"Every page brings forth the elegiac tone of JRR Tolkien's work... It is a beautiful book, including many wonderful pictures by Tolkien himself... Garth's book made me realise the impact that Tolkien has had on my life." The Times A lavishly illustrated exploration of the places that inspired and shaped the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, creator of Middle-earth. This new book from renowned expert John Garth takes us to the places that inspired J.R.R. Tolkien to create his fictional locations in The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and other classic works. Featuring more than 100 images, it includes Tolkien's own illustrations, contributions from other artists, archive images, maps and spectacular present-day photographs. Inspirational locations range across Great Britain - particularly Tolkien's beloved West Midlands and Oxford - but also overseas to all points of the compass. Sources are located for Hobbiton, the elven valley of Rivendell, the Glittering Caves of Helm's Deep, and many other key spots in Middle-earth, as well as for its mountain scenery, forests, rivers, lakes and shorelands. A rich interplay is revealed between Tolkien's personal travels, his wide reading and his deep scholarship as an Oxford professor. Garth uses his own profound knowledge of Tolkien's life and work to uncover the extraordinary processes of invention, to debunk popular misconceptions about the inspirations for Middle-earth, and to put forward strong new claims of his own. Organised by theme, The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien is an illustrated journey into the life and imagination of one of the world's best-loved authors, an exploration of the relationship between worlds real and fantastical, and an inspiration for anyone who wants to follow in Tolkien's footsteps.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. Three francs will feed you till tomorrow, and you cannot think further than that... As a young man struggling to find his voice as a writer, George Orwell left the comfort of home to live in the impoverished working districts of Paris and London. He would document both the chaos and boredom of destitution, the eccentric cast of characters he encountered, and the near-constant pains of hunger and discomfort. Exposing the grim reality of a life marred by poverty, Down and Out in Paris and London, part memoir, part social commentary, would become George Orwell's first published work.

This timely and expansive biography of Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian writer, Nobel laureate, and social activist, shows how the author's early years influence his life's work and how his writing, in turn, informs his political engagement. Three sections spanning his life, major texts, and place in history, connect Soyinka's legacy with global issues beyond the borders of his own country, and indeed beyond the African continent. Covering his encounters with the widespread rise of kleptocratic rule and international corporate corruption, his reflection on the human condition of the North-South divide, and the consequences of postcolonialism, this comprehensive biography locates Wole Soyinka as a global figure whose life and works have made him a subject of conversation in the public sphere, as well as one of Africa's most successful and popular authors. Looking at the different forms of Soyinka's work--plays, novels, and memoirs, among others--this volume argues that Soyinka used writing to inform, mobilize, and sometimes incite civil action, in a decades-long attempt at literary social engineering.

In June 1942, Anne Frank received a red-and-white-checked diary for her thirteenth birthday, just weeks before she and her family went into hiding in an Amsterdam attic to escape the Nazis. For two years, with ever-increasing maturity, Anne crafted a memoir that has become one of the most compelling documents of modern history. But Anne Frank's diary, argues Francine Prose, is as much a work of art as it is a historical record. Through close reading, she marvels at the teenage Frank's skillfully natural narrative voice, at her finely tuned dialogue and ability to turn living people into characters.

Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife tells the extraordinary story of the book that became a force in the world. Along the way, Prose definitively establishes that Anne Frank was not an accidental author or a casual teenage chronicler but a writer of prodigious talent and ambition.

Widely regarded as the finest poet of his generation, Seamus Heaney is the subject of numerous critical studies, but no book-length portrait has appeared before now. Through his own lively and eloquent reminiscences, "Stepping Stones "retraces the poet's steps from his first exploratory testing of the ground as an infant to what he called his "moon-walk" to the podium to receive the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. It also fascinatingly charts his post-Nobel life and is supplemented with a number of photographs, many from the Heaney family album and published here for the first time. In response to firm but subtle questioning from Dennis O'Driscoll, Heaney sheds a personal light on his work (poems, essays, translations, plays) and on the artistic and ethical challenges he faced during the dark years of the Ulster Troubles. Combining the spontaneity of animated conversation with the considered qualities of the best autobiographical writing, "Stepping Stones "provides an original, diverting, and absorbing store of reflections and recollections. Scholars and general readers alike are brought closer to the work, life, and creative development of a charismatic and lavishly gifted poet whose latest collection, "District and Circle," was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2007.

