Secondhand Literary Biography Books

An essentially private person, Siegfried Sassoon's work nevertheless constitutes a chorus of self-revelation. John Stuart Roberts has written the first full length biography of this complex man. A quintessential Edwardian...

In this, the celebrated, bestselling first volume of her autobiography, Maya Angelou beautifully evokes her childhood with her grandmother in the American South of the 1930s. She learns the power...

A full-scale biography of naval administrator Samuel Pepys, who was well-known for being the friend of the famous and powerful. This text, which draws on Pepys' own personal diary, covers...

Maxine Hong Kingston, author of such seminal works as The Woman Warrior and China Men, is one of the most important American writers of her generation. In this remarkable memoir,...

It's not the dream that matters, it's the telling of the dream - the words you choose, the risks you take in externalising your mindThis is a dreamlike portrait of...

'I wanted what we all want: everything. We want a mate who feels like family and a lover who is exotic, surprising. We want to be youthful adventurers and middle-aged...

Peeling the Onion is a searingly honest account of Grass' modest upbringing in Danzig, his time as a boy soldier fighting the Russians, and the writing of his masterpiece, The...

The life of Rosamond Lehmann (1901-1990) was as romantic and harrowing as that of any of her fictional heroines. She enjoyed an idyllic childhood in the Thames valley, and she...

In this much anticipated addition to the Eminent Lives series, Bill Bryson's biography of William Shakespeare unravels the superstitions, academic discoveries and myths surrounding the life of our greatest poet...

National Geographic Traveller's the best books on European cities, 2019In the autumn of 1948 Hemingway was approaching fifty and hadn't published a novel in nearly a decade. He travelled for...

Bestselling novelist Tatiana de Rosnay pays homage to Daphne du Maurier, the writer who influenced her deeply, in this startling and immersive new biography. A portrait of one writer by...

Woodbrook is a rare house that gives its name to a small, rural area in Ireland, not far from the old port of Sligo. It has been owned since the...

One bright day in December 2001, sixty-two-year-old Germaine Greer found herself confronted by an irresistible challenge in the shape of sixty hectares of dairy farm, one of many in south-east...

'Throughout my young days at school and just afterwards a number of things happened to me that I have never forgotten ....'Boy is a funny, insightful and at times grotesque...

When this second volume of The Life of Saul Bellow opens, Bellow, at forty-nine, is at the pinnacle of American letters - rich, famous, critically acclaimed. The expected trajectory is...

Forty years ago Norman Jeffares published his first biography of W.B.Yeats, however since that time much new material has come to light, both written and illustrative. This volume is a...

'IN THE RHODODENDRONS is vital consolation, amidst the amidst. It's a triumph, an instant classic. Christle has become one of our art's most urgent living practitioners' Kaveh Akbar, author of...

WINNER OF THE 2020 CRIME WRITERS' ASSOCIATION ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTIONSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTIONChosen as one of Barack Obama's favourite books of 2019'A triumph...

This is an absorbing portrait of a literary genius, whose muse was the desire for wealth and fortune, and whose misplaced entrepreneurial enthusiasms more then once endandgered the very money...

The essay is one of the richest of all literary forms and it is used for poetry, satire, fantasy, and sustained argument. Containing 140 essays by 120 British and American...

'An absolute gem . . . I was delightfully lost by the river throughout' Paul Whitehouse'Marvellous . . . The Catch leaves both its writer and its reader wonderfully "lost...

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...

Is it possible life without romantic love isn't so bad?An essential memoir about building life on your own terms'Marks an important shift in ideas about intimacy' OBSERVER'The harbinger of real...

One of the world's greatest correspondents, Madame de Sevigne (1626-96) paints an extraordinarily vivid picture of France at the time of Louis XIV, in eloquent letters written throughout her life...

_______________'Kathy Watson has achieved the rare combination of sensitive, meticulous research with readability' - Virginia Rounding, Sunday Times'Careful, intelligent, absorbing ... Watson tells Mary's story in a sensible, matter-of-fact way,...

Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life is the classic biography of Charles Bukowski, the hard-drinking barfly whose semi-autobiographical books about low-life America made him a cult figure across...

In December 1991, Allende's daughter Paula, aged 28 fell gravely ill and sank into a coma. This book started as a letter to Paula written during the hours spent at...

William Wharton turns his microscopic gaze on his own life to narrate and scrutinize the untimely deaths of his daughter and her family. A moving story of one man's rage...

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...