This selection of letters from James Schuyler to legendary poet Frank O'Hara reconstruct a friendship that lay at the heart of the New York school - a convocation of poets including Kenneth Koch and John Ashbery, with whom Schuyler later wrote a novel. It is an encapsulation of a friendship, a mind and a life.

Jose Marti (1853-1895) was the founding hero of Cuban independence. In all of modern Latin American history, arguably only the "Great Liberator" Simon Bolivar rivals Marti in stature and legacy. Beyond his accomplishments as a revolutionary and political thinker, Marti was a giant of Latin American letters, whose poetry, essays, and journalism still rank among the most important works of the region. Today he is revered by both the Castro regime and the Cuban exile community, whose shared veneration of the "apostle" of freedom has led to his virtual apotheosis as a national saint. In Jose Marti: A Revolutionary Life, Alfred J. Lopez presents the definitive biography of the Cuban patriot and martyr. Writing from a nonpartisan perspective and drawing on years of research using original Cuban and U.S. sources, including materials never before used in a Marti biography, Lopez strips away generations of mythmaking and portrays Marti as Cuba's greatest founding father and one of Latin America's literary and political giants, without suppressing his public missteps and personal flaws. In a lively account that engrosses like a novel, Lopez traces the full arc of Marti's eventful life, from his childhood and adolescence in Cuba, to his first exile and subsequent life in Spain, Mexico City, and Guatemala, through his mature revolutionary period in New York City and much-mythologized death in Cuba on the battlefield at Dos Rios. The first major biography of Marti in over half a century and the first ever in English, Jose Marti is the most substantial examination of Marti's life and work ever published.

The three volumes that comprise this set are facsimile reproductions of contemporary biographical material. They include letters, memoirs, poems and articles on three outstanding Victorian literary partnerships. These are the Brownings, Brontes and the Rossettis.

William Wordsworth's creative collaboration with his 'beloved Sister' spanned nearly fifty years, from their first reunion in 1787 until her premature decline in 1835. Rumours of incest have surrounded the siblings since the 19th century, but Lucy Newlyn sees their cohabitation as an expression of deep emotional need, arising from circumstances peculiar to their family history. Born in Cockermouth and parted when Dorothy was six by the death of their mother, the siblings grew up separately and were only reunited four years after their father had died, leaving them destitute. How did their orphaned consciousness shape their understanding of each other? What part did traumatic memories of separation play in their longing for a home? How fully did their re-settlement in the Lake District recompense them for the loss of a shared childhood? Newlyn shows how William and Dorothy's writings - closely intertwined with their regional affiliations - were part of the lifelong work of jointly re-building their family and re-claiming their communal identity. Walking, talking, remembering, and grieving were as important to their companionship as writing; and at every stage of their adult lives they drew nourishment from their immediate surroundings. This is the first book to bring the full range of Dorothy's writings into the foreground alongside her brother's, and to give each sibling the same level of detailed attention. Newlyn explores the symbiotic nature of their creative processes through close reading of journals, letters and poems - sometimes drawing on material that is in manuscript. She uncovers detailed interminglings in their work, approaching these as evidence of their deep affinity. The book offers a spirited rebuttal of the myth that the Romantic writer was a 'solitary genius', and that William Wordsworth was a poet of the 'egotistical sublime' - arguing instead that he was a poet of community, 'carrying everywhere with him relationship and love'. Dorothy is not presented as an undervalued or exploited member of the Wordsworth household, but as the poet's equal in a literary partnership of outstanding importance. Newlyn's book is deeply researched, drawing on a wide range of recent scholarship - not just in Romantic studies, but in psychology, literary theory, anthropology and life-writing. Yet it is a personal book, written with passion by a scholar-poet and intended to be of some practical use and inspirational value to non-specialist readers. Adopting a holistic approach to mental and spiritual health, human relationships, and the environment, Newlyn provides a timely reminder that creativity thrives best in a gift economy.

