Biography: writers Books

Book SynopsisIn 1962, children's writer Roger Lancelyn Green coined the phrase The Golden Age of Children's Books'. A. A. Milne's two Winnie-the-Pooh books, published in 1926 and 1928, which were so beautifully illustrated by artist and book illustrator E. H. Shepard, fall into this category.Milne was clearly motivated to compose his Winnie-the-Pooh stories in order to entertain his young son. However, Christopher Robin came to resent the fact that his father had used his real first names as the names of Pooh's owner in the books.Was there a deeper reason why Milne created Winnie-the-Pooh? Possibly yes. The author had served as a soldier in the First World War, and by creating Pooh and his Hundred Acre Wood', he had created a world into which he could withdraw whenever he chose, and thereby mitigate the post-traumatic stress disorder which all military combatants suffer, to a greater or lesser degree. The same applied to Shepard, who also served in that conflict.Having been given the Pooh books as

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Book Synopsis''Sharp, unsentimental and ruefully funny. A fascinating portrait not only of Lively but of the times through which she has lived'' Daily Telegraph''Clever and poignant . . . there is much to enjoy. This is Lively at her best'' Sunday Express''The twentieth century shook the world: it sobers me to have been one of those to see it through''Ten years ago, Penelope Lively, then eighty, wrote this powerful and compelling ''view from old age'', reporting back on what she found. There are meditations on what it is like to be old as well as on how memory shapes us. There are intriguing examinations of the key personal as well as historical moments she has lived through and her thoughts on her own bookishness - both as reader and writer. Lastly, she turns to six treasured possessions to speak eloquently about who she is and where she''s been - fragments of memories from a life well lived.Ten years on, Lively returns to the same questions in a new chapter, On Being Ninety, included in this new edition.''A superb study of memory and of her own voyage into the ninth decade of her life. Lively is a compelling, vitally interested witness to time past'' Helen Dunmore, Observer, Books of the Year''Enthralling. Will delight all those who love Lively''s novels'' Daily Mail

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Book SynopsisSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2014 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTIONThe definitive biography of America's most impassioned and lyrical twentieth-century playwright from acclaimed theatre critic John Lahr''A masterpiece about a genius'' Helen Mirren''Riveting ... masterful'' Sunday Times, Books of the YearOn 31 March 1945, at The Playhouse Theatre on Forty-Eight Street the curtain rose on the opening night of The Glass Menagerie. Tennessee Williams, the show's thirty-four-year-old playwright, sat hunched in an aisle seat, looking, according to one paper, like a farm boy in his Sunday best'. The Broadway premiere, which had been heading for disaster, closed to an astonishing twenty-four curtain calls and became an instant sell-out. Beloved by an American public, Tennessee Williams's work blood hot and personal pioneered, as Arthur Miller declared, a revolution' in American theatre.Tracing Williams's turbulent moral and psychological shifts, acclaTrade ReviewA masterpiece about a genius * Helen Mirren *Testimony to the crazy exhilaration of the entire theatrical process, and to the self-destructive solipsism of a great artist * Nicholas Hytner, Observer Books of the Year *John Lahr’s monumental tribute to the play’s 34-year-old creator, the son of a frigid, hysterical virago and a combustible father – a travelling shoe-salesman whose ear was bitten off in a poker fight … Lahr’s understanding of Williams is stamped on every page. “In playwriting, he found a strategy both to hide himself away and to vent his murderous feelings” * Nicholas Shakespeare, Daily Telegraph Biographies of the Year *John Lahr’s subtitle points to the spicier ingredients the reader can feast on in this very long but never dull book … He is supremely qualified for his task * Financial Times *A thrilling roller-coaster ride from its opening act to the tragic last scene, with Williams lying dead on the floor of a New York hotel room, his bloated body overwhelmed by drink, drugs, and sadness * Marcus Field, Independent Books of the Year *Dazzling, insightful ... It is a masterpiece on several levels: of synthesis and analysis * Paul Taylor, Independent *Riveting accounts of Williams’s plays in production, skilfully handled flashbacks to the early life, plenty of gossip, lavish quantities of photographs and yards of quotation. The result: total immersion, and a masterful analysis of a “self-cannibalising” writer “prepared to destroy himself for meaning” * Sunday Times Books of the Year *Marvellous, huge, almost out-of-control biography * The Times Book of the Week *By far the best book ever written about America’s greatest playwright. John Lahr, the longtime drama critic for the New Yorker, knows his way around Broadway better than anyone. He is a witty and elegant stylist, a scrupulous researcher, a passionate yet canny advocate * Wall Street Journal *What lifts Lahr’s book into the canon of biographical masterpieces (not a word I bandy about daily) is that, in chronicling the prurient excesses of Williams’s existence, he also explores, with critical and psychological acuity, the way in which great art emerged from such a profoundly unsettled and disquieting life ... Lahr’s biography is awash with wonderfully skewed backstage anecdotes from Williams’s career ... The seminal importance of Tennessee Williams shines through the biography – and so does the seminal sadness of his tortured life * New Statesman *Lahr’s book would be worth reading just for the anecdotes and the famous names that flit through its pages. But in essence it is a study – incisive, compelling, often painful – of how art feeds on life. -- John Carey * Sunday Times *A marvellous, huge, almost out-of-control biography -- Roger Lewis * The Times *The violence and melodrama of Williams’s life matched that of his plays. Reading his fragility, hysteria and depression always in the context of his work, Lahr is convincing in his central contention that Williams is “the most autobiographical of American playwrights” and that his writing “was a kind of cleansing” against a horrific upbringing. Utterly compelling * Daily Telegraph *The dependably excellent Lahr has crafted a dazzling portrait of America’s foremost playwright … raw material any biographer would kill for. Even those who have yet to pursue the “trail of beauty” in Williams’s oeuvre would relish this grand entertainment -- Christopher Hirst * Independent *magnificent and monumental * Mail on Sunday *

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Book Synopsis‘The most dazzling biography of a female writer to have come my way for a decade…' – Financial Times‘To be savoured for its vivid and sympathetic recreation of the tragic life and brilliant times of the gifted Mary Shelley’ – Times Literary Supplement ‘Brilliant and enthralling' – Independent On Sunday'Wonderfully vivid' – SpectatorThe definitive and richly woven biography of Mary Shelley, in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein  The creator of the world’s most famous outsider became one herself . . . There is no more dramatic scene in literary history than the stormy night by Lake Geneva when Byron, Claire Clairmont, Polidori and the Shelleys met to talk of horror and the unexplained. From thaTrade Review‘The most dazzling biography of a female writer to have come my way for a decade… Here, for the first time, Shelley steps off the page as a living, thinking, suffering woman, fraught and caught in the web of her own intelligence.’ -- Jackie Wullschlager * Financial Times *‘To be savoured for its vivid and sympathetic recreation of the tragic life and brilliant times of the gifted Mary Shelley.’ * Times Literary Supplement *‘Brilliant and enthralling, this portrait illuminates Mary’s life in many unexpected ways.’ * Independent On Sunday *‘A wonderfully vivid, human and learned portrait of the woman who created Frankenstein, married Shelley, and, amazingly, survived.’ * Spectator *'Mary Shelley, Miranda Seymour’s affectionate and well-written biography, concisely sketches the background of scientific inquiry that influenced Shelley’s early intellectual development… Seymour keenly brings out how fraught Mary Shelley’s own life was with tragedies of childbirth and infant mortality… In 1818, the Shelleys moved to Italy…where Byron now was. They formed a tense and inbred circle, sharply evoked by Seymour: the women eyeing each other jealously, each serially or simultaneously in love with Shelley or Byron or both… Miranda Seymour is a novelist as well as an experienced biographer… She has vivid narrative gifts and a perceptive understanding of the main personalities.' -- New York Times Notable Books * The New York Times *'Splendid biography.' * The New Yorker *'Miranda Seymour’s lucid biography arrives as the general reader’s guide to Mary Shelley’s ascent to academic cult status… Seymour is persuasive.' * The Guardian *'Gracefully sweeping through the dramatic life of the woman behind history’s most legendary monster, Miranda Seymour unbuttons a world of brilliant literary figures in Mary Shelley and re-creates the imaginative time in which Frankenstein was born… The Mary we meet here, brilliantly brought to life by Seymour from previously unexplored sources, is flawed, brave, generous, and impetuous.' * Goodreads *'I envy any reader of this excellent biography who happens not to be very familiar with the lives of Shelley and the girl who eloped with him when she was sixteen.' -- Diana Athill * The Oldie *'The most thorough account of Shelley’s life…eminently readable.' * Choice *'A harrowing life, wonderfully retold.' -- Washington Post Best Books of the Year * The Washington Post Book World *'Seymour is adept at capturing the cultural climate and social context of the early nineteenth century in the major English and Italian settings of Shelley’s life story. She has done hard and valuable work in finely combining the correspondence of the many players in this story, and reconstructing the likeliest version of events---no mean feat with a circle, such as Shelley’s, that was rife with contention, backbiting and self-promotion.' * The Baltimore Sun *'One of the finest and most significant biographies of recent years.' * Library Journal *'Seymour’s book is a timeless representation of a woman who endured skewed public perceptions about herself and her loved ones.' * Commercial Appeal *'Mary’s tragic life story makes for a biography as intriguing as her masterpiece.' * The Oregonian *'Seymour’s scrupulous, almost anxiously tender portrait peels away the myths like layers of tissue paper shrouding a lost relic. This is a fine biography that gives us the dense background to Mary Shelley’s work while losing none of the searing glamour and pain of her sad, extraordinary life.' * The Sunday Times *