""Stepping Stones"--a conversation-style response to questions submitted over the years by Dennis O'Driscoll--is an outspoken oral work of art."--Karl Miller, "The Times Literary Supplement"

""Stepping Stones: Interviews With Seamus Heaney," poet Dennis O'Driscoll's extraordinary book, takes its title from the place in Heaney's Nobel lecture where he observes that both his writing and his life can be seen as 'a journey where each point of arrival . . . turned out to be a stepping-stone rather than a destination, ' and the emphasis on continuing process informs it from beginning to end. The book's form is that of extended interviews, conducted (largely in writing) over a period of years, in which the interviewer, O'Driscoll, defines his role as that of prompter rather than interrogator. Its purpose--in the continuing absence of any substantial biography--is to present interviews, freed from space limitations, that might come to comprise 'a comprehensive portrait of the man and his times'--and, of course, of the work itself. (Heaney's only stipulation was that he would not speak in analytic detail of any of the poems, though he does cite particular aspects of many, and to dazzling effect.) O'Driscoll calls the book 'a survey of [Heaney's] life, often using the poems as reference points, ' thus providing 'a biographical context for the poems and a poetry-based account of the life.' For this reason he is right to find the result 'very much a book for readers of [Heaney's] oeuvre.' But it is much, much more. Many-leveled, it is a book that rearranges itself according to the angle of the reader's questioning, and while it will surely send many readers to the poems themselves, whether for the first or the dozenth time, it has, as great autobiography must have, stand-alone value as well. Some of this value is documentary, whether detailing the nuances of Irish cultural politics during the Troubles of the late '60s, or trenchantly evoking the writers and writings that assumed a place in Heaney's development. Richly deployed, this is the stuff of cultural history, and it is inevitably central to Heaney's probing account of his formation as man and poet. What I want to stress here, however, is that the book is more than simply an account of experience; it is itself "an agency of" experience. You come away from it--at least you can: I did--moved, enlarged and deepened. "Stepping Stones" consists of three sections, the first evoking in magical detail the poet's childhood on the family farm (Mossbawn) in County Derry--'a small, ordinary, nose-to-the-grindstoney place'--and his subsequent schooling in Belfast. The long central section organizes the intertwinings of life and work through the successive collections of the poems; and the third--the briefest--brings the account up to date, describing the poet's stroke in 2006, his recovery, and his view of the world on the eve of his 70th birthday . . . This is not only a radically original book; in its own quiet way it is also a great one."--Donald Fanger, "Truthdig"" "
"Popular contemporary Irish poet O'Driscoll began work on this book of interviews with Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney in September 2001. Interestingly, aside from some transcriptions in Chapters 13 and 15, these interviews were conducted in writing and through the mail. This format allowed Heaney to pick which questions to answer and to rearrange their order as he chose, and O'Driscoll sees his role as 'prompter rather than interrogator, ' giving Heaney a good deal of influence on the final book. The result is not a comprehensive biography (nor is it meant to be) but rather 'a survey of his life, using the poems as reference points.' Though Heaney has been interviewed by many others, this collection's unique method of creation makes it a worthy addition to literature collections."--Felicity D. Walsh, "Library Journal
""There is no shortage of writing by or about Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Heaney. Yet this big book is a unique and useful addition to the Heaney canon: beginning in 2001, the Dublin-based poet, essayist and anthologist O'Driscoll entered into an extended correspondence with Heaney for the purpose of collaboratively constructing a kind of autobiography-in-interviews. The result is a collection of 16 discreet interviews, the first two of which discuss Heaney's childhood and poetic growth. Then there is one interview-chapter for each of Heaney's celebrated books (except the last two, which are grouped together), followed by a summing up. In conversation, Heaney comes across as extremely friendly, expansively intelligent and in possession of the groundedness in the details of his environment that readers of his poems will be familiar with. Here are boyhood recollections ('Our travelling grocery van . . . was run first by a man called McCarney, but 'the egg man' was our name for him'), memories of the famous Belfast Group and accounts of coming-of-age, and then coming to international prominence, against the backdrop of Ireland's troubled 20th-century politics. And, of course, Heaney traces the events--both political and personal--that led to many of his poems. For fans of Heaney, of 20th-century Irish literature or anyone eager to get deep into the mind of a major artist, this is an essential book."--"Publishers Weekly"

"Generous and entertaining." -Publishers Weekly (starred review) Finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay * Nominated for "Best Memoir & Autobiography" by Goodreads Choice Awards 2016 * Named a "Best Book of the Year" by New York Post "You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll want to read it again." -TheSkimm "I'm mad Jennifer's Weiner's first book of essays is as wonderful as her fiction. You will love this book and wish she was your friend." -Mindy Kaling, author of Why Not Me? "Fiercely funny, powerfully smart, and remarkably brave." -Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild Jennifer Weiner is many things: a bestselling author, a Twitter phenomenon, and an "unlikely feminist enforcer" (The New Yorker). She's also a mom, a daughter, and a sister, a clumsy yogini, and a reality-TV devotee. In this "unflinching look at her own experiences" (Entertainment Weekly), Jennifer fashions tales of modern-day womanhood as uproariously funny and moving as the best of Nora Ephron and Tina Fey. No subject is off-limits in these intimate and honest essays: sex, weight, envy, money, her mother's coming out of the closet, her estranged father's death. From lonely adolescence to hearing her six-year-old daughter say the F word-fat-for the first time, Jen dives into the heart of female experience, with the wit and candor that have endeared her to readers all over the world.