Secondhand Literary Biography Books

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli was one of the most glamorous international publishers of his generation, yet he died violently, as a member of an ultra-left group attempting to blow up an electricity...

2015 will mark the centenary of Saul Bellow's birth as well as the tenth anniversary of his death. The Life of Saul Bellow by Zachary Leader is the first biography...

America's greatest living crime writer gives us a raw, brutally candid memoir-as high intensity and as riveting as any of his novels-about his obsessive search for "atonement in women."The year...

Some say that the first hint that Bill Bryson was not of Planet Earth came when his mother sent him to school in lime-green Capri pants. Others think it all...

Alastair Cooke's Letter from America: 1946-2004 is a defining collection from his legendary BBC Radio broadcasts that guides us through nearly sixty years of changing life in the United States....

This roman-a-clef is about a drunken young journalist. It is Hunter S. Thompson's only work of fiction.

Founder of the Left Bank bookstore Shakespeare and Company and the first publisher of James Joyce's Ulysses, Sylvia Beach had a legendary facility for nurturing literary talent. In this first...

Deborah Devonshire is a natural writer with a knack for the telling phrase and for hitting the nail on the head. She tells the story of her upbringing, lovingly and...

The biographer - so often in the shadows, kibbitzing, casting doubt, proving facts - here comes to the stage.James Atlas takes us back to his childhood in suburban Chicago, where...

Poetess, fallen woman and wit, Laetitia Pilkington spent her life as close to fame as she was near to ruin. Favoured by, among others, the newly celebrated Jonathan Swift in...

Wilbur Smith has lived an incredible life of adventure, and now he shares the extraordinary true stories that have inspired his fiction. I've been writing novels for over fifty years....

David Lodge's frank and illuminating memoir about the years where he found great success as a novelist and critic.Luck plays an important part in the careers of writers. In this...

'Extraordinary . . . a profound and beautiful book . . . a moving meditation on grief and loss, but also a sparky celebration of joy, wonder and the miracle...

The Bookshop in Wigtown is a bookworm's idyll - with thousands of books across nearly a mile of shelves, a real log fire, and Captain, the bookshop cat. You'd think...

A fascinating exploration of the contents of Agatha Christie's 73 recently discovered notebooks, including illustrations, deleted extracts, and two unpublished Poirot stories. When Agatha Christie died in 1976, aged 85,...

A powerful, personal agenda-changing exploration of poverty in today's Britain.'One of the most important books of the year' Guardian'When every day of your life you have been told you have...

'Traditional autobiography is composed after the experience has passed. I wrote this book in the very panic of the experiences that inspired it ... 'In his early thirties, Greg Baxter...

This is the first volume of Elias Canetti's autobiography, preceding "The Torch in My Ear" and "The Play of the Eyes". It provides a searching portrait of Canetti's personal background...

THE EXTRAORDINARY #1 BESTSELLER 'Fiercely feminist, fascinating. I have recommended this to several people. And I'm doing the same here' Sunday Times 'Do not read this book in public: it...

Writing Fiction offers the novice writer engaging and creative activities, making use of insightful, relevant readings from well-known authors to illustrate the techniques presented. This volume makes use of new...

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...

Nora Ephron meets Bram Stoker in Sophie White's vivid and ambitious literary non-fiction collection. White asks uncomfortable questions about the lived reality of womanhood in the 21st century, and the...

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...

Shaun Bythell owns The Bookshop, Wigtown - Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop. It contains 100,000 books, spread over a mile of shelving, with twisting corridors and roaring fires, and all set...

The dramatic true story of the love affair between Russia's greatest poet, his wife and her lover, french hussar George d'Anthes - and the tragic duel that followed. Pushkin's Button...

'I have never before in my life kept a diary of my thoughts, and here at the start of my ninth decade, having for the moment nothing much else to...

This is a memoir of the first 40 years of Gore Vidal's life, ranging back and forth across a rich history. He spent his childhood in Washington DC, in the...