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Book Synopsis''Wise, witty and empathetic . . . outstanding''JIM CRACE''A fascinating treatment of the age-old problem of writers and drink which displays the same subtle qualities as William Palmer''s own undervalued novels''D. J. TAYLOR''A vastly absorbing and entertaining study of this ever-interesting subject''ANDREW DAVIES, screenwriter and novelist''In Love with Hell is a fascinating and beautifully written account of the lives of eleven British and American authors whose addiction to alcohol may have been a necessary adjunct to their writing but ruined their lives. Palmer''s succinct biographies contain fine descriptions of the writers, their work and the times they lived in; and there are convincing insights into what led so many authors to take to drink.''PIERS PAUL READWhy do some writers destroy themselves by drinking alcohol? Before our health-conscious age it would be true to say that many wriTrade ReviewSympathetic and wonderfully perceptive biographies of eleven novelists and poets . . . Palmer is too wise a writer to pretend that novelists are a race apart . . . a heartbreaking read if you have learned to love the writers Palmer covers . . . By the end of this humane book, you are not falling into the sentimentality of the maudlin drunk if you wish the writers whom Palmer so tenderly examines had seen through alcohol's false promises before it was too late. -- Nick Cohen * Critic *It is an achievement to take on this subject and succumb to neither puritanism nor romanticising. In Love with Hell will send you not to the drinks cabinet but back to your bookshelves to rediscover the brilliance that Palmer's writers couldn't quite drown. -- Sarah Ditum * The Times *William Palmer's wise, witty and empathetic account of the tug 'o war - and the complicity - between alcohol and the frailties of talent lines up brilliant and boozy biographies of eleven celebrated writers, each of whom was propelled by the grip of the bottle, the allure of the bar and pub, the terrors of the blank page, and the destructive perils of both failure and fame. It is outstanding. -- JIM CRACEA fascinating treatment of the age-old problem of writers and drink which displays the same subtle qualities as William Palmer's own undervalued novels. -- D. J. TAYLORA vastly absorbing and entertaining study of this ever-interesting subject. -- ANDREW DAVIES, screenwriter and novelistAn enjoyable exploration of an enduringly fascinating subject . . . [Palmer] is above all a dispassionate critic, and is always attentive to, and unwaveringly perceptive about the art of his subjects as well as their relationship with alcohol . . . [his] treatment is even-handed and largely without judgement. He tries to understand, without either condoning or censuring, the impulses behind often reprehensible behaviour. -- Soumya Bhattacharya * New Statesman *In Love with Hell is a fascinating and beautifully written account of the lives of eleven British and American authors whose addiction to alcohol may have been a necessary adjunct to their writing but ruined their lives. Palmer's succinct biographies contain fine descriptions of the writers, their work and the times they lived in; and there are convincing insights into what led so many authors to take to drink. -- PIERS PAUL READPraise for The India House:[T]he mood of gentle regret and a sense of living in a time out of place resembles no writer so much as Chekhov. -- Alex Larman * Observer *The India House builds on its somewhat dusty foundations to altogether dazzling effect. -- D. J. Taylor * Spectator *Praise for Four Last Things:The depth and eloquence of this fine collection . . . might surprise even the most ardent admirers of his novels. -- Paul Sussman * Independent on Sunday *Praise for The Pardon of Saint Anne:Palmer's beautifully crafted novel convincingly unfolds for us a story of inadvertent complicity in acts of unspeakable evil. -- Lisa Jardine * The Times *Praise for The Contract:A beautifully written exploration of a once famous case that has uncomfortable relevance to our own times. -- David LodgePraise for The Contract:A flawless and intelligent study of sex, politics and the abuse of power. It is both subtle and shocking: that is a rare and potent combination. -- Jim CracePraise for The Pardon of Saint Anne:[A] haunting work over which one wants simultaneously to hurry and to linger. -- Christopher Hawtree * The Times *Praise for Leporello:[A]n extraordinarily skilful novel. -- Piers Paul Read * Catholic Herald *Praise for The Good Republic:Mr Palmer's book set a standard for an east European historical novel that has yet to be matched - an especially impressive feat for an outsider . . . It is a tribute to his novelist's skills that anyone reading the book has the feeling of complete authenticity in both history and geography. Readers are left longing for a sequel. -- Edward Lucas * The Economist *A masterful insider's account of how alcohol ruined the sustained careers of 11 writers, including Kingsley Amis, Dylan Thomas and Jean Rhys. * Books of the Year, New Statesman *

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Book Synopsis''Laura Thompson''s outstanding biography . . . is a pretty much perfect capturing of a life'' - Kate MosseIt has been 100 years since Agatha Christie wrote her first novel and created the formidable Hercule Poirot. In this biography, Laura Thompson describes the Edwardian world in which she grew up, explores the relationships she had, including those with her two husbands and daughter, and investigates the mysteries still surrounding Christie''s life - including her disappearance in 1926. Agatha Christie is a mystery and writing about her is a detection job in itself. But, with access to all of Christie''s letters, papers and writing notebooks, as well as interviews with her grandson, daughter, son-in-law and their living relations, Thompson is able to unravel not only the detailed workings of Christie''s detective fiction, but the truth behind her private life as well.First published in 2007 as ''Agatha Christie: An English Mystery'', this is a fuTrade ReviewThompson does a superlatives job at digging beneath the surface of this public but private woman... her prose here is elegantly turned and concise - and perfectly at the service of its enigmatic subject. * Crime Time *

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Book SynopsisParagon of English virtues or racist imperialist? Andrew Lycett (acclaimed biographer of Ian Fleming) has returned to primary sources to tell the intricate story of a misunderstood genius who became Britain''s most famous and highest earning author. Among the many new sources, Lycett has discovered previously unpublished letters that illuminate Kipling''s crucial years in India, his first girlfriend (the model for Mrs Hauksbee of Plain Tales from the Hills), his parents'' decision to send him back to England to boarding school; and in his adult life his use of opium, his frustrating times in London and the brief peace he found in America before the devastating loss of both his young daughter and, in the First World War, his son. Lycett also uncovers the extraordinary story of Kipling''s great love for Flo Garrard, daughter of the crown jeweller, and unravels the complicated yet enthralling saga of the American family the Balestiers, and of Carrie Balestier who became Trade ReviewConducts us through [Kipling's] life and times with authority, dispassion and clarity. This is an excellent biography, with everything in its place -- Lawrence James * LITERARY REVIEW *Well researched and finely written ... Anyone who wants to learn about this curious figure in our culture could do no better than to start here -- Simon Heffer * COUNTRY LIFE *Richly detailed ... will still be read after the latest psychohistories and literary deconstructions have deconstructed one another to bits -- Noel Malcolm * SUNDAY TELEGRAPH *

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Book SynopsisOxford thought it was at war. And then it was. After the horrors of the First World War, Oxford looked like an Arcadia - a dream world - from which pain could be shut out. Soldiers arrived with pictures of the university fully formed in their heads, and women finally won the right to earn degrees. Freedom meant reading beneath the spires and punting down the river with champagne picnics. But all was not quite as it seemed.The women of Oxford still faced a battle to emerge from their shadows. And among the dons a major conflict was beginning to brew. This singular tale of Oxford colleagues and rivals encapsulates the false sense of security that developed across the country in the interwar years. With the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich came the subversion of history for propaganda. In academic Oxford, the fight was on not only to preserve the past from the hands of the Nazis, but also to triumph, one don over another, as they became embroiled in a war of th

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Book Synopsis'Outstanding... The best short introduction I have come across' Sunday TimesWhen he died at the age of just twenty-five, few imagined John Keats would one day be considered among the greatest poets of all time.Taking nine of Keats's best-known poems, Lucasta Miller excavates their backstories and, in doing so, resurrects the real Keats: an outsider from a damaged family whose visceral love of language allowed him to change the face of English literature for ever.Combining close-up readings with the story of his brief existence, Miller shows us how Keats crafted his groundbreaking poetry and explains why it continues to speak to us across the centuries.'One never wants Keats's life to end so soon; I didn't want this book to end, either' TLS Books of the Year'Irresistible... [Miller]digs into the backstories of her subject's most famous poems to uncover aspects of his life and work that challenge well-worn romantic myths' Wall Street JournalTrade ReviewIn lucid, graceful prose she [Miller] manages to bring us closer to the life and work of a poet who never seemed that far away... I didn't want this book to end. * Times Literary Supplement, *Books of the Year* *An enlightening and perceptive introduction to (or reminder of) the great Romantic poet's life and work. * Financial Times *Outstanding... [Miller's] knowledge of all things Keatsian is formidable... For newcomers to Keats, Miller's is the best short introduction I have come across. -- John Carey * Sunday Times *Miller disrobes the myth, while helping us to appreciate what she calls Keats's "vertiginous originality". As a wittily perceptive introduction to (or reminder of) the poet and his work, her book is unlikely to be surpassed any time soon. -- Miranda Seymour * Financial Times *Lucasta Miller's task, which she carries out very successfully, is to strip away what we think when we think about Keats... This excellent book... enters an already crowded market of Keats biographies, but earns its place through its firm basis in precise reading. Miller is empathetic, and relishes Keats's best phrases. -- Philip Hensher * Spectator *

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Book Synopsis'Remarkable lives in extraordinary times - a gripping and exceptional literary journey.' Philippe Sands'Alexander Wolff is keen, after a generation of silence, to follow the untold stories wherever they might lead.' Claire Messud, Harpers Magazine'As riveting as the fiction the Wolffs themselves have published, and deeply affecting.' NewsweekIn 2017, acclaimed journalist Alexander Wolff moved to Berlin to take up a long-deferred task: learning his family's history. His grandfather Kurt Wolff set up his own publishing firm in 1910 at the age of twenty-three, publishing Franz Kafka, Émile Zola, Anton Chekhov and others whose books would be burned by the Nazis. In 1933, Kurt and his wife Helen fled to France and Italy, and later to New York, where they would bring books including Doctor Zhivago, The Leopard and The Tin Drum to English-speaking readers.Meanwhile, Kurt's son Niko, born from an earlier marriage, was left behind in Germany. Despite his Jewish heritage, he served in the German army and ended up in an prisoner of war camp before emigrating to the US in 1948. As Alexander gains a better understanding of his taciturn father's life, he finds secrets that never made it to America and is forced to confront his family's complex relationship with the Nazis.This stunning account of a family navigating wartime and its aftershocks brilliantly evokes the perils, triumphs and secrets of history and exile.Trade Reviewan event-filled biography and, along the way, a captivating case study in the challenges faced by refugees attempting to remake a life...as enlightening as it is engaging. * Wall Street Journal *as riveting as the fiction the Wolffs themselves have published, and deeply affecting. * Newsweek *Alexander Wolff is keen, after a generation of silence, to follow the untold stories wherever they might lead. -- Claire Messud * Harpers Magazine *Remarkable lives in extraordinary times - a gripping and exceptional literary journey. -- Philippe Sands[A] poignant portrait...Wolff skillfully contextualizes his father and grandfather's tales with military and political history; details links between Merck and the Nazi regime; and uncovers family secrets, including the existence of his father's illegitimate half-brother. History buffs and literary enthusiasts will be rewarded * Publishers Weekly *An astonishing, compelling, confronting story of a divided family, reaching sharply into the present. -- Tim Bonyhady, author of GOOD LIVING STREETMeticulously researched and beautifully written, Endpapers, at its heart, is an absorbing family history. But it is so much more than that, a haunting exploration of guilt and responsibility, of roots and new beginnings. Filled with stunning literary details that any bibliophile will cherish, this is an intimate and complex portrait of a remarkable family that also tells a wider story of Europe and America in the twentieth century. Endpapers is a treasure - a brave and moving book. -- Ariana Neumann, author of WHEN TIME STOPPEDA powerfully told story of family, honor, love and truth, by a masterful writer who sees across the oceans and through the generations. In Endpapers we see the Wolff family through war and love, detention camps and immigration hearings, kindness and betrayal, occupying a world equal parts Casablanca and Kafka. It is engrossing and entertaining, a book of conscience and remembrance that tells the beautiful truth that so often those who contribute most to the culture and civic life of a place are the outcast and the refugee. -- Beto O'RourkeAlexander Wolff - a writer of superb grace - traces a complex and compelling family history in this deeply absorbing narrative of high culture under threat, of political and moral violence, and the deep wish for what Wolff refers to as Heimkehr or 'homecoming.' Endpapers held me in its spell for days. -- Jay Parini, author of BORGES AND ME: AN ENCOUNTERA stunning and brave book, deep and absorbing. I was enraptured by the story of Kurt, Niko and Alex as they moved through the crosswinds of the twentieth century, from Munich to Princeton, and into the modern world. -- David Maraniss, author of A GOOD AMERICAN FAMILYIn a compelling, frequently thrilling and - if you have an ear for the biting tone of Hitler's exiles - often hilarious book, Alexander Wolff combines biography, memoir and cultural history, rendering them indivisible, and making clear the uncanny and terrifying parallels between Kurt Wolff's day and ours. -- Anthony Heilbut, author of EXILED IN PARADISE and THOMAS MANN[A] revelatory, riveting and deeply moving account of his family's involvement in Germany's recent history. -- Joshua Hammer * New York Review of Books *Table of ContentsPrologue: Prologue Introduction: Introduction 1: Bildung and Books 2: Done with the War 3: Technical Boy and the Deposed Sovereign 4: Mediterranean Refuge 5: Surrender on Demand 6: Into a Dark Room 7: A Debt for Rescue 8: An End with Horror 9: Blood and Shame 10: Chain Migration 11: Late Evening 12: Second Exile 13: Schweinenest 14: Turtle Bay 15: Mr. Bitte Nicht Ansprechen 16: Shallow Draft 17: Play on the Bones of the Dead 18: The End, Come by Itself

