Biography: writers Books
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The Real Enid Blyton
Book SynopsisA thrilling biographical study of the most prolific and controversial children's author in history.
£22.37
Random House USA Inc Vivir para contarla Living to Tell the Tale
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£16.16
Random House USA Inc Living to Tell the Tale Vintage International
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£17.00
Alfred A. Knopf Living to Tell the Tale
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£22.91
Random House USA Inc Selected Letters of William Styron
Book SynopsisIn 1950, at the age of twenty-four, William Clark Styron, Jr., wrote to his mentor, Professor William Blackburn of Duke University. The young writer was struggling with his first novel, Lie Down in Darkness, and he was nervous about whether his “strain and toil” would amount to anything. “When I mature and broaden,” Styron told Blackburn, “I expect to use the language on as exalted and elevated a level as I can sustain. I believe that a writer should accommodate language to his own peculiar personality, and mine wants to use great words, evocative words, when the situation demands them.” In February 1952, Styron was awarded the Prix de Rome of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which crowned him a literary star. In Europe, Styron met and married Rose Burgunder, and found himself immersed in a new generation of expatriate writers. His relationships with George Plimpton and Peter Matthiessen culminated in Styron introducing
£32.40
Johns Hopkins University Press Outsiders Five Women Writers Who Changed the
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewLiterary biographer Gordon (Lives Like Loaded Guns) brilliantly ties together the biographies of five women writers who bravely embraced outsider status . . . By addressing an almost inconceivably wide range of themes through the book's conceit—health, mores, politics, pregnancy, economics, sex, sexism, secrets, and silence—Gordon seduces readers interested in all that these fascinating women had to offer.—Publishers Weekly, starred reviewGordon maintains [a] level of engagement throughout . . . The result is a fascinating study that fully supports the author's thesis. Highly recommended for both academic and general readers interested in women's literature and history.—Library Journal, starred reviewGordon's voice is most lyrical and assured in her conclusions . . . Gordon narrates their deaths in understated yet powerful detail, stirring some of her most striking observations.—The New York Times Book ReviewWoolf once said that the role of biography is to give us 'the fertile fact' of a life, and this is what Ms. Gordon, an Oxford academic and biographer, is so good at supplying here. All five of these women believed that their status as outsiders—pariahs, even—was worth the creative freedom it gave them.—The Wall Street JournalThere is much to instruct and delight in the delineation of the ways in which the lives of these unusual women are reflected in their work.—Jane Hailé, New York Journal of BooksTable of ContentsList of IllustrationsForeword1. Prodigy—Mary Shelley2. Visionary—Emily Brontë3. "Outlaw"—George Eliot4. Orator—Olive Schreiner5. Explorer—Virginia WoolfThe Outsiders SocietySourcesFurther ReadingAcknowledgmentsIndex
£23.96
DK El Libro de la Literatura Big Ideas
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£25.19
History Press Cincinnatis Literary Heritage A History for
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£18.69
History Press Florida Literary Luminaries
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£18.69
History Press Guide to Hemingways Key West
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£18.69
History Press Black Women Writers of Louisiana
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£18.69
History Press Literary New Hampshire
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£20.39
Tyndale House Publishers C. S. Lewis A Life
Book SynopsisECPA 2014 Christian Book Award Winner (Non-Fiction)!Fifty years after his death, C. S. Lewis continues to inspire and fascinate millions. His legacy remains varied and vast. He was a towering intellectual figure, a popular fiction author who inspired a global movie franchise around the world of Narnia, and an atheist-turned-Christian thinker.In C.S. LewisA Life, Alister McGrath, prolific author and respected professor at King's College of London, paints a definitive portrait of the life of C. S. Lewis. After thoroughly examining recently published Lewis correspondence, Alister challenges some of the previously held beliefs about the exact timing of Lewis's shift from atheism to theism and then to Christianity. He paints a portrait of an eccentric thinker who became an inspiring, though reluctant, prophet for our times.You won't want to miss this fascinating portrait of a creative genius who inspired generations.
