Biography: writers Books

Book SynopsisA family containing six authors is special. When three of them independently become famous, the family is extraordinary. Such was the Strickland family, six sisters and two brothers, brought up in Suffolk, England with Lancastrian forbears and Canadian descendants. 'The Strickland Family' interweaves family letters, writings and newspaper items, allowing the family members to tell their own fascinating and varied life stories. Set in England and in Canada, their lives stretched from 1794 when King George III was on the throne, past celebrations for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Their father was a wealthy self-made man who believed that girls should be as well-educated as boys. The home education he devised for his daughters was of great breadth and depth. His sons were his two youngest children and went to schools. However a business deal went wrong in 1815 and he died in 1818 before he could re-coup the losses. He left his widow with debts, not income, and his sons' education was cut short. After his death, life for his family was a struggle, but they survived and to varying degrees prospered. Three of the family (Sam Strickland, Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill) were early emigrants to Canada. Their first homes were primitive log cabins in small forest clearings. As time passed and Canada developed, Sam became a successful farmer and businessman. His sisters struggled with Canadian pioneer life but both achieved long-lasting fame as writers - Susanna as a poet and novelist, Catharine through her writing for children and her botanical studies. Agnes Strickland was the most famous member of the family. She attended the Court of Queen Victoria and was a house guest in some of the grandest houses in Britain. Her sister and sometime co-author (Elizabeth Strickland) insisted on remaining anonymous, despite the complications this caused when their series of royal biographies 'Lives of the Queens of England' became an outstanding success. Agnes followed this with a biography of Mary Queen of Scots, which she considered her most important work. Jane Margaret Strickland, despite ill health and being the sister who stayed at home to care for their ageing mother, was also an author of note. Her many works included a history of Rome and a biography of her sister, Agnes. Of the two non-authors in the family, one (Sarah) became, in her second marriage, the wife of Richard Gwillym, a wealthy and well-connected vicar in Lancashire. The other (Tom) joined the merchant navy aged fourteen. As captain of beautiful but hazardous sailing ships, his working life took him all round the world. Despite the distances which separated them, family ties remained strong and they helped each other in times of need. Their interwoven biographies trace many of the changes and main events in Canada and England in the 19th century.Table of ContentsPictures 247-250, 416-419 19th century map of south-eastern Canada iv Introduction v Part 1: From Lancashire to Suffolk and Ontario 1 Part 2: Life patterns form and fame begins 97 Part 3: Return to Lancashire and difficulties 177 Part 4: Authors galore 251 Part 5: Life changes 331 Part 6: From eight to seven 421 Part 7: From seven to four 513 Part 8: A late flowering 571 Part 9: The sole survivor 615 Part 10: Lasting fame? 651 Acknowledgements 658 Appendix 1: Family members and key dates 659 Appendix 2: Principal works of the Strickland family 660 Appendix 3: References 661 Picture Credits 664

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Book SynopsisIn this stunning new biography of the eighteenth-century writer Mary Wollstonecraft, Lyndall Gordon explores the life of a woman often criticised by biographers, historians and feminists alike. Gordon challenges such slanders, and portrays instead the genius of this extraordinary woman. The two-generation approach to her life examines not only Wollstonecraft herself, but also her effect on her daughters and heirs (Mary Shelley, Fanny Imlay, Claire Clairmont and Margaret Mount Cashell), and the ways in which they carried her influence into subsequent generations.Gordon takes stock of Wollstonecraft's life in accord with her own values rather than through the reputation history has given her. The author looks at her important relationships with Gilbert Imlay and William Godwin, and her ideas about issues such as the problems of communication between the sexes and parenthood. Through this brilliant study, Gordon, the author of biographies of Virginia Woolf and Charlotte Brontë among others, successfully reinterprets Mary Wollstonecraft for the twenty-first century.Trade ReviewGordon's biographical method is exciting. From this beautifully written book, Wollstonecraft emerges as a triumphant success, despite all adversity and slights of fate -- Ruth Scurr * The Times *Gordon's moving tribute brings alive the depth and complexity of the woman, and the intellectual debt that generations of Wollstonecraft's political daughters owe her to this day -- Melissa Benn * Independent *Gordon presents her subject with a freshness that makes the reader feel they are being introduced to this familiar figure for the very first time. The impression of newness is magnified by Gordon's use of overlooked and recently excavated souces which shed much needed light on the darker corridors of Wollstonecraft's life * Observer *It is the elasticity and range of Gordon's mind that make this biography so rewarding * Sunday Times *Gordon's moving tribute brings alive the depth and complexity of the woman, and the intellectual debt that generations of Wollstonecraft's political daughters owe her to this day.' Melissa Benn - The Independent 'Gordon's biographical method is exciting. From this beautifully written book, Wollstonecraft emerges as a triumphant success, despite all adversity and slights of fate. * Ruth Scurr - The Times 'Brings alive the depth and complexity of the woman’ *

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Book SynopsisFirst published in 1936, this is the story of Elizabeth von Arnim's extraordinary life - and her equally extraordinary dogs. From her Pomeranian idyll (celebrated in her famous first book, ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN), to less happy days in London following the death of her first husband; from the beautiful solitude of her Swiss mountain hideaway, to the First World War and a disastrous second marriage, the author takes us on a disarmingly witty and poignant journey of canine companionship.Trade ReviewAs much a portrait of a vanished world as the autobiography of a well-loved author told through touching takes of canine companions * Big Issue *A captivating (in no way barking) autobiography. Dogs take the leading role, but it is also about troublesome husbands, wonderfu houses, a surprising life * Observer *

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Book SynopsisEdith Sitwell (1887-1964) was, through four decades, the most prominent and celebrated woman poet in Britain. Among the notable admirers of her work were Siegfried Sassoon, WB Yeats and Gertrude Stein, Stephen Spender and Marianne Moore. Just after her death, Allen Tate described her in The New York Times as 'one of the great poets of the twentieth century'. Even as one allows for the ebb and flow of literary reputations, Edith Sitwell will have permanent claim on the attention of readers and literary scholars. She and her two brothers, Osbert and Sacheverell, were the focus of a movement in English Literature described as an 'alternative Bloomsbury'. This volume includes unpublished letters to many significant figures, including WB Yeats, Bertrand Russell and Benjamin Britten. It also contains letters that illuminate Sitwell's relations with other women writers, among them, Gertrude Stein and Rosamond Lehmann.'I am besotted with this dotty old bat. Britain's most celebrated and eccentric female poet, she dashed off reams of witty, newsy, mischievous letters in exquisitely beautiful prose. Every letter is a gem' - Val Hennessy (one of her top ten books for 1997), Daily MailTrade ReviewAmusing, painful, these letters are very entertaining * THE TIMES *Her letters are a vital expression of that personality - witty, prickly, affectionate, kind, snobbish yet vulnerable, imaginative and often over-the-top ... the letters make you laugh out loud * LITERARY REVIEW *

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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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