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Book SynopsisBram Stoker, despite having a name nearly as famous as Count Dracula, has remained an enigma. David J. Skal, in a psychological and cultural portrait, exhumes the inner world and strange genius of the writer who conjured an undying cultural icon. Stoker was inexplicably paralysed as a boy and his story unfolds against a backdrop of Victorian medical mysteries and horrors: fever, opium abuse, bloodletting, quack cures and the obsession with “bad blood” that inform every page of Dracula. Stoker’s ambiguous sexuality is explored through his acquaintance with Oscar Wilde, who emerges as Stoker’s repressed shadow self—a doppelgänger worthy of a Gothic novel. The psychosexual dimensions of Stoker’s correspondence with Walt Whitman, his punishing work ethic and his adoration of the actor Henry Irving are examined in scholarly detail.Trade Review"He [David Skal] is surely successful in his efforts to revivify his subject and to reveal that even those shadows we think we know may contain obscurities that move of their own volition and which, tantalizingly, remain just out of sight." -- The Times Literary Supplement"Skal's knowledge of the byways of literary and theatrical history is prodigious." -- The Sunday Times"… Skal’s 'untold story' is an exercise in literary sleuthing, reading back from the fiction to uncover the motives of its making." -- Literary Review"... consistently entertaining, sumptuously illustrated ramble through Stokerism." -- John Sutherland - The Spectator"... highly digestible feast." -- SFX"Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula. Most people don’t know much more about him than that, so this hefty biography is to be welcomed... [it] makes many fascinating connections." -- The Irish Times"David Skal’s enormous, and enormously enjoyable, new biography of Stoker... is a vast and generously discursive work that has interesting and important things to say about almost every aspect of Stoker’s life and work..." -- The Wildean

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Book SynopsisFor fifteen years, after his first visit to the country in1876, Nietzsche was repeatedly and irresistibly drawn back to Italy's climate and lifestyle. It was there that he composed his most famous works, including Thus Spake Zarathustra and Ecce Homo. This classic biography follows the troubled philosopher from Rome, to Florence, via Venice, Sorrento, Genoa, Sicily and finally to the tragic denouement in Turin, the city in which Nietzsche found a final measure of contentment before his irretrievable collapse. Endlessly fascinating and highly readable, Nietzsche in Italy will enthral anyone interested in Nietzsche's relationship with the country that enriched his soul more than any other.Trade Review“The essay-form allows Pourtalès a type of rhetorical flourish you wouldn’t expect in a traditional biography [as he] describes Nietzsche’s increasingly iconoclastic thought process, expressed throughout the 1880s in such explosive books as “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” “Beyond Good and Evil” and “On the Genealogy of Morality.” --Wall Street Journal

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Book SynopsisWinner East Anglian Book of the Year 2022In Iron Man, Lynne Bryan writes movingly and candidly about disability, the vulnerability of the body and mind, and the frailty and strength of our corporeality. She writes insightfully and thought-provokingly about the ways in which women’s access to head space and the physical and economic space for creativity can be restricted or blocked – sometimes by the people they love best and who love them best; and, of course, sometimes by themselves.

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Book Synopsis'JOYOUS . . . READERS WILL LOVE THIS FASCINATING BOOK' CATHY RENTZENBRINK'A GODSEND WITH THE PRESENT SEASON APPROACHING' IRISH INDEPENDENT'THE PERFECT GIFT FOR A BOOK-OBSESSED FRIEND' STYLIST, 50 UNMISSABLE BOOKS FOR AUTUMN 2017'EXCELLENT . . . SHOULD BE READ BY ANYONE WHO LOVES BOOKS' EVENING STANDARDAbsence doesn't make the heart grow fonder. It makes people think you're dead.So begins Christopher Fowler's foray into the back catalogues and backstories of 99 authors who, once hugely popular, have all but disappeared from our shelves.Whether male or female, domestic or international, flash-in-the-pan or prolific, mega-seller or prize-winner - no author, it seems, can ever be fully immune from the fate of being forgotten. And Fowler, as well as remembering their careers, lifts the lid on their lives, and why they often stopped writing or disappeared from the public eye.These 99 journeys are punctuated by 12 short essays about faded once-favourites: including the now-vanished novels Walt Disney brought to the screen, the contemporary rivals of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie who did not stand the test of time, and the women who introduced us to psychological suspense many decades before it conquered the world.This is a book about books and their authors. It is for book lovers, and is written by one who could not be a more enthusiastic, enlightening and entertaining guide.'A BIBLIOPHILE'S DREAM' FINANCIAL TIMES'WILL HAVE READERS SCURRYING INTO SECONDHAND BOOKSHOPS' GUARDIANTrade ReviewWell researched and wide-ranging . . . The Book of Forgotten Authors is a bibliophile's treat written with verve and passion. It will have readers scurrying into secondhand bookshops in search of yellowing paperbacks. * Guardian *Full of humour and pathos, Christopher Fowler's survey of authors who have fallen into obscurity is a bibliophile's dream. * Financial Times *A real gem, filled with old favourites and new discoveries, and written in a light, snappy, erudite tone, as satisfying as a full English breakfast at your local art-house cafe. -- Joanne HarrisA joyous saunter through the lives and words of yesterday's big names. Readers will love this fascinating book. -- Cathy RentzenbrinkA sure-fire Christmas gift . . . charged with an irresistible passion for the world of the book. * Daily Telegraph *A treasure trove of trivia . . . Excellent . . . This colourful compendium of literary lives should be read by anyone who loves books. * Evening Standard *

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Book Synopsis'Deeply moving... This is a beautiful book.' TLS______________________________Katharine Smyth was a student at Oxford University when she first read Virginia Woolf's modernist masterpiece To the Lighthouse in the comfort of an English sitting room, and in the companionable silence she shared with her father. After his death, she returned to that beloved novel as a way of wrestling with his memory and understanding her own grief. Braiding memoir, literary criticism and biography, Smyth's story explores universal questions about family, loss and homecoming. Through her inventive, highly personal reading of To the Lighthouse, Smyth guides us towards a new vision of Woolf's most demanding and rewarding novel. All the Lives We Ever Lived is a wholly original debut: a love letter from a daughter to her father, and from a reader to her most cherished author.'Beautifully written... a gift to readers drawn to big questions about time, memory, mortality, love and grief' Wall Street JournalTrade ReviewBeautifully written... a gift to readers drawn to big questions about time, memory, mortality, love and grief... you'd be hard put to find a more moving appreciation of Woolf's work. * Wall Street Journal *This is a transcendent book, not a simple meditation on one woman's loss, but a reflection on all of our losses, on loss itself, on how to remember and commemorate our dead. * Washington Post *Deeply moving... This is a beautiful book about the wildness of mortal life, and the tenuous consolations of art. -- Joanna Kavenna * TLS *Smyth is an elegant writer and she explores her deep, complicated love for her father in lyrical yet restrained prose. * Literary Review *All the Lives We Ever Lived is both a haunting attempt to come to terms with loss and an honest appraisal of the ways in which a person can become unmoored. Acutely observed and shot through with a furious beauty, it is a book that lingers long after the final page has been turned. * The i *Raw and moving... Smyth is an elegant and powerful writer, her sentences suffused with attention to detail and rich with self-interrogation. * Prospect *This searching memoir pays homage to To the Lighthouse, while recounting the author's fraught relationship with her beloved father, a vibrant figure afflicted with alcoholism and cancer... evocative and incisive. * New Yorker *Blending analysis of a deeply literary novel with a personal story... gently entwining observations from Woolf's classic with her own layered experience. Smyth tells us of her love for her father, his profound alcoholism and the unpredictable course of the cancer that ultimately claimed his life. * TIME *All the Lives We Ever Lived is both a reflection on To the Lighthouse and a lingeringly beautiful elegy in its own right. * Los Angeles Review of Books *[Smyth's] prose is so fluid and clear throughout that it's not surprising to observe her view of her family, its cracks and fissures, sharpen into unsparing focus... Her exploration of grown-up love, the kind that accounts for who the loved one actually is, not who you want him or her to be, gains power and grace as her story unfolds. I suspect her book could itself become solace for people navigating their way through the complexities of grief for their fallen idols. And they will be lucky to have it. -- Radhika Jones * New York Times Book Review *Like H Is for Hawk, Smyth's book is a memoir that's not quite a memoir, using Woolf, and her obsession with Woolf, as a springboard to tell the story of her father's vivid life and sad demise due to alcoholism and cancer....an experiment in 21st-century introspection that feels rooted in a modernist tradition and bracingly fresh. * Vogue *A critical and reflective delight... elegant and thorough and in several places stunning... All The Lives We Ever Lived reads at least in part as a steadfast refusal to countenance a pessimistic approach to life, insisting that even when the case seems desperate, one might find sufficiency in a moment. * Review 31 *A conceptually ambitious and assured debut... a close reading of that novel from the perspective of an obsessed reader who is both coming-of-age and coming to terms... A work of incisive observation and analysis, [with] exquisite writing. * Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) *Brilliant... All the Lives is a memoir, yes, but also part biography, part lit crit, part adulation - the story of the emotional turmoil of her father's alcoholism, cancer diagnosis, and eventual death, organized as a paean to a British novel written in the 1920s... Smyth reaffirms the value of novels as existential guideposts.... beautiful. * Vulture *This gorgeous, moving book gracefully moves between memoir and literary criticism... Smyth's writing possesses a unique ability to wend its way into your head, traveling into all the darkest corners of your mind, triggering thoughts on love and loss and family and memory you hadn't known were lurking; it's a profound experience, reading this book - one not to be missed. * Nylon *I loved All the Lives We Ever Lived: its structural inventiveness, its fluid and lyrically beautiful writing - some lines made me gasp - and its often astonishing wisdom. But above all, this is a smart, moving portrait of a family in crisis; Smyth weaves literary criticism and biography into nearly every page, but she never strays from the deepest concerns of the human heart. -- Jamie Quatro, author of Fire Sermon and I Want to Show You MoreAll the Lives We Ever Lived is a work of vivid intelligence-a sharp love letter to the reading and relationships that shape us, and an ingenious reply to the questions Woolf asked her readers to answer for themselves. -- Nell Stevens, author of Bleaker House and Mrs Gaskell and MeIn her brilliant debut, Katharine Smyth has done the impossible - invented a new form for the overworked genre of memoir, weaving Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse into her personal story as she absorbs the meaning of her beloved father's long illness and early death. Her prose is luxuriant and supple, but never sentimental, and her piercing insights into the dynamics of the nuclear family often profound. -- Michael Scammell, author of Koestler and Solzhenitsyn

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Book SynopsisA chronicle of Geoffrey Chaucer's life, accomplishments and roles outside poetry.

