Biography: writers Books
Alfred A. Knopf The Measure of Our Lives A Gathering of Wisdom
Book Synopsis
£14.24
Alfred A. Knopf Tomorrow Perhaps the Future
Book SynopsisA NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • An extraordinary account of the women artists and activists whose determination to live—and to create—with courage and conviction took them as far as the Spanish Civil War“Now, as certainly as never before, we are determined or compelled, to take sides.” —Nancy CunardAn attempted insurrection, a country divided, a democracy threatened. It was the Spanish Civil War of 1936, surprisingly, that Sarah Watling found herself drawn to when confounded by the tumultuous politics of our present day. This was a conflict that galvanized tens of thousands of volunteers from around the world to join the fight. For them, the choice seemed clear: either you were for fascism or you were against it.Seeking to understand how they knew that the moment to act had arrived, Watling sifts through archives for lost journals, letters, and manifestos, discovering a trove of work by writers and outsi
£24.00
Alfred A. Knopf Wifedom
Book SynopsisThe New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • This is the story of the marriage behind some of the most famous literary works of the 20th century —and a probing consideration of what it means to be a wife and a writer in the modern worldSimply, a masterpiece...Funder not only re-makes the art of biography, she resurrects a woman in full. —Geraldine Brooks, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, author of HorseAt the end of summer 2017, Anna Funder found herself at a moment of peak overload. Family obligations and household responsibilities were crushing her soul and taking her away from her writing deadlines. She needed help, and George Orwell came to her rescue.I’ve always loved Orwell, Funder writes, his self-deprecating humour, his laser vision about how power works, and who it works on. So after rereading and savoring books Orwell had written, she devoured six major biographies tracing his life and
£25.60
Penguin Putnam Inc Capotes Women
Book Synopsis*National Bestseller*New York Times bestselling author Laurence Leamer reveals the complex web of relationships and scandalous true stories behind Truman Capote''s never-published final novel, Answered Prayers—the dark secrets, tragic glamour, and Capote''s ultimate betrayal of the group of female friends he called his swans.“There are certain women,” Truman Capote wrote, “who, though perhaps not born rich, are born to be rich.” Barbara “Babe” Paley, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli, Slim Hayward, Pamela Churchill, C. Z. Guest, Lee Radziwill (Jackie Kennedy’s sister)—they were the toast of midcentury New York, each beautiful and distinguished in her own way. Capote befriended them, received their deepest confidences, and ingratiated himself into their lives. Then, in one fell swoop, he betrayed them in the most surprising and startling way possible.Bestselling biographer Laurence Leame
£23.80
Random House USA Inc The Dictionary People
Book SynopsisA WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • A history and celebration of the many far-flung volunteers who helped define the English language, word by word.“Enthralling and exuberant, Sarah Ogilvie tells the surprising story of the making of the OED. Philologists, fantasists, crackpots, criminals, career spinsters, suffragists, and Australians: here is a wonder book for word lovers.” —Jeanette Winterson, author of Oranges Are Not the Only FruitThe Oxford English Dictionary is one of mankind’s greatest achievements, and yet, curiously, its creators are almost never considered. Who were the people behind this unprecedented book? As Sarah Ogilvie reveals, they include three murderers, a collector of pornography, the daughter of Karl Marx, a president of Yale, a radical suffragette, a vicar who was later found dead in the cupboard of his chapel, an inventor of the first American subway, a female anti-slavery activist in Philadelphia . . . and thousands of others. Of deep transgenerational and broad appeal, a thrilling literary detective story that, for the first time, unravels the mystery of the endlessly fascinating contributors the world over who, for over seventy years, helped to codify the way we read and write and speak. It was the greatest crowdsourcing endeavor in human history, the Wikipedia of its time. The Dictionary People is a celebration of words, language, and people, whose eccentricities and obsessions, triumphs, and failures enriched the English language.
£13.09
Penguin Putnam Inc Love in a Time of Hate
Book Synopsis?An enthralling and insightful cultural history?one that shows how, over the course of one pivotal decade, love, freedom and the freedom to love gave way to fear, madness and despair.? ?Malcolm Forbes, Washington Post Book ReviewAn ingeniously orchestrated popular history brings to life the most pivotal decade of the twentieth centuryAs the Roaring Twenties wind down, Jean-Paul Sartre waits in a Paris café for a first date with Simone de Beauvoir, who never shows. Marlene Dietrich slips away from a loveless marriage to cruise the dive bars of Berlin. The fledgling writer Vladimir Nabokov places a freshly netted butterfly at the end of his wife?s bed. Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Zelda and Scott, Dalí and Gala, Picasso and his many muses, Henry and June and Anaïs Nin, the entire extended family of Thomas Mann, and a host of other fascinating and famous figures make art and love, write and row, bed and wed and betray. They do not yet know that they, along with millions of others, will soon be forced to contemplate flight?or fight?as the world careens from one global conflict to the next.
