Literary Figures

When the Durrells expert Michael Haag died in 2020, it was feared that his definitive biography of Larry would never emerge. But, happily, it turned out that he had left complete chapters covering Durrell's life up to the time he left for South America...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781948585378Author Paul KentFormat PaperbackImprint Leapfrog PressPublisher Leapfrog Press

It is universally acknowledged among Russians that Pushkin is as much their finest letter writer as he is their greatest and most beloved poet. The letters provide the best source of direct information about Pushkin as a man, as a littérateur and as a...

In her unique dual biography, Kate Ashton delineates the parallel lives of Hans Christian Anderson and Søren Kierkegaard, their personal relationship, literary careers, and lasting cultural influence on the western and wider world. These two towering...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780063320574Author Laurence BergreenImprint HarperAudioPublisher HarperCollins Publishers Inc

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781638041092Author Howard Erskine-HillFormat HardbackPage Count 256Imprint Clemson University Digital PressPublisher Clemson University Digital Press

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781644213896Author Gary IndianaFormat PaperbackPage Count 240Imprint Seven Stories Press,U.S.Publisher Seven Stories Press,U.S.

The first English-language biography in over fifty years to tell the full, vibrant story of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, known to history as the Brothers Grimm More than two hundred years ago, the German brothers Jacob Grimm (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm...

This third volume of Patricia Craig’s trilogy or memoir – following her celebrated Asking for Trouble and A Twisted Root: Ancestral Entanglements in Ireland – takes its title from Louis MacNeice: “My diehard countrymen like drayhorses/drag their ruin...

Experience a rich and nostalgic narrative that has touched the hearts of generations, now made accessible to English-speaking readers. This literary classic is a captivating journey through the author's early years, set in the historic Principality of...

"Dazai's brand of egoistic pessimism dovetails organically with the emo chic of this cultural moment and with the inner lives of teenagers of all eras." —Andrew Martin, The New York TimesBest-known for his novels No Longer Human and The Setting Sun,...

'Textured literary portraits of the masculine mind and body'Raymond Antrobus, author of The PerseveranceIn October 1960, James Baldwin and John Cheever spoke on a panel together at San Francisco State College. The troubled state of American society was...

H. Rider Haggard (1856–1925), author of King Solomon’s Mines, Allan Quatermain and She, was no stranger to the continent where his bestsellers were set. He lived in southern Africa from 1875 to 1881, a period that witnessed Britain’s attempted...

John Clellon Holmes met Jack Kerouac on a hot New York City weekend in 1948, and until the end of Kerouac’s life they were—in Holmes’s words—""Brother Souls."" Both were neophyte novelists, hungry for literary fame but just as hungry to find a new way of...

In 2015, Ben Miller and the poet Anne Pierson Wiese moved from New York City to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to explore their Midwestern roots and to focus on their writing careers. Working a day job in a hospital, Miller had a front-row seat to the...

'Janet Frame's luminous words are the more precious because they were snatched from the jaws of the disaster of her early life. It is one of the classics of autobiography. She knew that a writer must search her soul in order to say anything that is...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781800750968Author Rob DoyleFormat PaperbackPage Count 256Imprint Swift PressPublisher Swift Press

This engrossing narrative recounts the story of Jane de La Vaudère (née Jeanne Scrive), a prolific and celebrated writer of France’s Belle Époque. Interweaving biography and literary analysis, Sharon Larson examines the ways in which La Vaudère adapted...

Leading Middle East correspondent surveys the life and work of his father, the groundbreaking radical journalist, Claud Cockburn, and meditates whether journalist can still change the world. Claud started on Fleet Street in the 1930s - where he reported...

In Walking through Fire, Nawal El Saadawi, author of Woman at Point Zero and one of the Arab world’s greatest writers, tells the story of the later years of a life which shaped an iconic voice in global feminism. Covering her life in Nasser’s then...

'A first-rate biography of the man, the writer and the lover' DAVID HOCKNEYAn engrossing new biography of the man whose writings about 1930s Berlin made him famous. From the editor of Isherwood’s diaries and letters.Christopher Isherwood rejected the...

