, after years of silence that had made Rhys’s great novels of the 1920s and ’30s as good as unknown, had at last gained genuine recognition for her. Rhys, however, can hardly be said to be enjoying her new fame. A terminal alcoholic, she curses and staggers and rants like King Lear on the heath in the hotel room that she has made her home, while Plante looks impassively on. Sonia Orwell is his second subject, a suave exploiter and hapless victim of her beauty and social prowess, while the unflappable, brilliant, and impossibly opinionated Germaine Greer sails through the final pages, ever ready to set the world, and any erring companion, right.

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Book SynopsisOne of France's most high-profile writers, Albert Camus experienced both public adulation and acrimonious rejection in a career cut short by a fatal car accident in 1960. From humble origins in a European family living in colonial Algeria, Camus established himself as a successful novelist, with best-selling titles such as The Outsider and The Plague coming to be translated into scores of languages and earning him a reputation as a figure who captured the mood of the age. It was a world dominated, he reflected ruefully, by war and violence. The Liberation of France towards the end of the Second World War saw him emerge as one of the country's most prominent journalists at the newspaper Combat. But his subsequent position-taking on the Cold War in which, not unlike Orwell, he distanced himself from those sympathetic to the Soviet Union left him adrift from many on the Left in post-war metropolitan France. The worsening conflict in his native Algeria in the mid to late 1950s accentuated his sense of alienation as voices within France increasingly called into question the country's role in North Africa. Camus reflected on 'all the errors, contradictions and hesitations' that had marked his involvement with Algeria but he remained viscerally linked to the place of his birth. Edward J. Hughes analyses the life of an author whose work and position-taking were the subject of both intense interest and scrutiny. 'I do not guide anyone', he was to plead in his last interview, thereby reinforcing the paradox of a leading figure who in private wrestled with the challenge of pursuing his craft as a writer in an age of pressing ideological conflict.

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Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and through Knowledge Unlatched.The Argentine Jorge Luis Borges, one of the most sophisticated writers of the twentieth century, suffered from sexual impotence. This emotionally overwhelming condition shaped his literary experience in ways that have not been understood. Until now Borges has largely been considered an asexual author who could not read, think, or write about desire and sex, but in this book historian Ariel de la Fuente shows that sexuality was a major preoccupation for him, both as a reader and as an author. De la Fuente has conducted an extensive literary investigation in Borges’s figurative erotic library and presents for the first time a study of the relationship between Borges’s sexual biography, his erotic readings, and the writing of desire and sex in his work. The author explores relevant literary questions while employing a historical method and the book is truly an interdisciplinary study at the intersection of history with Latin American, European, and Eastern literatures, poetry, philosophy, and sexuality. Argued with clarity, Borges, Desire, and Sex offers an unexpected perspective on the literature and figure of a world-wide influential author.Trade Review'It is remarkable that there remains under-explored an area of Borges scholarship, yet the central questions posed here are important, original, and compelling.'William Rowlandson, University of Kent'This is a work of exceptional originality. The historical rather than literary perspective has brought to the fore entirely new readings, both regarding the interplay between Borges’s life and his work, and between his reading and creative output. At the moment it stands almost alone in its approach and methodology. This work will become a mandatory tool in the development of future research.'Evelyn Fishburn, University College London, author of A Dictionary of Borges'The author offers a detailed argument…assembling strong evidence for his case, while opening new avenues of investigation of Borges’s life and works…For [its] novel investigations of key [Borges’s] works, for highlighting the erotic focus of some of Borges’s readings, for offering a timely reminder of the importance of Stoic philosophy in the Argentine writer’s thinking, as well as for its exposition of the sexual dimensions of Borges’s poetry on the arrabal, among other merits, the book is very valuable. In the end, it serves to bring to light the important role that sex and desire played in [Borges’s] life and work.' Bill Richardson (National University of Ireland), Variaciones Borges'De la Fuente makes a compelling argument not merely for the importance of sexuality in Borges’s work, but for its extent. The author marshals his evidence and presents it clearly… Borges, Desire, and Sex makes a major contribution to our better, more complete understanding of the man and his work. I recommend it highly.' Earl Fitz (Vanderbilt University), Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y El CaribeTable of ContentsIntroductionChapter 1: On Borges’s SexualityChapter 2: Biography in Literature and the Reading of Desire and Sex in BorgesChapter 3: Borges’s Erotic Library: The Poetry ShelfChapter 4: Sir Richard Burton’s Orientalist Erotica: The Thousand Nights and a Night and The Perfumed GardenChapter 5: Schopenhauer and Montaigne, Philosophy and SexChapter 6: Desire and Sex in Buenos Aires: Borges’s Poetry on the ArrabalChapter 7: Stoicism and Borges’s Writing of WomenChapter 8: Emma Zunz: Sex, Virtue, and PunishmentChapter 9: La intrusa: Incest and Gay ReadingsWorks Cited

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Book SynopsisMysterious, esoteric, baffling – John Ashbery is notorious for the seeming difficulty of his work. But Ashbery is also entertaining, humorous and charming, and responsive to his shifting social and political contexts. This biography charts his emergence from a minor avant-garde figure to the most important poet of his generation. In this entertaining account, Jess Cotton provides a legible and accessible map of Ashbery’s work that draws connections between the poetry, the New York art and literary world and the political climate of the middle decades of the twentieth century. It makes the case for a more approachable, enjoyable and engaged Ashbery and will appeal to both students and the general reader, as well as anyone interested in American poetry, queer lives and twentieth-century history.

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Book Synopsis"Louis-Ferdinand Céline was one of the most innovative novelists of the twentieth century, and his influence both in his native France and beyond remains huge. This book sheds light on Céline’s groundbreaking novels, which drew extensively on his complex life: he rose from humble beginnings to worldwide literary fame, then dramatically fell from grace only to return, belatedly, to the limelight. Céline’s subversive writing remains fresh and urgent today, despite his controversial political views and inflammatory pamphlets that threatened to ruin his reputation. The first English-language biography of Céline in over two decades, this book explores new material and reminds us why the author belongs in the pantheon of modern greats."Trade Review“In this major new biography of Céline, Damian Catani deftly weaves together the life and the work allowing each to illuminate the other in a brilliant portrait. One of the twentieth century’s most important literary figures, Céline emerges here in all his ambivalence, his outstanding talent as a writer matched only by his obvious flaws as an individual.” -- Ian James, Reader in Modern French Literature and Thought, University of Cambridge, and author of "The Technique of Thought" and "The New French Philosophy"“One of the best French writers ever, who re-invented the very language of literature, and a complete SALOPARD.” -- Marie Darrieussecq

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Book SynopsisA new perspective on one of the world's greatest writers, Émile Zola.

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Book SynopsisA beautifully written cultural history of nine pioneering bisexual artists, writers and musicians that will change our understanding of the world's largest sexual minority.

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