Literary Figures

Thomas Wyatt (1503?-1542) was the first modern voice in English poetry. His poetry holds a mirror to the secret, capricious world of Henry VIII's court, and alludes darkly to events which it might be death to describe. In the Tower, twice, Wyatt was...

James Joyce is one of the greatest writers in English. His first book, A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man laid down the template for the Coming of Age novel, while his collection of short stories, Dubliners, is of perennial interest. His great...

A unique testimony to modern literature's most celebrated and enduring marriage.'I first saw Harold across a crowded room, but it was lunchtime, not some enchanted evening, and we did not speak.'When Antonia Fraser met Harold Pinter she was a celebrated...

This first full-length biography of the Nobel Laureate to appear in a quarter century explores John Steinbeck's long apprenticeship as a writer struggling through the depths of the Great Depression, and his rise to greatness with masterpieces such as The...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781905512331Author Bernard KopsFormat PaperbackPage Count 244Imprint Five Leaves PublicationsPublisher Five Leaves Publications

'I don't believe in God, but I miss Him.' Julian Barnes' new book is, among many things, a family memoir, an exchange with his philosopher brother, a meditation on mortality and the fear of death, a celebration of art, an argument with and about God, and...

The definitive and revealing biography of the author of The Secret Garden. Frances Hodgson Burnett's favourite theme in her fiction was the reversal of fortune, and she herself knew extremes of poverty and wealth. Born in Manchester in 1849, she...

William Henry Davies was born in a pub and learnt early in life to rely on his wits and his fists - and to drink. Around the turn of the century, when he was twenty-two, his restless spirit of adventure led him to set off for America, and he worked...

The life of Siegfried Sassoon has been recorded and interpreted in literature and film for over half a century. He is one of the great figures of the First World War, and Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man and Memoirs of an Infantry Officer are still widely...

In Living to Tell the Tale Gabriel Garcia Marquez - winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature and author of One Hundred Years of Solitude - recounts his personal experience of returning to the house in which he grew up and the memories that this...

_______________ 'One of the most inventive, original and disturbing writers of her generation' - Daily Telegraph 'Diski does not do linear, or normal, or boring ... In Gratitude amounts to the inner monologue of a highly intelligent, furiously...

*A NEW STATESMAN AND THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR**WINNER OF THE TONY LOTHIAN PRIZE*'Interesting women have secrets. They also ought to have sisters.'From the beginning of their lives, the Olivier sisters stood out: surprisingly emancipated, strikingly...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780544657496Author Jacques P pinFormat PaperbackPage Count 352Imprint Harvest PublicationsPublisher Harvest PublicationsWeight(grams) 318gDimensions(mm)...

Widely regarded as the first modern autobiography, The Confessions is an astonishing work of acute psychological insight. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) argued passionately against the inequality he believed to be intrinsic to civilized society. In his...

'A wonderful memoir, written with great linguistic brio. Candid, shrewd and moving - a classic of its kind,' William BoydHoward Jacobson's funny, revealing and tender memoir of his path to becoming a writer.It's my theory that only the unhappy, the...

BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCA INTRODUCED BY ALISON LIGHT'The genuine, thoughtful voice of a woman whose works have been loved by millions' NEW YORK TIMES'Daphne du Maurier has no equal' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Du Maurier created a scale by which modern...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781611806892Author Matsuo BashoFormat PaperbackPage Count 272Imprint Shambhala Publications IncPublisher Shambhala Publications Inc

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781906841591Author Dorothy K. HaynesFormat PaperbackPage Count 240Imprint Association for Scottish Literary StudiesPublisher Association for Scottish...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781583228555Author Annie ErnauxFormat PaperbackPage Count 62Imprint Seven Stories Press,U.S.Publisher Seven Stories Press,U.S.Weight(grams) 90g

"Affectionate and informative, Unearthing the Secret Garden is not unlike a garden itself, with its smooth lawns of prose and striking shows of illustration and photography." -The Wall Street JournalNew York Times bestselling author Marta McDowell has...