£17.99
Amazon Publishing A Marriage in Dog Years: A Memoir
Book SynopsisWhen Nancy Balbirer learns her beloved eleven-year-old beagle has kidney failure, she’s devastated. She and her husband had gotten Ira as a puppy—a wedding gift to each other, and their first foray into “parenthood.” Now, her dog is terminal, her marriage is on life support, and Nancy is desperate to save them both (whether they want it or not). In a single year, she loses her two best friends, but Nancy’s life is about to take yet another unexpected turn. With humor and heart, Nancy Balbirer shares her story of relationships, loss, and canine friendship in this illuminating memoir about the lengths people will go to keep love alive…and the power of finally letting go.
£12.82
Alfred A. Knopf Time Pieces: A Dublin Memoir
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£21.56
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The Real Enid Blyton
Book SynopsisShe is the most prolific children's author in history, but Enid Blyton is also the most controversial. A remarkable woman who wrote hundreds of books in a career spanning forty years, even her razor sharp mind could never have predicted her enormous global audience. Now, fifty years after her death, Enid remains a phenomenon, with sales outstripping every rival. Parents and teachers lobbied against Enid's books, complaining they were simplistic, repetitive and littered with sexist and snobbish undertones. Blatant racist slurs were particularly shockingly; foreign and working class characters were treated with a distain that horrifies modern readers. But regardless of the criticism, Enid worked until she could not physically write another word, famously producing thousands of words a day hunched over her manual typewriter. She imaged a more innocent world, where children roamed unsupervised, and problems were solved with midnight feasts or glorious picnics with lashings of ginger beer. Smugglers, thieves, spies and kidnappers were thwarted by fearless gangs who easily outwitted the police, while popular schoolgirls scored winning goals in nail-biting lacrosse matches. Enid carefully crafted her public image to ensure her fans only knew of this sunny persona, but behind the scenes, she weaved elaborate stories to conceal infidelities, betrayals and unconventional friendships, lied about her childhood and never fully recovered from her parent's marriage collapsing. She grew up convinced that her beloved father abandoned her for someone he loved more, and few could ever measure up to her impossible standards. A complex and immature woman, Enid was plagued by insecurities and haunted by a dark past. She was prone to bursts of furious temper, yet was a shrewd businesswoman years ahead of her time. She may not have been particularly likeable, and her stories infuriatingly unimaginative, but she left a vast literary legacy to generations of children.
£23.77
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The Magic of Terry Pratchett
Book SynopsisThe Magic Of Terry Pratchett is the first full biography of Sir Terry Pratchett ever written. Sir Terry was Britain's best-selling living author*, and before his death in 2015 had sold more than 85 million copies of his books worldwide. Best known for the Discworld series, his work has been translated into 37 languages, and performed as plays on every continent in the world, including Antarctica. Journalist, comedian and Pratchett fan Marc Burrows delves into the back story of one of UK's most enduring and beloved authors, from his childhood in the Chiltern Hills, to his time as a journalist, and the journey that would take him - via more than sixty best-selling books - to an OBE, a knighthood and national treasure status. The Magic Of Terry Pratchett is the result of painstaking archival research alongside interviews with friends and contemporaries who knew the real man under the famous black hat, helping to piece together the full story of one of British literature's most remarkable and beloved figures for the very first time. * Now disqualified on both counts.
