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Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > Literary
Die geliefde en gevierde kortverhaalskrywer Hennie Aucamp is op 21
Maart 2014, slegs twee maande na sy 80ste verjaardag oorlede. In
hierdie herinneringsboek word verskillende fasette van sy lewe deur
familie, vriende en medeskrywers belig. Onder die familielede wat
bydraes tot die boek gelewer het, is sy suster Rina wat
herinneringe aan hulle kinderjare op die familieplaas Rus-mijn-ziel
opdiep en sy neef Inus Aucamp wat meer vertel van die vestiging van
die Aucamp-familie in die Stormberge. Die skryfster Margaret
Bakkes, wat ook sy kleinniggie is en op 'n buurplaas grootgeword
het, vertel hoe sy en Hennie reeds as kinders teenoor mekaar bely
het dat hulle wil skryf. Daar is ook bydraes deur Marius en
Christiaan Bakkes, wat oor Hennie se belangstelling in die natuur.
Daar is besondere opstelle deur medeskrywers Lina Spies, Aletta
Lubbe (gebore Aucamp), Danie Botha en Abraham de Vries, terwyl
Daniel Hugo en Joan Hambidge gedigte opgedra aan Hennie gelewer
het. Die radiopersoonlikhede Monica Breed en Margot Luyt skryf oor
Hennie se ruimhartigheid en sy vriend Nico Loubser oor Hennie se
laaste dae. Foto’s van Philip de Vos en Marius Bakkes skep 'n
visuele beeld van die woordman Aucamp.
When John Joseph Mathews (1894-1979) began his career as a writer
in the 1930s, he was one of only a small number of Native American
authors writing for a national audience. Today he is widely
recognized as a founder and shaper of twentieth-century Native
American literature. Twenty Thousand Mornings is Mathews's intimate
chronicle of his formative years. Written in 1965-67 but only
recently discovered, this work captures Osage life in pre-statehood
Oklahoma and recounts many remarkable events in
early-twentieth-century history. Born in Pawhuska, Osage Nation,
Mathews was the only surviving son of a mixed-blood Osage father
and a French-American mother. Within these pages he lovingly
depicts his close relationships with family members and friends.
Yet always drawn to solitude and the natural world, he wanders the
Osage Hills in search of tranquil swimming holes - and new
adventures. Overturning misguided critical attempts to confine
Mathews to either Indian or white identity, Twenty Thousand
Mornings shows him as a young man of his time. He goes to dances
and movies, attends the brand-new University of Oklahoma, and joins
the Air Service as a flight instructor during World War I -
spawning a lifelong fascination with aviation. His accounts of
wartime experiences include unforgettable descriptions of his first
solo flight and growing skill in night-flying. Eventually Mathews
gives up piloting to become a student again, this time at Oxford
University, where he begins to mature as an intellectual. In her
insightful introduction and explanatory notes, Susan Kalter places
Mathews's work in the context of his life and career as a novelist,
historian, naturalist, and scholar. Kalter draws on his unpublished
diaries, revealing aspects of his personal life that have
previously been misunderstood. In addressing the significance of
this posthumous work, she posits that Twenty Thousand Mornings will
challenge, defy, and perhaps redefine studies of American Indian
autobiography.
Novelist, poet, playwright, and short story writer Joaquim Maria
Machado de Assis (1839-1908) is widely regarded as Brazil's
greatest writer, although his work is still too little read outside
his native country. In this first comprehensive English-language
examination of Machado since Helen Caldwell's seminal 1970 study,
K. David Jackson reveals Machado de Assis as an important world
author, one of the inventors of literary modernism whose writings
profoundly influenced some of the most celebrated authors of the
twentieth century, including Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, and
Donald Barthelme. Jackson introduces a hitherto unknown Machado de
Assis to readers, illuminating the remarkable life, work, and
legacy of the genius whom Susan Sontag called "the greatest writer
ever produced in Latin America" and whom Allen Ginsberg hailed as
"another Kafka." Philip Roth has said of him that "like Beckett, he
is ironic about suffering." And Harold Bloom has remarked of
Machado that "he's funny as hell."
This fascinating book is a must-Read for any Twain enthusiast" -
Andy Borowitz In fall 1891, Mark Twain headed for Berlin, the
"newest city I have ever seen," as America's foremost humorist
wrote; accompanied by his wife, Olivia, and their three daughters.
Twain, a "Yankee from head to toe," according to the Berlin press,
conspired with diplomats, frequented the famed salons, had
breakfast with duchesses, and dined with the emperor. He also
suffered an "organized dog-choir club," at his first address, which
he deemed a "rag-picker's paradise," picked a fight with the
police, who made him look under his maid's petticoats, was abused
by a porter, got lost on streetcars, was nearly struck down by
pneumonia, and witnessed a proletarian uprising right in front of
his hotel on Unter den Linden. Twain penned articles about his
everyday life and also began a novel about lonely Prussian princess
Wilhelmina von Preussen-unpublished until now, like many of his
Berlin stories. These are assembled for the first time in this
book, along with a riveting account of Twain's foray in the German
capital, by Andreas Austilat. Berlinica offers English-language
books from Berlin, German; fiction, non-fiction, travel guides,
history about the Wall and the Third Reich, Jewish life, art,
architecture and photography, as well as books about nightlife,
cookbooks, and maps. It also offers documentaries and feature films
on DVD, as well as music CDs. Berlinica caters to history buffs,
Americans of German heritage, travelers, and artists and young
people who love the cutting-edge city in the heart of Europe.