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Book SynopsisEdgar Allan Poe, the original master of the macabre and dark Romantic writer of Gothic novels, detective stories, poetry, short stories and satires is synonymous with themes of premature burial, death, madness and mysticism. His life was intriguing and his early death at 40 was appropriately mysterious – dying in delirium (possibly opium, alcohol, rabies or syphilis induced) in someone else's clothes on the streets of Baltimore.One of the most recognizable and widely referenced literary figures, outside of the enormous popularity of his literature, Poe also became a compelling popular culture figure, especially for literary, horror and sci-fi fans. The Little Book of Edgar Allan Poe is made up of fascinating, poignant, witty and occasionally disturbing quotes from across the breadth of Poe's work, as well as comments from his contemporaries, extracts from letters and interesting facts about the man's life and works. It adds up to a fascinating overview of this unique literary character and the incredible fiction he produced.SAMPLE QUOTE: 'Tis the wind and nothing more! Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore' - The Raven, 1845.SAMPLE FACT: American football team the Baltimore Ravens are name after Poe's classic poem, The Raven.Table of ContentsGaffy: The Early Years - Letters, writings, and quotations from Poe's formative years. Tomahawk Man: Criticism and Comment - Edgar Allan Poe started writing literary criticism and theory, the former earning him the “Tomahawk” nickname. E. A. Poe: Master of the Macabre - Quotes from Poe's most famous works, in short story and longer form, as well as critiques about him by contemporaries and modern commentators. Eddy: The Man behind the Myth - Poe wrote many letters to friends, lovers and family. Many excerpts are featured, as well as replies and other comments. Quarles: Poetry - Famous for his long-form poetry, Poe was a master of that art as well as prose. Wisdom and Wit - An absolute master of words, meaning, inference and wit, this section features cutting quotes from Poe's pen.

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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.

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Book SynopsisAs seen in the new movie The Post, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Meryl Streep, here is the captivating, inside story of the woman who piloted the Washington Post during one of the most turbulent periods in the history of American media.In this bestselling and widely acclaimed memoir, Katharine Graham, the woman who piloted the Washington Post through the scandals of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, tells her story - one that is extraordinary both for the events it encompasses and for the courage, candour and dignity of its telling. Here is the awkward child who grew up amid material wealth and emotional isolation; the young bride who watched her brilliant, charismatic husband - a confidant to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson - plunge into the mental illness that would culminate in his suicide. And here is the widow who shook off her grief and insecurity to take on a president and a pressman's union as she entered the profane boys' club of the newspaper business.As timely now as ever, Personal History is an exemplary record of our history and of the woman who played such a shaping role within them, discovering her own strength and sense of self as she confronted - and mastered - the personal and professional crises of her fascinating life.Trade ReviewThis is a stunning book * Sunday Telegraph *An autobiographical masterpiece, adroitly combining the public and personal spheres. Frank, sensitive and bubbling with humour, it is a fascinating account by an impressive person * The Economist *A well-written, fascinating, moving and, in its social and historical context, important book -- Sarah Bradford * Daily Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisHope Against Hope recounted the last four years in the life of the great Russian poet, Osip Mandelstam, and gave a hair-raising account of Stalin's terror. Hope Abandoned complements that earlier masterpiece, and in it Nadezhda Mandelstam describes their life together from 1919, and her own after Mandelstam's death in a labour camp in 1938. She also sets out his system of values and beliefs, and provides striking portraits of many of their contemporaries including Boris Pasternak and their champion till his own downfall, Nikolai Bukharin, as well as an astonishingly candid picture of Anna Akhmatova.Trade ReviewTwo of the most fortifying books of our times, Nadezhda Mandelstam’s Hope against Hope and Hope Abandoned ... were finally written in the late Sixties. In these books, we have a devastating indictment of most of what happened in post-revolutionary Russia -- Seamus Heaney * London Review of Books *A bursting compendium of glances at people, framed in essays of scorn for the inquisitors and compassion for the victims... If she is vinegarish, she is also powerful and enhancing -- V.S. PritchettDescribes the whole range of her life with Mandelstam, their travels, vicissitudes and friendships, above all the friendship with Akhmatova... a vivid triple portrait * New Society *Max Hayward's translation reads easily and seems to me to convey exactly the style and tone in which this great book is written * Daily Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisAn engaging exploration of the stories behind forty famous pen names from the nineteenth century to the present day.

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Book SynopsisThis tender and personal memoir by the poet Joanna Ramsey of George Mackay Brown gives an account of some aspects of the last eight years of his life in Stromness, Orkney, and of the friendship between them. It also provides a background to his poem 'A New Child: ECL 11 June 1993' (included in the anthology Following a Lark), which he wrote for Joanna's daughter. There are many small details of George's day to day life in those last years that are not included in any other account. Also included are an unpublished poem written for Joanna, and a number of birthday acrostics written for her and her daughter, Emma. In his final years George Mackay Brown rarely travelled beyond Stromness, but many of his friends visited him there; the book is also peopled by George's other friends, and paints a portrait of a man who remained very dear and important to others until his death and beyond it.Trade Review'Joanna Ramsey has written a scrupulously honest, nuanced account of her close friendship with George Mackay Brown. As well as containing previously unpublished verse by this great Orcadian poet, this book is full of hints and glints of the remarkable cultural life of Brown's Stromness in the late twentieth century.' ‘Refreshingly, Ramsey reveals a kind and relaxed private man.’ * The Skinny *‘In several glowing, loving passages she honours art and artist alike.’ * The Herald *

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Book SynopsisVirginia Woolf, figurehead of the Bloomsbury Group and an innovative writer whose experimental style and lyrical prose ensured her position as one of the most influential of modern novelists, was also firmly anchored in the reality of the houses she lived in and those she visited regularly. Detailed and evocative accounts appear in her letters and diaries, as well as in her fiction, where they appear as backdrops or provide direct inspiration. Hilary Macaskill examines the houses that meant the most to Woolf, including: 22 Hyde Park Gate, London – where Virginia Woolf was born in 1882 Talland House, St Ives, Cornwall – the summer home of Virginia’s family until 1895 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London – the birthplace of the Bloomsbury Group – Virginia lived here from 1904 to 1912 Hogarth House, Richmond, London – where the newly married Woolfs set up home and founded the Hogarth Press Asheham House, East Sussex – the summer home of the Woolfs, 1912-1919 52 Tavistock Square, London – a return to Bloomsbury, the heart of London Monk’s House, Rodmell, East Sussex – where Virginia lived from 1919 until her death in 1941 Trade Review"A delight to the eye and a pleasure to read. Anyone who picks it up will be enchanted by it. * Virginia Woolf Bulletin *"The Woolfs' domestic lives have been documented many times, but Macaskill has written a lively and lovingly researched book, full of domestic detail, which is sure to delight Bloomsbury fans." * Sussex Life *“Intriguing insight into her domestic life . . . rich with quotes.” * House & Garden *"A confident, well-written book with a whiff of that seductive 'spirit of place'." * Times Literary Supplement *"I can’t really recommend Virginia Woolf at Home highly enough for its excellent combination of the visual and the written...if you want a look into the life of Virginia Woolf, both the woman and the writer, this is a great place to start. It’s informative, evocative, readable and very lovely to look at." * Kaggy's Bookish Ramblings blog *"Ms Macaskill handles her material with elegance and a light touch." * Country Life *"Hilary Macaskill is... an indefatigable sleuth." * World of Interiors *

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Book Synopsis'A marvel of clarity, fluency, and (Morris's favourite word in her final days) kindness.' The Sunday Times'A measured and elegant biography that Morris aficionados will find fascinating.' The TimesThe first full account of a truly remarkable life. When Jan Morris passed away in 2020, she was considered one of Britain's best-loved writers. The author of Venice, Pax Britannica, Conundrum, and more than fifty other books, her work was known for its observational genius, lyricism, and humour, and had earned her a passionate readership around the world. Morris's life was no less fascinating than her oeuvre. Born in 1926, she spent her childhood amidst Oxford's Gothic beauty and later participated in military service in Italy and the Middle East, before embarking on a career as an internationally feted foreign correspondent. From being the only journalist to join the first ascent of Mount Everest in 1953 to covering the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Morris's reportage spanned many of the twentiet

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Book SynopsisTowards the end of 1974, a stranger arrived in the small town of Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent. He could often be found sitting at the bar in the Napier Tavern, drinking lager and smoking Gauloises while flicking through the pages of the Kent Evening Post. "Charles" was the name he offered to his new acquaintances. But this unexpected immigrant was actually Uwe Johnson, originally from the Baltic province of Mecklenburg in the GDR, and already famous as the leading author of a divided Germany. What caused him to abandon West Berlin and spend the last nine years of his life in Sheerness, where he eventually completed his great New York novel Anniversaries in a house overlooking the outer reaches of the Thames Estuary? And what did he mean by detecting a “moral utopia” in a town that others, including his concerned friends, saw only as a busted slum on an island abandoned to “deindustrialisation” and a stranded Liberty ship full of unexploded bombs? Patrick Wright, who himself abandoned north Kent for Canada a few months before Johnson arrived, returns to the “island that is all the world” to uncover the story of the East German author’s English decade, and to understand why his closely observed Kentish writings continue to speak with such clairvoyance in the age of Brexit. Guided in his encounters and researches by clues left by Johnson in his own “island stories”, the book is set in the 1970s, when North Sea oil and joining the European Economic Community seemed the last hope for bankrupt Britain. It opens out to provide an alternative version of modern British history: a history for the present, told through the rich and haunted landscapes of an often spurned downriver mudbank, with a brilliant German answer to Robinson Crusoe as its primary witness.Trade Review"A monumental sifting and arranging of local particulars, stitched against the savage farce of a great European novelist’s elective exile... Patrick Wright has picked over the landfill of a very specific Estuary culture to devastating effect.""A double 'biography' of the great but always tempestuous German writer Uwe Johnson and his ultimate home, the gritty and disreputable Isle of Sheppey. 'Biography' is in quotes because Wright is a saboteur of genres and his books encompass multiple worlds. I stand in awe of what he has accomplished here.""A masterful modernist history, and Patrick Wright’s most important book, bringing Europe to England by showing it has always been here, at a moment when too many want to believe something else.""An extraordinary, haunting book... a phenomenal achievement.""An astonishing chronicle of the great German author Uwe Johnson, who moved to Sheerness, Kent, in the 70s.”“To repeat: this tidal book, reaching into everything and then withdrawing to show what is left behind, is a triumph."“A huge achievement: a comprehensive portrait of a place and a person, and the best book about Brexit that’s yet been written.""A model portrait of person and place, a kind of cultural and literary geography that never fails to fascinate.""A glorious rabbit hole of a book ... a longue durée portrait, from the 17th century to Thatcher, of a single location on the edges of British national life."“Wright plays both the anatomist and the elegist for the blighted modernity of seemingly forsaken spots such as Sheppey … a fragmentary panorama of traumatic, half-remembered history, personal and national.”“Thorough, discerning, compassionate.”"The most involving and originally-conceived social history of modern England to have appeared in decades." "A hymn to estuarial peculiarity and a lament for an awkward man determined never to find his place." "I was entirely captivated by this microscopic, discursive study of Uwe Johnson... a great book about the relationship between Britain and the rest of Europe, and not a page too long."

