Biography: writers Books

Book SynopsisSteven Belletto is Professor of English at Lafayette College, USA. He is author of The Beats: A Literary History (2020) and No Accident, Comrade: Chance and Design in Cold War American Narratives (2012). He is the editor of four books, including American Literature in Transition, 1950-1960 (2018) and The Cambridge Companion to the Beats (2017). He is the Editor of Contemporary Literature.

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Book Synopsis'Poignant and fiercely intelligent, this is the best work of creative non-fiction I have read in years' FIONA MOZLEY'Profound, moving and courageous' NICHOLAS ALLEN, IRISH TIMESIn April 1931, modernist poet Hart Crane arrived in Mexico City. Between mood swings, dire financial difficulties, and a rotating series of personal estrangements, Hart was struggling to make the parts of a fragmentary world cohere. This move to Mexico was one in a long list of attempts to find security. In just over a year he would be dead.In July 1932, Grace Crane picks up the morning paper. Scanning the headlines, she is halted on page five. Her son's eyes stare back at her, tinted pink by the thin paper: 'POET LOST AT SEA FROM SHIP'.Hart Crane's death has accrued a morbid mythology, often overshadowing discussions of his work. In Stronger than Death Francesca Bratton focuses instead on Hart's vivid life and his turbulent final year among the vibrant artistic and political communities of Mexico City. Interwoven with Hart's story is that of his mother, exploring Grace's lifelong frustrated creativity and, after his death, her attempts to reach him through seance. Finally, the book explores Hart's legacy as a queer man and as a poet, informed by Francesca's responses to his work during her own periods of mental illness. Part-memoir, part-biography, Stronger than Death is a profound and lyrical meditation on grief, mental health, enduring love and the power of poetry.Trade ReviewBrilliant and unsettling . . . Bratton's observations of Crane, mental suffering and re-entry to the world as being like the sight of the white tip of a rolling wave, are profound, moving and courageous -- Nicholas Allen * Irish Times *Francesca Bratton is a brilliant writer on Hart Crane * Shane McCrae *I wholeheartedly recommend . . . this interesting, very modern and compelling, emotional reading of a poet's life -- Will Burns

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Book SynopsisAt thirty-five, Elsie Robinson feared she'd lost it all. Reeling from a scandalous divorce in 1917, she had no means to support herself and her chronically ill son. She dreamed of becoming a writer and was willing to sacrifice everything for this goal, even swinging a pickax in a gold mine to pay the bills.When the mine shut down, she moved to the Bay Area. Armed with moxie and samples of her work, she barged into the offices of the Oakland Tribune and was hired on the spot. She went on to become a nationally syndicated columnist and household name whose column ran for over thirty years and garnered more than twenty million readers.Told in cinematic detail by bestselling author Julia Scheeres and award-winning journalist Allison Gilbert, Listen, World! is the inspiring story of a timeless maverick, capturing what it means to take a gamble on self-fulfillment and find freedom along the way.

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Book SynopsisA critical reading of Jean Genet's last 18 years, through his politics, writings and personal experience.

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Book SynopsisToward the end of his career as a brilliant novelist, Turgenev turned his pen to the essays that comprise these Literary Reminiscences. Here he discusses the character of creative writing, the attitude of the artist to his environment, and the transmutation of the artist's experience into a work of art. He offers, as well, brilliant studies of Pushkin, Gogol, Belinsky, Lermontov, and Krylov, and a penetrating account of his own difficulties in writing Fathers and Sons. There are also descriptions of travels through Italy, simply and beautifully written pieces on country life, and eyewitness accounts of the 1848 political riots in Paris. David Magarshack has provided a first-class translation and has written an introduction which explains and sets the scene for each of the essays. "The best possible introduction to the author a reader could ask for....Turgenev is an uninsistent, lyric meditator, who sees with a precise eye wherever he looks, and whether he is drawing a bead on a quail or escaping from a burning ship, always asks the uncomfortable questions of himself."—New York Herald-Tribune.Trade ReviewThe best possible introduction to the author a reader could ask for...A lyric meditator who sees with a precise eye wherever he looks. * New York Herald-Tribune *