Berlinica's current and upcoming titles include "Berlin Berlin
Dispatches from the Weimar Republic," by Kurt Tucholsky, "Jews in
Berlin, by Andreas Nachama, Julius H. Schoeps, and Hermann Simon, a
comprehensive book on Jewish history and present in the German
capital, "Wings of Desire-Angels of Berlin," by Lother Heinke,"
"The Berlin Wall Today," a full-color guide to the remnants of the
Wall, "Wallflower," a novel by New-York-born writer Holly-Jane
Rahlens; "Berlin For Free," a guide to everything free in Berlin
for the frugal traveler by Monika Maertens; "Berlin in the Cold
War," about post-World War II history and the Wall, "The Berlin
Cookbook," a full-color collection of traditional German recipes by
Rose Marie Donhauser, the music CD "Berlin-mon amour," by chanteuse
Adrienne Haan, and two documentaries on DVD, "The Red Orchestra,"
by Berlin-born artist Stefan Roloff and "The Path to Nuclear
Fission," by New York filmmaker Rosemarie Reed.
A definitive new biography of James Fenimore Cooper, early
nineteenth-century master of American popular fiction "It will be
the definitive biography and foremost study of Cooper's fiction and
nonfiction for the foreseeable future."- Allan Axelrad, California
State University, Fullerton American author James Fenimore Cooper
(1789-1851) has been credited with inventing and popularizing a
wide variety of genre fiction, including the Western, the spy
novel, the high seas adventure tale, and the Revolutionary War
romance. America's first crusading novelist, Cooper reminds us that
literature is not a cloistered art; rather, it ought to be
intimately engaged with the world. In this second volume of his
definitive biography, Wayne Franklin concentrates on the latter
half of Cooper's life, detailing a period of personal and political
controversy, far-ranging international travel, and prolific
literary creation. We hear of Cooper's progressive views on race
and slavery, his doubts about American expansionism, and his
concern about the future prospects of the American Republic, while
observing how his groundbreaking career management paved the way
for later novelists to make a living through their writing.
Franklin offers readers the most comprehensive portrait to date of
this underappreciated American literary icon.
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.
John Cleland is among the most scandalous figures in British
literary history, both celebrated and attacked as a pioneer of
pornographic writing in English. His first novel, "Memoirs of a
Woman of Pleasure, " or "Fanny Hill," is one of the enduring
literary creations of the eighteenth century, despite over two
hundred years of legal prohibition. Yet the full range of his work
is still too little known.
In this study, Hal Gladfelder combines groundbreaking archival
research into Cleland's tumultuous life with incisive readings of
his sometimes extravagant, sometimes perverse body of work,
positioning him as a central figure in the development of the novel
and in the construction of modern notions of authorial and sexual
identity in eighteenth-century England.
Rather than a traditional biography, "Fanny Hill in Bombay"
presents a case history of a renegade authorial persona, based on
published works, letters, private notes, and newly discovered legal
testimony. It retraces Cleland's career from his years as a young
colonial striver with the East India Company in Bombay through
periods of imprisonment for debt and of estrangement from
collaborators and family, shedding light on his paradoxical status
as literary insider and social outcast.
As novelist, critic, journalist, and translator, Cleland engaged
with the most challenging intellectual currents of his era yet at
the same time was vilified as a pornographer, atheist, and
sodomite. Reconnecting Cleland's writing to its literary and social
milieu, this study offers new insights into the history of
authorship and the literary marketplace and contributes to
contemporary debates on pornography, censorship, the history of
sexuality, and the contested role of literature in
eighteenth-century culture.
Hailed as "a virtuoso exercise" (Sunday Telegraph), this book
reflects candidly, sometimes with great humor, on the condition of
being old. Charming readers, writers, and critics alike, the memoir
won the Costa Award for Biography and made Athill, then ninety-one,
a surprising literary star. Diana Athill was one of the great
editors in British publishing. For more than five decades she
edited the likes of V. S. Naipaul and Jean Rhys, for whom she was a
confidante and caretaker. As a writer, Athill made her reputation
for the frankness and precisely expressed wisdom of her memoirs.
Writing in her ninety-first year, "entirely untamed about both old
and new conventions" (Literary Review) and freed from any of the
inhibitions that even she may have once had, Athill reflects
candidly, and sometimes with great humor, on the condition of being
old-the losses and occasionally the gains that age brings, the
wisdom and fortitude required to face death. Distinguished by
"remarkable intelligence...[and the] easy elegance of her prose"
(Daily Telegraph), this short, well-crafted book, hailed as "a
virtuoso exercise" (Sunday Telegraph) presents an inspiring work
for those hoping to flourish in their later years.
