Literary Figures

During a 1960 interview, East German writer Christa Wolf was asked a curious question: would she describe in detail what she did on September 27th? Fascinated by considering the significance of a single day over many years, Wolf began keeping a detailed...

In Edge of the Orison the visionary Iain Sinclair walks in the steps of poet John Clare.In 1841 the poet John Clare fled an asylum in Epping Forest and walked eighty miles to his home in Northborough. He was searching for his lost love, Mary Joyce - a...

Through the novels of England's foremost woman writer, we explore the Regency world at the time of the Napoleonic wars, its manners, fashion and style, pastimes and entertainments. Jane Austen - loved now by a huge audience, thanks partly to modern-day...

'With this meticulously researched biography, we don't so much move closer as move in with Gunn and shadow him through his life . . . Gunn's life is chronicled beautifully here.' Andrew McMillan, Literary Review'A consummately researched, intelligent and...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781912916542Author Charlotte PeacockFormat PaperbackPage Count 400Imprint Galileo PublishersPublisher Galileo Publishers

Discover the life of one of the twentieth century's most significant and notorious war correspondents, and the third wife of Ernest Hemingway.Martha Gellhorn's journalism tracks many of the flashpoints of the twentieth century; as a young woman she...

Short and oddly built, with a head too big for his body, extremely short-sighted, unable to stay still, dressed in colourful clothes, Wilkie Collins looked distinctly strange. But he was none the less a charmer, befriended by the great, loved by...

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...

Hemingway's captivating memoir of living in Paris during the twenties.'If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast'Hemingway's memories of...

'I have read all W. Scott's novels at least fifty times,' wrote Byron. '...grand work. Scotch Fielding, as well as great English poet - wonderful man! I long to get drunk with him.' A. N. Wilson's subtle, entertaining and frequently provocative...

'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...

In Journey Through a Small Planet (1972), the writer Emanuel Litvinoff recalls his working-class Jewish childhood in the East End of London: a small cluster of streets right next to the city, but worlds apart in culture and spirit. With vivid intensity...

* TOLKIEN * Now a major motion picture Acclaimed as 'the best book about Tolkien', this award-winning biography explores J.R.R. Tolkien's wartime experiences and their impact on his life and his writing of The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings...

**Nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biography**This celebration of the woman who took us to the heights of a secluded attic and the depths of our own dark psyches reveals an intimate portrait of the famously private V.C. Andrews-featuring...

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...

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BOOK AWARDS 2020*'A bravura performance, highly entertaining' Evening StandardThe Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending takes us on a rich, witty tour of Belle Epoque Paris, via the life story of the pioneering...

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 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...

Andrew Young was one of the most original, inventive and paradoxical poets of the twentieth-century. C.S. Lewis called him, 'A modern Marvell and a modern marvel', and Philip Larkin remarked that, 'His works are in no danger of being forgotten'. Regarded...

Questing was Sherlock Holmes’s business. He famously adopted the latest forensic techniques, channelled the Victorian passion for enquiry, kept abreast of the key scientific breakthroughs of his age, and conducted his investigations in an enigmatic and...

A SPECTATOR, NEW STATESMAN AND THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 'The best biography I have read in years' Philippe Sands 'Spectacular' Observer 'A remarkable portrait' Guardian W. G. Sebald was one of the most extraordinary and influential writers of...

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...

'Paling's deftly drawn vignettes are frequently funny, sometimes sad and occasionally troubling . . . Borrow a copy from your local library, if you still have one. Better yet, buy it' Neil Armstrong, Mail on Sunday'Not only was I captivated by Paling's...

John Took provides an entirely original view of one of the most important poets and thinkers in all of Western literature, Dante Alighieri. The year 2021 marks the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri, a poet who, as T. S. Eliot put it,...

From the very first book publication in 1920 to the upcoming film release of Death on the Nile, this investigation into Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot celebrates a century of probably the world's favourite fictional detective. ...

'Enlightening, moving' SIR IAN MCKELLEN From the acclaimed and bestselling biographer Jonathan Bate, a luminous new exploration of Shakespeare and how his themes can untangle comedy and tragedy, learning and loving in our modern...

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...

GUARDIAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014No marriage of a major twentieth-century writer lasted longer than Vladimir Nabokov's. Vera Slonim shared his delight at the enchantment of life's trifles and literature's treasures, and he rated her as having the best and...

The Arms of the Infinite takes the reader inside the minds of author Christopher Barker's parents, writer Elizabeth Smart (By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept) and poet George Barker. From their first fateful meeting and subsequent elopement,...

The definitive biography of the poet who was almost as notorious for his 'rock 'n' roll' lifestyle as his artistic workDylan Thomas was a romantic and controversial figure; a poet who lived to excess and died young. An inventive genius with a gift for...

The definitive biography of the poet who was almost as notorious for his 'rock 'n' roll' lifestyle as his artistic workDylan Thomas was a romantic and controversial figure; a poet who lived to excess and died young. An inventive genius with a gift for...

'During the Tang dynasty, the Chinese artist Wu Tao-tzu was one day standing looking at a mural he had just completed. Suddenly, he clapped his hands and the temple gate opened. He went into his work and the gates closed behind him.' Thus begins Sven...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781590172469Author Gregor Von RezzoriFormat PaperbackPage Count 320Imprint NYRB ClassicsPublisher The New York Review of Books, IncWeight(grams)...

*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,...

'He was "not of an age, but for all time".' (Shakespeare's contemporary Ben Jonson) No writer, before or since, has matched Shakespeare in terms of influence, critical acclaim or popular success. His genius lay in his sheer dramatic skill, his powerful...

'You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else...

'The best thing he's ever written . . . I loved it' ObserverMelvyn Bragg's first ever memoir - an elegiac, intimate account of growing up in post-war Cumbria, which lyrically evokes a vanished world.In this captivating memoir, Melvyn Bragg recalls...

A dazzling biography of two interwoven, tragic lives: John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald. 'Highly engaging ... Go now, read this book' THE TIMES 'For awhile after you quit Keats,' Fitzgerald once wrote,...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE CRIMEFEST HRF KEATING AWARD A Times Best Literature Book of the Year 2023 A Financial Times Book of the Year 2023 A Spectator Book of the Year 2023 A Daily Express Best Book of 2023 'A fascinating, revelatory appendix .....

'One day there is life . . . And then, suddenly, it happens there is death.'So begins Paul Auster's moving and personal meditation on fatherhood, The Invention of Solitude. The first section, 'Portrait of an Invisible Man', reveals Auster's memories and...