Literary Figures

Even when I was funny, I wasn't this funny'Augusten Burroughs, author of Running With Scissors Have you ever embarrassed yourself so badly you thought you'd never get over it? Have you ever wished your family could be just like everyone else's? Have you...

"I lived the same life as everyone else, the life of ordinary people, the masses." Sitting in a prison cell in the autumn of 1944, the German author Hans Fallada sums up his life under the National Socialist dictatorship, the time of "inward emigration"...

For the better part of forty years, Edith Sitwell's poetry has been neglected by critics. But born into a family of privileged eccentrics, Edith Sitwell was highly regarded by her contemporaries: the great writers and artists of the day who attended her...

'The Tongue Set Free is so beautifully written. It begins wtih an extraordinary image, Canetti's earliest memory. He comes out of a room. A man makes him stick out his tongue; if he talks he will cut it off. Years later Canetti realises that this was his...

Ghost Image is made up of sixty-three short essays - meditations, memories, fantasies, and stories bordering on prose poems - and not a single image. Herve Guibert's brief, literary rumination on photography was written in response to Roland Barthes'...

In 2008, J.K. Rowling delivered a deeply affecting commencement speech at Harvard University. Now published for the first time in book form, Very Good Lives offers J.K. Rowling's words of wisdom for anyone at a turning point in life, asking the profound...

On the fiftieth anniversary of his death, C.S. Lewis was commemorated in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, taking his place beside the greatest names in English literature. Oxford and Cambridge Universities, where Lewis taught, also held celebrations of...

This biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, written with reference to Browning correspondence only recently available, argues that the poet was a strong and determined woman largely responsible for her own incarceration in Wimpole Street. The author...

THE TOP TEN BESTSELLERSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZEA The Times Book of the Year 2022'Morland writes about nature and the changing landscape with such lyrical precision that her prose sometimes seems close to poetry' - Christina...

Fiona MacCarthy makes a breakthrough in interpreting Byron's life and poetry drawing on John Murray's world-famous archive.She brings a fresh eye to his early years: his childhood in Scotland, embattled relations with his mother, the effect of his...

Critically acclaimed, award-winning biography of CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien and the brilliant group of writers to come out of Oxford during the Second World War. C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and their friends were a regular feature of the Oxford...

____________________ 'A superbly edited and evocatively illustrated collection that brings together everything that Scott wrote to his wife' - Sunday Telegraph 'Heartbreaking ... Love has seldom seemed more poignant' - Sunday Times 'Excellent .....

Out of a lifetime of travelling, Martha Gellhorn has selected her "best horror journeys". She bumps through rain-sodden, war-torn China to meet Chiang Kai-Shek, floats listlessly in search of u-boats in the wartime Caribbean and visits a dissident writer...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781598534801Author David Foster WallaceFormat HardbackPage Count 158Imprint The Library of AmericaPublisher The Library of AmericaWeight(grams) 364g

Amanda Prowse has built a bestselling career on the lives of fictional women. Now she turns the pen on her own life. I guess the first question to ask is, what kind of woman am I? Well, you know those women who saunter into a room, immaculately...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780394728995Author Simone De BeauvoirFormat PaperbackPage Count 112Imprint Random House USA IncPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams)...

Shot through with Stoppard's voice, and illuminating all his plays, Lee's gripping narrative draws on unprecedented access to archive material, interviews and long conversations with Stoppard himself. She traces the dramatic story of his family's flight...

TELEGRAPH BOOKS OF THE YEAR and OBSERVER BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014Limonov is not a fictional character, but he could have been. He's lived a hundred lives. He was a hoodlum in Ukraine, an idol of the Soviet underground, punk-poet and valet to a billionaire...

This special edition of The Oxford Companion to the Brontes commemorates the bicentenary of Emily Bronte's birth in July 1818 and provides comprehensive and detailed information about the lives, works, and reputations of the Brontes - the three sisters...

'Britain's greatest living nature writer' The TimesRediscover the extraodinary power of nature and the British wilderness, from award-winning naturalist and author Richard MabeyIn the last year of the old millennium, Richard Mabey, Britain's foremost...

