Literary Figures

Passionate, independent-minded nonfiction from the international bestselling author of 'The Corrections'. Jonathan Franzen's 'Freedom' was the literary sensation of 2010, whilst 'The Corrections' was the best-loved and most written-about novel...

'A joy. Celebrates the real world and revels in its mad glory' Sue Townsend, Sunday Times_____________________________________All Points North is part-memoir and part-excursion. Charting the rugged and uneven terrain of a writer's formative years - ...

'A delightful book, full of amusing and charming stories' THE TIMES'Daphne du Maurier has no equal' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH'An intimate view of a creative personality . . . as richly evocative as any of her novels' LOS ANGELES TIMESIn Myself When Young, based...

** Chosen as a New Statesman, Financial Times, Observer and Sunday Times Book of the Year **A riveting account of the making of T. S. Eliot's celebrated poem The Waste Land on its centenary.'A rattling good story' Sunday Telegraph'A work of art' Times...

The story of Uwe Johnson, one of Germany's greatest and most-influential post-war writers, and how he came to live and work in Sheerness, Kent in the 1970s. In 1974, a strange man called "Charles" arrived in the small town of Sheerness on the Isle of...

The 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...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781681375878Author Lucille CliftonFormat PaperbackPage Count 96Imprint NYRB ClassicsPublisher The New York Review of Books, Inc

The third book in V. S. Naipaul's acclaimed Indian trilogy, with a preface by the author. India: A Million Mutinies Now is a truly perceptive work whose insights continue to inform travellers of all generations to India. Much has changed since V. S...

Federico Garcia Lorca is Spain's most famous writer, and an icon of its culture. He is the author of a series of innovative works that changed the face of Spanish poetry and drama. In this new biography Stephen Roberts seeks out the roots of the man and...

The Invisible Woman by Claire Tomalin is the acclaimed story of Nelly Ternan and Charles DickensWinner of the NCR Book Award, the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize'This is the story of someone who - almost - wasn't there; who...

Henry David Thoreau is considered one of the leading figures in early American literature, and Walden is without doubt his most influential book. Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold...

From the outset, Caroline Lamb had a rebellious nature. From childhood she grew increasingly troublesome, experimenting with sedatives like laudanum, and she had a special governess to control her. She also had a merciless wit and talent for mimicry. She...

The long-awaited autobiography of one of the world's greatest children's writers, and an empowering and inspiring account of a life in books.Malorie Blackman OBE is one of Britain's best loved and most widely-read writers. For over thirty years, her...

The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls trilogy begins in August 2019.I thought of life's many bounties, to have known the extremities of joy and sorrow, love, crossed love and unrequited love, success and failure, fame and...

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961) was one of the first writers of free verse in English, best known for her sparse Imagist poems. For over forty years she wrote poetry that resurrected forgotten ancient goddesses, and autobiographical prose that explored...

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...

Book of the Week on Radio 4, and in the Observer, Sunday Times, Daily Mail and The Week 'Riveting, and immaculately written' Sunday Telegraph 'A superb psychological study of a literary genius' Business Post 'A rounded picture... and gets to...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780998724645Author Paul HerronFormat PaperbackPage Count 104Imprint Sky Blue PressPublisher Sky Blue PressWeight(grams) 159gDimensions(mm) 224mm * 152mm *...

FINALIST: 2022 PULITZER PRIZE IN BIOGRAPHYA NEW STATESMAN AND SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021'A revelation. Such a revolutionary literary discovery seems unlikely to be on offer again. It's that good' Sunday Times 'A masterpiece of literary biography...

Margery Kempe. Aemilia Lanyer. Aphra Behn. Lady Mary. Jane Austen. Warned not to write - and certainly not to bite - these women put pen to paper anyway and wrote themselves into history. 'Smart, funny and highly readable... a tour de force.' A.L...

'A most impressive achievement' Michael Holroyd 'Enthralling' Sunday Times 'Masterly' Telegraph _______________________ 'The web of our Life is of mingled Yarn' - John Keats In Young Romantics Daisy Hay shatters the myth of the Romantic poet as a...

With a novelist's pen, Forster brings to life the fabled, romantic city of Alexander the Great, capital of Graeco-Roman Egypt, beacon of light and culture symbolised by the Pharos, where the doomed love affair of Antony and Cleopatra was played out and...

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...

These are Anthony Burgess's candid confessions: he was seduced at the age of nine by an older woman; whilst serving in Gibraltar in World War II he was thrown into jail on VE Day for calling Franco names; he once taught a group of Nazi socialites that...

The second instalment of his famed unreliable memoirs, Falling Towards England sees Clive James set sail for London - a long way from the acclaimed author, poet and broadcaster he would one day become . . .'A comic triumph' - Ian Hamilton, London Review...

Michael Gorra asks provocative questions in this historic portrait of William Faulkner and his world. He explores whether William Faulkner should still be read in this new century and asks what his works tell us about the legacy of slavery and the...

In 1918, the RAF was established as the world's first independent air force. To mark the 100th anniversary of its creation, Penguin are publishing the Centenary Collection, a series of six classic books highlighting the skill, heroism esprit de corps...

'Her story is intimate and revealing about what it is to smile and what it means when you can't' Cynthia NixonThe extraordinary story of one woman's ten-year odyssey that brought her physical, creative, emotional, and spiritual healing.With a play...

In this one-of-a-kind book, novelist and academic Nicholas Royle brings together two remarkably different creative figures: Enid Blyton and David Bowie. His exploration of their lives and work delves deeply into questions about the value of art, music...

After The Second World War, Czeslaw Milosz was exiled for many years from his home country of Poland. In Native Realm, he evokes that homeland and his years away from it; how it nurtured him and how its divisions and destruction shaped a generation...

'A titan of American letters. It's high time for Gellhorn to emerge from the shadows of twentieth-century literature into the bright light of mainstream recognition.' The Washington Post Book World. Before email, when long distance telephone calls...

'A wonderfully assured and utterly riveting biography that captures not only the much-maligned Machiavelli, but also the spirit of his time and place. A monumental achievement.' - Jessie Childs, author of God's Traitors.'A notorious fiend', 'generally...

Dickens was a landmark biography when first published in 1990. This specially edited shorter edition takes the reader into the life of one of the world's greatest writers.Here, Ackroyd attempts to peel away the mask of a man whose life was outwardly a...

A guide to writing fiction by the Booker Prize-winning author of Vernon God Little.Part biography, part reflection and part practical guide, Release the Bats explores the mysteries of why and how we tell stories, and the craft of writing fiction. DBC...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781911547310Author Natalia GinzburgFormat PaperbackPage Count 184Imprint Daunt BooksPublisher Daunt Books

In 1949, after years of nomadic existence, nine-year-old Aeronwy Thomas and her family arrived at the Boat House in Laugharne, a small village on the Welsh coast. Here her father, the poet Dylan Thomas and mother, Caitlin, hoped to find peace, a place to...

"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"...

Rimbaud was the original enfant terrible. A poetic genius, he destroyed all those who attempted to befriend him, most notoriously wrecking the marriage and sanity of the poet Verlaine. Having conquered the literary world of Paris, he abandoned France and...

'A sympathetic and perceptive account of a fine writer at a critical moment in our cultural life' KEN LOACHOn 27 May 1958, A Taste of Honey opened in a small fringe theatre in London. Written by a nineteen-year-old bus driver's daughter from Salford, the...

I took off my wedding ring - a gold band with half a line of 'Morning Song' by Sylvia Plath etched inside - and for weeks afterwards, my thumb would involuntarily reach across my palm for the warm bright circle that had gone. I didn't throw the ring into...