"Everyone is female, and everyone hates it." So begins Andrea Long Chu's genre-defying investigation into sex and lies, desperate artists and reckless politics, the smothering embrace of gender and the punishing force of desire. Drawing inspiration from a forgotten play by Valerie Solanas-the woman who wrote the SCUM Manifesto and shot Andy Warhol-Chu aims her searing wit and surgical intuition at targets ranging from performance art to psychoanalysis, incels to porn, and even feminists like herself. Each step of the way she defends the indefensible claim that femaleness is less a biological state of women and more a fatal existential condition that afflicts the entire human race-men, women, and everyone else. Or maybe she's just projecting. A thrilling new voice who has been credited with launching the "second wave" of trans studies, Chu shows readers how to write for your life, baring herself with a morbid sense of humor and a mordant kind of hope.

The ground-breaking work of the poet who paved the way for generations of women writers, in a new selection by her daugher and literary executor, Linda Gray Sexton When Anne Sexton took her own life in October 1974, she left behind a body of work which had already, in less than two decades of writing, won her the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, established her as one of the foremost voices of her generation, and shocked America by breaking multiple taboos of subject matter, from insanity, depression and addiction to menstruation, adultery and the figure of the witch. Sexton's name is legendary. Her poetry is read around the world, translated into over thirty languages, and in her own country remains a touchstone for poets and readers looking for rawness of perception, vitality of expression, confessional frankness and fiery passion. Yet, incredibly, there has been no new UK edition of her work for decades. In Mercies, readers are provided with a resonant new selection from the writings of this natural phenomenon of a poet.

An ardent steward of the land, fearless traveller and unrivalled observer of nature and culture, Barry Lopez died after a long illness on Christmas Day in 2020. The previous summer, a wildfire had consumed much of what was dear to him in his home and the community around it - a tragic reminder of the climate change of which he'd long warned. At once a cri de Coeur and a memoir of both pain and wonder, this remarkable collection of essays adds indelibly to Lopez's legacy, and includes previously unpublished works, some written in the months before his death. They unspool memories, both personal and political, among them tender, sometimes painful stories of his childhood in New York and California, reports from expeditions to study animals and sea life, recollections of travels to Antarctica and other extraordinary places on earth, and mediations on finding oneself amid vast, dramatic landscapes. He reflects on those who taught him, including Indigenous elders and scientific mentors who sharpened his eye for the natural world. We witness poignant returns from his travels to the sanctuary of his Oregon backyard and in prose of searing candour, he reckons with the cycle of life, including own and - as he has done throughout his career - with the dangers the earth and its people are facing. With an introduction by Rebecca Solnit that speaks to Lopez's keen attention to the world, including its spiritual dimensions, Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World opens our minds and sounds to the important of being wholly present to the beauty and complexity of life.

'A brave, beautiful book that could double as a handbook to accompany anyone on their journey through cancer' Jackie Kay, New Statesman The Cancer Journals is an intimate, poetic and invigorating account of the experience of breast cancer, from biopsy to mastectomy, told by the great feminist and activist Audre Lorde. Moving between journal entry, memoir, and essay, Lorde fuses the personal and political to reflect on the many questions breast cancer raises: questions of survival, sexuality, prosthesis and self-care. It is a journey of survival, friendship, and self-acceptance. 'Grief, terror, courage, the passion for survival and for more than survival, are here in the searchings of a great poet' Adrienne Rich 'This book teaches me that with one breast or none, I am still me' Alice Walker

Emily Dickinson may be the most widely read American poet but the story behind her work's publication in 1890 is barely known. After Emily recounts the extraordinary lives of Mabel Loomis Todd and her daughter, Millicent Todd Bingham and the powerful literary legacy they shared. Mabel's complicated relationships with the Dickinsons-including her thirteen-year extramarital affair with Emily's brother, Austin-roiled the small town of Amherst, Massachusetts. Julie Dobrow has unearthed hundreds of primary sources to tell this compelling story and reveal the surprising impact Mabel and Millicent had on the Emily Dickinson we know today.

