Literary Figures

The inspiration behind the powerful new film starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson, this is the story of Dido Belle, whose adoption by an aristocratic family challenged the conventions of 18th century England. In one of the...

He would become one of the most important poets of the twentieth century; she a muse of Europe's fin-de-siecle thinkers and artists. In this collection of letters, a finalist for the PEN USA translation award, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou...

Beatrix Potter's Scotland gives insight into the life of one of the best-loved writers in Britain. Based around Potter's own journal, the book goes into detail about her upbringing and influences. She was largely brought up by nannies and governesses and...

George Steiner, the eminent professor of English at Cambridge and Geneva universities, has outlined seven books he has never written, but has always wanted to write, in seven sections.In this fiercely original and audacious work, George Steiner tells of...

Because Thomas Hardy is so closely associated with the rural Wessex of his novels, stories, and poems, it is easy to forget that he was, in his own words, half a Londoner. Focusing on the formative five years in his early twenties when Hardy lived in the...

Witty, inspiring, and charismatic, Oscar Wilde is one of the Greats of English literature. Today, his plays and stories are beloved around the world. But it was not always so. His afterlife has given him the legitimacy that life denied him. Making Oscar...

The identity of Shakespeare, the most important poet and dramatist in the English language, has been debated for centuries. This historical work investigates the role of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, establishing him as most likely the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780956299413Author Phil MathisonFormat PaperbackPage Count 120Imprint DEADGOOD PublicationsPublisher DEADGOOD Publications

Orwell's Nose, now available in paperback, is an original and imaginative account of the life and work of George Orwell, exploring the 'scent narratives' that abound in Orwell's fiction and non-fiction. This illuminating and irreverent book provides a...

'Spring was already in the air, in the town; there was no rain but there was still less sun - one wondered what had become of it, on this side of the world - and the grey mildness, shading away into black at any pretext, appeared in itself a promise.' ...

True crime, memoir, and ghost story, Mean is the bold and hilarious tale of Myriam Gurba's coming of age as a queer, mixed-race Chicana. Blending radical formal fluidity and caustic humor, Gurba takes on sexual violence, small towns, and race, turning...

[b]Bicentenary Edition" Celebrating 200 years of Jane Austen[/b]In a country parsonage in the late 18th century, there lived a large family of seven children. They were all bright and clever and noisy, so nobody really noticed when little Jane turned...

Natalie Barney,'the wild girl of Cincinnati', and Romaine Brooks were both rich, American and grandly lesbian. They met in Paris in 1915 and their tempestuous affair lasted more than fifty years. By the end of their lives together, Natalie and Romaine...

In the summer of 1816 paparazzi trained their telescopes on Byron and the Shelleys across Lake Geneva. Mary Shelley babysat and wrote Frankenstein. Byron dieted and penned The Prisoner of Chillon. His doctor, Polidori, was dreaming up The Vampyre...

'Amusing, charming, stimulating, urbane' - THE TIMES 'Revelatory' - GUARDIAN 'Restores Clive Bell vividly to life' - Lucasta Miller ______________ Clive Bell is perhaps better known today for being a Bloomsbury socialite and the husband of...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781907222658Author Ironfoot JackFormat PaperbackPage Count 264Imprint Strange Attractor PressPublisher Strange Attractor Press

Penelope Fitzgerald, the Booker Prize-winning author of 'Offshore' and 'The Blue Flower', turns her attention to the remarkable life of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones. 'I mean by a picture a beautiful, romantic dream of something...

The acclaimed Proust biographer William Carter portrays Proust's amorous adventures and misadventures from adolescence through his adult years, supplying where appropriate Proust's own sensitive, intelligent, and often disillusioned observations about...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781598535402Author Philip RothFormat HardbackPage Count 476Imprint The Library of AmericaPublisher The Library of America

One of the outstanding literary figures of the twentieth century, the Welsh poet and playwright Dylan Thomas is as famous for his poetry as he is for his dissolute, Bohemian lifestyle and tempestuous personal life. In The Three Lives of Dylan Thomas,...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780375707049Author Caryl PhillipsFormat PaperbackPage Count 144Imprint Vintage BooksPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 139gDimensions(mm) 204mm *...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780375760815Author Nancy MilfordFormat PaperbackPage Count 550Imprint Random House USA IncPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 500g

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.AwardsShort-listed for National Book Critics Circle Award (General Nonfiction) 1998.Book InformationISBN 9780060175962Author Simon WinchesterFormat HardbackPage Count 256Imprint...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781590174449Author Elisabeth GilleFormat PaperbackPage Count 256Imprint NYRB ClassicsPublisher The New York Review of Books, IncWeight(grams)...

"Research reveals the rich and varied cultural and intellectual experiences available to an eager young Thomas Stearns Eliot during the year he spent in Paris: Wagnerian opera, the Ballets Russes, music of Stravinsky and Beethoven, Bergson's...

When her questions remained unanswered by multiple how-to guides, despite how her writing career was now thriving, Linda decided to go straight to the source: her favourite storytellers across numerous genres. So, Linda co-created the Beautiful Writers...

'All profound relationships have the quality of being a folie a deux; an intimate departure from reality, an imaginative creation of a world apart; perhaps this is a way of calling forth meaning - the merging of senseless subjectivities.' In 1950s...

The remarkable transformation of Orwell from journeyman writer to towering iconIs George Orwell the most influential writer who ever lived? Yes, according to John Rodden's provocative book about the transformation of a man into a myth. Rodden does not...

"A page turner, even for those familiar with the subject...The surprising truth that emerges is no less human, and no less revealing about the Victorians than the myths; on the contrary it gives a far more compelling insight into what relationships,...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.AwardsWinner of New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age.Book InformationISBN 9780679781424Author Piri ThomasFormat PaperbackPage Count 352Imprint Vintage BooksPublisher...

The Stranger is a rite of passage for readers around the world. Since its publication in France in 1942, Camus's novel has been translated into sixty languages and sold more than six million copies. It's the rare novel that's as at likely to be found in...

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...

'One of the most original and audacious autobiographies ever written by a writer.' Le Monde Hand to Mouth tells the story of the young Paul Auster's struggle to stay afloat. By turns poignant and comic, Auster's memoir is essentially a book about...

William Golding was born in 1911 and educated at his local grammar school and Brasenose College, Oxford. He published a volume of poems in 1934 and during the war served in the Royal Navy. Afterwards he returned to being a schoolmaster in Salisbury. Lord...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780142002179Author Neal CassadyFormat PaperbackPage Count 512Imprint Penguin USAPublisher Penguin Putnam IncWeight(grams) 391gDimensions(mm) 196mm * 130mm *...

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 9780679740704Author Nathan McCallFormat PaperbackPage Count 416Imprint Vintage BooksPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 311g

When, in 2000, the National Theatre published its poll of the hundred best plays of the 20th century, David Hare had written five of them. Yet he was born in 1947 into an anonymous suburban street in Hastings. It is a world he believes to be as...

A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week'This is such a great idea for a book, and Michelle Dean carries it off, showing us the complexities of her fascinating, extraordinary subjects, in print and out in the world. Dean writes with vigor, depth, knowledge and...

The Celtic Twilight (1893) is a collection of stories written and edited by W.B. Yeats. Compiled at the height of the Celtic Twilight, a movement to revive the myths and traditions of Ancient Ireland, The Celtic Twilight captures a wide range of stories,...