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Book SynopsisOf the ten thousand letters that Aldous Huxley wrote, only a fraction have been published. Those that were once considered too sensitive for publication can now be included in a wholly new collection. James Sexton's thoughtful selection opens new perspectives on one of the giants of prose. Huxley's letters movingly depict his courageous battle with almost total blindness. Later letters to his patroness demonstrate the brilliance that would soon gain Huxley an international reputation as one of his generation's major satirists. Gradually the letters reveal a shift from cynical satirist to a committed critic of fascism. The letters also provide plentiful insights into the London and New York theater scenes, and vivid discussions of Hollywood's film industry.Trade ReviewAldous Huxley's letters represent a valuable contribution to literary history-and an entertaining one. They reflect his high seriousness, and the extraordinary range of his cultural interests; at the same time they abound in witty gossip and shrewdly observed social detail. They also reveal many unexpected aspects of his personality and his private life. The Huxley who emerges from these pages is both formidable and very human. He can sometimes be arrogant or wrong-headed, too-but that doesn't make him any less readable. -- John GrossA fascinating and revelatory glimpse into the mental engine room of one of the twentieth-century's most commanding men of letters. Huxley knew everybody, and everybody knew him: these letters provide a vital record of an extraordinary moment in Europe's history as well as a portrait of an extraordinary man. A volume as entertaining as it is illuminating. -- Roger KimballThese newly published letters of Aldous Huxley are like the discovery of buried treasure. It is as if some leading figure from the Age of Enlightenment had survived into the present. Expressing himself so naturally and often wittily in these letters, he sets a lasting example of intelligence and humanity. -- David Pryce JonesHis reading was immense, his taste was impeccable, and his ear acute...His place in English literature is unique and is certainly assured. -- T. S. EliotHuxley was among the few writers who played with ideas so freely, so gaily, with such virtuosity, that the responsive reader was dazzled and excited. -- Isaiah Berlin"An illuminating work.... Sexton helps reveal Huxley more fully than ever before." * Publishers Weekly *A book of letters, many previously unpublished, reinforces the impression that Aldous Huxley was attracted to eccentric ideas ... ENGROSSING. * The New York Times *Main pleasures here derive from correspondence with two women, one of whom Huxley shared as a lover with his wife. * The New York Times *Brings a new perspective on the personal and intellectual life of a giant of modern English prose. * Sarasota Herald-Tribune *Remarkable scope...its hundreds of never-before-published letters recommend it for large academic libraries. -- Paulina Taglienti * Library Journal *Letters extend one’s sense of Huxley’s ubiquitous presence in 20th-century intellectual society....Attractive collection represents diligent research....Recommended. * CHOICE *A powerful gathering of his personal and intellectual life in letters-most of them published for the first time. * Midwest Book Review *We see Huxley's full range: husband, traveler, lover, aesthete, and scathing social commentator....Sexton has done an invaluable service. -- ELLIE THERMANSEN * The New Criterion *There are wonderful things in these letters: dazzling historical, literary-critical and etymological excursions; very funny gossip; reflections on Huxley's writing…and on his increasingly religious reading and sympathies. -- JEREMY TREGLOWN * Times Literary Supplement *Sexton's attractive collection represents diligent research in dozens of libraries, and his useful introduction places the letters in the context of Huxley's life and friendships. * CHOICE *

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Book SynopsisHow many times have you heard readers argue about which is better, Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights? The works of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne continue to provoke passionate fandom over a century after their deaths. Brontë enthusiasts, as well as those of us who never made it further than those oft-cited classics, will devour Miranda Pennington's delightful literary memoir.Pennington, today a writer and teacher in New York, was a precocious reader. Her father gave her Jane Eyre at the age of 10, sparking what would become a lifelong devotion and multiple re-readings. She began to delve into the work and lives of the Brontës, finding that the sisters were at times her lifeline, her sounding board, even her closest friends. In this charming, offbeat memoir, Pennington traces the development of the Brontës as women, as sisters, and as writers, as she recounts her own struggles to fit in as a bookish, introverted, bisexual woman. In the Brontës and their characters, Pennington finally finds the heroines she needs, and she becomes obsessed with their wisdom, courage, and fearlessness. Her obsession makes for an entirely absorbing and unique read. A Girl Walks Into a Book is a candid and emotional love affair that braids criticism, biography and literature into a quest that helps us understand the place of literature in our lives; how it affects and inspires us.

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Book SynopsisAn oral history biography of the legendary Latin American writer and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcà a Mà rquez, brimming with atmosphere and insight from those that knew him.