A retelling of American modernism through the lines of solidarity and division within and among ethnic and religious identities found in poetry. What happens if we approach the reading and writing of poetry not as an individual act, but as a public one? Answering this question challenges common assumptions about modern poetry and requires that we explore the important questions that define genre: Where is this poem situated, and how did it get there? Joshua Logan Wall's Situating Poetry studies five poets of the New York literary scene rarely considered together: James Weldon Johnson, Charles Reznikoff, Lola Ridge, Louis Zukofsky, and Robert Hayden. Charting their works and careers from 1910-1940, Wall illustrates how these politically marginalized writers from drastically different religious backgrounds wrestled with their status as American outsiders. These poets produced a secularized version of America in which poetry, rather than God, governed individual obligations to one another across multiethnic barriers. Adopting a multiethnic and pluralist approach, Wall argues that each of these poets-two Black, two Jewish, and one Irish-American anarchist-shares a desire to create more truly democratic communities through art and through the covenantal publics created by their poems despite otherwise sitting uncomfortably, at best, within a more standard literary history. In this unique account of American modernist poetics, religious pluralism creates a lens through which to consider the bounds of solidarity and division within and among ethnic identities and their corresponding literatures.

Few would question that Albert Camus (1913-1960), novelist, playwright, philosopher and journalist, is a major cultural icon. His widely quoted works have led to countless movie adaptions, graphic novels, pop songs, and even t-shirts. In this Very Short Introduction, Oliver Gloag chronicles the inspiring story of Camus' life. From a poor fatherless settler in French-Algeria to the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Gloag offers a comprehensive view of Camus' major works and interventions, including his notion of the absurd and revolt, as well as his highly original concept of pure happiness through unity with nature called "bonheur". This original introduction also addresses debates on coloniality, which have arisen around Camus' work. Gloag presents Camus in all his complexity a staunch defender of many progressive causes, fiercely attached to his French-Algerian roots, a writer of enormous talent and social awareness plagued by self-doubt, and a crucially relevant author whose major works continue to significantly impact our views on contemporary issues and events. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

What can we learn about life, love, and artillery from an eighty-two-year-old man whose favorite hobby is firing his homemade cannons? Visit by visit--often with his young daughters in tow--author Michael Perry finds out.

Toiling in his shop, Tom Hartwig makes gag shovel handles, parts for quarter-million-dollar farm equipment, and--now and then--batches of potentially "extralegal" explosives. Tom, who is approaching his sixtieth wedding anniversary with his wife, Arlene, and is famous for driving a team of oxen in local parades, has stories dating back to the days of his prize Model A and an antiauthoritarian streak refreshed daily by the interstate that was shoved through his front yard in 1965 and now dumps more than eight million vehicles past his kitchen window every year. And yet Visiting Tom is dominated by the elderly man's equanimity and ultimately--when he and Perry converse as husbands and the fathers of daughters--unvarnished tenderness.

Hadley Richardson and Ernest Hemingway were the golden couple of Paris in the twenties, the center of an expatriate community boasting the likes of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, and James and Nora Joyce. In this haunting account of the young Hemingways, Gioia Diliberto explores their passionate courtship, their family life in Paris with baby Bumby, and their thrilling, adventurous relationship--a literary love story scarred by Hadley's loss of the only copy of Hemingway's first novel and ultimately destroyed by a devastating mEnage A trois on the French Riviera.

Compelling, illuminating, poignant, and deeply insightful, "Paris Without End" provides a rare, intimate glimpse of the writer who so fully captured the American imagination and the remarkable woman who inspired his passion and his art--the only woman Hemingway never stopped loving.