£23.20
Penguin Random House India My Family
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£13.25
Random House USA Inc Little Failure
Book Synopsis
£21.60
Random House USA Inc Ake
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£15.26
Random House USA Inc All Gods Children Need Traveling Shoes
Book SynopsisIn 1962 the poet, musician, and performer Maya Angelou claimed another piece of her identity by moving to Ghana, joining a community of Revolutionist Returnees inspired by the promise of pan-Africanism. All God's Children Need Walking Shoes is her lyrical and acutely perceptive exploration of what it means to be an African American on the mother continent, where color no longer matters but where American-ness keeps asserting itself in ways both puzzling and heartbreaking. As it builds on the personal narrative of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Gather Together in My Name, this book confirms Maya Angelou’s stature as one of the most gifted autobiographers of our time.
£13.56
Irish Academic Press Ltd Undoing Time The Life and Work of Samuel Beckett
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£24.99
Penguin Putnam Inc Boy Erased A Memoir of Identity Faith and Family
Book SynopsisThe New York Times bestselling memoir about identity, love and understanding. Now a major motion picture starring Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, and Lucas Hedges, directed by Joel Edgerton. “Every sentence of the story will stir your soul” (O Magazine). The son of a Baptist pastor and deeply embedded in church life in small town Arkansas, as a young man Garrard Conley was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality. When Garrard was a nineteen-year-old college student, he was outed to his parents, and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to cure him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends, and the God he had prayed to every day of his life. Through an institutionalized Twelve-Step Program heavy on Bible study, he was supposed to emerge heterosexual, ex-gay, cleansed of impure urges and stronger in his faith in God for
£15.30
Penguin Putnam Inc The Pigeon Tunnel
Book Synopsis
£15.30
The History Press Ltd The P.G. Wodehouse Miscellany
Book SynopsisWodehouse Miscellany follows the development and progress of his legendary characters, tells us where Wodehouse got his ideas from and demonstrates why his admirers included Bertrand Russell, Berthold Brecht, George Orwell, Rudyard Kipling and the Kaiser.
£14.48
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Sadeq Hedayat
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewSadeq Hedayat offers the first reliable introduction to an Iranian writer whose genius is as elusive as the gazelle in the fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz's poem... Katouzian deftly dispels the legends about Hedayat that have grown up since his death... Katouzian has produced a study which all who want to understand Iran ought to read. This is a Life which inevitably tells more about Iran’s sufferings in the modern world than many other books do. * Peter Avery, Times Literary Supplement *“a skilful and pioneering study of Sadiq Hedayat which builds on previous scholarship.” * Muslim World Book Review *Homa Katouzian has merely reminded us in this revised edition of his already seminal work that he is bar-none the final word on Sadeq Hedayat. This work is a testament to Katouzian’s uncanny ability to synthesize society, literature, politics, and a literary persona in a particularly important century in Iran’s turbulent and experimental history. The unabashedly informed penmanship, invigorated by well-researched scholarship that is devoid of what we see today are flights of pomp and fancy makes this revised, larger edition a celebrated platform upon which studies on Hedayat can be nurtured: mindful of philology, sociology, and culture. Homa Katouzian carefully draws a logical road map of Hedayat’s time and life: from birth to suicide; all awhile surgically keeping the milieu and many of its most pertinent facet’s in a literary persona’s life present in his discourse. The development of the theme in this book leaves no room for confusion in the flow of this book and as such in the way it informs. Kudos to Professor Katouzian as this is simply a masterpiece: New and improved and AGAIN! * Alireza Korangy, Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Persian Literature *A must read for anyone who is exploring the field of modern Persian literature, culture, and politics. Katouzian brilliantly and carefully provides a tangible and original framework with which to present an alternative understanding of the life and career of Sadeq Hedayat in the socio-political context of modern Iran. * Fatemeh Shams, University of Pennsylvania, USA *'In this book