Literary Figures

A compelling personal introduction to the life and work of Nobel Prize-winning writer Czeslaw Milosz from his fellow Polish exile and acclaimed writer Eva HoffmanCzeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) was a giant of twentieth-century literature, not least because he...

Becoming Dickens tells the story of how an ambitious young Londoner became England's greatest novelist. In following the twists and turns of Charles Dickens's early career, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst examines a remarkable double transformation: in...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780593328088Author Laurence LeamerFormat HardbackPage Count 368Imprint G P Putnam's SonsPublisher Penguin Putnam IncWeight(grams) 550gDimensions(mm) 235mm *...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781642860894Author Linda Bostroem KnausgardFormat PaperbackPage Count 240Imprint World EditionsPublisher World Editions

Four popular novelists of the same generation each wrote a novel inspired by a holiday that the author spent in France. In the nineteen-fifties, Rumer Godden based The Greengage Summer on her recollections of her family's 1923 battlefield-tour manque in...

A fascinating journey through literary America over the last forty years, guided by one of the "most gifted chroniclers in the Western World" (The Times [London])A Penguin Classic"Sentence by sentence, page by page, Bellow is simply the best writer we...

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,...

An intimate yet frank biography of Gore Vidal, one of the most accomplished, visible and controversial American novelists and cultural figures of the past century. The product of thirty years of friendship and conversation, Jay Parini's biography probes...

'Poignant and fiercely intelligent, this is the best work of creative non-fiction I have read in years' FIONA MOZLEY'Profound, moving and courageous' NICHOLAS ALLEN, IRISH TIMESIn April 1931, modernist poet Hart Crane arrived in Mexico City. Between mood...

In 2010, Ted Geltner drove to Gainesville, Florida, to pay a visit to Harry Crews and ask the legendary author if he would be willing to be the subject of a literary biography. His health rapidly deteriorating, Crews told Geltner he was on board and...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780374528591Author Czeslaw MiloszFormat PaperbackPage Count 480Imprint Farrar, Straus & Giroux IncPublisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux IncWeight(grams)...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781560253754Author Jonathan AmesFormat PaperbackPage Count 256Imprint Thunder's Mouth PressPublisher Thunder's Mouth Press

One couple's inspiring memoir of healing a Rwandan village, raising a family near the old killing fields, and building a restaurant named Heaven.Newlyweds Josh and Alissa were at a party and received a challenge that shook them to the core: do you think...

Ngugi wa Thiong'o's powerful prison memoir begins half an hour before his release on 12 December 1978. A year earlier, he recalls, armed police arrived at his home and took him to Kenya's Kamiti Maximum Security Prison. There, Ngugi lives in a block...

While travelling in Calgary, Alberto Manguel was struck by how the novel he was reading seemed to reflect the world he was living in. An article in the daily paper would be suddenly illuminated by a passage in the novel; a long reflection would be...

Rather than resist the vast social and cultural changes sweeping Japan in the nineteenth century, the poet Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) instead incorporated new Western influences into his country's native haiku and tanka verse. By reinvigorating these...

Catherine Hogarth, who came from a cultured Scots family, married Charles Dickens in 1836, the same year he began serializing his first novel. Together they traveled widely, entertained frequently, and raised ten children. In 1858, the celebrated writer...

Hans Fallada was a drug addict, womanizer, alcoholic, jailbird and thief. Yet he was also one of the most extraordinary storytellers of the twentieth century, whose novels, including Alone in Berlin, portrayed ordinary people in terrible times with a...

One was the mother who bore him; three were women who adored him; one was the sister he slept with; one was his abused and sodomized wife; one was his legitimate daughter; one was the fruit of his incest; another was his friend Shelley's wife, who...

Part of the "Writers' Britain" series, first published in the 1940s. This work offers Graham Greene's evaluation of British drama, from its roots in the Mystery and Miracle plays of the market carnival through Shakespeare and the Restoration to the 20th...

The Vivien Eliot Papers is a groundbreaking new biography of Vivien Eliot, comprising two sections: her Life and her Papers. Based on a rich repository of primary evidence, much only recently uncovered, it corrects the accidental inaccuracies and...

A radical look at Jane Austen as you've never seen her - as a lover of farce, comic theatre and juvenilia. The Genius of Jane Austen celebrates Britain's favourite novelist 200 years after her death and explores why her books make such...

Winner of the 2019 Somerset Maugham Award'A great galloping joy of a book - funny, lyrical, fast paced, heart-warming - a delicious celebration of love and life' Rebecca Stott, author of In the Days of RainIn 1857, after two years of writing The Life of...

A vivid portrait of the man behind the writings, placing Orwell and his work at the centre of the current political landscape. One of the most enduringly popular and controversial writers of the twentieth century, George Orwell's work is as relevant...

"One of the Year's Best," Times Literary Supplement When a writer tracks down his literary hero, Graham Greene, who is living quietly on the shores of the Mediterranean, the author finds his new friend is every bit as complex as the fiction he's famous...

How does a writer compose a suicide note? This was not a question that the prize-winning novelist William Styron had ever contemplated before. In this true account of his depression, Styron describes an illness that reduced him from a successful writer...

Soon after its publication on 30 September 1868, Little Women became an enormous international bestseller. When Anne Boyd Rioux read it in her twenties, it had a powerful effect on her and through teaching it, she has seen its effect on many others. In...

Lady Diana Cooper had been famous from her earliest youth, the subject of gossip and adoration as the queen of the 'Coterie', an exclusive high society set. Her marriage to Duff Cooper, a rising political star, and her career on the stage and in early...

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...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780898708011Author Alice von HildebrandFormat PaperbackPage Count 340Imprint Ignatius PressPublisher Ignatius PressWeight(grams) 431g

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9789491780189Author Joe LunaFormat PaperbackPage Count 208Imprint The Last BooksPublisher The Last Books

'Adds enormously to our understanding of the man' Evening Standard George Orwell was one of the greatest writers England produced in the last century. He left an enduring mark on our language and culture, with concepts such as 'Big Brother' and 'Room...

FROM THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF WHAT I LOVED AND A WOMAN LOOKING AT MEN LOOKING AT WOMEN'Richly intelligent insights on every page' Financial Times'A rare kind of quiet intellectual confidence' Sunday TelegraphIn these fascinating, lively...

On 3 August 1845, Emily Dickinson declared, "All things are ready"-and with this, her life as a poet began. Despite spending her days almost entirely "at home", Dickinson's interior world was extraordinary. She loved passionately, was ambivalent towards...

'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...

When Rilke died in 1926, his reputation as a great poet seemed secure. But as the tide of the critical avant-garde turned, he was increasingly dismissed as apolitical, too inward. In Rilke: The Last Inward Man, acclaimed critic Lesley Chamberlain uses...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780060926199Author Lisa St Auben de TeranFormat PaperbackPage Count 224Imprint HarperCollinsPublisher HarperCollins Publishers Inc

A New York Times Notable BookA New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceA Boston Globe and LitHub Best Book of the YearWhen "The Fourth State of Matter," her now famous piece about a workplace massacre at the University of Iowa was published in The New...

Widely recognized as one of the most inventive and iconic science fiction writers of all time, Philip K. Dick is an author whose literary sophistication elevated the sci-fi genre into the storytelling powerhouse it is today. His works, known for their...

'A moving and absorbing account' Adam Buxton'Scorching ... a brave book' Helen Brown, Telegraph'A wise and vivid memoir of a disintegrating marriage and a study of the role of the spouse in the life of a literary giant' Fiona Sturges, i Paper18TH JANUARY...