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Book Synopsis2018 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleRebecca Harding Davis is best known for her gritty short story ""Life in the Iron-Mills,"" set in her native Wheeling, West Virginia. Far less is known of her later career among elite social circles in Philadelphia, New York, and Europe, or her relationships with American presidents and leading international figures in the worlds of literature and the stage. In the first book-length biography of Davis, Sharon M. Harris traces the extraordinary life of this pioneering realist and recovers her status as one of America's notable women journalists. Harris also examines Rebecca's role as the leading member of the Davis family, a unique and nationally recognized family of writers that shaped the changing culture of later nineteenth-century literature and journalism. This accessible treatment of Davis's life, based on deep research in archival sources, provides new perspective on topics ranging from sectional tensions in the border South to the gendered world of nineteenth-century publishing. It promises to be the authoritative treatment of an important figure in the literary history of West Virginia and the wider world.Trade ReviewRemarkable."" - Los Angeles Review of Books""Masterful."" - Choice""An important and exciting biography of a major literary figure. Harris's detective work fills many gaps in Davis's life and work, and her book should appeal to readers interested in nineteenth-century literature, American women writers, and the history of print culture and the book."" - Alicia Mischa Renfroe, Middle Tennessee State University""A welcome addition to Davis scholarship. Harris's depth of research is extraordinary, providing new material for those wishing to advance the study of Davis's work."" - Robin L. Cadwallader, St. Francis University of Pennsylvania

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Book Synopsis“If you loved Wilder’s books, or if you garden with a child who loves her books, you will enjoy the read.” —San Francisco Chronicle In this revealing exploration of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s deep connection with the natural world, Marta McDowell follows the wagon trail of the beloved Little House series. You’ll learn details about Wilder’s life and inspirations, pinpoint the Ingalls and Wilder homestead claims on authentic archival maps, and learn how to grow the plants and vegetables featured in the series. Excerpts from Wilder’s books, letters, and diaries bring to light her profound appreciation for the landscapes at the heart of her world. Featuring the beloved illustrations by Helen Sewell and Garth Williams, plus hundreds of historic and contemporary photographs, The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder is a treasure that honors Laura’s wild and beautiful life.

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Book Synopsis''You cannot find peace by avoiding life'' Virginia WoolfAn intimate portrait of Virginia, the best-known and most influential Bloomsbury author of them all - ''All you need to know about the modernist, feminist icon'' TIME OUT''A gem'' SUNDAY TIMES''As a short introduction to Virginia Woolf this deceptively brief book could hardly be bettered and achieves high status instantly as a significant work of reference in its own right'' THE TIMESVirginia Woolf was undoubtedly one of the literary giants of the twentieth century. She was a central figure in the Bloomsbury Group, and her writings were works of astonishing originality. Nigel Nicolson is the son of Vita Sackville-West, who was Virginia Woolf''s most intimate friend, and for a short time her lover. He spent many days in her company and he has threaded his recollections of her throughout this unique narrative of her life.Trade ReviewAll you need to know about the modernist, feminist icon ... If only all literary lives were as succinct * TIME OUT *From his unique position, Nigel Nicolson is able to combine intimacy with scholarship ... an excellent introduction to her life and work * MAIL ON SUNDAY *This lucid portrait is a gem * SUNDAY TIMES *As a short introduction to Virginia Woolf this deceptively brief book could hardly be bettered and achieves high status instantly as a significant work of reference in its own right * THE TIMES *This little book is not only a delight to read but also of lasting importance * SPECTATOR *Nothing beats the excitement of feeling that you're in the presence of someone who once walked with giants ... Nigel Nicolson's recollections of the woman whom he regarded "like a favourite aunt" are to be recommended * DAILY TELEGRAPH *This is an unusual (and unusually charming) biography ... It is a quality of wide-eyed observation that gives this book its charm. Woolf comes alive in it ... vivid vignettes are the essence of Nicolson's book ... Nicolson's personal recollections run like a silver thread through this biography. But he tells the whole story of Woolf's life with authority - affectionately but not uncritically. He is especially good at describing the trance-like states which went to the writing of Woolf's best novels * SCOTSMAN *Nicolson writes with authority on the Bloomsbury Group ... [he] gives a thorough and illuminating account of the Woolfs' publishing business, the Hogarth Press, and makes a persuasive case for Woolf's "excellence as a traveller" ... Broadly appreciative and admirably concise * FINANCIAL TIMES *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Winner of the Otto Gründler Book Prize, The Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University""Winner of the Beatrice White Prize, The English Association, University of Leicester""Winner of the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize, The British Academy""Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize, The Wolfson Foundation""Longlisted for the HWA Non-Fiction Crown, Historical Writers’ Association""Finalist for the PROSE Award in Biography and Autobiography, Association of American Publishers""One of The Times' Best Literary Non-Fiction Books of 2019""One of the Times Literary Supplement's Books of the Year 2019""One of the Sunday Times' Best Literary Books of 2019""A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year""One of New Statesman's Books of the Year 2020""[Turner has] read his work so intelligently, that even those who thought they knew it all already will find themselves looking at Chaucer with completely fresh eyes. She evokes the times, the politics, the personalities of his contemporaries and, above all, she gets inside this most ironical and brilliant of poets. . . . The book was so richly enjoyable that, once I had finished, I started to read all over again. It is an absolute triumph."---A. N. Wilson, Times Literary Supplement"A quite exceptional biography that with imaginative insight and stylish wit, sets one of the most significant figures in English literary history firmly in a European context." * Wolfson History Prize judges *""It’s very wide-ranging scholarship, but it’s written in a witty, engaging style and it’s very, very accessible. . . . [A] deeply researched and highly readable life.""---Richard J. Evans, Five Books"[Chaucer’s] life in its European context. Fresh glimpses of the great man are everywhere: perhaps most strikingly an account of the instagrammable teenaged Chaucer posing as aristocratic eye candy in a skimpy outfit called a 'paltok', which failed to cover his backside. Oddsbodkins!"---James Marriott, The Times"A European Life feels to me like a radical new take on a man we thought we knew, but whose sophisticated business, military and political career took him criss-crossing the continent."---Andrew Marr, Start the Week, BBC Radio 4"A hugely illuminating book. This is one of those studies that academics like to call 'magisterial', but non-specialists will find much to enjoy here too. Turner's writing is never less than perspicacious, and often slyly humorous. . . . What A European Life does particularly well is to situate Chaucer in the largeness and complexity of his world."---Tim Smith-Laing, The Telegraph (five star review)"Turner charts an uncannily tangible route through Chaucer’s life, binding his ideas and poems to precise locations, often enlivening it with consummate detail. . . . Chaucer: A European Life serves as a compass that allows readers to traverse Chaucer’s London and Europe. At the same time, reading Turner’s book makes us aware of how much our own lives are shaped by the rooms we inhabit and the places we visit. . . . Chaucer: A European Life introduces the 21st century to Chaucer and Chaucer to the 21st century"---Sebastian Sobecki, Literary Review"In this fine biography, Marion Turner gives us new images of the poet. Turner’s biography takes us from birth to death, but focuses on the spaces through which Chaucer moved, in reality and in poetic imagination. This is a clever move, and Turner’s technique means that the poet’s works can be woven organically into an account of his life. The book is elegantly written, accessible to the general reader as well as the scholarly specialist. In suggesting further questions and presenting an array of new images, Turner’s book gives us back an image of Chaucer more melancholy and mercurial than the cosy figure we thought we knew."---Mark Williams, The Times"[A] wholly beguiling, original, vividly written appreciation of the hugely innovative author and his rich cultural and political European background. A parable for our time?"---Robert Fox, Evening Standard"Magnificently scholarly."---Sam Leith, The Spectator"Marion Turner’s exciting new biography explores in breathtaking detail the spaces and places that shaped the imaginative world of this great Anglo-European poet . . . . this momentous biography gives readers a new perspective on the personal authorial journey that culminated in The Canterbury Tales. Turner has produced a stylishly written and carefully crafted book, at times humorous and always lucid, lively, and engaging."---Clare Egan, BBC History Magazine"[Turner pays] carefully nuanced attention to the significance of the places visited, to the mixture of cultures they accommodated, and to the range of experiences they offered to a traveller from London. . . . [Turner’s] processes of expansion, and of interweaving the life with the works, make for enjoyable and consistently informative reading. . . . Although the book’s European emphasis and concluding gestures to the here and now insist on its timeliness, its real focus is on understanding Chaucer’s world through the variety of that world’s records and its remains, and through the imaginative reflection of it in Chaucer’s works."---Julia Boffey, Times Literary Supplement"Marion Turner has had the inspired idea of organising her biography by the places [Chaucer] occupied . . . . So many places, so many points of view. Chaucer's modernity consists in his adoption of many perspectives. This biography provides a wonderful illumination of his art." * Country Life Magazine *"It feels as though new light is genuinely being shed on Chaucer’s life, combining documentary material with sure-footed interpretations of his works, what we know of the people and places he encountered, and social and economic history . . . . The result is a three-dimensional picture of Chaucer from the outside in."---Laura Ashe, History Today"Marion Turner has done a magnificent job. . . . I do not expect to see this biography superseded."---Paul Dean, New Criterion"A meticulously researched, well-styled academic study showing Chaucer as the ‘consummate networker.’" * Kirkus *"This meaty new biography is likely to be the best book on the subject for decades to come."---Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Review"In Marion Turner’s capacious biography – the first since Derek Pearsall’s in 1992 and the first ever by a woman – Chaucer is Bakhtinian and plural, a man of many voices. Much like his Canterbury pilgrims, he is always en route but never arriving. . . . Fittingly, she ends by rejecting the image of Chaucer as the ‘father of English poetry’ and finds his legacy instead in the suppressed and marginalised voices that he licensed to speak."---Barbara Newman, London Review of Books"A rich, thought-provoking and readable work of scholarship. . . . [Turner] has forged a new kind of biography. . . . Her work promises to be definitive for some time to come."---Mary Wellesley, Times Higher Education"[A] great swirl of a biography, one more capacious and more ranging than any of its predecessors. . . . [Chaucer: A European Life] proclaims a hope to bring this canonical medieval poet to life before a broad, modern audience."---Joe Stadolnik, Los Angeles Review of Books"What wonders Turner can work with a word! . . . . I find it difficult to stop quoting Turner, since she puts the life she is following into such intricate yet accessible prose. You need to stick with this long biography to fully absorb the point toward which she is headed. In other words, it becomes a journey just like the many trips Chaucer took for himself and others."---Carl Rollyson, University Bookman"Chaucer has not lacked for biographies, but Marion Turner’s is of a rare ambition and competence . . . [A] very substantial book . . . sustained by a confident erudition and a powerful and controlled narrative flow."---John V. Fleming, First Things"[I]n Marion Turner's brilliant 'Chaucer: A European Life,' you will learn not only about the life of the man behind 'The Canterbury Tales,' you will learn about the bustling, fast-changing world in which he lived and traveled . . . if you are interested in history, poetry or the man who invented iambic pentameter, it's fascinating."---Laurie Hertzel, Minneapolis Star Tribune"Turner's study is itself like a medieval book. It loves exhaustive detail; it loves a careful architectural design; and it is not afraid of exhausting its readers. It's a biography full of rich detail . . . securely grounded in the material and cultural world, instead of the conventional focus on the singular voice of a solitary poetic genius."---Stephanie Trigg, Sydney Morning Herald"Marion Turner's splendid new biography of the poet . . . is wonderfully evocative. [A] magisterial intellectual biography."---Bruce Whiteman, Hudson Review"[Turner's] expansive book is written with an unusual mix of erudition, clarity, and wit: it will be required reading for specialists, an invaluable resource for students, and a rich introduction to Chaucer’s world for the general reader. . . .[Turner's] generous and humane vision is deeply appealing, and offered with a warmth that is hard to resist—a welcome invitation to all of us to broaden our horizons."---Philip Knox, Review of English Studies"Chaucer’s first female biographer provides a fresh, modern perspective, memorably showing us the great poet as a young man dressed by his employer in a skimpy garment designed to emphasise the genitals and buttocks. A richly textured account and an essential addition to Chaucerian scholarship."---Claire Lowdon, Sunday Times"Marion Turner carves out a space for another biography by locating the facts of Chaucer’s professional and writing life within the context of English and European history and material culture…This is a strong biography, well suited to the needs and interests of our own Chaucerian moment."---Lynn Staley, Studies in the Age of Chaucer"[Turner] enchantingly weaves Chaucer’s life and poetry between the local spaces of households, gardens, and inns, as well as the international spaces of French castles under siege, Italian libraries, and Mediterranean marketplaces. . . .[this book] is crucial and rewarding for any current or future student of medieval literature—and luckily for us, Turner’s style both educates and delights."---Leah Pope Parker, Journal of British Studies"[Turner’s] enormous contribution to our comprehension of Chaucer's moves and maneuvers within his culture will alter scholarly contexts."---John L. Murphy, PopMatters"[A] new and brilliant biography. . . . This is a book of the first importance not only for students of Chaucer but for anyone seriously interested in the ways in which history, poetry, life and art generally came about and developed in late medieval Europe." * Heythrop Journal *"Chaucer scholarship has always been awaiting a biography this rich…Among the very many contributions Turner’s biography makes to Chaucer scholarship is to reverse the general presumption that has always animated studies of this kind; rather than write about Chaucer because he was a historically significant poet, Turner shows us what, in history, made this poet matter."---Christopher Canno, Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies"A vivid reconstruction of Chaucer’s 14th-century world and a revelatory exploration of his poems."---Thomas Penn, History Today"Chaucer: A European Life is a masterful appreciation of the first great poet of the living English language—a biography of Geoffrey Chaucer wrapped around a thoughtful study of what Chaucer wrote and what he read . . . A strength of this book is that Turner looks beyond the portraits that Chaucer so emphatically sketched to emphasize the vitality with which he imbued his characters. . . . The genius of the book lies in its valuing of difference qua difference, and its refusal either to collapse those differences or to prioritize saint’s life over folktale, man over woman, knight over miller, marquis over peasant girl, moral truth over poetic line, idea over rhetoric."---The Key Reporter, Allen D. Boyer"A masterpiece."---Simon Winder, New Statesman"This is an invigorating and refreshing book that is by no means a standard biography. . . . this book is an extraordinary achievement. Its erudition and enthusiasm are matched by an enviable eloquence, and it will remain a focus of admiration, reference and discussion for many years to come."---Peter Brown, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen"Marion Turner does a spectacular job."---Baroness Bennet, The House Magazine