£19.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The Creator of the Wombles: The First Biography
Book SynopsisThis is the extraordinary story of Elisabeth Beresford, creator of The Wombles, the furry, fun-loving recyclers of rubbish which became a children's publishing and television sensation in the 1970s. What drove this imaginative and prolific writer of children's books to invent The Wombles? From her birth in Paris in 1926 to her death in the Channel Islands in 2010, Beresford's working life was led to the full, driven by the fear of debt. Married to the TV and radio sports commentator, Max Robertson, and with two children, Elisabeth's life was never dull but always uncertain. In addition to writing over 140 children's books, she wrote romantic fiction for women's magazines, became a regular contributor to the Today programme, Woman's Hour (BBC) and Woman's World (Central Office of Information). As a journalist she interviewed a fascinating range of people from politicians and film stars to children in the remote Australian Outback. With the publication of The Wombles, and subsequently the enchanting BBC films, Elisabeth found fame and for a very brief moment, fortune. This is the first biography of Mrs Womble' as Elisabeth was known by millions of fans. Written by her daughter with insider knowledge and access to private family archives - diaries, letters, photographs and family memories - this book relates the remarkable and often hilarious life of one of the 20th century's most successful children's authors.
£18.70
Rowman & Littlefield The Gatsby Affair: Scott, Zelda, and the Betrayal
Book SynopsisThe romance between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre has been celebrated as one of the greatest of the 20th century. From the beginning, their relationship was a tumultuous one, in which the couple’s excesses were as widely known as their passion for each other. Despite their love, both Scott and Zelda engaged in flirtations that threatened to tear the couple apart. But none had a more profound impact on the two—and on Scott’s writing—as the liaison between Zelda and a French aviator, Edouard Jozan. Though other biographies have written of Jozan as one of Scott’s romantic rivals, accounts of the pilot’s effect on the couple have been superficial at best. In The Gatsby Affair: Scott, Zelda, and the Betrayal That Shaped an American Classic, Kendall Taylor examines the dalliance between the southern belle and the French pilot from a fresh perspective. Drawing on conversations and correspondence with Jozan’s daughter, as well as materials from the Jozan family archives, Taylor sheds new light on this romantic triangle. More than just a casual fling, Zelda’s tryst with Edouard affected Scott as much as it did his wife—and ultimately influenced the author’s most famous creation, Jay Gatsby. Were it not for Zelda’s affair with the pilot, Scott’s novel might be less about betrayal and more about lost illusions. Exploring the private motives of these public figures, Taylor offers new explanations for their behavior. In addition to the love triangle that included Jozan, Taylor also delves into an earlier event in Zelda’s life—a sexual assault she suffered as a teenager—one that affected her future relationships. Both a literary study and a probing look at an iconic couple’s psychological makeup, The Gatsby Affair offers readers a bold interpretation of how one of America’s greatest novels was influenced.Trade ReviewTaylor’s work leaves readers with a colorful portrait of a stormy chapter in the Fitzgeralds’ life and its far-reaching consequences. * Publishers Weekly *Meticulously researched, the author’s attention to detail creates an immersion into the Jazz Age and highlights previously unknown events that offer explanations for both Fitzgerald and Zelda’s recklessness and approach to life. Much has been documented about their tumultuous relationship, but Taylor examines the couple’s dependence on each other through an unfiltered lens that reveals the life events that shaped their existence and, ultimately, their demise. The author’s skill at discovering new information on the uninhibited couple’s past encounters connects the previously missing pieces and establishes a multi-dimensional picture of these passionate individuals. * US Review of Books *The Gatsby Affair is highly atmospheric and does an incredible job explaining the time period, how Zelda and Scott met, and the context of the affair. * FangirlNation *Who is Edouard Jozan? The intriguing mystery man in the saga of Scott and Zelda has long eluded literary sleuths. In a stunning feat of research, Kendall Taylor brings the French aviator out of the shadows to reveal how he influenced the writing of a classic novel and left his mark on the marriage of an iconic couple. This is an important, richly detailed biography that will deepen our understanding of American literature. -- Marion Meade, author of Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?Kendall Taylor rips the lid off one of the world’s great literary mysteries—the love triangle between Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and