Homa Katouzian walks the readers, both the experts on Iran and Persian literature and those who might not be familiar with that country and its culture, through the maze of Hedayat’s life and mind via his stories producing the most thorough, well researched, and reader friendly account of Sadeq Hedayat’s life and work.' * M. R. Ghanoonparvar, The University of Texas at Austin, USA *Table of ContentsPreface to Second Edition Chapter 1. Hedayat and Modern Persian Literature Chapter 2. Early Years Chapter 3. Hedayat in Europe Chapter 4. Life and Labour in the Golden Era Chapter 5. Iranian Culture and Romantic Nationalism Chapter 6. Iranian Culture and Critical Realism Chapter 7. The Blind Owl: A Critical Exposition Chapter 8. The Origins of The Blind Owl Chapter 9. Hopes and Despairs Chapter 10. Hajjis and Workers Chapter 11. Satire and Depression Chapter 12. The Trial: The Message of Hedayat Chapter 13. The Execution: Hedayat's Suicide Chapter 14. The Legend and the Man Index
£31.82
Schiffer Publishing Ltd Beatrix Potter Collectibles The Peter Rabbit
Book Synopsis
£23.79
Schiffer Publishing Ltd Americas Literary Legends The Lives and Burial
Book SynopsisAmerica's Literary Legends is a concise, yet truly distinctive and comprehensive review of 50 authors and poets who shaped American literature from the 1600s through the mid-twentieth century. Fully grounded in sound literary and historical scholarship, this anthology takes a fresh approach to the lives and burial places of the greatest authors of American literature. It includes such masters as Irving, Poe, Whitman, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald, and features introductions to each time period with an overview of the historical, cultural, and literary background of the era. Through succinct and engaging biographies, extensive descriptive observations, and 200 photographs, these great writers come to life. Innovative and authoritative, America's Literary Legends embodies a fresh approach to the study of American literature and the authors whose works have become classics.
£25.19
McClelland & Stewart Inc. Robertson Davies
Book SynopsisNational bestseller and a Globe and Mail Best Book A fascinating, larger-than-life character, Davies left a treasure trove of stories about him when he died in 1995 — expertly arranged here into a revealing portrait.From his student days onward, Robertson Davies made a huge impression on those around him. He was so clearly bound for a glorious future that some young friends even carefully preserved his letters. And everyone remembered their encounters with him.Later in life, as a world-famous writer, perhaps Canada’s pre-eminent man of letters (who “looked like Jehovah”), he attracted people eager to meet him, who also vividly remembered their meetings. So when Val Ross set out in search of people’s memories, she was faced with a wonderful embarrassment of riches. The one hundred or so contributors here range very widely. There are family memories, of course, and memories from colleagues in the academic world who k
£16.96
Johns Hopkins University Press Mary Shelley
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewPromises to be the definitive biography of Mary Shelley... Sunstein is to be praised for looking anew at so misunderstood a life. New York Times Beyond question Shelley scholars and 19th-century specialists will value this usefully annotated and carefully produced edition; it may also be that anyone would enjoy the stories themselves... and the accompanying original engravings. -- Diane Johnson Washington PostTable of ContentsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgments Introduction Part I: The Aspiring ChildChapter 1. "My Brilliant Star"Chapter 2. "To Be Something Great And Good"Chapter 3. "The Time of My Girlish Troubles"Chapter 4. "My Choice!"Part II: RomanceChapter 5. "France – Poverty – A Few Days of Solitude & Some Uneasiness"Chapter 6. "A Tranquil Residence in A Beautiful Spot"Chapter 7. "Switzerland – Bath"Chapter 8. "Marlow"Chapter 9. "Milan – The Baths of Lucca – Este – Venice – Rome – Naples – Rome & Misery"Chapter 10. "Leghorn – Florence Pisa –"Chapter 11. "Solitude The Williams – The Baths"Chapter 12. "Pisa" – The Last Chapter With ShelleyPart III: HeroismChapter 13. "Magnificent, Deep, Pathetic, Wild and Exalted"Chapter 14. "The Regions of the Has Been, Is, & To Be"Chapter 15. "The Union of Kentish Town"Chapter 16. "Ingratitude, Caprice, and Change"Part IV: The WorldChapter 17. "A New Kind of Life"Chapter 18. "The Great Disappointment of my Life"Chapter 19. "Do Not Awaken the Deep Waters"Chapter 20. "Amore Redivivus"Chapter 21. "I Will Sit Admidst the Ruins and Smile" Chapter 22. Romance and RealityAppendix A "Stanazas"Appendix B Mary Shelley's WorksChapter NotesIndex
£34.91
Johns Hopkins University Press Percy Bysshe Shelley