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Book SynopsisMost people know that Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was one of the greatest novelists of the Victorian era, whose works include David Copperfield and Great Expectations. What, perhaps, they don't know is that he invented more than 200 original words and phrases; that he always slept facing north, in an effort to battle insomnia; that he sent more than 14,000 letters in his lifetime; and that he kept a pet raven called Grip, which he had stuffed after its death. Biographic: Dickens presents an instant impression of his life, work and legacy, with an array of irresistible facts and figures converted into infographics to reveal the writer behind the words.

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Book SynopsisThe fascinating and quirky biography of a disheveled poet, skillfully interwoven with his original works.Zen monk Santoka Taneda (1882-1940) is one of Japan's most beloved modern poets, famous for his "free-verse" haiku, the dominant style today. This book tells the fascinating story of his life, liberally sprinkled with more than 300 of his poems and extracts from his essays and journals—compiled by his best friend and biographer Sumita Oyama and elegantly translated by William Scott Wilson.Santoka was a literary prodigy, but a notoriously disorganized human being. By his own admission, he was incapable of doing anything other than wandering the countryside and writing verses. Although Santoka married and had a son, he devoted his life to poetry, studying Zen, drinking sake and wandering the length and breadth of the Japanese islands on foot, as a mendicant monk.The poet's life alternated between long periods of solitary retreat and restless travel, influenced by his tragic childhood. When not on the road, he lived in simple grass huts supported by friends and family. Santoka was a lively conversationalist who was often found so drunk he could only make it home with the help of a friendly neighbor or passerby. But above all, throughout his life, he wrote constantly; poetry and essays flowed from him effortlessly.Santoka's eccentric style of haiku is highly regarded in Japan today for being truly modern and free from formal constraints. His journals and essays are equally thought-provoking—the musings of an unkempt but supremely self-conscious mind on everything from writing to cooking rice and his failure to live a more orderly life.This translation and its introduction are by best-selling author William Scott Wilson, whose other works include The Book of Five Rings and The Lone Samurai. Wilson provides sensitive renditions of the haiku illustrating Santoka's life as well as an extensive introduction to the influences on Santoka's work, from contemporary haiku poets and his Buddhist teachers.Alongside the book, readers have access to a two-hour online audio recording of 331 of Santoka Taneda's haiku, read in Japanese by a native speaker, and in English.Trade Review"I feel guilty, finding so much joy in another man's sadness…" --Red Pine, author of Finding Them Gone, translator of The Heart Sutra"William Scott Wilson has unearthed yet another neglected Japanese treasure. Both biography and poems are elegant, inspirational, and brimming with life. Wilson has outdone himself." --Barry Lancet, award-winning author of Japantown and The Spy Across the Table"In this extraordinary book, William Scott Wilson brings his vast experience as a renowned translator of Japanese literature and religious thought…a must read for all those interested in how traditional Japanese culture endures in modern times." --Steven Heine, author of Readings of Dogen's Treasury of the True Dharma Eye

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Book SynopsisJeoffry was a real cat who lived 250 years ago, confined to an asylum with Christopher Smart, one of the most visionary poets of the age. In exchange for love and companionship, Smart rewarded Jeoffry with the greatest tribute to a feline ever written. Prize-winning biographer Oliver Soden combines meticulous research with passages of dazzling invention to recount the life of the cat praised as a mixture of gravity and waggery'. The narrative roams from the theatres and bordellos of Covent Garden to the cell where Smart was imprisoned for mania. At once whimsical and profound, witty and deeply moving, Soden's biography plays with the genre like a cat with a toy. It tells the story of a poet and a poem, while setting Jeoffry's life and adventures against the roaring backdrop of eighteenth-century London.Trade Review‘Jeoffry is the greatest cat in the English language, and here are his life and times, wittily and deftly imagined, entwined with a memoir of Kit Smart, lunatic and poet, and the London he shared with Samuel Johnson and his cat Hodge. An inspired and original tale’ – Hilary Mantel, author of The Mirror and the Light ‘Simply unforgettable ... Oliver Soden has written a little masterpiece ... The life and times of Jeoffry, the cat described in Smart’s famous poem, are imagined here by Soden in one of the most beautiful and haunting books of recent times. This is a book to savour, reflect upon, and give to friends ... It is beautifully written. It is gentle. It is full of historical detail and whimsy, in more or less equal measure. It is a complete treat ... a lovely, enchanting piece of work’ – Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency ‘A heart-lifting delight; I absolutely loved it. A triumph’ – Alexander Harris, author of Weatherland ‘An absolute classic … Oliver Soden combines the originality of wit and concept found in Virginia Woolf’s Flush with an intimate portrayal of the humanity of a cat that T.S. Eliot understood so well. I found myself so gloriously moved and entertained by Jeoffry who has leapt purring and stretching, hunting and curling his way into my heart’ – Juliet Nicolson, author of A House Full of Daughters ‘Mr Soden’s delightful, insinuating book curls around your thoughts and tickles you with its whiskers ... Soden jokes that if Jubilate Agno is a magnificat (a song of praise to God), the Jeoffry verses are a magnifi-cat. His own magnifi-cat recreation, bound in cloth-covers and sporting a Gainsborough kitty, would make a fine stocking filler – silk, buckled or gartered' – Economist ‘Oliver Soden has done for Christopher Smart’s cat Jeoffry what Virginia Woolf did for the Brownings’ dog, Flush. Except he’s made a much better job of it. This is a beautifully written, wise and wonderfully entertaining account of loyalty and the meaning of biography. Smart’s cat was indeed a magical being, and Oliver Soden has plucked a wealth of literary art from the cat’s life and from Smart’s unforgettable vision. I intend to give a copy to everybody I like’ – Andrew O’Hagan, author of Mayflies ‘In Jeoffry: The Poet's Cat, Oliver Soden has pulled off a difficult feat. His book about the life and adventures of Christopher Smart's considerable cat is charming without being twee, light but not lightweight, inventive within the bounds of respect for history ... Beautifully conceived and done with wit and tenderness. A book to cherish in times when Smart's madhouse seems close to home’ – Daniel Karlin, Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year ‘Protagonist of the most anthologised section of the mad poet Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno, the eccentrically spelled ginger tom now takes a fresh lease of fictionalised life in this jeu d’esprit … It’s at once a sly introduction to Christopher Smart and the literary milieu of 18th-century London … and a cat’s-eye view of 18th-century social history – from the brothels and theatres of central London to the treatment of mental illness … It has a good deal, too, to tell the reader about cats … But it also poses the implicit question of how fictional biographies are in any case … All biographies adopt points of view, make suppositions, put fictional flesh on the bones of the facts the record gives us; and their test is how persuasively they do so. This one does so with great panache and not a little of the writerly flourish’ – Sam Leith, Spectator ‘An intensely poignant portrait of a celebrated cat … told with vibrant pace and energy … As we follow the irresistible subject towards and through his interaction with the poet who would give him his immortality, we smell the streets and the confined spaces, we suffer the blows, we weep the tears. This beautifully written and highly affecting book is a must-read for lovers of poetry, of the eighteenth century, and of cats’ – Jane Glover, author of Handel in London ‘Although Jeoffry has become famous through Smart’s much-anthologised poem "My Cat Jeoffry", he has left no other pawprint on the historical record ... It is this gap that Oliver Soden proceeds to plug in his delightful "biography" of Jeoffry ... In a particularly fine evocation of a cat’s-eye view, Soden has Jeoffry distinguish Smart’s asylum visitors from each other by the shape of their lower legs: he is able to tell apart the bulging calves and hobbled feet of Dr Johnson and the more springy limbs of Charles Burney. When David Garrick arrives, Jeoffry recognises him from the way the actor’s theatrical vibrato moves the air in the little cell. It is, after all, what whiskers are for’ – Kathryn Hughes, Literary Review ‘A bracing and heartfelt scamper through Georgian London, and the life of a much-loved cat – like Jeoffry himself, this delightful book is an irresistible mixture of 'gravity and waggery'. With its supporting cast of eighteenth-century luminaries such as Handel, Dr Johnson and the bloated brothel-keeper Mother Douglas, this is a carefully researched and beautifully imagined feline biography’ – Emily Brand, author of The Fall of the House of Byron ‘Inspired by Flush, Virginia Woolf’s “biography” of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s dog, Soden’s book is a witty, charming, semi-fictional biography of the cat that kept Smart company in the madhouse’ – Tristram Fane Saunders, Daily Telegraph ‘Jeoffry: The Poet’s Cat is an engrossing recreation of eighteenth-century London at its grittiest, from brothels to insane asylums, as seen through the eyes of a famous cat. The blend of scrupulous scholarship with imaginative invention is wonderfully effective’ – Leo Damrosch, author of The Club ‘I greatly enjoyed this book ... Oliver Soden has found a really vivid "ground-level" way to capture Georgian London, and as soon as Smart comes on the scene a most moving chemistry develops between the cat who has no words and the poet who is adrift in them’ – Ann Wroe, author of Francis 'Ravishing ... Jeoffry’s life is envisioned here with ingenuity and tact … Soden can write, and knows feline liquidity and transformation: Jeoffry “tipping himself off the wall” is matched when he is a “thrumming loaf of warmth” at the bed’s foot … Soden doesn’t duck cruelty and pain, and Jeoffry ends movingly, back with Smart’s poem, “for nothing is sweeter than his peace when at rest” … A lovely little book' – Min Wild, TLS

