Literary Figures

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

"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...

*Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2020**Winner of non-fiction book of the year at the Irish Book Awards*An extraordinarily intimate book of essays that chart the experiences that have made Sinead Gleeson the woman and the writer she is today,...

In Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard fixes her entrancing gaze and powerful sense of wonder on the natural world. Whether watching a sublime lunar eclipse or locking eyes with a wild weasel, Dillard captures the grand and miniature miracles of our...

An old pond;a frog jumps in:the sound of water - Basho This comprehensive introduction to Japan's best-loved haiku poets is the perfect book for anyone wanting to learn about haiku. Compiled and with commentary by renowned author and translator William...

An annotated selection of the letters of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay, from childhood through the last year of her life Throughout her life, Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote hundreds of letters, which together...

Written by his collateral descendant, sculptor Andrew Wordsworth, this insightful biography studies Wordsworth's poetry to understand more fully this deeply private and often enigmatic personality, and it observes the artist's life to better grasp the...

'The only transformation that interests me is a total transformation- however minute. I want the encounter with a person or a work of art to change everything.'Brazen, brilliant and deeply searing, Sontag's diaries wrestle with the profound - exploring...

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...

From the author of The Satanic Verses and Midnight's Children comes an unflinchingly honest and fiercely funny account of a life turned upside-down. On Valentine's Day, 1989, Salman Rushdie received a telephone call from a BBC journalist that would...

When, in 2000, the National Theatre published its poll of the hundred best plays of the 20th century, David Hare had written five of them. Yet he was born in 1947 into an anonymous suburban street in Hastings. It is a world he believes to be as...

'An absolute belter of a biography' MARINA HYDE A Times Literary Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2022 An LA Times Best Book of the Year 2022 An...

When Sofia Behrs married Count Leo Tolstoy, the author of "War and Peace", husband and wife regularly exchanged diaries covering the years from 1862 to 1910. Sofia's life was not an easy one: she idealized her husband, but was tormented by him; even her...

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...

By turns hilarious, insightful and tender, the voice of Clive James defined a generation of writers. His memoirs, amongst the best-loved and acclaimed by any writer, are now collected in two volumes: his Complete Unreliable Memoirs. This is Volume Two...

The first English language biography of the great European writer Joseph Roth, exploring his genius and his tragic life story, lived in the shadow of war. The brilliant, mercurial, self-mythologising novelist and journalist Joseph Roth, author of the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781848409286Author Grainne LyonsFormat PaperbackPage Count 248Imprint New Island BooksPublisher New Island BooksWeight(grams) 350gDimensions(mm) 198mm *...

'Against the white sand, the contours of my father's body were well defined, emphasized its existence in a world where everything was liquid, where the blue of the sea melted into the blue of the sky with nothing between. This independent existence was...

It's the start of a new year, so why not record your thoughts alongside Dawn's warm and witty observations. It's a brilliant way to pay-attention to and remember the days you're living through . . .'Beautiful, like Dawn, and stuffed full of goodies' JO...

'I defy you to read this book and come away with a mind unchanged' John Jeremiah Sullivan'Als has a serious claim to be regarded as the next James Baldwin' Observer'I see how we are all the same, that none of us are white women or black men; rather,...

A totally unique poetic treatise, La Vita Nuova is an elaborately and symbolically patterned selection of Dante's early poems, interspersed with his own incisive prose commentary.The poems themselves tell the story of his undying love for Beatrice, from...

A genius of literary suspense, known to millions as the author of the "The Lottery", Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) plumbed the cultural anxiety of postwar America better than anyone. Based on a wealth of previously undiscovered correspondence and dozens of...

Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of her close friend Charlotte Bronte was published in 1857 to immediate popular acclaim, and remains the most significant study of the enigmatic author who gave Jane Eyre the subtitle An Autobiography. It recounts Charlotte...

'This book is just about my favourite book of all time ... I'm not entirely convinced I could like somebody who didn't like this book ... it's funny and moving and gives you an insight into this extraordinary moment as the war is about to begin ... it's...

The enormous popular appeal of Philip Larkin's poetry has long been established; but oddly little is known to his admiring public about the personality behind the work.The Selected Letters will change this, throwing light on a more complex, and in many...

'Captures both Barbara and her writing so miraculously' JILLY COOPER Picked as a Book to Look Forward to in 2021 by the Guardian, The Times and the Observer A Radio 4 Book of the Week, April...

A rich feast of travel writing, literary essays and fascinating interviews from Sunday Times bestselling travel author Paul Theroux'Wonderful... Evidence of both the breadth of Theroux's interests and his skill in bringing them to life' Sunday Times...

Romanticism is where the modern age begins, and Hazlitt was its most articulate spokesman. No one else had the ability to see it whole; no one else knew so many of its politicians, poets, and philosophers. By interpreting it for his contemporaries, he...

The Forging of a Rebel is an unsurpassed account of Spanish history and society from early in the twentieth century through the cataclysmic events of the Spanish Civil War. Arturo Barea's masterpiece charts the author's coming-of-age in a bruised and...

'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...

*The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller*Rose Tremain (or Rosie as she was then) grew up in post-war London - a city still partly in ruins, where both food and affection were fiercely rationed. But when she is ten years old, everything changes. She loses her...

In our age of political divisions, this portrait of the women outsiders who took part in the Spanish Civil War asks questions of solidarity and resistance.'Glorious... so beautifully rendered, so powerful'ANNA FUNDER, author of WifedomIn the 1930s, women...

Previously published as Nujeen The story that is inspiring the world. Read about Nujeen who escaped the hell of war in Aleppo and travelled to Europe in a wheelchair. ...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 'I loved this book... An exhilarating romp through Orwell's life and times' Margaret Atwood 'Outside my work the thing I care most about is gardening' George Orwell In 1936 Orwell planted roses at his cottage...

A superb autobiography by one of the great literary figures of the twentieth century, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter offers an intimate picture of growing up in a bourgeois French family, rebelling as an adolescent against the conventional expectations of...

The autobiography of Cass Pennant is packed with amazing stories of a life lived on the edge of the law. In this thrilling book, he tells of how he saved World Boxing Champion Frank Bruno from a potentially vicious attack; how he was shot three times in...