Book SynopsisThis biography offers a sympathetic and nuanced view of Shelley's tumultuous life, personality, and poetry.Trade ReviewBieri's biography, which will surely be the definitive study of Shelley's life and work for many years to come, advances and enriches the state of contemporary Shelley studies in remarkable ways. -- Stephen C. Behrendt Romantic Circles 2007 Bieri's detailed presentations and thoughtful analyses make this an especially admirable volume... This could well become the standard Shelley biography. Essential. Choice 2005 It is the life of the subject that really carries this book. Shelley's life was indeed sensational, tragic, and still contains mystery enough to stretch the mind... The achievement of this book is in its gathering together and careful presentation of evidence. It is the unfortunate life of Shelley that grips the reader throughout. -- Sharon Ruston Times Literary Supplement 2005 The young Shelley that emerges from this well-researched biography, the outcome of many years' work, is in part the product of family personalities and tensions, but Bieri also respects the strength of Shelley's own opinions. -- Elizabeth Helsinger SEL Studies in English Literature 2006 A quietly magisterial feat of scholarship... All those who admire Shelley's work or wish to find out more about his life will gain much from these superbly researched and executed volumes. -- Michael O'Neill Keats-Shelley Journal 2006 An impressively comprehensive and frequently exciting work. -- Rebecca Oppenheimer Howard County Times 2009 This is a work sure to become an indispensable resource for the next generation of Shelley scholars. -- Rowland Weston Cercles 2010Table of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsPart I: Youth's Unextinguished Fire, 1792–18161. The Politics of Paternity2. "An Infancy Outlasting Manhood": Mother3. The Young Prometheus4. Exiled to Education5. "Untaught Foresters": Eton Madness6. Gothic "Wild Boy" and Harriet Grove7. A Radical Poetic Identity8. Icarus at Oxford9. Doubling after the Fall: Harriet Westbrook and Elizabeth Hitchener10. Elopement and Betrayal11. Seeking New Fathers: Keswick12. The Irish Expedition13. Wandering Reformer14. Phantasmagoria at Tanyrallt15. Marital Disengagement16. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin17. Births and Deaths18. The Mirror of Self-Analysis19. The Creative Swiss SummerPart II: Exile of Unfulfilled Renown, 1816–182220. The Dark Autumn of Suicides21. Albion House: The Last English Year22. "Paradise of exiles, Italy"23. Euganean Isles of Misery: Venice24. Paradise of Devils: Naples25. Roman Tragedy and Creativity26. Leghorn's "sad reality"27. "a voice from over the Sea"28. Florentine Voices: Unacknowledged Legislator and Sophia Stacey29. Poetic Mothers: Pisa and Leghorn30. Baths of San Giuliano31. "Emily . . . my heart's sister"32. "A Love in desolation masked"33. The Last Pisan Winter34. Drawn to the Sea35. A "watery eclipse"36. Life Terminable and InterminableAbbreviationsNotesSelected BibliographyIndex
£53.13
University of Oklahoma Press John Joseph Mathews Life of an Osage Writer
Book SynopsisJohn Joseph Mathews is one of Oklahoma's most revered twentieth-century authors. An Osage Indian, he was also one of the first Indigenous authors to gain national renown. Yet fame did not come easily, and his personality was full of contradictions. In this biography, Michael Snyder provides the first book-length account of this fascinating figure.Trade Review[Michael] Snyder's meticulous biography explodes long-standing myths about Mathews. . . . In filling gaps both personal and cultural, the book does fine service."" - Times Literary Supplement""John Joseph Mathews: Life of an Osage Writer is a major contribution to the growing field of biographies of American Indian literary figures. Students of Native American literature will find this a significant addition to the canon of Mathews scholarship. Others will find it an engaging read."" - Daniel F. Littlefield Jr., author of Alex Posey: Creek Poet, Journalist, and Humorist""This is a critical biography, delving into both the literary and the personal sides of Mathews. In the end the story is edifying. I was transfixed by the interactions of literary legends traipsing through the narrative - Savoie Lottinville. J. Frank Dobie. Carter Revard."" - Plains Folk
£18.00
Beacon Press For All of Us One Today An Inaugural Poets
