Secondhand Literary Biography Books

The childhood and early life memoir of Antonia Fraser, one of our finest narrative historians.Antonia Fraser's magical memoir describes growing up in the 1930s and '40s, but its real concern...

Jay Cowan, who was caretaker on Thompson's ranch and a trusted friend, paints a sensitive portrait of a man who redefined participatory journalism, who captured the decadence of the era,...

Biography of one of the greatest of modern playwrights, Arthur Miller (1915-2005).This is the long-awaited biography of one of the twentieth century's greatest playwrights whose postwar decade of work earned...

Who was William Shakespeare? How did the 'rude groom' from Stratford grow up to be the greatest poet the world has known? Not for a generation, since the late Anthony...

The sole and definitive biography of the greatest living American playwright. Arthur Miller has been delivering powerful drama to the stage for decades with such masterpieces as Death of a...

Rose Macaulay was a woman of originality. The author of 36 books - several best-selling novels, culminating in "The Towers of Trebizond", criticism, poetry, history and travel - she was...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Between 1948 and 1961, Ernest Hemingway and A. E. Hotchner traveled together from New York to Paris to Spain, fished the waters off Cuba, hunted in Idaho, ran with the...

'Screamingly funny and deliciously candid, full of wisdom and joie de vivre, this is memoir with the grip of a thriller' ERIN KELLY'A rollercoaster ride' THE TIMES'Fascinating and funny' SUNDAY...

'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...

In Let Me Make Myself Plain Catherine Cookson may be said to break new ground as an author. The title echoes her first surprised reaction to a television producer's suggestion...