Literary Figures

An intimate study of three of Ireland's greatest writers from one of its best-loved contemporary voices, Colm Toibin__________________In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know Colm Toibin takes three of Ireland's greatest writers - Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and James...

The first book to publish the entirety of Franz Kafka's graphic output, including more than 100 newly discovered drawings "The figures he drew stand alone as stories in themselves."-Lauren Christensen, New York Times Book Review "A sensational new book...

Completed in 1933, but not published until 1962, over twenty years after its author's death, "The Life of Monsieur de Moliere" charts the life of the French playwright, from humble beginnings to later theatrical triumphs and political controversies. The...

THE TELEGRAPH'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR SHORTLISTED FOR 2024 EDGAR ALLAN POE AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE H.R.F KEATING AWARD FOE BEST BIOGRAPHICAL/CRITICAL BOOK "As gripping and twisted as a James Ellroy novel." - Ian Rankin "A masterpiece of...

'To build up a future, you have to know the past.' Otto Frank, 1967 In late 1940s Amsterdam, when Otto Frank unwrapped his daughter Anne's diary with trembling hands and began to read the first pages, he discovered a side to his daughter that was as...

*One Dublin One Book choice for 2022* *Shortlisted for an Irish Book Award 2021* When Nora Barnacle, a twenty-year-old from Galway working as a maid at Finn's Hotel, meets young James Joyce on a summer's day in Dublin, she is instantly attracted to...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781590173213Author Henry David ThoreauFormat PaperbackPage Count 704Imprint NYRB ClassicsPublisher The New York Review of Books, IncWeight(grams)...

Poet's Corner is Malcolm Guite's delectable column that appears on the back page of the Church Times each week. This second collection brings together more than seventy columns created from little glimpses and reflections from all corners of the country,...

The second volume of the extraordinary life of the great music and literary icon Leonard Cohen, in the words of those who knew him best.Poet, novelist, singer-songwriter, artist, prophet, icon-there has never been a figure like Leonard Cohen. He was a...

From one of India's finest writers, thinkers and commentators, a memoir of a love affair with cricket. As a fan, player, writer, scholar, controversialist and administrator, Ramachandra Guha has spent a life with cricket. In this...

The final work of Nobel Prize-winning writer Gunter Grass - a witty and elegiac series of meditations on writing, growing old, and the world.Suddenly, in spite of the trials of old age, and with the end in sight, everything seems possible again: love...

The revealing of T. S. Eliot's hidden muse - Emily Hale, the Hyacinth Girl of the famous The Waste Land poem'Extraordinary... A rare work of sympathy and insight' Colm Toibin'Gordon sifts through the documents with her customary care and delicacy'...

'A marvel of clarity, fluency, and (Morris's favourite word in her final days) kindness.' The Sunday Times 'A measured and elegant biography that Morris aficionados will find fascinating.' The Times The first full account of a truly remarkable life. ...

A groundbreaking biography that recreates the cosmopolitan world in which a wine merchant's son became one of the most celebrated of all English poets More than any other canonical English writer, Geoffrey Chaucer lived and worked at the centre of...

He may live in Madrid but he continues to make front-page headlines. This is David Beckham's own story of his career to date, for Manchester United, Real Madrid and England, and of his childhood, family and private life. Featuring David's first full...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780805212662Author Franz KafkaFormat PaperbackPage Count 144Imprint Schocken BooksPublisher Schocken BooksWeight(grams) 136gDimensions(mm) 203mm * 131mm *...

Winner of the 1989 Whitbread Prize for Book of the Year, this is the first volume of Holmes's seminal two-part examination of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of Britain's greatest poets. 'Coleridge: Early Visions' is the first part of Holmes's...

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...

In mid to late March 1913, as the storm clouds of the Great War which was to claim his life gathered, Edward Thomas took a bicycle ride from Clapham to the Quantock Hills. The poet recorded his journey through his beloved South Country and his account...