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Book SynopsisThis book scrutinizes the genre of the author-as-character with respect to three broad issues–authorship, the posthumous, and cultural revisionism–that arise in reading such works from a contemporary perspective. Late twentieth-century fiction 'postmodernizes' romantic and modern authors not only to understand them better, but also to understand itself in relation to a past (literary tradition, aesthetic paradigms, cultural formations, etc.) that has not really passed. Penelope Fitzgerald's 'The Blue Flower', Peter Ackroyd's 'The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde and Chatterton', Peter Carey's 'Jack Maggs', Michael Cunningham's 'The Hours', Colm Toibin's 'The Master', and Geoff Dyer's 'Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence - 'the mighty dead' (Harold Bloom) are brought back to life, reanimated and bodied forth in new textual bodies that project a postmodern understanding of the author as a historically and culturally contingent subjectivity constructed along the lines of gender, sexual orientation, class, and nationality.

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Book SynopsisA radically new understanding of Hemingway's life in Cuba, from the first North American scholar permitted to study in residence there.

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Book SynopsisA master of twentieth century fiction looks back on his life, in a newly-expanded conversation - also includes several key interviews from throughout Greene's career.

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Book Synopsis"Unmask Alice by Rick Emerson goes a long way to showing what investigative journalism could be in the right hands . . . this book is undeniably buzzworthy." —Portland Book Review"An absorbing and unnerving read . . . this book demands to be finished in one sitting." —Booklist Two teens. Two diaries. Two social panics. One incredible fraud.In 1971, Go Ask Alice reinvented the young adult genre with a blistering portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. The supposed diary of a middle-class addict, Go Ask Alice terrified adults and cemented LSD's fearsome reputation, fueling support for the War on Drugs. Five million copies later, Go Ask Alice remains a divisive bestseller, outraging censors and earning new fans, all of them drawn by the book's mythic premise: A Real Diary, by Anonymous. But Alice was only the beginning. In 1979, another diary rattled the culture, setting the stage for a national meltdown. The posthumous memoir of an alleged teenage Satanist, Jay's Journal merged with a frightening new crisis—adolescent suicide—to create a literal witch hunt, shattering countless lives and poisoning whole communities. In reality, Go Ask Alice and Jay's Journal came from the same dark place: Beatrice Sparks, a serial con artist who betrayed a grieving family, stole a dead boy's memory, and lied her way to the National Book Awards. Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries is a true story of contagious deception. It stretches from Hollywood to Quantico, and passes through a tiny patch of Utah nicknamed "the fraud capital of America." It's the story of a doomed romance and a vengeful celebrity. Of a lazy press and a public mob. Of two suicidal teenagers, and their exploitation by a literary vampire. Unmask Alice . . . where truth is stranger than nonfiction.

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Book SynopsisAn oral history biography of the legendary Latin American writer and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcà a Mà rquez, brimming with atmosphere and insight from those that knew him.

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Book SynopsisFou Lei (1908-1966) is modern China's most renowned critic-translator. This biography is a revelation of his formative years in Europe between the Wars, and an investigation of his existential struggles between Revolutions. Other than minor corrections, this edition is identical to the Brill version (2017; 2020), discontinued since 2022.Trade Review‘A powerfully argued and deeply moving study, linking Shanghai and Paris, of one of twentieth-century China’s greatest and most courageous public intellectuals. Uncovering previously unknown primary sources that detail personal relationships in Paris, Hu Mingyuan charts the evolution of Fou Lei’s resistance to authoritarianism and the seeds of his tragic demise.’ – Claire Roberts, Professor of Art History at the University of Melbourne, author of Friendship in Art: Fou Lei and Huang Binhong; ‘Now Hu Mingyuan, a Chinese-British scholar, has published this impeccably researched and deeply sympathetic account of the evolution of Fou Lei’s mental world. Throughout the book, Hu is never afraid to think laterally and creatively, infusing a lyrical quality into her writing, a quality which lifts her work far above the run-of-the-mill academic studies of modern Chinese culture.’ – John Minford, Professor Emeritus of Chinese at the Australian National University, and Sin Wai Kin Distinguished Professor of Chinese Culture and Translation at the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong'; ‘This is a ground-breaking biography of twentieth-century China’s greatest translator. The discoveries rigorously unearthed in Parisian archives by Dr Hu Mingyuan shed an entirely new light on Fou Lei’s links to French friends such as Jean Daniélou and René Étiemble. The reconstruction of Fou Lei’s intellectual itinerary through his brotherhood with his authors and heroes, be it Romain Rolland and his Jean-Christophe or Hippolyte Taine and his Philosophy of Art, restitutes for the reader this Insistence on Truth which gives Fou Lei’s tragic destiny its true meaning.’ – Pierre Barroux, former Consul General of France in ShanghaiTable of ContentsNote on the New Edition Note on Transliteration Note on Translation Prologue Part I. Shanghai in Revolution: An Unlived Youth 1 Everywhere a Stranger Part II. The Spleen of Paris: A Bildungsroman 2 Crisis: What Bruges Did Not Appease 3 Malady: Child of the Century by Lac Léman 4 Remedy: The Promise of Tainean Scientism 5 Fever: From Werther to Beethoven 6 Light: A Willed Metamorphosis Part III. Shanghai in Turmoil: A Land of Chimera 7 Moralising in Times of War: A Critic was Born 8 Translating, or the Search for a Brother 9 Creatures of Prometheus, or Unresolved Grief Epilogue Bibliography Index Acknowledgements

