Literary Figures

From a master biographer and leading scholar of eighteenth-century literature comes an award-winning new portrait of the greatest satirist in the English language Jonathan Swift is best remembered today as the author of Gulliver's Travels, the satiric...

By the author who inspired Wes Anderson's 2014 film, The Grand Budapest HotelWritten as both a recollection of the past and a warning for future generations, The World of Yesterday recalls the golden age of literary Vienna-its seeming permanence, its...

"I don't regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do anything one does. I lived on honeycomb." Oscar Wilde Although it is over 120 years since his infamous trial for indecency, Oscar Wilde has never held...

Nevil Shute was a writer whose books were frequently looked down on by literary critics and yet when he died in 1960 he was one of the best selling novelists of his day. Today, books such as A Town Like Alice and On the Beach continue to attract new...

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Celebrated novelist Daphne Du Maurier and her sisters, eclipsed by her fame, are revealed in all their surprising complexity in this riveting new biography. The middle sister in a famous artistic dynasty, Daphne du Maurier is one of the master...

Merlin, the wizard of Arthurian legend, has been a source of enduring fascination for centuries. In this authoritative, entertaining, and generously illustrated book, Stephen Knight traces the myth of Merlin back to its earliest roots in the early Welsh...

An 365-day anthology of readings from one of the most influential writers of all time, George MacDonald, compiled by CS Lewis himself. MacDonald was a major Christian writer of the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries. He influenced...

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Orwell has become one of the most potent and symbolic figures in western political thought. Even the adjective 'Orwellian' is now a byword for a particular way of thinking about life, literature and language yet, despite this iconic status, the man who...

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Pronounced guilty of libel and sentenced to a year in prison, novelist Emile Zola went on the run. Zola's crime had been to defend a wrongly convicted man, in what became known as the Dreyfus Affair. Fleeing the French state with just hours to spare he...

Part memoir, part detective story, part untold history of museums - this is a fascinating and moving family story. Museum expert Rachel Morris had been ignoring the boxes under her bed for decades. When she finally opened them, an entire bohemian family...

At once a classic of travel literature and a penetrating portrait of a "sensibility on tour," Flaubert in Egypt wonderfully captures the young writer's impressions during his 1849 voyages. Using diaries, letters, travel notes, and the evidence of...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781787373877Author W H DaviesFormat PaperbackPage Count 120Imprint Word to the WisePublisher Word to the WiseWeight(grams) 172gDimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm...

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In 1612 Shakespeare gave evidence at the Court of Requests in Westminster - it is the only occasion his spoken words are recorded. The case seems routine - a dispute over an unpaid marriage-dowry - but it opens up an unexpected window into the...

Despite her family's ailing finances, Diana Athill's childhood - spent in a lovely house in Norfolk - was blissful. In 1932, she fell in love with Paul: an undergraduate who tutored her younger brother. Within several years, she had moved to Oxford to...

Bowen's Court describes the history of one Anglo-Irish family in County Cork from the Cromwellian settlement until 1959, when Elizabeth Bowen was forced to sell the family house she loved. Bowen reviews ten generations of her family, representatives of...

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Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780156027915Author Virginia WoolfFormat PaperbackPage Count 368Imprint Mariner Books ClassicsPublisher Mariner Books ClassicsWeight(grams)...

Something extraordinary happened to the UK literary scene in the 1980s. In the space of eight years, a generation of young British writers took the literary novel into new realms of setting, subject matter and style, challenging - and almost eclipsing -...

Published simultaneously in Britain and America to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the death of T. S. Eliot, this major biography traces the life of the twentieth century's most important poet from his childhood in the ragtime city of St Louis right up...

"I began writing about power because I had so little," Octavia E. Butler once said. Butler's life as an African American woman--an alien in American society and among science fiction writers--informed the powerful works that earned her an ardent...

"I have all my life regretted that I did not keep a regular (journal). I have myself lost recollection of much that was interesting and I have deprived my family and the public of some curious information by not carrying this resolution into effect."...

The Finnish-Swedish writer and artist Tove Jansson achieved worldwide fame as the creator of the Moomin stories, written between 1945 and 1970 and still in print in more than twenty languages. However, the Moomins were only a part of her prodigious...

A harrowing yet uplifting account of Stalin's persecution of the Russian intelligentsia in the 1930s, and of one man - Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938), whose poetry, in spite of the unfolding tragedy of his life, preserved its unique creative gaiety...

One of Smithsonian magazine's Best Books About Travel of 2018The Landscapes of Anne of Green Gables explores L. M. Montgomery's deep connection to the landscapes of Prince Edward Island that inspired her to write the beloved Anne of Green Gables series...

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The book opens on the day Hemingway's close friend Pop, a legendary hunter, leaves him in charge of the camp. Tensions have heightened among the various tribes and news arrives of a potential attack on the hunters, forcing Hemingway not only to take on...

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Janet Morgan's definitive and authorised biography of Agatha Christie, with a new retrospective foreword by the author. Agatha Christie (1890-1976), the world's bestselling author, is a public institution. Her creations, Hercule Poirot and...

Jerry Stahl's seminal memoir of drug addiction and a career in Hollywood, Permanent Midnight is a classic along the lines of Hubert Selby, Jr.'s Last Exit to Brooklyn. Illuminating the self-loathing and self-destruction of an addict's inner life,...

In 1951 the Australian writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston left grey, post-war London for Greece. Settling first on the tiny island of Kalymnos, then Hydra, their plan was to live simply and focus on their writing The result is Charmian Clift's...

A luminous memoir of post-war childhood, adventure and loss on the banks of the Nile. 'Wonderful - a brave, inventive, touching distillation of memory and imagination' JENNY UGLOW Inventory of a Life...

A fresh English translation of five Alberti works that illuminate new aspects of the literary aims and development of the first "Renaissance man."Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) was one of the most famous figures of the Italian Renaissance. His...

The story of the group of extraordinary eighteenth-century writers, artists, and thinkers who gathered weekly at a London tavernNamed one of the 10 Best Books of 2019 by the New York Times Book Review * A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2019 * A Kirkus...

With a new introduction by JESMYN WARD'Warm, witty, imaginative . . . A rich and winning book' NEW YORKER 'Devilishly funny and academically solid: delicious mixture' MAYA ANGELOU'One of the greatest writers of our time' TONI MORRISONFirst published in...

Renowned American artist Anne Truitt kept this illuminating and inspiring journal over a period of seven years, determined to come to terms with the forces that shaped her art and life. Within its beautifully written pages, you will come to know a woman...