Book SynopsisFor All of Us, One Today is a fluid, poetic story anchored by Richard Blanco’s experiences as the inaugural poet in 2013, and beyond. In this brief and evocative narrative, he shares for the first time his journey as a Latino immigrant and openly gay man discovering a new, emotional understanding of what it means to be an American. He tells the story of the call from the White House committee and all the exhilaration and upheaval of the days that followed. He reveals the inspiration and challenges behind the creation of the inaugural poem, “One Today,” as well as two other poems commissioned for the occasion (“Mother Country” and “What We Know of Country”), published here for the first time ever, alongside translations of all three of those poems into his native Spanish. Finally, Blanco reflects on his life-changing role as a public voice since the inauguration, his spiritual embrace of Americans everywhere, and his vision for poetr
£13.49
New Directions Publishing Corporation Three Book Sebald Set
Book SynopsisThe masterworks of W. G. Sebald, now in gorgeous new covers by the famed designer Peter MendelsundTrade Review"Think of Sebald as memory’s Einstein." -- Richard Eder - Los Angeles Times"Sebald is a thrilling, original writer. He makes narration a state of investigative bliss." -- W. S. Di Piero - The New York Times Book Review"One of contemporary literature’s most transformative figures: utterly unique. His books combine memoir, fiction, travelogue, history, and biography in the crucible of his haunting prose style to create a strange new literary compound. Susan Sontag, in a 2000 essay in the Times Literary Supplement, asked whether ‘literary greatness [was] still possible’. She concluded that ‘one of the few answers available to English-language readers is the work of W. G. Sebald.’ The books are fascinating for the way they inhabit their own self-determined genre, but that’s not ultimately why they are essential reading. There is a moral magnitude and a weary, melancholy wisdom in Sebald’s writing that transcends the literary and attains something like an oracular register. Reading him feels like being spoken to in a dream." -- The New Yorker
£34.19
Random House USA Inc Perdita The Literary Theatrical Scandalous Life
Book SynopsisThis compelling and richly researched book presents a fascinating portrait of Mary Robinson-darling of the London stage, mistress to the most powerful men in England, feminist thinker, and bestselling author. Though one of the most flamboyant free spirits of the late eighteenth century, Mary led a life that was marked by reversals of fortune. After being abandoned by her father, Mary was married, at age fifteen, to Thomas Robinson, whose dissipation landed the couple and their baby in debtors’ prison. On her release, Mary rose to become one of the London theater’s most alluring actresses, famously playing Perdita in The Winter’s Tale for a rapt audience that included the Prince of Wales, who fell madly in love with her. Never one to pass up an opportunity, she later used his ardent love letters for blackmail. After being struck down by paralysis, apparently following a miscarriage, she remade herself yet again, this time as a popular writer who was also admired by the
£15.26
The University Press of Kentucky Charles Boyer
Book SynopsisA fascinating exploration of the life of Charles Boyer.Table of ContentsPreface The Eyes of a Stranger All Quiet on the Western Front Paris On the Road To Be Famous and To Be Loved Movies Bernstein On Trial Ufa and After Mid-Atlantic A Ride on the Carousel The Boyer Type The Love of His Life The Japanese Sandman Think American Discord The Sleeping Prince "Only God and I Know What Is In My Heart" The Best Head Waiter in Europe Immortal Longings Exiles Lazy and Hot and Happy "Come With Me To The Casbah" Sex on the High Seas The Gathering Storm Blood, Toil, Sweat and Tears The World's Best-Dressed Governess The War at Home A Voice Singing in the Snow The Golden Door The Most Popular Frenchman in America Love and Death Not What It Looks Like Love in a Cold Climate Stranger in a Strange Land "Why, this is Hell, Nor Am I Out of It." No Fixed Place of Abode One Star Short Superficially Superficial Great Body, Beautiful Soul Sins of the Father Men of Distinction The Calm Before the Storm Man and Boy. Michael Fade to Black The Rold of a Lifetime Envoi Notes Filmography Bibliography Index
£30.40
The University Press of Kentucky James Still
Book SynopsisIn the definitive biography of the man known as the dean of Appalachian literature, Carol Boggess offers a detailed portrait of James Still. James Still: A Life explores every period of Still's life, from his childhood in Alabama, through the years he spent supporting himself in various odd jobs while trying to build his literary career, to the decades he spent fostering other talents.Trade ReviewJames Still was, and still is, the greatest writer of hill culture in Kentucky. This book is a welcome addition to Appalachian literature."" - Chris Offutt, author of Kentucky Straight
£32.00
University of Pittsburgh Press The Power of Place
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£32.37
Schiffer Publishing Ltd Down on the Shore The Family Place That Forged a