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Book SynopsisI remember shaving off my beard in the bathroom on the eve of the camp, with Mahalia Jackson singing rousing spirituals from the living room. Afterwards my chin was strangely smooth, and seemed to have shrunk. I remember that from the Springbok Grounds, where the army has its administrative offices, you could see a whisky ad on a billboard with a moustachioed gentleman suggesting: "Don't be vague, ask for Haig". I remember our arrival at camp, in a roaring truck with wooden plank benches that fetched s from the station. There were many trucks parked or driving along an endless esplanade with their headlights forked into the night. Dust and diesel fumes. People running. Uniforms. Hoarse orders in Afrikaans. I remember 'roer jou gat!", "jou gat", "se gat", "bakgat", "slapgat", "gates", and "don't gooi me grief, hey!" We walk straight so you better get out of the way is author's new book of personal and public memories of growing up in South Africa. Once again he delves deeply into sense memories, making the reader hum long-forgotten tunes, summoning up familiar pictures through his delicate and finely-tuned phrasing. In this title the author deals with the army years, the Grateful Dead years, the loss of his father to prison years and the losing himself to Paris years.

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Book SynopsisAisha al-Ba‘uniyya (c.1456–1517) was one of the greatest women mystics in Islamic history. A Sufi master and an Arab poet, her religious writings were extensive by any standard and extraordinary for her time. In medieval Islam a number of women were respected scholars and teachers, but they rarely composed works of their own. Aisha al-Ba‘uniyya, however, was prolific. She composed over twenty works, and likely wrote more Arabic prose and poetry than any other Muslim woman prior to the twentieth century. The first full-scale biography of al-Ba‘uniyya in the English language, this volume provides a rare glimpse into the life and writings of a medieval Muslim woman in her own words. Homerin presents her work in the wider context of late-medieval Islamic spirituality, examining the influence of figures such as Ibn al-‘Arabi, al-Busiri and Ibn al-Farid, and emphasising the role of the person of the Prophet Muhammad in her spirituality. Aisha al-Ba‘uniyya is a fascinating introduction to a figure described by a sixteenth-century biographer as ‘one of the marvels of her age’.Trade Review‘In this highly readable book, Th. Emil Homerin skilfully weaves Aisha al-Ba‘uniyya’s life, work, and her inner and external worlds together with insightful erudition.’ -- Li Guo, Professor, Arabic Studies Program, University of Notre Dame‘In this beautifully written study, Th. Emil Homerin situates Aisha’s work in its literary and historical context… This book is an important contribution to the study of Muslim women’s spirituality.’ -- Adam Sabra, Professor of History and King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud Chair in Islamic Studies, University of CaliforniaTable of ContentsMaps Preface 1 GOD’S BLESSINGS Origins Slave Soldiers Mamluk Sultanate Secretaries and Scholars Education Damascus Mosques and Libraries Gabriel’s Questions Obedient Servant Dress and Decorum Saints and Shrines Inner Sanctum Intercession or Idolatry Forgiveness and Favor 2 AISHA AL-BA‘UNIYYA AND THE BELOVED PROPHET Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah That Sacred Place Syrian Caravan Damascus to Medina Medina to Mecca Before the Black Stone Hajj Dreams What is a Woman to Do? Poems of Praise Blessings Holy Prophet Virtuous Life Return to Heaven 3 O MY LOVE AND HAPPINESS Marriage and Family Sufi Way Venerable Masters Recalling the Lord Noble Invocations Taste and See Hymn/Him Poetry of Recollection He’s My Destiny Old Loves for New Ibn al-Farid Odes in T Covenant Wine of Love Moses of the Heart Seat of Truth 4 TREE OF MYSTICAL LIFE Repentance Sincerity Recollection Love Amazing Stories Wondrous Secret Ocean Without a Shore 5 GATHERING UNION New Challenges To Egypt Cairo Victorious Pomp and Princess Among the Elite Shadows of War Time of Change Legacy Bibliography Acknowledgments Index