French aviator Edouard Jozan. Brimming with strong research and enchanted writing, Taylor’s engaging account of the love affair and its consequences is sure to stir fans eager to dig into this absorbing chapter in the lives of Scott and Zelda. -- Bob Batchelor, author of Stan Lee: The Man behind Marvel and Gatsby: The Cultural History of the Great American NovelThis new telling of Zelda’s affair with French pilot Edouard Jozan is powerfully rendered, thanks to Kendall Taylor’s laudable research. By interweaving bits from Scott and Zelda’s novels, Taylor shows how the French pilot triggered ever deepening fractures in the Fitzgerald marriage, and brings a heart-wrenching light to their lives and their work. -- Sally Ryder Brady, author of A Box of Darkness: The Story of a MarriageWith admirable scholarship, Kendall Taylor takes the reader on a journey into the complex heart of the Jazz Era. Probing the volatile Fitzgerald marriage, she shows the destructive forces unleashed by infidelity, and portrays Zelda as a suppressed creator in her own right. An absorbing study of one of the most fascinating couples of the twentieth century. -- Mary McAuliffe, author of When Paris Sizzled: The 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Chanel, Cocteau, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and Their FriendsWhile the line, 'Rich girls don’t marry poor boys,' isn’t actually in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby, that line is in at least one film version and is a perfect summation of Fitzgerald’s personal mythology as it appears in his most famous book. What Kendall Taylor does in her latest book The Gatsby Affair is masterful in her examination of the rich girl—Zelda Sayre—who did marry the poor boy—Fitzgerald—but whose love was as much about betrayal and pain as it was about joy and celebration. . . . [Taylor's] prose is passionate, dense, and masterful in its revelation of the immediate attraction between the two. . . . For fans of Fitzgerald’s work, or those just interested in exploring the difficult and tragic love lives of two of America’s literary giants, The Gatsby Affair is a must read. * Seattle Book Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Preface Chapter 1: Recklessness in the Making Chapter 2: Seeds of Discontent Chapter 3: The French Lieutenant Chapter 4: A Mistress Not a Wife Chapter 5: Truly a Sad Story Chapter 6: Retribution and Remorse Chapter 7: Locked Away Chapter 8: No Hope Salvaged Chapter 9: An Ailment No One Could Cure Chapter 10: All In Disarray Chapter 11: A Mind Washed Clean Chronology Notes Bibliography Index About the Author
£18.99
Seal Press (CA) Juliet: The Life and Afterlives of Shakespeare's
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£24.00
Graywolf Press,U.S. My Lesbian Husband: Landscapes of a Marriage
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£18.99
Graywolf Press One Day I Will Write about This Place: A Memoir
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£15.30
Graywolf Press The Last Englishmen: Love, War, and the End of
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£22.40
Paragon House Publishers Heav'nly Tidings from the Afric Muse: The Grace
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£26.09
Arte Publico Press Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood
£11.88
Arte Publico Press Rain of Gold
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£21.80
The New York Review of Books, Inc Shelley: The Pursuit
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£36.00
The New York Review of Books, Inc Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse
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£19.51
The New York Review of Books, Inc The Notebooks Of Joseph Joubert
Book SynopsisThe elusive French luminary Joseph Joubert is a great explorer of the mind''s open spaces. Edited and translated by Paul Auster, this selection from Joubert''s notebooks introduces a master of the enigmatic who seeks 'to call everything by its true name' while asking us to 'remember everything is double.' 'Joubert speaks in whispers,' Auster writes. 'One must draw very close to hear what he is saying.'
£16.99
The New York Review of Books, Inc The Company They Kept
Book SynopsisNow in paperbackMany of the illustrious contributors to The New York Review of Books have had deep and abiding relationships-both personal and intellectual-with other poets, writers, artists, composers, and scientists of equal stature. The Company They Kept is a collection of twenty-seven accounts of these varied friendships-most of them undeniably fraught with “idiosyncratic complexities.” From Anna Akhmatova’s dreamlike description of wandering through Paris with the impoverished Modigliani to Joseph Brodsky’s account of his first meeting with Isaiah Berlin (from which he returned to report, around the kitchen table, to Stephen Spender and W. H. Auden), these pieces are tantalizing glimpses into the lives of those who have made The New York Review of Books into what Esquire magazine calls “the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language.”
