Literary Figures

Over seventy years since his premature death, George Orwell (1903-50) has become one of the most significant figures in western literature. His two dystopian masterpieces, Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) have together sold over 40...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781566494168Author Malachy McCourtFormat PaperbackPage Count 296Imprint Welcome Rain PublishersPublisher Welcome Rain Publishers

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781598534801Author David Foster WallaceFormat HardbackPage Count 158Imprint The Library of AmericaPublisher The Library of AmericaWeight(grams) 364g

'Deeply moving, darkly funny and hugely powerful' Robert Macfarlane'A brave, lit-up account of going mad and getting better' Jeanette WintersonAfter a lifetime of ups and downs, Horatio Clare was committed to hospital under Section 2 of the Mental Health...

**Featured on BBC Radio 4's A Good Read** 'A profound meditation on language and loss and time, and on how we construct ourselves through stories. And it's painful. And it's beautiful. And I love it.' NATHAN FLIER Samantha Harvey's insomnia arrived,...

Homage to Catalonia remains one of the most famous accounts of the Spanish Civil War. With characteristic scrutiny, Orwell questions the actions and motives of all sides whilst retaining his firm beliefs in human courage and the need for radical social...

Included in The Times and Daily Telegraph Book of the Year round-ups'Friends and Enemies is an extraordinary read showing unflinching candour from a truly remarkable woman' Elton John 'Blistering . . . shockingly candid . . . stiletto-sharp memoir of the...

In this collection of profiles, essays and travel stories, Chatwin takes us to Benin, where he is arrested as a mercenary during a coup; to Boston to meet an LSD guru who believes he is Christ; to India with Indira Ghandi when she attempted a political...

Amanda Prowse has built a bestselling career on the lives of fictional women. Now she turns the pen on her own life. I guess the first question to ask is, what kind of woman am I? Well, you know those women who saunter into a room, immaculately...

Is it ever possible to know 'the truth' about Sylvia Plath and her marriage to Ted Hughes, which ended with her suicide? In The Silent Woman, renowned writer Janet Malcolm examines the biographies of Sylvia Plath, with particular focus on Anne...

Here, Rudiger Safranski sets his sights on the writer considered the Shakespeare of German literature. Goethe (1749-1832) awakened a burgeoning German nation and the European continent with his electrifying novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. Safranski...

Join Gervase Phinn in the classroom where he faces his greatest challenge: keeping a straight face as teachers and children alike conspire to have him laughing out loud . . .'So funny, it will echo things that happen in your own life' 5***** Reader...

Sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf have long been celebrated for their central roles in the development of modernism in art and literature. Vanessa's experimental work places her at the vanguard of early twentieth-century art, as does her role in...

In 1918, the RAF was established as the world's first independent air force. To mark the 100th anniversary of its creation, Penguin are publishing the Centenary Collection, a series of six classic books highlighting the skill, heroism esprit de corps...

"A year in Paris"...Countless American students have been lured by that vision - and been transformed by their sojourn in the City of Light. "Dreaming in French" tells three stories of that experience and how it changed the lives of three extraordinary...

'Glorious' GUARIDAN 'Vigorous, rigorous and eminently readable' SPECTATOR London is a city of dreamers. A city of possibility and experiment. A city of fervent...

From 1892, when he was eighteen, until 1949, when this book was first published, Somerset Maugham kept a notebook. It is without doubt one of his most important works. Part autobiographical, part confessional, packed with observations, confidences,...

Hermione Lee sees Virginia Woolf afresh, in her historical setting and as a vital figure for our times. Her book moves freely between a richly detailed life-story and new attempts to understand crucial questions - the impact of her childhood, the cause...

From the award-winning biographer of Chaucer, the story of his most popular and scandalous character, from the Middle Ages to #MeTooEver since her triumphant debut in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and...

Describing Tolstoy's crisis of depression and estrangement from the world, A Confession (1879) is an autobiographical work of exceptional emotional honesty. By the time he was fifty, Tolstoy had already written the novels that would assure him of...