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Book SynopsisTeffi was one of twentieth century Russia’s most celebrated authors. Born Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya in 1872, she came to be admired by an impressive range of people – from Tsar Nicholas II to Lenin – and her popularity was such that sweets and perfume were named after her. She visited Tolstoy when she was 13 to haggle with him about the ending of War and Peace and Rasputin tried (and utterly failed) to seduce her. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 she was exiled and lived out her days in the lively Russian émigré community of Paris, where she continued writing – and enjoying comparable fame – until her death in 1952. Teffi’s best stories effortlessly shift from light humour and satire to pathos and even tragedy – ever more so when depicting the daunting hardships she and her fellow émigrés suffered in exile. While best known for her stories and feuilletons, she also moved over to other genres, from serious poetry to theatrical miniatures and even music, and inhabited an extraordinary range of spheres connected to both high and popular culture. In the first biography of her in any language, Edythe Haber here brings Teffi – who has recently been ‘rediscovered’ in the West to resounding acclaim – to life. Teffi’s life and works afford a unique panoramic view of the cultural world of early twentieth century Russia, from the debauchery of the Silver Age to the terror and euphoria of revolution, and of interwar Russian emigration. But they also offer fresh insights into the seismic events – from the 1905 Russian Revolution and World War II to life as a refugee – that she experienced first-hand and recreated in her vivid, penetrating, moving and witty writing.Trade ReviewHaber is a scrupulous scholar and she has been researching Teffi’s life and work for 40 years. She takes nothing for granted and backs all her assertions with definite evidence ... an exemplary biographer. * Robert Chandler, Los Angeles Review of Books *A masterful and overdue biography… meticulously researched and engagingly narrated. * CHOICE *[Haber’s] biography is a masterpiece of sober and diligent scholarship. * The Observer *[Haber’s] analysis of Teffi’s methods — for instance, the observation that ‘the absurdity of the situation makes a tragic end more inappropriate, laughter more suitable’ — can be illuminating. * The Spectator *[Haber's] longstanding scholarly interest in Teffi has equipped this biography with an encyclopedic level of detail on every feuilleton and flirtation – two genres in which Teffi was prolific. * Times Literary Supplement *It is Teffi’s puckish wit and formidable spirit that defines Edythe Haber’s engaging biography as much as her travails ... Haber has pulled off a difficult job with great skill in writing Teffi’s life story ... [she] quotes astutely from Teffi’s work, much of which is still untranslated and unpublished since first appearing in print, and has a keen ear for her word-games and zingers; Teffi’s wit remains unputdownable. * The Oldie *This biography is fair and surefooted. It offers, but does not impose, interpretations. * Literary Review *Thanks to Haber’s extremely meticulous research on Teffi’s encounters with Tolstoy, Rasputin, and others, English speakers can finally get a glimpse into a remarkable life. * Meduza *Edythe Haber has done a splendid job of drawing together all the information about Teffi's life that is currently known to exist – perhaps all that does exist. * East-West Review *Table of ContentsList of Plates Notes on the Text Acknowledgements Introduction 1. “An Interesting Bunch”: Family Background and Early Years 2. Literary Beginnings, 1898–1908 3. Ascent, 1908–15 4. Feasts and Plagues, 1910–16 5. A Farewell to Russia, Past and Future, 1915–19 6. Migration, 1919–24 7. Russia Abroad, 1924–31 8. A Slippery Slope, 1931–6 9. Tenderness and Angst, 1936–8 10. Zigzags in Life and Art, 1938–9 11. War and Its Aftermath, 1939–46 12. Struggle and Perseverance, 1946–51 13. Last Works, Last Days, 1952 Epilogue: Life after Teffi Notes Select Bibliography and Further Reading in English Index

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Book Synopsis'Do you like the truth? It is well for you. Adhere to that preference - never swerve thence.' - Charlotte Brontë, 'Shirley' The Jenkins family knew the Brontës in Brussels and West Yorkshire. Eager to learn about them, their descendant read the Brontë biographies, and discovered that no one had researched this family, and, worse, that what was written was fabricated, with one biographer copying another, embroidering, even making up dialogue. Yet Mrs Gaskell had deliberately sought out Mrs Jenkins when researching her famous Life of Charlotte. If it had not been for Mrs Jenkins, Charlotte would never have gone to Brussels, never met M. Heger. There would be no 'Villette', no 'Jane Eyre'. This book purges the lies and identifies one of Charlotte's characters for the first time. It reveals a thrumming wire that connects Byron to Trollope to Henry James, and gives further evidence of the adultery of William Wordsworth's eldest son. Above all, it gives a radical new perspective on the inspiration for Charlotte's novels and those vital two years she spent in Brussels.