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Book SynopsisAn intimate exploration of the life, craft, and legacy of one of the most revered and influential writers, an artist who continues to inspire fans and creatives to cultivate practices of deep attention, rigourous interrogation and beautiful style.Joan Didion was a writer's writer; not only a groundbreaking journalist, essayist, novelist and screenwriter, but a keen observer who honed her sights on life's telling details. Her insights continue to influence creatives and admirers, encouraging them to become close observers of the world, unsentimental critics, and meticulous stylists.An antidote to a global view that narrows our vision to the smallest screens, The World According To Joan Didion is a meditation on the people, places, and objects that propelled Didion's prose and an invitation to journalists, storytellers, and life adventurers to throw themselves into the convulsions of the world, as she once said.Evelyn McDonnell, the acclaimed journalist, essayist, critic, feminist, nativ

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Book SynopsisOver more than four decades J.R.R. Tolkien’s son and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien, published some twenty-four volumes of his father’s work, much more than his father had succeeded in publishing during his own lifetime. Standing on the mountain of his son’s colossal publishing effort and extraordinary scholarship, readers today are therefore able to survey and understand the vastness of the landscape of Tolkien’s legendarium. This collection of essays by world-renowned scholars, together with family reminiscences, sheds new light on J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, his son Christopher’s unique gifts in communicating and interpreting that work and the debt owed to Christopher by the many Tolkien scholars who were privileged to work with him. What was Tolkien’s intended ending for 'The Lord of the Rings'? Did it leave echoes in the stripped-down version that was actually published? What was the audience’s response to the first ever adaptation of 'The Lord of the Rings' – a radio dramatization that has now been deleted forever from the BBC’s archives? What was the significance of the extraordinary array of doorways which confronted the hobbits as they journeyed through Middle-earth? The book is illustrated with colour reproductions of J.R.R. Tolkien’s manuscripts, maps, drawings and letters and, with the kind permission of his estate, photographs of Christopher Tolkien and extracts from his works, some of which have never been seen before, making this volume essential reading for Tolkien scholars, readers and fans.Table of ContentsCONTENTS 1 Catherine McIlwaine Introduction Timeline 2 Maxime H. Pascal Eulogy delivered at Christopher Tolkien’s funeral 3 Priscilla Tolkien A Personal Memory 4 Vincent Ferré The Son Behind the Father: Christopher Tolkien as a Writer 5 Verlyn Flieger Listening to the Music 6 John Garth The Chronology of Creation: How J.R.R. Tolkien Misremembered the Beginnings of his Mythology 7 Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull ‘I Wisely Started with a Map’: J.R.R. Tolkien as Cartographer 8 Carl F. Hostetter Editing the Tolkienian Manuscript 9 Stuart D. Lee A Milestone in BBC History? The 1955-56 Radio Dramatization of The Lord of the Rings 10 Tom Shippey King Sheave and The Lost Road 11 Brian Sibley Down from the door where it began… Portal images in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Bibliography for Christopher Tolkien Notes About the Contributors Further Reading Picture Credits Index

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Book SynopsisThe Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft is the acclaimed bestselling biography by Claire TomalinWinner of the Whitbread First Book PrizeWitty, courageous and unconventional, Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the most controversial figures of her day. She published A Vindication of the Rights of Women; travelled to revolutionary France and lived through the Terror and the destruction of the incipient French feminist movement; produced an illegitimate daughter; and married William Godwin before dying in childbed at the age of thirty-eight. Often embattled and bitterly disappointed, she never gave up her radical ideas or her belief that courage and honesty would triumph over convention.''Tomalin is a most intelligent and sympathetic biographer, aware of her impetuous subject''s many failings, yet with the perception to present her greatness fairly. She writes well and wittily'' Daily Telegraph''A vivid evocation not only of what Mary went th

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Book SynopsisAn arresting study of the life, times, and achievement of one of the most influential writers of the twentieth centuryTrade Review“Benjamin Taylor’s Proust: The Search is a marvel of brief biography, reanimating the hapless, almost Chaplinesque figure who by all logic should never have accomplished what he did. With a kind of worldly tenderness, Taylor shows Proust’s work accruing amid personal pratfalls, French anti-Semitism and the catastrophe of World War I.”—Thomas Mallon, New York Times Book Review“This engaging book, invitingly elegant to handle with its beautiful deckle-edged pages, should encourage those who have quailed at the thought of Proust’s colossus to have another go.”—John Carey, Sunday Times“Taylor’s loose, multi-clausal sentences are as bendy as the master’s, and there is the same shimmery quality to the prose, like sunlight glancing off a shallow Normandy sea.”—Kathryn Hughes, Guardian“An excellent brief biography of Proust.”—Andrea Barrett, New York Times Book Review“Taylor’s slim and elegant biography will bring new readers to Proust, and remind us to see him as a true modern.”—Ingrid Wassenaar, Times Literary Supplement“An important contribution to the study of this complex individual. . . . A riveting summary of the rampant anti-Semitism found in late 19th-century France. . . . Excellent analysis of the Dreyfus affair and how it split French society. . . . A noteworthy biography of a great writer.”—Library Journal“Deeply researched, and immensely well considered, Benjamin Taylor’s own search is an outstanding addition to Proust studies.”—Robert McCrum, The Observer“If you’ve read Proust’s novel, Taylor is entertaining and tells you things you didn’t already know, deepening your appreciation of Proust and his world. For those who have been so far put off reading him, this biography is a peerless introduction.”—Max Liu, The Independent“Because Taylor has been willing to learn from Proust how to write his biography—be enjoyably clever but not too presumptuous—his book is unusually instructive about how we can read Proust. . . . Explains both formally and intimately, through straightforward documentary narrative and engaging interpretation, the facts and fictions of Proust’s extraordinarily improbable life.”—Adam Phillips, London Review of Books“Benjamin Taylor’s short readable biography of Proust . . . tells Proust’s life story briefly and well.”—David Herman, Jewish Chronicle“Benjamin Taylor’s brief life is immaculately executed. He writes with lithe concision, wry wit and deceptive lightness about his formidable and demanding subject. There are no cloying moments, but Taylor’s perceptive tenderness will bring tears to the eyes of dedicated Proustians. Every page has charm and acumen.”—Richard Davenport-Hines, The Oldie“Situates Proust in the milieu that nurtured his genius, at once specific and universal. . . . An important work. What he demonstrates about Proust’s life is true of everyone. We all change with time and time changes us all. Pass the madeleines, s’il vous plait.”—Elka Weber, Segula“Those who found reading Proust too grand an undertaking over the years because of distractions and deficiencies of their own, might well rush to reconsider after confronting this dazzlingly elegant biography.”—Philip Roth“Taylor’s endeavor is not to explain the life by the novel or the novel by the life but to show how different events, different emotional upheavals, fired Proust’s imagination and, albeit sometimes completely transformed, appeared in his work. The result is a very subtle, thought-provoking book.”—Anka Muhlstein, author of Balzac’s Omelette and Monsieur Proust’s Library

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Book SynopsisA biography of Ann Hathaway and a social history of Shakespeare's time by the redoubtable Germaine GreerTrade Review‘Greer dares to think the unthinkable ... this is a bold and imaginative book' * Independent *‘Excellent ... a marvellous imagining of the life of Shakespeare's wife and a devastating exposure of the misogyny of the male biographers who have disparaged her' * Sunday Telegraph *‘This is a spirited, voluble, scholarly book which gives some depth and some dignity to the marginalised Mrs Shakespeare' * Guardian *‘A refreshing corrective to the usual portrait ... Greer is impressive when it comes to detailing their Stratford life and times ... It's robust, lively stuff' * The Times *