*For those aspiring authors who are interested in the path to success*'I read this yesterday in one glorious sitting! What an absolute treat of a book!' Lesley Kara'Illuminating, revealing and absolutely fascinating, Will Brooker offers us the keys to...

The essential gift for lovers of Prince, Dickens and everyone in between!In Nick Hornby's completely joyous and original new book two great figures share the stage. Charles Dickens and Prince. Two wildly different artists who caught fire and lit up the...

'When Dickens has described something you see it for the rest of your life' George OrwellIn 1844, Charles Dickens took a break from novel writing to travel through Italy for almost a year, and Pictures from Italy is an illuminating account of his...

In 2013, the filmmaker Chantal Akerman's mother was dying. She flew back from New York to care for her, and between dressing her, feeding her and putting her to bed, she wrote. She wrote about her childhood, the escape her mother made from Auschwitz but...

Now in paperback, a beautifully illustrated account of of Tove Jansson's life and artThe definitive biography of one of the most unique and beloved children's authors of the 20th century, the creator of the Moomins. Tove Jansson (1914-2001) led a long,...

For nearly sixty years Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was one of the most famous writers in the world. An enormously successful playwright and the author of over a hundred short stories and twenty-one novels - several of which are now established classics...

‘A lively picture of multiple operators scrambling to steal a march on the competition . . . Lavishly detailed’FINANCIAL TIMES ‘This is Shakespearean scholarship at its best, brilliantly researched yet compulsively readable. It's a book for our times,...

** The Sunday Times Best Literary Book of 2023**** A Waterstones Best Book of 2023**** A Financial Times Best Summer Books of 2023 **'All Sorts of Lives is a beautiful, fastidiously researched and fascinating exploration of Mansfield's life and work' A.L...

'I took it: - and in an hour, oh! Heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me!' Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) launched a...

Written between August and December 1938, Autumn Journal is still considered one of the most valuable and moving testaments of living through the thirties by a young writer. It is a record of the author's emotional and intellectual experience during...

Elegant, provocative and hugely entertaining, Kingsley Amis's memoirs are filled with anecdotes, experiences and portraits of famous friends, family, acquaintances (and a few eminent foes). From his childhood days to Oxford and army life, his travels...

The recent Narnia films have inspired a resurgence of interest in C. S. Lewis, the Oxford academic, popular theologian and, most famously, creator of the magical world of Narnia - and this authoritative new biography, published to mark the 50th...

Journeying from Glasgow to Lagos and beyond, Red Dust Road is a heart-stopping memoir, a story of parents and siblings, friends and strangers, belonging and beliefs, biology and destiny.With an introduction by the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780805209068Author Franz KafkaFormat PaperbackPage Count 528Imprint Schocken BooksPublisher Schocken BooksWeight(grams) 414gDimensions(mm) 203mm * 131mm *...

Thomas Paine is one of the greatest political advocates in history. Declaration of the Rights of Man, first published in 1791, is the key to his reputation. Inspired by his outrage at Edmund Burke's attack on the uprising of the French people, Paine's...

A fascinating and wonderfully readable deconstruction of the countless myths that have grown up around the Brontes.Since 1857, hardly a year has gone by without some sort of Bronte 'biography' appearing. These range from pious accounts in Victorian...

Over the past few decades, the bestselling author of Hitch-22 has crisscrossed the globe debating religious scholars, Catholic clergy, rabbis, and devout Christians on the existence of God- appearances that have attracted thousands of people on both...

A fascinating picture of the American frontier emerges from Twain's fictionalized recollections of his experiences prospecting for gold, speculating in timber, and writing for a succession of small Western newspapers during the 1860s.About the AuthorBorn...

Robert Burns is more than Scotland's national poet. This compact little book contains an illustrated selection of Burns' most acclaimed and best loved poems and songs. The book also contains a biography, a guide to the key landmarks 'in the land of...

The first book in V. S. Naipaul's acclaimed Indian trilogy - with a preface by the author. An Area of Darkness is V. S. Naipaul's semi-autobiographical account - at once painful and hilarious, but always thoughtful and considered - of his first visit to...