In A Daughter of Isis, Nawal El Saadawi, author of Woman at Point Zero and one of the Arab world’s greatest writers, tells the story of the formative years which shaped an iconic voice in global feminism. In poignant and moving prose we learn about her...

Winner of the Crime Fest HRF Keating Award 'Not merely the conclusive homage to a compulsively fascinating character, but an insightful study into the biographical process itself' Nicholas Shakespeare 'Now that he is dead, we can know him better.'...

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340-1400) is celebrated as the father of English. Demonstrating for the first time that the English language had greatness and legitimacy, Chaucer's role in the rise of England's self-identity was immense. Yet there was more to...

Known internationally for his Japanese-style poetry, Lenard D. Moore (b. 1958) has published eight poetry collections over the course of his career. Moore has distinguished himself especially in such forms as jazz poetry, haiku, tanka, renga, sequence,...

Known internationally for his Japanese-style poetry, Lenard D. Moore (b. 1958) has published eight poetry collections over the course of his career. Moore has distinguished himself especially in such forms as jazz poetry, haiku, tanka, renga, sequence,...

Don Paterson is one of our most acclaimed contemporary poets, possessed of “an infinite sensitivity to the world” (Zadie Smith). But his current standing gives few hints of his hilariously misspent youth. An indifferent student prone to obsessions (with...

A moving exploration of the life and work of the celebrated American writer, blending biography and memoir with literary criticism. Since James Baldwin’s death in 1987, his writing – including The Fire Next Time, one of the manifestoes of the Civil...

'Textured literary portraits of the masculine mind and body'Raymond Antrobus, author of The PerseveranceIn October 1960, James Baldwin and John Cheever spoke on a panel together at San Francisco State College. The troubled state of American society was...

This concise biography of Dylan Thomas incorporates the most recent research, challenging the legend of the dissolute bard to reveal a diligent, professional writer, author of some of the century’s greatest lyric poetry as well as short stories,...

As a young man Fernando Pessoa wrote ‘be plural like the universe’. Staying true to this, he went on to invent over 100 fictional alter-egos, which he called heteronyms. This philosophical biography navigates Pessoa’s early days in Lisbon and South...

A collection of rare (many never before published) intimate photographs of the Fitzgeralds.Book InformationISBN 9780817321796Author Shawn Sudia-SkehanFormat HardbackPage Count 352Imprint The University of Alabama PressPublisher The University of Alabama...

In the Future of Yesterday offers a refreshing approach to the life and work of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig and delves into his considerable contribution to world literature, rooted in the Austro-Jewish tradition. His privileged social background saw...

Ronald Blythe has been called the finest rural historian of our times and one of England's greatest country writers. He spent his entire life - over 100 years of it - living in and around Suffolk, and was best known for his bestselling fictionalised...

A long-awaited collection of superb and distinctive essays moving between Ireland and the Balkans, often considering parallels between Belfast and Sarajevo in such well-known work as “A Week in Sarajevo”, “Weather Report: Good Friday Week, 1998”,...

Since her death, Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) has become an endless source of fascination for a wide audience ranging from readers of The Bell Jar, her semiautobiographical novel, to her groundbreaking poetry as exemplified by Ariel. Beyond her writing,...

To celebrate the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth, Lucy Worsley has written a new Introduction to her Sunday Times Bestselling biography - the book that leads us into the rooms from which our best-loved novelist quietly changed the world.This...

After arriving in London just before the Second World War as a penniless and friendless Austrian-Jewish refugee, George Weidenfeld went on to transform not only the world of publishing but the culture of ideas. The books that he published include...

Hemingway’s passion was writing—he was inspired by a lifetime of daring adventures and encouraged by the many women in his life. He nurtured his creativity by purposely seeking dangerous situations to test his own levels of courage and to create literary...

Oxford thought it was at war. And then it was. After the horrors of the First World War, Oxford looked like an Arcadia - a dream world - from which pain could be shut out. Soldiers arrived with pictures of the university fully formed in their heads, and...