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Book Synopsis‘It is impossible not to be thrilled by Edgar Wallace.’ So said the blurbs of Wallace’s own books.Indeed, he was a prolific author of over 170 books, translated into more than thirty languages. More films were made from his books than any other twentieth-century writer, and in the 1920s a quarter of all books read in England were written by him. His success is written in black and white, but his life got off to an inauspicious start.Edgar Wallace, the illegitimate son of a travelling actress, rose from poverty in Victorian England to become the most popular author in the world and a global celebrity of his age.Famous for his thrillers, with their fantastic plots, in many ways Wallace did not write his most exciting story: he lived it, and here Neil Clark eloquently tells his tale to allow you to live it too.Trade ReviewClark’s aim is less to claim Wallace as a neglected genius than to 'generate renewed interest in this remarkable man'. In this he succeeds admirably. -- Duncan Campbell * The Guardian *A very readable biography about an extraordinary writer. -- Martin EdwardsA fascinating book which I wholeheartedly recommend. -- Christopher Gray * The Oxford Times *

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Book SynopsisA pioneering Pan Africanist, Garveyite and poet from the Caribbean island of Dominica, JR Ralph Casimir (1898-1996) played an important role as agent and organiser in the eastern Caribbean for Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Black Star Line. For more than half a century, he fearlessly confronted not just colonial rule but his island’s elites. This biography, lovingly written by his grand-daughter, explores his political and personal life, and sheds much light on little known aspects of Dominica’s march to independence.

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Book Synopsis One of Shakespeare’s relatives was executed for plotting against Elizabeth I. There are more than 80 records of Shakespeare’s name. Not one of them says ‘William Shakespeare’. Shakespeare once played the ghost in Hamlet. Shakespeare wore a gold earring in his left ear. This fun little book, containing 400 fantastic facts about the Bard and his work and more than 100 illustrations, will delight fans everywhere!

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Book SynopsisDr RB McDowell is a legend. To graduates of Trinity College, Dublin, he is a symbol of their years at university, the enduring source of endless amusing anecdotes and memories. Now, for the first time, reminiscences by graduates and friends, recording entertaining encounters with ‘RB’ over a period of some seventy years, appear in book form, enlivened by comments from Dr McDowell himself and illustrated with evocative sketches of College circa 1950 by Bryan de Grineau, archival photographs, many hitherto unseen, and a Derek Hill painting in full colour. The result is an intriguing portrait of the traditions and the way of life at Ireland’s oldest university during the greater part of the twentieth century and the part played by the charismatic and unique RB McDowell. RB MCDOWELL is an Emeritus Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. His works include Irish Public Opinion 1750-1800, The Church of Ireland 1869-1969, Ireland in the Age of Imperialism and Revolution 1760-1801, Land and Learning: Two Irish Clubs, Crisis and Decline: The Fate of the Southern Unionists, and Grattan: A Life.

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Book SynopsisYEATS 150 is a collection of essays, many of them illustrated, commemorating the life and work of Irish poet and Nobel Laureate, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939). The book, dedicated to Seamus Heaney, is divided into a number of sections: Academic Essays; Plays; the Yeats family; Scholarly Essays; Yeats Poetry Prizes and, appropriately, the topographical ‘Sligo’, by Sligo natives and visitors to the International Yeats Summer School. The book includes Helen Vendler’s tribute to Seamus Heaney; essays on Yeats’ poetry and plays; on his wife George, his children Anne and Michael, his contemporary, AE, and on the Sligo landscape that so influenced his imagination. It also details his elaborately crafted book designs. A section, appropriately titled Tír na nÓg, includes pieces by the late T.R. Henn, Vincent Buckley and Alec King, connecting to the post-1945 writing on W.B. Yeats. This remarkably wide-ranging collection honours the poet Yeats and those who have lectured and tutored across the world on the man and his work. The US, Canada, UK, Hungary, Japan, New Zealand and Australia are represented in the essays. The thirty-six contributors include former Yeats Summer School Directors: Helen Vendler, Denis Donoghue and James Pethica, Ann Margaret Daniels, as well as Patrick M. Keane, Harvard professors Deirdre Toomey and Daniel Albright, Yeats Annual editor Warwick Gould, publisher Colin Smythe, professor and director of Otago University, New Zealand, Peter Kuch, Tokyo professor Tomoko Iwatsubo, biographer Ann Saddlemyer, critics Lucy McDiarmid, Bruce Stewart and Martin Mansergh: in all, a glittering gathering of writers lend weight to this important commemorative and historical work.