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£13.49
WW Norton & Co Diaries
Book SynopsisA New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection A major literary event—the long-awaited publication of George Orwell's diaries, chronicling the events that inspired his greatest works.Trade Review"Starred review. [A] lushly annotated edition of Orwell’s diaries from 1931 to 1949…. Born Eric Arthur Blair, Orwell, as these diaries reveal, lived a varied and even dichotomized life. …Editor Davison (English/De Montfort Univ.) supplies necessary contextual information and footnotes generously, but stays in the shadows and allows us to truly enjoy Orwell’s impressive chronicles." -- Kirkus Reviews"Read with care, George Orwell’s diaries, from the years 1931 to 1949, can greatly enrich our understanding of how Orwell transmuted the raw material of everyday experience into some of his best-known novels and polemics. They furnish us with a more intimate picture of a man who, committed to the struggles of the mechanized and “modern” world, was also drawn by the rhythms of the wild, the rural, and the remote." -- Christopher Hitchens - Vanity Fair"One cannot help but be struck by the degree to which [Orwell] became, in Henry James’s words, one of those upon whom nothing was lost. By declining to lie, even as far as possible to himself, and by his determination to seek elusive but verifiable truth, he showed how much can be accomplished by an individual who unites the qualities of intellectual honesty and moral courage." -- Christopher Hitchens, from the Introduction of Diaries"Among the vivifying things about his Diaries, issued now in one volume for the first time, is how they restore some first-person flesh and blood to what can seem like his disembodied head. What’s more, they show Orwell to be nearly Jeffersonian in his combined passion for politics and for the natural world, not merely for fishing but also for the enlightened and fervent cultivation of vegetables, fruit trees, animals and flowers… These diaries show him with his hands covered in fresh dirt, hard at work, in sync with the seasons, curious about everything under the sun, tending to what he needed and grateful for beauty as well as sustenance. They present a man in full." -- Dwight Garner - New York Times"Never before published in the United States, this wonderfully annotated collection of George Orwell’s diaries from 1931 to 1949 is sure to fascinate any fan of his work. From his down and out years to his stint working at the BBC during WWII (“something halfway between a girls’ school and a lunatic asylum…. Our radio strategy is even more hopeless than our military strategy.”), the reader can catch a glimpse of this essential English writer’s internal life, and watch the ideas that became Animal Farm and 1984 bloom, percolate, and grow." -- Emily Temple - Flavorpill"Reading the Diaries end-to-end in a single volume offers us a different take on Orwell: less as a thinker, or a figure of political conscience, than as a complex and dimensional human being." -- David Ulin - Los Angeles Times"Orwell’s achievement grew out of seemingly modest virtues: decency; good, hard sense; and clean, clear prose. Yet they added up to something monumental… The diaries as a whole do exactly what you would expect: They confirm his greatness." -- Craig Seligman - Bloomberg.com"Orwell lived in London during most of World War II, including during the Battle of Britain. Entries during this period have the author’s defining features on display, including unimpeachable intellectual honesty, concern about the degradation of truth, physical courage, and unpretentious writing… All the traits that made Orwell so great can be found in the Diaries." -- Jordan Michael Smith - Christian Science Monitor"A window into the way Orwell's mind worked." -- Barry Gewen - New York Times Book Review, Front page"Reading these diaries leaves one, as always when encountering the words of George Orwell, with a confirmed admiration for the sterling qualities that have made him a benchmark for integrity and a lodestar for writers and thinkers across the ideological spectrum. Embedded in the DNA of his writing is that austere, penetrating analytical ability, averse to cant or any form of hypocrisy and pretension, unsparing of everything and everyone—especially himself. He simply can't help being that way: Once pen is put to paper, or fingers to typewriter, those qualities appear, second nature to his writing, even the most casual." -- Martin Rubin - San Francisco Chronicle"...