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Book SynopsisPigeonholed as a Jazz Age epicurean and an emblem of the Lost Generation, Fitzgerald was at heart a moralist struck by the nation’s shifting mood and manners after WWI. Placing him among Progressives such as Charles Beard, Randolph Bourne, and Thorstein Veblen, David Brown reveals Fitzgerald as a writer with an encompassing historical imagination.Trade ReviewBrown’s book is a useful corrective to the figure of F. Scott Fitzgerald as a hopeless drunk and unrestrained reveler—diving into the fountain at the Plaza and all that—which has been vastly overdone…One of the splendid services rendered by Brown is to have convincingly made the case that F. Scott Fitzgerald was an original in a way much grander than he himself realized. -- Joseph Epstein * Wall Street Journal *[An] excellent book… Paradise Lost…conjures up an entirely different portrait from the one painted by previous biographers… Brown’s book,…in its breadth of perspective and seriousness of intent, makes most biographies seem to consist mainly of tittle-tattle and random gossip. -- John Banville * New York Review of Books *With a surer sense than more gossipy writers, [Brown] fits Fitzgerald's life into the broader American history. -- Sam Tanenhaus * New Republic *[An] incisive biography. * New Yorker *What I admire about Paradise Lost is that it moves well beyond the hackneyed images in which the author lives in the prison house of his own fragile dreams, a sybaritic social climber who squanders his talent by drinking…This biography seems wildly relevant in a time when raw wealth has again taken on such an emblematic value…More than any biographer before him, Brown reveals the degree to which Fitzgerald understood the politics of his era…A splendid biography. -- Jay Parini * Literary Review *Brown has delivered an insightful, thought-provoking and at times entertaining rendering of [Fitzgerald’s] life…For fans of The Great Gatsby, there is much to like in Paradise Lost. -- James McGrath Morris * Dallas Morning News *Brown gets closer to a real Fitzgerald than anyone else. -- Brian Morton * The Herald *The book is rich with detailed historical, philosophical, and sociological examples that place Fitzgerald’s work within a historical situation that isn’t simply the stereotype of ‘Jazz Age Excess.’…Brown re-shapes the standard understanding of the Fitzgeralds as rapacious consumers into something more nuanced…By writing this respectful yet critical biography, David S. Brown has done much to add to the now-prodigious legacy of a man who, like Jay Gatsby, died alone despite having done so much for so many. -- Eric Rovie * PopMatters *Brown produces the most clearly written biography of his subject. -- Paul Gottfried * American Conservative *Sometimes when a historian turns to a literary figure the results are refreshing. Think of David Donald writing about Thomas Wolfe and now David S. Brown on Fitzgerald… What sets this biography apart from the others is its emphasis on Fitzgerald's ‘historical sensibility.’ -- Carl Rollyson * New Criterion *[A] thorough biography. -- Alex Harvey * London Review of Books *Brown’s biography strives to forgo the well-known anecdotes to instead reinsert Fitzgerald into his historical context. -- Carl Wilkinson * Financial Times *Paradise Lost accomplishes much in its aim to contextualize Fitzgerald within both American historical and literary historical parameters. This new biography manages to get past the trappings of Fitzgerald’s boozy flapper-era persona and to credit his talent for taking the pulse of the America in which he lived. -- Christina Hunt Mahoney * Irish Times *[An] insightful history of Fitzgerald’s main characters and themes. -- David Leigh * America *Brown writes a tight, finely observed character study of F. Scott Fitzgerald…Brown deftly explores the great uncertainties of social class in Fitzgerald’s day and the outsider feelings that clouded his life and psyche. Making sense of his time-bound views of African Americans and women proves more of a challenge. Carefully researched and a pleasure to read, Brown’s persuasive, original account will entice Fitzgerald fans and cultural historians alike. * Publishers Weekly *Looks beyond Gatsby and the famous stories of Fitzgerald’s excesses, and instead explores his correspondence with the Progressive intellectuals of his day to show that—if his prose left any doubt—Fitzgerald held a dim view of the decadent world in which he found himself trapped. -- Mene Ukueberuwa * New Criterion *A worthy and readable addition to the always-widening shelf of Fitzgerald biographies. -- Steve Donoghue * Open Letters Monthly *[An] engaging portrait…Brown draws extensively on the autobiographical aspects of Fitzgerald’s novels and stories. * Kirkus Reviews *[An] enjoyable biography…Brown’s Paradise Lost is welcome in that it filters some of the poor-boy-in-life-and-love consensus. -- N. J. McGarrigle * Irish Times *David Brown provides the kind of context that other biographers, caught up in the myths that Scott and Zelda created about themselves, have not provided. A pleasure to read. -- James L. W. West III, Pennsylvania State UniversityIn this masterful book, Brown brings an extensive knowledge of American cultural, social, and political history to the details of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life and works. The result is a study that allows the reader to consider Fitzgerald from a new perspective. -- Bryant Mangum, Virginia Commonwealth University

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Book Synopsis''A brave process of healing and self reconstruction'' Observer''Simply one of the best writers working today. Here''s to family, to glamour, and to love'' Nell Frizzell, author of The Panic YearsI looked around at my flat, at the woodchip wallpaper and scuffed furniture, and realised that I did have a life after all. What it didn''t have in it was a cat.When Rhiannon fell in love with, and eventually married her flatmate, she imagined they might one day move on. But this is London in the age of generation rent, and so they share their home with a succession of friends and strangers while saving for a life less makeshift. The desire for a baby is never far from the surface, but can she be sure that she will ever be free of the anxiety she has experienced since an attack in the street one night? And after a childhood spent caring for her autistic brother does she really want to devote herself to motherhood?Moving through the seasoTrade ReviewRhiannon Lucy Cosslett is simply one of the best writers working today. She conjures a heady, terrifying time in beautiful detail. Here's to family, to glamour, and to love -- Nell Frizzell, author of The Panic YearsAcutely evocative... Ripples with those rare nuggets of wisdom that feel as though their author has reached into your head and pulled out something you have been on the verge of saying all your life. * 'I Newspaper *What Cosslett so beautifully captures is that liminal period before any life-changing decision, when anguished uncertainty morphs into sudden resolve. * New Statesman *The most beautiful paragraphs in The Year of the Cat remind me what a rare gift Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett possesses: expansive compassion, empathy and warmth, but a scalpel precision with words. Memories are conjured so headily it feels, to the reader, less like reading than experiencing déjà vu -- Emma Forrest, author of Busy Being FreeA nuanced calibration of care, desire, trauma and anxiety that made me feel so energised. A superbly written, special book -- Olivia Sudjic, author of Asylum RoadSuch a moving, unique and elegant book, examining mental health, motherhood, creativity, love, life, youth, femininity, family and friendship. But above all, Cosslett takes her place in a long history of genius writers in the meowmoir genre by celebrating her strong bond with a true hero -- Mackerel the cat. I loved this book, and if you have a heart, you will, too. -- Nick Bradley, author of The Cat and the CityThe Year of the Cat is a tender and wise meditation on trauma and the fragmentation of memory. Weaving together a history of women and their feline companions, Cosslett charts the emergence of a lasting love, while grappling with deeper anxieties: what it means to be a carer, and a mother, in precarious times. With her signature wit and radiant prose, Cosslett has produced a remarkable work, one that speaks for her generation -- Jessica Cornwell, author of Birth NotesI feel like I have been waiting my whole life for this brilliant book, alive with Rhiannon's characteristic blend of gorgeous prose, razor-sharp analysis and enormous amounts of empathy and honesty. You'll come back to it again and again, as I have -- Lucia Osborne-Crowley, author of I Choose ElenaSharp and accurate...a brave process of healing and self reconstruction * Observer *Admirable and affecting * Guardian *A meditative read on what it means not just to be a mother, but a human being just trying to navigate all that life throws at us * Red Online *I loved it. Such a strong, nuanced book; Rhiannon's writing is as sharp as her thinking. It's funny, human, rich with thought and care * Rebecca Watson *At once thoughtful and thought-provoking. There are more and more books on the experiences of motherhood, but few make room for what Cosslett describes as 'not motherhood, or almost motherhood'... Here she is changing the game, finding a new way of writing it -- Chloe Ashby * Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisFrom a master biographer and leading scholar of eighteenth-century literature comes an award-winning new portrait of the greatest satirist in the English languageTrade Review“Damrosch’s approach is forensic. . .For me the Swift who emerges from these patient investigations is a more rounded personality.”—George Walden, The Times -- George Walden * The Times *‘If Damrosch follows Ehrenpreis in anything, it’s in the ambition, indicated by his ‘life and world’ subtitle, to ground biography in social context. He does that job with efficiency and a sure touch.’—Thomas Keymer, London Review of Books -- Thomas Keymer * London Review of Books *“Convincing and vivid. . . . Damrosch has . . . let us glimpse the human roots of Swift’s sometimes inhuman irony.”—John Mullan, The Guardian -- John Mullan * Guardian *“Damrosch is incisive about Swift’s personality . . . and writes with fine Swiftian clarity, but does not simplify. He acknowledges that, investigating Swift, you run into a revolving door of contradictions. . . . But Damrosch sees him, rightly, not just as a tragic figure but as a fearless thinker whose works are an antidote to optimism's happy lies.” — John Carey, London Sunday Times -- John Carey * The Sunday Times *“[Damrosch] writes elegantly, has exactly the right mix of empathy and detachment, and is admirably open-minded in his approach to complex evidence – some of it the product of very new scholarship. . . this will be the definitive life of Swift for years to come.”—Jonathan Bate, New Statesman -- Jonathan Bate * New Statesman *‘. . .an oxygenated account that blows fresh air on Swift, the most readable account in recent times’ —Brean Hammond, History Today -- Brean Hammond * History Today *'The book, far from being a dry academic analysis based on sketchy records, is a romp through the years when Britain became established as a world power. . .Damrosch writes with wry humour and clarity of detail, often cuttingly disputing the theories of previous Swift biographers. To read this hefty book is to get a highly enjoyable education.’—Claire Looby, The Irish Times -- Claire Looby * The Irish Times *

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Book SynopsisUpon publication, "Don't Panic" quickly established itself as the definitive companion to "Adams" and "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". This edition comes up-to-date, covering the movie, "And Another Thing" by Eoin Colfer and the build up to the 30th anniversary of the first novel. Acclaimed author Neil Gaiman celebrates the life and work of Douglas Adams who, in a field in Innsbruck in 1971, had an idea that became "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". The radio series that started it all, the five - soon to be six - book 'trilogy', the TV series, almost-film and actual film, and everything in between.Trade Review"It's all devastatingly true - except the bits that are lies" - Douglas Adams * "Hilarious fun... a source of much delightful trivia" - Publisher's Weekly"

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Book SynopsisFor nearly sixty years Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was one of the most famous writers in the world. An enormously successful playwright and the author of over a hundred short stories and twenty-one novels - several of which are now established classics - Maugham expertly concealed a private life. Predominantly homosexual, and deeply in love with the charming but dissolute Gerald Haxton, he made a disastrous marriage to Syrie Wellcome which he would escape by travelling and writing extensively in the Far East. A talented linguist, during both world wars Maugham worked for British Intelligence. In between he moved in literary and theatrical circles in London, New York and Hollywood and entertained lavishly at his luxurious villa in the south of France. Outwardly his life was richly rewarding, but privately he suffered anguish from an unrequited love affair and a shocking final betrayal.Acclaimed biographer Selina Hastings has had access to Maugham''s extensive private correspTrade Review'This steady-eyed biography of an extraordinary, extravagant, generous and bitter artist will not only fascinate its readers but encourage some to go to his work for the first time' * Times Literary Supplement, Jeremy Treglown *'Hastings' Life of Maugham is pitch-perfect: supple, confident and written with something of the same beady detachment (and enjoyable signature streak of malice) as the great tale-teller himself' * Nicholas Shakespeare, Daily Telegraph *'Hastings provides a searing emotional history...her closing chapter...is so powerfully written, in places so shocking, as to give a series of physical jolts to the reader. Hastings's book cannot be bettered' * Richard Davenport-Hines, Sunday Telegraph *'Every so often, a biography appears of such authority and such power that it is more than a chronicle of a human life, it is a work of art...brilliant...such is Selina Hasting's skill that this horrible story is richly enjoyable' * A. N. Wilson, Reader's Digest *'Engrossing . . . a brilliant evocation' * Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times *'The year's best biography by far' * Sunday Express *'Selina Hastings has coped manfully with the task of summarising Maugham's huge oeuvre without distracting her readers from his long and eventful life' * The Oldie *'Supple, confident and written with the same beady detachment shown by the writer himself * Daily Telegraph *'Here's Selina Hastings at her best, which is saying something . . . thoroughly researched and elegantly written' * Sunday Telegraph (Seven) *'In a period when literary biographies have fallen out of favour, Hastings's magisterial life shows ut he peaks that the genre can reach . . . The book teems enjoyably with stars, spies and scandals' * Independent *'Compelling' * Daily Express *'Brilliantly researched, Hastings captured the turmoils and tragedies that shaped the great writer's life' * Sunday Mail Adelaide *

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