Biography: writers Books

Book SynopsisEarn Your Milk contains all the uncollected prose works of Tom Raworth, gathering together Letters from Yaddo, The Vein and Letter to Martin Stannard with his uncategorizable prose-work A Serial Biography, an extraordinary assembly memoir and reportage. This invaluable collection now makes widely available work which was previously hard to obtain or long out of print, it will delight fans as well as general readers wanting to discover more about one of the UK’s most widely-celebrated poets.Tom Raworth was born in London just before the Second World War and has done everything wrong since. For half-a-century he has printed, published, translated and written poetry; has occasionally taught in several countries; and has read his own work and performed with other artists all over the world. He has a taste for spicy food from his father’s service in Burma and a quick temper from his Irish mother. He is at the moment of no fixed abode. In 2007, in Modena, he was awarded the Antonio Delfini Prize for “lifetime career achievement” though as he remarks “he is not yet dead.”Table of Contents Acknowledgements A Serial Biography Letters from Yaddo The Vein A Letter to Martin Stannard

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Book SynopsisWhen Bernard Spencer died in September 1963, he left behind two collections of poetry and a volume of collaborative translations from George Seferis. The second of these collections, With Luck Lasting, has proved aptly entitled with the publications of a Collected Poems (1965) edited by Alan Ross, an enlarged edition from 1981 edited by Roger Bowen, and a Complete Poetry, Translations & Selected Prose (2011) edited by Peter Robinson. With Bernard Spencer: Essays on his Poetry & Life, Robinson now offers the first collection of writings dedicated to the poet. Coming out of a 2009 centenary conference at Special Collections in the University of Reading, where his archive is housed, these essays cover a great many aspects of Spencer's poetry, translations, and his relations with contemporary writers. The volume also contains an updated bibliography of primary and secondary materials, and forms an invaluable aid to approaching this distinctive voice in mid-twentieth-century poetry.

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Book SynopsisGertrude Stein and Alice Babette Toklas met on Sunday 8 September 1907, in Paris. From that day on they were together, until Gertrude's death on Saturday 27 July 1946. Everyone who was anyone went to their salons at the rue de Fleurus. They became a legendary couple, photographed by Stieglitz, Man Ray & Cecil Beaton, painted by Picasso and written about in the works of Hemingway, Paul Bowles and Sylvia Beach. "Gertrude and Alice", now with a new foreword, is the highly acclaimed story of their remarkable life together, of the paths that led them to each other, and of Alice's years of widowhood after Gertrude had died. From letters, memoirs and the published writings of Stein and Toklas and with rich illustrations, Whitbread Award-winner Diana Souhami brings their characters, beliefs and achievements vividly to life: 'so emphatically and uncompromisingly themselves, that the world could do nothing less than accept them as they were'.Trade Review'A brilliant and witty chronicle of one of the happiest marriages in modern literary history. Not only star-studded but light-filled.' - John Richardson, author of 'A Life of Picasso'Table of ContentsForeword List of Illustrations Gertrude and Alice Gertrude's Early Years Alice's Early Years First Love for Gertrude The rue de Fleurus Alice Meets Gertrude Ousting the Others Marriage The First War Famous Men, and Women Country Life The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas America Another War Peace Carrying on for Gertrude References Select Bibliography Credits Index

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Book SynopsisThis new edition of the critically-acclaimed biography of Alexander Trocchi has been revised, extended and updated since its first publication in 1991 when it helped to create new interest in the celebrated - and notorious - author of Young Adam and Cain's Book. It was highly influential, led to the reprinting of his novels and inspired a wave of new writers to discover Trocchi for themselves. A story of heartbreak and pain, the minutiae of squalor, tragedy, obsession, of chemical addictions, sexual experimentations, promiscuity and desertion, suicide - and literary genius. So begins this account of one of Britain's most remarkable literary figures. It traces his childhood in war-time Glasgow, his literary apprenticeship in Paris with Beckett, Ionesco and Sartre, his move to New York then Venice Beach among the leaders of the Beat movement. Trocchi charmed and haunted all who met him...a strange and saddening book...Trocchi...experimenting with drugs and sex...left behind a trail of wrecked lives ...at least he has been lucky in this excellent biography which conveys something of his charm and charisma." COLIN WILSON, Literary Review

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Book SynopsisJessie Kesson is forever associated with her first novel, the fictionalised autobiography of her early years, The White Bird Passes. Born illegitimate in a Workhouse and raised in an Elgin slum, she was removed from her beloved but neglectful mother and sent to an orphanage in Kirkton of Skene. There she throve and shone, but was refused any chance of higher education, and ended up a year in a mental hospital. After marriage, she became a cottar wife around North East Scotland, before moving to London, where she combined writing novels and radio plays with jobs from cleaning a cinema to producing Woman's Hour. The first edition of her authorised biography won the National Library of Scotland/Saltire Research Book of the Year in 2000. It revealed an extraordinary woman making her life and art out of all life threw at her, overcoming and transforming it all. This second edition at last reveals the truth about her ever-absent father, here named.