[T]he diaries as a whole do exactly what you would expect: They confirm his greatness." -- Craig Seligman - Newsday"We should celebrate the publication of Orwell’s diaries. The publication of personal texts by other authors might smack of cheap opportunism, purely a money-making ploy. But I think publishers got it right with Orwell." -- Scott Beauchamp - Book Riot"How appropriate that the political moralist George Orwell (1903-50) should be published by a company called Liveright! Orwell, who despised every form of careerism, instinctively gravitated to the kind of quiet rural existence that we associate with ancient Greek philosophers or Anglican clergyman of the 18th century. Certainly, these diaries reveal that the author of Animal Farm was happiest cultivating his garden, observing the weather, enjoying the beauty of spring flowers and watching over the health of his hens." -- Michael Dirda - Washington Post"It is a blessing, then, to now have the opportunity to read his Diaries, edited meticulously by Peter Davison, who as the editor of the twenty volumes of Orwell's Complete Works has an unequaled knowledge of the material… They throw a revealing light on Orwell the thinker, and offer welcome stimulus to revisit the books and essays in which that mind left its lasting imprint." -- Brooke Allen - Barnes and Noble Review"Edited with exemplary skill and grace by Peter Davison." -- William H. Gass - Harper's
£30.39
Bartleby Press Whats Next
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£27.86
The New York Review of Books, Inc Letters Summer 1926 New York Review Books
Book SynopsisEdited by Yevgeny Pasternak, Yelena Pasternak, and Konstantin M. AzadovskyThe summer of 1926 was a time of trouble and uncertainty for each of the three poets whose correspondence is collected in this moving volume. Marina Tsvetayeva was living in exile in France and struggling to get by. Boris Pasternak was in Moscow, trying to come to terms with the new Bolshevik regime. Rainer Maria Rilke, in Switzerland, was dying. Though hardly known to each other, they began to correspond, exchanging a series of searching letters in which every aspect of life and work is discussed with extraordinary intensity and passion. Letters: Summer 1926 takes the reader into the hearts and minds of three of the twentieth century's greatest poets at a moment of maximum emotional and creative pressure.
£18.36
Otago University Press A Strange Beautiful Excitement
Book SynopsisHow does a city make a writer? Described by Fiona Kidman as a ravishing, immersing read, A Strange Beautiful Excitement is a wild ride through the Wellington of Katherine Mansfields childhood. From the grubby, wind-blasted streets of Thorndon to the hushed green valley of Karori, author Redmer Yska, himself raised in Karori, retraces Mansfields old ground: the sights, sounds and smells of the rickety colonial capital, as experienced by the budding writer. Along the way his encounters and dogged research -- into her Beauchamp ancestry, the social landscape, the festering, deadly surroundings -- lead him (and us) to reevaluate long-held conclusions about the writers shaping years. They also lead to a thrilling discovery. This haunting and beautifully vivid book combines fact and fiction, biography and memoir, as Yska rediscovers Mansfields Wellington, unearthing her childhood as he goes, shining a new lamp on old territory.
£27.42
Schaffner Press Inc sylviaplath
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£19.99
Tin House Books Mentor A Memoir
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£13.23
Pen & Sword Books Jane Austens Remarkable Aunt Philadelphia Hancock
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£25.00
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Lady Charlotte Bury
£28.49
Random House Canada Paper Trails
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£22.09
BookBaby Rants For Social Media
£17.84
Random House USA Inc Collected Nonfiction of Mark Twain Volume 2
Book SynopsisThe second of two hardcover volumes collecting the major nonfiction by the father of American literature, including excerpts from The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, A Tramp Abroad, and Life on the Mississippi. Twain’s playful exuberance and remarkable storytelling gifts are on full display as he regales readers with real-life adventures in these rollicking, shrewd, and hilarious autobiographical works. In these pages, we follow him through his stint as a fledgling reporter out West to his attempt to navigate a steamboat on the Mississippi River, and all during his experiences as an irreverent and skeptical traveler through Europe and the Holy Land. Gleefully iconoclastic, whether he is puncturing the pretensions of others or aiming his satirical barbs squarely at himself, Twain also proves to be deeply compassionate, as fierce in his condemnation of injustice as he is skillful in mining the humor in human folly. Long hailed as “the Lincoln of our literature,” Twain harbored as rich and fertile a blend of contradictions as the dynamic nation he came to embody—and define.