£19.55
The New York Review of Books, Inc The Mirador
Book SynopsisA New York Review Books OriginalSeparated from her mother—the famed author of Suite Française—during World War II, Irène Némirovsky’s daughter offers a “nuanced, eloquent portrait of a complicated woman” in a series of memoirs that reimagine her mother’s life (The Washington Post)Élisabeth Gille was only five when the Gestapo arrested her mother, and she grew up remembering next to nothing of her. Her mother was a figure, a name, Irène Némirovsky, a once popular novelist, a Russian émigré from an immensely rich family, a Jew who didn’t consider herself one and who even contributed to collaborationist periodicals, and a woman who died in Auschwitz because she was a Jew. To her daughter she was a tragic enigma and a stranger.It was to come to terms with that stranger that Gille wrote, in The Mirador, her mother’s memoirs. The first part of the book, dated 1929, the year David Golder made Némirovsky famous, takes us back to her difficult childhood in Kiev and St. Petersburg. Her father is doting, her mother a beautiful monster, while Irene herself is bookish and self-absorbed. There are pogroms and riots, parties and excursions, then revolution, from which the family flees to France, a country of “moderation, freedom, and generosity,” where at last she is happy.Some thirteen years later Irène picks up her pen again. Everything has changed. Abandoned by friends and colleagues, she lives in the countryside and waits for the knock on the door. Written a decade before the publication of Suite Française made Irène Némirovsky famous once more (something Gille did not live to see), The Mirador is a haunted and a haunting book, an unflinching reckoning with the tragic past, and a triumph not only of the imagination but of love.
£12.59
The New York Review of Books, Inc Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure
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£19.51
Soft Skull Press MOTHERCARE: On Obligation, Love, Death, and
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£14.41
Penguin Putnam Inc Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
Book SynopsisFrom the New York Times bestselling author of Dusk, Night, Dawn, Bird by Bird, Hallelujah Anyway, and Almost Everything Lamott has chronicled her wacky and (sometimes) wild adventures in faith in...the wonderful Grace (Eventually). (Chicago Sun-Times) In Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, the author of the bestsellers Traveling Mercies and Plan B delivers a poignant, funny, and bittersweet primer of faith, as we come to discover what it means to be fully alive.
£16.15
Penguin Putnam Inc God'll Cut You Down: The Tangled Tale of a White
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£14.40
Thomas Nelson Publishers Jane Austen
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£9.99
The Library of America Life on the Mississippi: A Library of America
Book Synopsis?Mark Twain was the first truly American writer, and all of us since are his heirs.?--William FaulknerA brilliant amalgam of remembrance and reportage, by turns satiric, celebratory, nostalgic, and melancholy, Life on the Mississippi evokes the great river that Mark Twain knew as a boy and young man and the one he revisited as a mature and successful author. Written between the publication of his two greatest novels, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Twain?s rich portrait of the Mississippi marks a distinctive transition in the life of the river and the nation, from the boom years preceding the Civil War to the sober times that followed it.Library of America Paperback Classics feature authoritative texts drawn from the acclaimed Library of America series and introduced by today?s most distinguished scholars and writers. Each book features a detailed chronology of the author?s life and career, and essay on the choice of the text, and notes.The contents of this Paperback Classic are drawn from Mark Twain: Mississippi Writings, volume number 5 in the Library of America series. It is joined in the series by six companion volumes, gathering the collected works of Mark Twain.
