Literary Figures

Richard Wright's memoir of his childhood as a young black boy in the American south of the 1920s and 30s is a stark depiction of African-American life and a powerful exploration of racial tension.'A compelling indictment of life in the Deep South between...

From the teenager in provincial Russia in 1875 to his premature death in Germany in 1904, Chekhov wrote over 4,500 letters to a range of correspondents, including family and friends, his publisher and fellow writers - not to mention actresses. These...

"And I? May I say nothing, my lord?" With these words, Oscar Wilde's courtroom trials came to a close. The lord in question, High Court justice Sir Alfred Wills, sent Wilde to the cells, sentenced to two years in prison with hard labor for the crime of...

He wrote one of the most quintessentially English books, yet Kenneth Grahame (1859 -1932) was a Scot. He was four years old when his mother died and his father became an alcoholic, so Kenneth grew up with his grandmother who lived on the banks of the...

Unravel the history, themes, and language of Shakespeare's plays, poems, and sonnets with this beautifully illustrated guide to his life and works.Comedy and romance, history, and tragedy, Shakespeare's canon has it all. Some 400 years after they were...

Volumes have been written by and about Patrick Leigh Fermor, but his wife Joan is almost entirely absent from their pages. Now Simon Fenwick, the first archivist to see the Leigh Fermor papers, reveals a woman hitherto only fleetingly glimpsed. A...

'Hilarious, subversive, sharp without being lethal, and loving without an ounce of sentiment, Shirley Jackson's more-or-less autobiographical account of life as a mother of four and faculty wife (and brilliant writer) is an eternal, comic joy' Amy...

An intimate exploration of the life, craft, and legacy of one of the most revered and influential writers, an artist who continues to inspire fans and creatives to cultivate practices of deep attention, rigourous interrogation and beautiful...

*THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*'A simply wonderful book' PHILIPPE SANDS'Begin Again is that rare thing: an instant classic' PANKAJ MISHRA'Incredibly moving and stirring' DIANA EVANSAmerica is at a crossroads.Drawing insight and inspiration from Baldwin's...

Kate Grenville's The Secret River was one of the most loved novels of 2006. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and awarded the Commonwealth Writer's Prize, the story of William Thornhill and his journey from London to the other side of the world has moved...

THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING MEMOIR OF SPY-WRITING LEGEND JOHN LE CARRE'As recognizable a writer as Dickens or Austen' Financial TimesFrom his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War to a career as a writer, John le Carre has...

One of Ireland's greatest contemporary writers turns her attention to one of the country's greatest novelists: James Joyce and his relationship with Nora Barnacle - in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the iconic classic ULYSSES.'Both Joyce and...

"Louis-Ferdinand Celine was one of the most innovative novelists of the twentieth century, and his influence both in his native France and beyond remains huge. This book sheds light on Celine's groundbreaking novels, which drew extensively on his complex...

'Utterly engaging.' - Sunday TimesFrom her first life-changing solo trip to Australia as a young graduate, Rosita Boland was enthralled by travel. In the last thirty years she has visited some of the most remote parts of the globe carrying little more...

_________________________The perfect accompaniment to the definitive new editions of Georgette Heyer's celebrated novels that are currently being reissued.A remarkable biography of one of Britain's best-loved and best-selling novelists, 'the queen of...

David Gilmour's biography of Giuseppe di Lampedusa unearths the life story of the creator of "The Leopard", one of the great novels of the twentieth century. A book whose imagery, once tasted, haunts the reader forever. "The Leopard" describes the golden...

Virginia Woolf, figurehead of the Bloomsbury Group and an innovative writer whose experimental style and lyrical prose ensured her position as one of the most influential of modern novelists, was also firmly anchored in the reality of the houses she...

The extraordinary life and times of Marcel Proust, one of the greatest literary voices of the twentieth century, by "Proust's definitive biographer" (Harold Bloom) Based on a wealth of letters, memoirs, workbooks, and manuscripts unavailable before, the...

A formally audacious and deeply moving memoir in three timeframes that confronts the defining trauma of the twentieth century, and its effects on a father and son. In 1939, Jonathan Lichtenstein's father Hans escaped Nazi-occupied Berlin as a child...