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Book SynopsisRobert Tressell described his famous book The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists as 'the story of twelve months in Hell, told by one of the damned'. This biography of Tressell, first published in 1973, tells the story of a man about whom virtually nothing - not even his real name - was known before Fred Ball began his research. Ball describes the family, educational and social background of Robert Tressell; his move from his early upbringing in Ireland to become a house-painter in Hastings (the Mugsborough of his novel); his becoming a socialist; his travels abroad; his other writings, and his creative work as a specialist sign-writer. Not least, it tells the story of the writing and the publication of his classic book, and of Ball's own role in ensuring the publication of the original unabridged version of the book in 1953. Ball was a researcher of skill and enthusiasm, and his book describes clues and leads, and the way the story fell into place, until he was finally able to do full justice to a man who had hitherto been a somewhat shadowy figure. F.C. Ball was the author of several novels, and of an earlier book on Robert Tressell, Tressell of Mugsborough (1951). He was born and worked throughout most of his life in Hastings.Table of Contents1. Who was Robert Tressell?; 2. Who was Robert Tressell?; 3. Emigration and marriage; 4. Sad South Africa and the Boer War; 5. Mugsborough, England; 6. The dignity of labour, as the man said; 7. Robert at home; 8. Work, boys, and be contented; 9. Artist and artisan; 10. Linguist and model-builder; 11. Bread and circuses, 1906; 12. The rise of the labour movement; 13. Robert joins in; 14. Democracy Ltd; 15. Raw material for a book; 16. A new home; 17. Work with the local societies; 18. Danger; men at work; 19. Political music-hall: the 1908 by-election; 20. Recreations; 21. The writer; 22. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists; 23. Give us this day; 24. A pauper's death; 25. Kathleen and the manuscript; 26. Publication and reactions; 27. 1914-18: the book dies and is born again; 28. Editions and abridgements; 29. 1946: Tressell's handwritten manuscript is found; 30. How the original manuscript was butchered; 31. The manuscript and the building trades unions; 32. Publication in full; 33. How the mutilated manuscript was reconstituted; 34. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists on stage; 35. A dramatic development and a new search; 36. The adventures of the manuscript; 37. Still alive?; 38. 1962: a return from the dead; 39. Family secrets; 40. The painter; 41. A grass plot, a jam jar and The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisJapan in the 10th century stood physically and culturally isolated from the rest of the world. Inside this bubble, a subtle and beautiful world was in operation, and its inhabitants were tied to the moment, having no interest in the future and disdain for the past.The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon was a product of a tenth-century courtier's experiences in the palace of Empress Teishi. A common custom of the time period, courtiers used to keep notes or a diary in a wooden pillow with a drawer. This "pillow book" reflects the confident aesthetic judgments of Shonagon and her ability to create prose that crossed into the realm of the poetic. The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon is one of the earliest examples of diary literature whose passages chronicle the events of the court calendar, the ceremonies and celebrations specific to Teishi's court, and the vignettes that provide brilliantly drawn glimpses into the manners and foibles of the aristocracy.A contemporary of Murasaki Shikibu, the author of The Tale of Genji, this small diary brings an added dimension to Murasaki's timeless and seminal work.Arthur Waley's elegant translation of The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon captures the beauty of its prose and the vitality of Shonagon's narrative voice, as well as her quirky personality traits. In a place and time where poetry was as important as knowledge and beauty was highly revered, Sei Shonagon's private writings give the reader a charming and intimate glimpse into a time of isolated innocence and pale beauty.Trade Review"His [Waley] is the most appealing version for the general reader." --Michael Dirda, Pulitzer-prize winning columnist"In a small diary, a young courtesan of the Heian period gives her account of the Japanese courts of the day, providing perspective on a unique time in Japanese history. A contemporary of Murasaki Shikibu, the author of The Tale of Genji, Sei Shonagon's commentary brings an added dimension to that timeless and seminal work." --Svetlana's Reads and Views blog

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