£9.45
The Library of America Thornton Wilder: The Eighth Day, Theophilus
Book Synopsis"The best thing he ever wrote," observed Edmund Wilson of Thornton Wilder's National Book Award winner The Eighth Day (1967), an enthralling novel that shows Wilder revisiting the small-town America of Our Town to fashion a philosophical whodunit. A wrongful conviction for murder and a daring rescue lead to a meditation on justice, destiny, and "the impassioned will," for which "nothing is impossible." Wilder's last novel, the semi-autobiographical Theophilus North (1973), is an affectionate portrait of Newport, Rhode Island, in the 1920s and a playful, valedictory glance at Wilder's young manhood. Completing this volume are three never-before- published reminiscences taken from an unfinished autobiography in which Wilder engagingly recalls his childhood stay at a boarding school in China, his time as an undergraduate at Yale, and the uneasy experience of visiting Salzburg not long before Austria was annexed by the Nazis.LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.Trade Review“You have to hand it to a writer willing to attack the big questions head on, and to embed those questions in the story of small-town America, and then surround it all in the grandeur of the grandeur of America, and then abase some of its citizens for venality while others rise to existential heights.” —Harold Augenbraum
£28.00
The Library of America Walt Whitman Speaks: His Final Thoughts on Life,
Book SynopsisThe incomparable wisdom of America's greatest poet, distilled from his late-in-life conversations with Horace Traubel.
£17.09
Red Wheel/Weiser Haunted Mind
Book SynopsisJust sit back and relax as Dr. Bob Curran takes you to places that only your mind can create with his words and stories. He has captivated the radio listening audience as he will captivate the reader... Dr. Curran will delight the imagination. -Tom Danheiser, producer, Coast To Coast AMArguably no American writer has had more of an impact on the modern horror scene than Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the man who created the Cthulhu Mythos, with its strange gods, eerie places and forbidden books. But what sort of a man was Lovecraft, how did he create such a terrible universe and where did his inspiration come from? Was it, as some have argued, based on esoteric knowledge forgotten or even denied to all sane people?In A HAUNTED MIND, Dr. Bob Curran explores what motivated Lovecraft - his personal life is just as strange as some of his creations - and drove him to create his terrible cosmos. Using both folklore and history, Dr Curran investigates a wide variety of Lovecraftian mysteries.A wo
£18.90
History Press Tennessee Literary Luminaries
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£18.69
History Press Mark Twain in Washington D.C.
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£18.69
Seven Stories Press,U.S. A Man's Place
Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREA New York Times Notable BookAnnie Ernaux's father died exactly two months after she passed her practical examination for a teaching certificate. Barely educated and valued since childhood strictly for his labor, Ernaux's father had grown into a hard, practical man who showed his family little affection. Narrating his slow ascent towards material comfort, Ernaux's cold observation reveals the shame that haunted her father throughout his life. She scrutinizes the importance he attributed to manners and language that came so unnaturally to him as he struggled to provide for his family with a grocery store and cafe in rural France. Over the course of the book, Ernaux grows up to become the uncompromising observer now familiar to the world, while her father matures into old age with a staid appreciation for life as it is and for a daughter he cautiously, even reluctantly admires. A Man's Place is the companion book to her critically acclaimed memoir about her mother, A Woman's Story.
£8.54
Seven Stories Press,U.S. There Are Things I Want You to Know About Stieg
Book SynopsisEva Gabrielsson and Stieg Larsson. In There Are Things I Want You to Know About Stieg Larsson and Me, Gabrielsson accepts the daunting challenge of telling their story, steeped in love and sharpened in the struggle for justice and human rights. She chooses to tell it in short, spare, lyrical chapters, like snapshots, regaling Larsson's readers with how he wrote, why he wrote, who the sources are were for Lisbeth and his other characters—graciously answering Stieg Larsson's readers' most pressing questions—and at the same time telling us the things we didn't know we wanted to know—about love and loss, death, betrayal, and the mistreatment of women.
£13.46
Bancroft Press Young Man, Muddled: A Memoir
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£23.36
Bancroft Press Young Man, Muddled: A Memoir
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£17.05
Melville House Publishing Ray Bradbury: The Last Interview: And Other
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£12.59
Chicago Review Press A Mysterious Something in the Light: The Life of
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£16.19