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Book SynopsisLyndall Gordon was born in 1941 in Cape Town, a place from which `a ship takes fourteen days to reach anywhere that matters'. Born to a mother whose mysterious illness confined her for years to life indoors, Lyndall was her secret sharer, a child who grew to know life through books, story-telling and her mother's own writings. It was an exciting, precious world, pure and rich in dreams and imagination - untainted by the demands of reality. But a daughter grows up. Despite her own inability to leave home for long, Lyndall's mother believed in migration, a belief that became almost a necessity once the horrors of apartheid gripped their country. Lyndall loves the rocks, the sea, the light of Cape Town, but, struggling to achieve a life approved by her mother, she tries and makes a failure of living in Israel and then, back once again in her beloved South Africa she marries and moves with her husband to New York. It's in America in 1968 when suddenly Lyndall realises she cannot be, and does not want to be, the woman, the daughter and the mother her mother wants her to be. This is a wonderfully layered memoir about the expectations of love and duty between mother and daughter. The particular time and place, the people and the situation are Lyndall's, but the division between generations, the pain and the joy of being a daughter are everywoman's.Trade ReviewLyndall Gordon manages to avoid being undaughterly about her exciting, difficult, self-obsessed mother . . . as racy as a novel * Guardian *A biographer with soul, she reaches into the hearts of those she brings alive for us. She makes the meaning of their lives sing and sweat as she invites us into their experiences, their longings, their struggles and their disappointments . . . [a] fascinating mix between memoir and biography * Observer *[A] beautifully written and troubling memoir * Independent on Sunday *[A] sensitive exploration of the complexities of motherhood and daughterhood * Sunday Times *This quietly devastating book takes us into many strange terrains but it is to the 'inner life of that room' in Cape Town that Gordon finds herself returning. It was there she fountained into one of our most sensitive writers * Mail on Sunday *In Divided Lives, [Gordon] devotes to her mother the kind of care and attention she has previously devoted to the Modernists, and - goodness knows! - her mother, Rhoda, certainly deserves it * Literary Review *Lyndall Gordon's intrepid and astute biographies of writers . . . frequently yield insights that have eluded previous scholars . . . Now Gordon brings her gift for uncovering startling truths to bear on her own upbringing in 1950s and 60s South Africa * Times Literary Supplement *Memoir of the year? Divided Lives, Lyndall Gordon's enthralling and painful account of her relationship with her mother -- Elizabeth Lowry * Times Literary Supplement *A wonderful read that's both frank and delicate * Sunday Herald *

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Book SynopsisAs her mother slipped into the darkness of old age, Lisa Appignanesi began to realise how little she knew of the reality behind the tales she had heard since childhood. She had shunned her parents' stories of war-time Poland, but now she set out to find the truth. In her quest she flew to Warsaw - imagining and revisiting a past she never knew.This is the moving story of the Jews who survived outside the camps, but it is also the author's own voyage of self-discovery - a family memoir of the rites of passage of emigration, childhood, and growing up an outsider in a closed communityTrade ReviewDistinguished . . . Appignanesi has a sharp eye for the details of everyday life in the Warsaw ghetto . . . Read Losing the Dead and you begin to appreciate what life must have been like for hundreds of thousands of European Jews during the long nightmare of the Third Reich * The Times *This book crosses genre, combining profound story telling and hard history. It is wonderful and heartbreaking in equal measure, and it remains an astonishing work * Edmund de Waal, author of THE HARE WITH AMBER EYES *This book crosses genre, combining profound story telling and hard history. It is wonderful and heartbreaking in equal measure, and it remains an astonishing work -- Edmund de Waal, author of THE HARE WITH AMBER EYES