It is the middle of the Swinging Sixties, and Clive James doesn't have much to show for it. May Week Was In June is the third hilarious, tender instalment of memoir from the iconic author, poet and broadcaster.'Nobody writes like Clive James' -...

'Machiavellian' can signify duplicity and amorality in politics, but Machiavelli himself is far more complex than this cliche. A high-ranking Florentine government official and prolific writer of hugely influential political, military and historical...

Binyavanga Wainaina tumbled through his middle-class Kenyan childhood out of kilter with the world around him.This world came to him as a chaos of loud and colourful sounds: the hair dryers at his mother's beauty parlour, black mamba bicycle bells,...

On childhood holidays to the western coast, Tim Winton's days followed a joyous rhythm. In the mornings, the sun and surf kept him outside, in the water. In the afternoons, as the horizon wobbled with mirages and the wind came in from the ocean, he was...

Cosmopolitan, richly intelligent, beautiful, questing - Shirley Hazzard's writing reflects her life. The acclaim it attracts is immeasurable.Brigitta Olubas tells the story of a girl from the suburbs of Sydney, Australia who fell early under the spell of...

'A scrupulous biography' Publishers Weekly 'Fresh, incisive, and uplifting' Kirkus 'If you want to know the real Baldwin, this is the book to read' Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk James Baldwin is an icon of liberation who created...

'A mellow, gentle read with a lot of words of wisdom' IndependentLet Dawn French guide you through the year with her witty and wise seasonal insights. __________Me You: Not A Diary is a pocket diary without the diary part. Or the pocket. It includes...

**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...

Unpublished for 90 years, Agatha Christie's extensive and evocative letters and photographs from her year-long round-the-world trip to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and America as part of the British trade mission for the...

As liberty and truth are increasingly challenged, the figures of Churchill and Orwell loom large. Exemplars of Britishness, they preserved individual freedom and democracy for the world through their far-sighted vision and inspired action, and cast a...

Erudite and entertaining in equal measure, Somewhere Becoming Rain is a love letter from the much-loved writer Clive James to one of the world's most cherished poets: Philip Larkin.'This is the finest critic of his generation on the best poet of his...

William Burroughs' work was dedicated to an assault upon language, traditional values and all agents of control. Produced at a time when he was at his most extreme and messianic, The Job lays out his abrasive, incisive, paranoiac, maddened and maddening...

The classic story of the relationship between Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, and a unique portrait of the Bloomsbury Group.'Vita and Harold have become part of our literature' OBSERVERThe marriage of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson was...

In 1888, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche moved to Turin. This would be the year in which he wrote three of his greatest works: Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, and Ecce Homo; it would also be his last year of writing. He suffered a debilitating...

This book is an intimate, fond and funny memoir of one of the greatest novelists of the last century. This colourful, personal, anecdotal, indiscreet and admiring memoir charts the course of Muriel Spark's life revealing her as she really was. Once, she...

The Experimentalists is a collective biography, capturing the life and times of the British experimental writers of the swinging 1960s. A decade of research, including as-yet unopened archives and interviews with the writers' colleagues, is brought...

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) always stood in the shadow of her lover and teacher, Jean-Paul Sartre, despite the fact that she was a brilliant writer and philosopher in her own right. Her monumental study "The Second Sex" made her a cult figure of the...

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...

From award-winning literary scholar Robert Alter, a masterful exploration of how Nabokov used artifice to evoke the dilemmas, pain, and exaltation of the human conditionAdmirers and detractors of Vladimir Nabokov have viewed him as an ingenious contriver...

Catherine Cookson is known and loved for her vibrant and earthy novels set in and around the North-East of England, past and present. Her autobiography makes plain how it is she knows her background and her characters so well.The Our Kate of the title is...

A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week It's as if they're made for each other. Two men, both falling, but holding each other up for a time. Ostend, 1936: the Belgian seaside town is playing host to a coterie of artists, intellectuals and madmen, who find...