Secondhand Literary Biography Books

'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...

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...

This remarkable double biography celebrates the interlocking lives of two of the greatest eccentrics of the 20th century: the brilliant and bizarre Quentin Crisp and the outlandish Philip O'Connor, whose...

Written with a mixture of memoir and dramatic stories, this text is an exploration into what it means to be a wife, particularly a "good wife", then and now, looked...

James Lees-Milne (1908-97) - known to friends as Jim - is remembered for his work for the National Trust, rescuing some of England's greatest architectural treasures, and for the vivid...

When Stephen Ambrose became interested in American history at age 18, there was much that America had done that made him proud, but there were many things he condemned as...

It is 1964 and Maya Angelou is on her way back home, leaving behind her beloved - and now seriously teenaged - son Guy, to finish university in Ghana. America...

Captivated is a true story of genius and possession. The background is the turn of the century, when a late 19th century world of mesmerists, psychics, trancers and table-turners gave...

In 1974, the homeless Miss Shepherd moved her broken down van into Alan Bennett's garden. Deeply eccentric and stubborn to her bones, Miss Shepherd was not an easy tenant. And...

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCA'A remarkable book . . . brilliant comic writing' THE TIMES'An enthralling picture of family life . . . devotion to Gerald, the man' KIRKUS...

A major new biography of Eugene O'Neill, the Nobel Prize-winning dramatist who revolutionized American theater"Restores balance to the slightly skewed twenty-first century reputation of America's greatest playwright. . . ....

Pearl Buck was raised in China by her American parents, Presbyterian missionaries from Virginia. Blonde and blue-eyed she looked startlingly foreign, but felt as at home as her Chinese companions....

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...

In January 2014 I was informed that I had cancer.However, Quicksand is not a book about death and destruction, but about what it means to be human. I have undertaken...

Brief Encounters describes Bill Long''s chance meetings with some of the most famous writers of our time, including Raymond Chandler and John Steinbeck.'

Columbia University Press's multivolume Prison Notebooks is the only complete critical edition of Antonio Gramsci's seminal writings in English. Based on the authoritative Italian edition of Gramsci's work, Quaderni del...

'Funny and honest dispatches from the world of modern dating' Vogue'Bushnell's voice is as knowing and sharp as ever' Washington Post'Bittersweet, amusing and well observed' Viv Groskop, Guardian'Fuelled by chilled...

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...

A New York Times Bestseller and National Book Award Winner Jacqueline Woodson, the acclaimed author of Red at the Bone, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse....

This biography of Sir Angus Wilson by Margaret Drabble, herself much influenced by his writing, traces his early years as a librarian at the British Library, interrupted by a grim...

At twenty-three, after leaving graduate school to pursue her dreams of becoming a poet, Joanna Rakoff moves to New York City and takes a job as assistant to the storied...

'A classic of its kind.' William Boyd'Thought-provoking, hilarious, sardonic and scarily brilliant.' Scotsman'A work of dazzling craft.' Times Literary Supplement'A memoir in a million.' Sunday Times** Chosen as a Time...

Although before him Charles Perrault in France and the Brothers Gimm in Germany had collected and retold folk-tales in ways which found wide popular audiences, it was only with the...

Written in an even more vivid and direct style than her celebrated memoirs, Diana Athill's letters to the American poet Edward Field reveal a sharply intelligent woman with a brilliant...

'Dear Mama, I am having a lovely time here. We play football every day here. The beds have no springs . . .'So begins the first letter that a nine-year-old...

Life of the Russian poet who withstood Stalinism and became an inspiration to millionsAnna Akhmatova is recognised as one of the greatest poets of Russian literature, an iconic figure who...