The authorised biography of Shirley Hazzard, one of the greatest writers in the English language, author of The Transit of Venus and winner of the National Book Award 'Lambent, discerning, deeply intelligent and empathetic' Lucy Scholes, Financial Times 'Impeccably researched and deeply incisive' Lily King, New York Times 'A refined, deeply insightful perspective' Chloe Schama, Vogue 'Absorbing, well-crafted... scrupulously researched' Kirkus Born and raised in Sydney Australia, Hazzard lived around the world: in Hong Kong; Wellington, New Zealand; New York; Naples and Capri and her writing -- cosmopolitan, richly intelligent, beautiful, questing -- reflects her life. Her body of work is small but the acclaim it attracts is immeasurable, from among others, Michael Cunningham, Zoe Heller, Ann Patchett, Anne Tyler, Lauren Goff, Hermione Lee, Joan Didion, Richard Ford, Colm Toibin. At sixteen, she was living in Hong Kong with her family and working for the British Combined Services. She later worked, another desk job, for the United Nations in New York and, briefly, in Naples. Italy -- Capri and Naples -- claimed her heart and after she was married -- she was introduced to the biographer, Francis Steegmuller by Muriel Spark -- they divided their time between Italy and America. Drawing on diaries, letters, interviews alongside a close reading of Hazzard's fiction -- Brigitta Olubas, herself Australian -- tells the story of a girl from the suburbs 'with a head full of poetry' who fell early under the spell of words and sought out first books and then people who loved books as her companions. In the process she transformed and indeed created her life. She became a woman of the world who felt injustice keenly, a deep and original thinker, who wrote some of the most beautiful fiction about love and longing, always with an eye to the ways we reveal ourselves to another. This, the definitive biography uncovers the truths and myths and about Shirley Hazzard's life and work, which come together at the point, as Brigitta Olubas observes: 'where the writer lives'.

This book is a biography of one of the first important Abbey playwrights. In many ways George Fitzmaurice was "the great lost soul of twentieth century Irish theatre." His work is now being reclaimed both on the stage and in literary criticism.

Christy Brown was born with cerebral palsy and severe physical disability. He grew up to become a brilliantly imaginative and sensitive writer who would take his place among the giants of Irish literature.

This autobiography, published in 1954 when he was twenty-two, recounts his early life in Dublin – the poverty of his childhood, the support of his mother and his hope for a better life. Above all it describes his struggle to learn to read, write, paint and finally type, all with the toe of his left foot. Warm, honest and inspiring, this is a unique and captivating story of disability told by an extraordinary man.

This book, the first of two volumes anticipating the bicentenary of the birth of William Makepeace Thackeray in 1811, details not only the author's life, but also the cosmopolitan and literary worlds inhabited by his two daughters, Minny and Annie. When Thackeray died in 1863, the two sisters were forced to find their own way forward. Minny would marry Leslie Stephen, later father of Virginia Woolf, and die at only thirty-five; Annie, encouraged in early years by her father, would herself emerge as a successful novelist, though one always living, albeit willingly, within her father's shadow. Drawing continuously on the letters, diaries, journals and notebooks of the Thackerays and their circle, Aplin sheds light on this remarkable man's family, and the effect that his life, death and legacy had on those closest to him. The book will appeal not just to those interested in Thackeray and the Victorians, but also to readers of biography, womenis studies and memoirs, and to followers of Viriginia Woolf and Bloomsbury.

The identity of Shakespeare, the most important poet and dramatist in the English language, has been debated for centuries. This historical work investigates the role of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, establishing him as most likely the author of Shakespeare's literary oeuvre. Topics include the historical background of English literature from 1530 through 1575, major contemporary transitions in the theatre, and a linguistically rich examination of Oxford's life and the events leading to his literary prominence. The sonnets, Oxford's early poetry, juvenile "pre-Shakespeare" plays, and his acting career are of particular interest. An appendix examines the role of the historical William Shakespeare and how he became associated with Oxford's work.

Originally published in 1994. The Romance of Real Life aims to reconstruct historically the life and writings of Charles Brockden Brown in terms of their cultural connection. Watts examines in detail Brown's early and later writings. By looking at these often-neglected works more closely, he offers a new perspective on the well-known novels from the late 1790s. Watts's synthetic look at genre as well as chronology reveals broader connections between Brown's literature and American society and culture in the decades of the early republic. Furthermore, Watts situates Brown's writings in terms of the interplay of text, context, and the self, with each factor recognized as mutually shaping the others. The Romance of Real Life incorporates sensitivity to the "social history of ideas," in which both the form and content of language remain rooted in the material experience of real life.