Melvyn Bragg's first ever memoir - an elegiac, intimate account of growing up in post-war Cumbria, which vividly evokes a vanished world.'The best thing he's ever written . . . What a world he captures here. You can almost smell it' Rachel Cooke,...

In this new book, David Ellis traces Byron's life from rented lodgings in Aberdeen to the crumbling splendours of Newstead Abbey and then on to his grand tour of the East. Describing his exile from England after a disastrous marriage, and subsequent...

Tangled Paths tells the life story of Aby Warburg, one of the most influential historians of art and culture of the twentieth century. It also tells the story of a man who, throughout his life, struggled to assert his place in the world. Charting...

From one of the most important chroniclers of our time, come two extended excerpts from her never-before-seen notebooks - writings that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary writer. ...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780873515412Author Richard R. LingemanFormat PaperbackPage Count 659Imprint Minnesota Historical Society Press,U.S.Publisher Minnesota Historical Society...

Who's afraid of Edna O'Brien? asks an early interviewer in Conversations with Edna O'Brien. With over fifty years of published novels, biographies, plays, telecasts, short stories, and more, it is hard not to be intimidated by her. An acclaimed and...

Probably the greatest British novelist of his generation, Graham Greene's own story was as strange and compelling as those he told of Pinkie the Mobster, Harry Lime, or the Whisky Priest. A restless traveller, he was a witness to many of the key events...

Ruskin is one of the most influential and exhilarating writers in English. Art critic, architectural visionary, social reformer, climate warner and incomparable teacher; Ruskin's words not only transformed Victorian England but speak to us with...

The sequel to I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS'A brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman' Barack ObamaMaya Angelou's volumes of autobiography are a testament to the talents and resilience of this extraordinary writer. Loving the...

BEST BOOK OF 2023 ACCORDING TO THE NEWSTATESMAN AND OBSERVERThe definitive biography of beloved author, Roger DeakinRoger Deakin, author of the immortal Waterlog and Wildwood, was a man of unusually many parts. A born writer who nonetheless took decades...

A devastating essay on loss and the people we love from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the bestselling author of Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun. 'Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can...

Winner of the James Tait Black Prize for Biography 2014Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best BiographyNew York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the YearPenelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) was a great English writer, who would never have described herself...

TWO LIVES tells the remarkable story of Seth's great uncle and aunt. His great uncle Shanti left India for medical school in Berlin in the 1930s and lodged with a German Jewish family. In the household was a daughter, Henny, who urged her mother 'not to...

Dorothy Wellesley was a poet, gardener, traveller and heiress; she was also bisexual and a rebel. She became the lover of Vita Sackville-West, wrecking her marriage to the Duke of Wellington. She was the intimate friend of W.B. Yeats in his final years...

From one of the most famous poets in history comes a new selection of writings to bereaved friends and acquaintances, providing comfort in a time of grief and words to soothe the soul. 'A treasure. The solace Rilke offers is uncommon, uplifting and...

ANNE LISTER IS THE INSPIRATION FOR GENTLEMAN JACK, THE ACCLAIMED BBC/HBO SERIES BY SALLY WAINWRIGHT, STARRING SURANNE JONES. 'The Lister diaries are the Dead Sea Scrolls of lesbian history; they changed everything. By resurrecting them and editing them...

Includes a new introduction from Sophie Hannah, bestselling author of THE MONOGRAM MURDERS and HAVEN'T THEY GROWNAgatha Christie was not only the biggest selling writer of detective stories the world has ever known, she was also a mystery in herself,...

With an introduction by Adam Phillips Monday 17 July 1922. Back from Garsington, & too unsettled to write - I meant to say read; but then this does not count as writing. It is to me like scratching; or, if it goes well, like having a bath - which of...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780979606632Author Mark Royden WinchellFormat PaperbackPage Count 138Imprint Clemson University PressPublisher Clemson University PressWeight(grams)...

A beautifully illustrated account of the letters and correspondence of Jane Austen. It has been said that Jane Austen the woman and Jane Austen the author are all of a piece, and nowhere is this more evident to the lovers of her novels than in the pages...