The 1937 Sequel to THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B TOKLAS, is Stein's account of her triumphant return to the U.S, and a meditation of the meaning of identity, success and America. I used to be fond of saying that America was a land of failure. Most of the...

'If a thing loves, it is infinite' William BlakeA short, impassioned argument for why the visionary artist William Blake is important in the twenty-first centuryThe visionary poet and painter William Blake is a constant presence throughout contemporary...

A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR. 'Matthew Dennison skilfully covers the facts, producing a vivid impression of this strange, shy, awkward figure. The result is a highly readable book' Literary Review. 'A haunting new biography... A compelling account of...

"Ex-Friends" is filled with brilliant portraits of some of the cultural icons who defined our time. While it has some of the elements of a personal diary, it is also a journal de combat describing the intellectual and social turbulence of the 60s and 70s...

Kafka's letters to Felice Bauer were written between 1912 and 1917, during which time they were twice engaged to be married. This complex relationship, which coincided with a period of great productivity for Kafka, gave him both hope and strength, but...

Revered across the globe as an author of compelling novels, journalism and essays that came to define the twentieth century, George Orwell was an unmatched political visionary, shining a light on the insidious nature of propaganda. Yet this chronicler of...

From New York Times bestselling author Amy Tan, a memoir on her life as a writer, her childhood and the symbiotic relationship between fiction and emotional memory. In Where the Past Begins, bestselling author of The...

Byron, more than any other poet, has come to personify the poet as rebel; imaginative and lawless, reaching beyond race, creed or frontier, his notorious flaws redeemed by a magnetism and ultimately a heroism that by ending in tragedy raised it and him...

'I seem to have banged on this year rather more than usual. I make no apology for that, nor am I nervous that it will it make a jot of difference. I shall still be thought to be kindly, cosy and essentially harmless. I am in the pigeon-hole marked 'no...

Richard Holmes's great work of biographical exploration, published alongside its sister volume 'Sidetracks'. In 1985, Richard Holmes published a small book of essays called Footsteps and the writing of biography was changed forever. A daring...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2014 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION The definitive biography of America's most impassioned and lyrical twentieth-century playwright from acclaimed theatre critic John Lahr 'A masterpiece about a genius' Helen Mirren ...

'A daring and mesmerizing twist on the art of biography' - Douglas Smith, author of Rasputin: The Biography 'Anyone who loves [Dostoevsky's] novels will be fascinated by this book' - Sue Prideaux, author of I Am Dynamite! A Life of Friedrich...

Amid the flames of the culture wars, politicians have taken up arms over controls on literary culture, spurred on in part by universities 'triggering' canonical texts. Jonathan Swift's 'Battle of the Books' has flared up again. But is 'triggering' utter...

A brilliant companion piece to Wide Sargasso Sea, this is Jean Rhys's beautifully written, bitter-sweet autobiography, covering her chequered early years in Dominica, England and Paris.Jean Rhys wrote this autobiography in her old age, now the celebrated...

'A delight . . . a glorious, witty and life-affirming ragbag of autobiography, cultural commentary and hard-won wisdom.' ANDREW TAYLOR, author of The Shadows of London'Perceptive, wise and illuminating . . . an unmissable farewell.' Barry Forshaw,...

The Snows of Yesteryear (1989) is Gregor von Rezzori's haunting evocation of his childhood in Czernowitz, in present-day Ukraine. Growing up after the First World War, Rezzori portrays a twilit world suspended between the dying ways of an imperial past...

The prize-winning biography of Wordsworth's beloved sister, champion, muse who was at the heart of the Romantic movement in Britain - reissued to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Dorothy's birth.'Genius ... Its own kind of heaven.' New York Times 'A...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780679781264Author Anatole BroyardFormat PaperbackPage Count 160Imprint Random House USA IncPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 176gDimensions(mm)...

In Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, one of the towering figures of English literature is revealed with unparalleled immediacy and originality, in a biography to which we owe much of our knowledge of the man himself. Through a series of richly detailed...

Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) has become the most popular Russian writer of the twentieth century, even though his works were banned for decades after his death due to the repressive Soviet censorship of literature. His great novel, The Master and...