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Book SynopsisShortlised for the Saltire Society Non Fiction Book of the Year Award Almost every adult and child is familiar with his Treasure Island, but few know that Robert Louis Stevenson lived out his last years on an equally remote island, which was squabbled over by colonial powers much as Captain Flint's treasure was contested by the mongrel crew of the Hispaniola.In 1890 Stevenson settled in Upolu, an island in Samoa, after two years sailing round the South Pacific. He was given a Samoan name and became a fierce critic of the interference of Germany, Britain and the U.S.A. in Samoan affairs - a stance that earned him Oscar Wilde's sneers, and brought him into conflict with the Colonial Office, who regarded him as a menace and even threatened him with expulsion from the island.Joseph Farrell's pioneering study of Stevenson's twilight years stands apart from previous biographies by giving as much weight to the Samoa and the Samoans - their culture, their manners, their history - as to the life and work of the man himself. For it is only by examining the full complexity of Samoa and the political situation it faced as the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, that Stevenson's lasting and generous contribution to its cause can be appreciated.Trade ReviewA bracing amalgam of history, biography and travel . . . Farrell has done his compatriot proud. -- Ian Thomson * Financial Times. *Scholarly, engaging and deeply thoughtful, Joseph Farrell's account of Stevenson's last four years in Samoa has the feel of an instant classic in studies of the writer. The Navigator Islands had fascinated Stevenson for years, but when he went to live there in 1890, frail and famous, the realities of life in on the margins of his own culture, language and society changed him forever. Rarely can a place and a writer have had so much effect on each other: Joseph Farrell's brilliant study takes us further into this fascinating relationship than ever before. -- Claire Harman, author of Robert Louis Stevenson: A BiographyMarvellously done, thanks to the lively fair-mindedness of Farrell's excellent prose. Vivid, scholarly, informative, but above all a really good read. -- Liz Lochhead, Scots Makar 2011-16Joseph Farrell's is the best book I have seen on Stevenson's years in Samoa, the most enviable of any writer's ever. Farrell is fair to both his sunburnt Bohemianism and his unremitting hard work. -- James BuchanStevenson in Samoa is very good indeed . . . It is full of interest and repays the attention it demands. -- Allan Massie * Scotsman. *A sparkling account of the last years of Stevenson's life . . . An emeritus professor at the University of Strathclyde and translator of literary works from Italian, Farrell comes armed with perceptive, elegant prose and a revealing understanding of Stevenson's peculiarly Scottish frame of mind. * Literary Review *A very profound examination of Stevenson's Samoa in light of current and present ideologies. -- Brian Morton * Glasgow Herald. *Farrell provides a welcome service by offering us the fascinating story of Stevenson's last great roll with the dice. -- Peter Carty * Spectator. *By adeptly detailing colonial politics in which Stevenson intervened, Farrell takes us well beyond the image of the romantic exile in Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa. -- Christine Bold * T.L.S. *A warm and intelligent account of the novelist's life and work in his last years in the South Seas. -- Allan Massie * Catholic Herald Books of the Year *

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisNo one is more responsible for Britain's current obsession with celebrity culture than the late, great gossip columnist Nigel Dempster (1941-2007). For a quarter of a century, as the editor of the Daily Mail's diary, he was the man perfectly placed and qualified to record - and accelerate - the end of the age of deference...Trade ReviewI'm really jealous of this; Dempsters world is such a juicy subject and Tim Willis has caught it completely.'A gorgeous account of the sentimental sadist, seasoned with scandal and nostalgia'Witty, scandalous and horribly riveting'. * The Sunday Times *This lively, well-written biography is studded with the sort of anecdotes Dempster would have relished... (But) is is more than a portrait of a man; it is a portrait of a pre-Twitter age. Dempster prefigured our celebrity culture and in the end was submerged by it...' * The Evening Standard *This alluring biography chronicles the extraordinary changes British society has undergone in the past few decades and accurately defines the columnist s own part in that seismic shift. It s a dazzling read, a helter-skelter ride through High Society and Fleet Street...' * The Sunday Express *Not just a fine portrait of a diarist, Tim Willis has anatomised a society in flux' * The Lady *A must for anyone interested in showbusiness and how it is reported * News of The World *Effervescent, elegantly written and faultlessly researched... Tim Willis has caught the atmosphere of the Dempster decades with uncanny precision. Willis's book treats the many facets of Dempster, his braggadocio and his bonking, his swagger, his guile and his generosity with frankness and in fascinating detail.' * The Spectator *

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Book SynopsisJohann Wolfgang von Goethe is recognised as a giant of world literature; an exceptionally prolific and versatile writer. As a student, he composed pastoral plays in the style of the waning Rococo. With Gotz von Berlichingen, a drama conceived in the spirit of Shakespeare, he joined the avant-garde Sturm und Drang authors. His epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther elicited fervent responses among those who rejected the traditions of the Enlightenment, and in his tragedy Faust, which evolved over a 60-year period, he created a prototype of the Romantic hero. Furthermore, based on his studies in literary theory, he developed a concept of 'world literature' that he hoped would foster communication among writers of different nations.

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