Flush was an English cocker spaniel who belonged to the nineteenth-century poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Virginia Woolf learned of him from the love letters Elizabeth wrote to her future husband, fellow poet Robert Browning, and found 'the figure of...

Granny worked so hard at my rearing. She was a frustrated ladysmith and I was her last chance...This is the story of my years on her anvil. Whether she succeeded in making a lady out of me is for you to decide, but I will say one thing in my own favour...

'A woman's defiant fight to write.' ObserverBeing categorised as black and female does not constrain my writing. Writing assures me that I am more the merely blackness and femaleness. Writing assures me I am.This paradigm shifting essay collection weaves...

This is a biography of a book: the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays printed in 1623 and known as the First Folio. It begins with the story of its first purchaser in London in December 1623, and goes on to explore the ways people have...

As an internationally bestselling phenomenon and queen of the Regency Romance, Georgette Heyer is one of the most beloved historical novelists of our time. She's written more than fifty novels - romances, detective stories and contemporary works of...

The Amazing Spider-Man. The Incredible Hulk. The Invincible Iron Man. Black Panther. These are just a few of the iconic superheroes to emerge from the mind of Stan Lee. From the mean streets of Depression-era New York City to recipient of the...

'Making Darkness Light is an illumination' Adam Phillips'His sympathetic yet challenging account will undoubtedly win Milton new readers - and for that a chorus of Hallelujahs' SpectatorFor most of us John Milton has been consigned to the dusty pantheon...

Scribners tells the inside story of five generations--over 150 years--at the legendary publishing house of Charles Scribner's Sons, beginning with its founding in an unused chapel in downtown New York through its golden era on Fifth Avenue above the...

'Every generalisation that we settled forty years ago, is abandoned' As a journalist, historian and novelist born into a family that included two past presidents of the United States, Henry Adams was constantly focused on the American experiment. An...

The idea of place runs like a river through the life and works of the poet and playwright W.B. Yeats. This book focuses on his time in Dublin, London, Sligo and elsewhere in the west of Ireland, embracing the homes, landscapes and people that impacted...

_We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the Author_.' (John Keats to J.H. Reynolds, Teignmouth May 1818) John Keats is one of Britain's best-known and most-loved poets. Despite dying in Rome in 1821, at...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781635901702Author Mathieu LindonFormat PaperbackPage Count 160Imprint Semiotext (E)Publisher Semiotext (E)

'A meditation on race, and class, and grief ... Uplifting, but just wrenching' BARACK OBAMA ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2020 AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE ANISFIELD-WOLF BOOK AWARD ...

The second volume of the remarkable autobiography of Arthur Koestler, author of Darkness at Noon.Taken together, Arthur Koestler's volumes of autobiography constitute an unrivalled study of a twentieth-century life. The Invisible Writing picks up where...

A groundbreaking biography of Milton’s formative years that provides a new account of the poet’s political radicalizationJohn Milton (1608–1674) has a unique claim on literary and intellectual history as the author of both Paradise Lost, the greatest...

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in BiographyA double portrait of two of America's most influential writers that reveals the surprising connections between them-and their uncanny relevance to our age of crisisUp from the Depths tells...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781681371627Author Jamey GambrellFormat PaperbackPage Count 280Imprint The New York Review of Books, IncPublisher The New York Review of Books,...

'Sympathetic and wonderfully perceptive . . . a heartbreaking read'NICK COHEN, Critic'Wise, witty and empathetic . . . outstanding'JIM CRACE'A fascinating treatment of the age-old problem of writers and drink which displays the same subtle qualities as...

Hugo and Locus Award FinalistAn Economist Best Book of the YearA Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Best Book of 2018"An amazing and engrossing history...Insightful, entertaining, and compulsively readable." - George R. R. MartinAstounding is the landmark...

First published to celebrate Faber's 90th anniversary, this is the story of one of the world's greatest publishing houses - a delight for all readers who are curious about the business of writing.'A striking drama.'SUNDAY TIMES'Never less than...

National Geographic Traveller's the best books on European cities, 2019In the autumn of 1948 Hemingway was approaching fifty and hadn't published a novel in nearly a decade. He travelled for the first time to Venice and there, at a duck shoot in the...