£24.00
Random House USA Inc Selected Letters of Horace Walpole
Book SynopsisA new and newly annotated selection of letters--the only selected edition available in hardcover--from the English eighteenth-century historian, novelist, and politician whose correspondence is one of the most admired in English literature. Author of the first gothic novel and son of the first prime minister of Great Britain, Horace Walpole had wide-ranging interests that included literature, politics, world affairs, collecting, antiquities, and architecture. He wrote to his numerous correspondents on these and other topics in prose that is celebrated for its charm, eloquence, and wit. This new Everyman's edition offers an extensive selection of Walpole's letters, helpfully arranged by subject so the reader can choose from themes including social life, the Court, politics, literature, and the evolution of his Gothic castle and art and book collections at Strawberry Hill. This edition offers new annotations throughout, with introductions to its various sections and a general introduction on Walpole as a letter writer. In addition, the text of the letters has been corrected and previously excised passages have been restored.
£25.60
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group Byrons Travels
Book SynopsisA new hardcover selection of Lord Byron's letters, poems, and journals, tracing his dramatic, scandalous, heroic life and his wide-ranging travels—and timed to the two-hundredth anniversary of his tragic early deathGeorge Gordon, Lord Byron, was one of the leading figures of British Romanticism. The Byronic hero he gave his name to—the charming, dashing, rebellious outsider—remains a powerful literary archetype. Byron was known for his unconventional character and his extravagant and flamboyant lifestyle: he had numerous scandalous love affairs, including with his half-sister Augusta Leigh. Lady Caroline Lamb, one of his lovers, famously described him as mad, bad and dangerous to know.His letters and journals were originally published in two volumes; this new one-volume selection includes poems and provides a vivid overview of his dramatic life arranged to reflect his travels through Scotland, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Albania, Switzerland, and of course Greece, where he died. It contains a new introduction by scholar Fiona Stafford highlighting Byron’s enduring significance and the ways in which he was ahead of his time.Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Each title includes an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.
£28.00
Random House USA Inc Autumn in Venice
Book SynopsisThe illuminating story of writer and muse—which also examines the cost to a young woman of her association with a larger-than-life literary celebrity—Autumn in Venice is an intimate look at Hemingway’s final years.In the fall of 1948, Ernest Hemingway and his fourth wife traveled for the first time to Venice, which Hemingway called “absolutely god-damned wonderful.” A year shy of his fiftieth birthday, Hemingway hadn’t published a novel in nearly a decade when he met and fell in love with Adriana Ivancich, a striking Venetian girl just out of finishing school. Here Andrea di Robilant re-creates with sparkling clarity this surprising, years-long relationship, during which Adriana inspired a man thirty years her senior to complete his great final work. Hemingway used Adriana as the model for Renata in Across the River and into the Trees, and continued to visit Venice to see her; when the Ivanciches traveled to Cuba, Adriana was there as he wrote The Old Man and the Sea.
£15.26
Random House USA Inc Tom Stoppard
Book SynopsisA NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOK OF THE YEAR • One of our most brilliant biographers takes on one of our greatest living playwrights, drawing on a wealth of new materials and on many conversations with him.“An extraordinary record of a vital and evolving artistic life, replete with textured illuminations of the plays and their performances, and shaped by the arc of Stoppard’s exhilarating engagement with the world around him, and of his eventual awakening to his own past.” —Harper'sTom Stoppard is a towering and beloved literary figure. Known for his dizzying narrative inventiveness and intense attention to language, he deftly deploys art, science, history, politics, and philosophy in works that span a remarkable spectrum of literary genres: theater, radio, film, TV, journalism, and fiction. His most acclaimed creations—Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Real Thing, Arcadia, The
£19.00
St Martin's Press At Home in the World
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£18.70
St Martin's Press Avid Reader A Life
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£13.99
Picador USA The Plague
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£12.41
St. Martin's Publishing Group Peace Is a Shy Thing
£28.80
St Martin's Press A Mystery of Mysteries
Book SynopsisAn Agatha, Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Ohioana Award nominee!A Mystery of Mysteries is a brilliant biography of Edgar Allan Poe that examines the renowned author's life through the prism of his mysterious death and its many possible causes.It is a moment shrouded in horror and mystery. Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849, at just forty, in a painful, utterly bizarre manner that would not have been out of place in one of his own tales of terror. What was the cause of his untimely death, and what happened to him during the three missing days before he was found, delirious and in great distress on the streets of Baltimore, wearing ill-fitting clothes that were not his own?Mystery and horror. Poe, who remains one of the most iconic of American writers, died under haunting circumstances that reflect the two literary genres he took to new heights. Over the years, there has been a staggering amount of speculation about the cause of
£22.49
