Secondhand Literary Biography Books

Louis MacNeice is increasingly recognised as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, and his work has been a defining influence upon a generation of Irish poets that...

Therese Humbert's salon captivated fin-de-siecle Paris. Her dazzling wealth, as the illegitimate daughter of an American billionaire, was fabled. But it was all a hoax. La Grande Therese looks at...

Compulsive writer and exquisite dandy Raymond Roussel was one of the most extraordinary literary figures of all time. He was born in 1877 and died in mysterious circumstances in 1933;...

This unique and celebrated biography describes how a largely self-educated boy from a small village in Scotland entered the world of scholarship and became the first editor of the Oxford...

'Through the years, a man peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, tools, stars, horses and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers...

Dr Nokes presents a portrait of Swift in his multifarious roles as satirist, politician, churchman, and friend. In particular, he seeks to re-establish a proper balance between Swift's public and...

The real fascination of the career of Giacomo Casanova is often overlooked by those who know of him only for his sexual exploits. Great lover he was, perhaps; but he...

This biography illuminates and explores the complexities and contradictions of Burns's character and personality, untangling the myth from the legend. Based on new evidence from 700 letters Burns wrote during...

More than a hundred years have passed since the creation of Sherlock Holmes, perhaps the most famous fictional character of all time. But while the legendary detective lives on in...

J. D. Salinger was one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He was also one of its most elusive. After making his mark on the American literary scene with the...

Moving freely between a detailed life-story and attempts to understand significant questions, this biography of Virginia Woolf addresses topics such as the impact of her childhood, the cause and nature...

Leo Tolstoy(1828-1910) was born into one of the grand old families of Imperial Russia. The loss of both of his parents during childhood was the prelude to a series of...

Maryann Burk Carver married Raymond Carver in 1957, when she was sixteen-years-old and he nineteen. Over the next twenty-five years, as Carver's fame grew, the couple and their two children...

This biography of Byron (by Byron's own publisher John Murray) attempts to reinterpret Byron's life and poetry for a new generation. Fiona MacCarthy has had access to the full John...

The artistic work of Leo Tolstoy has been described as 'nothing less than one tremendous diary kept for over fifty years'. This particular 'diary' begins with Tolstoy's first published work,...

With an introduction by Virginia NicholsonSaturday 2 February 1918. The first walk we've had for ever so long. Damp, mild vaporous day. Funeral bells tolling as we went out, &...

A fascinating collection of letters from the great English novelist - and prolific correspondent - Penelope Fitzgerald. Acclaimed for her exquisitely elegant novels - including the Booker Prize-winning 'Offshore' -...

Ranulph Fiennes has travelled to the most dangerous and inaccessible places on earth, almost died countless times, lost nearly half his fingers to frostbite, raised millions of pounds for charity...

'The time provides the pictures, I merely speak the words to go with them, and it will not be so much my own story I tell as that of an...