This is an essential early Johnson biography, recovered from
obscurity and reissued in celebration of the tercentenary of
Johnson's birth. This is the first and only scholarly edition of
Sir John Hawkins' Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., a work that has
not been widely available in complete form for more than two
hundred years. Published in 1787, some four years before James
Boswell's biography of Johnson, ""Hawkins' Life"" complements,
clarifies, and often corrects numerous aspects of Boswell's Life.
Samuel Johnson (1709-84) is the most significant English writer of
the second half of the eighteenth century; indeed, this period is
widely known as the Age of Johnson. Hawkins was Johnson's friend
and legal adviser and the chief executor of his will. He knew
Johnson longer and in many respects better than other biographers,
including Boswell, who made unacknowledged use of Hawkins' Life and
helped orchestrate the critical attacks that consigned the book to
obscurity. Sir John Hawkins had special insight into Johnson's
mental states at various points in his life, his early days in
London, his association with the ""Gentleman's Magazine"", and his
political views and writings. Hawkins' use of historical and
cultural details, an uncommon literary device at the time, produced
one of the earliest 'life and times' biographies in our language. O
M Brack, Jr.'s introduction covers the history of the composition,
publication, and reception of the Life and provides a context in
which it should be read. Annotations address historical, literary,
and linguistic uncertainties, and a full textual apparatus
documents how Brack arrived at this definitive text of Hawkins'
Life.
The fifth and final volume of the Collected Letters of Katherine
Mansfield covers the almost thirteen months during which her
attention at first was firmly set on a last chance medical cure,
then finally on something very different--if death came to seem
inevitable, how should one behave in the time that remained, so one
could truly say one lived?
Mansfield's biographers, like her friends, have wondered at the
seemingly extraordinary decision to ditch conventional medicine,
for the bizarre choice of Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious
Development of Man at Fontainebleau. These letters show the clarity
of mind and will that led to that decision, the courage and
distress in making it, and the gaiety even once it was made. She
went against what her education, her husband, and most of her
friends would regard as reasonable, as she opted to spend her last
months with Russian emigres and a strange assortment of Gurdjieff
disciples (which she was not). But Fontainebleau give her the space
and the incentive to shake free from the intellectualism that she
thought the malaise of her time, as she worked at kitchen chores,
took in the details of farm life, tried to learn Russian, and
attempted to reach total honesty with herself. "If I were allowed
one simple cry to God," she wrote in one of her last letters, "that
cry would be I want to be REAL."
David Foster is the most original, challenging, contradictory,
risk-taking and infuriating Australian novelist of his generation.
To date he has published twelve novels, three collections of
novellas and short stories, two books of poetry, and a collection
of essays, with several produced radio plays. Foster writes in an
Australian tradition of idiosyncratic satire and comedy that may be
traced through the work of Joseph Furphy, Miles Franklin, Xavier
Herbert and David Ireland. His novels are the most wide-ranging and
fearless of the Australian novels that have contributed to the late
twentieth-century re-examination of Western ideologies and the
literary forms in which they are expressed. In this first critical
study of David Foster's works, Professor Susan Lever steers us into
penetrating the mysteries of Foster's fiction, and provides
guidance to readers willing to approach them. The book examines the
contradictory nature of his commitments and interests as expressed
mainly in his novels. Each of his works of fiction and poetry in
the order of publication (except for The Adventures of Christian
Rosy Cross and The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover which are
discussed with similar novels) are discussed. The development of
Foster's philosophical ideas and technique as a novelist over the
35 years of his writing life to date is followed. The book also
examines Foster's letters to Geoffrey Dutton early in his career;
his interviews and essays provide some of the background to these
novels. The book also furnishes a sense of the Australian context
for his work. A brief biography of Foster's early life and a
discussion of his approach to satire is also included.
Few people are aware that the true identity of William Shakespeare
represents Western Civilization's greatest mystery. Even fewer
realize that the commonly accepted authorship by William Shaksper
of Stratford-on-Avon, who was illiterate, is a complete hoax
manufactured by England's leading politicians, William Cecil and
his son, Robert, for personal reasons of greed and power.
The hoax survived largely unscathed until 1920 when J. Thomas
Looney's brilliant book, "Shakespeare Identified," plucked Edward
de Vere's buried name out of historical obscurity and introduced
him to the world as the real Shakespeare. Fighting the astonishing
power of conventional wisdom, believers in the de Vere theory have
steadily built their case through now hard-to-find scholarly
research for the past ninety years.
This anthology series, "Building the Case for Edward de Vere as
Shakespeare," salvages fascinating, neglected authorship material
which repeatedly and convincingly shows that Edward de Vere was the
uniquely creative genius who wrote under the coerced pen name of
William Shakespeare.
The Life of William Shakespeare is a fascinating and wide-ranging
exploration of Shakespeare's life and works focusing on oftern
neglected literary and historical contexts: what Shakespeare read,
who he worked with as an author and an actor, and how these various
collaborations may have affected his writing. * Written by an
eminent Shakespearean scholar and experienced theatre reviewer *
Pays particular attention to Shakespeare's theatrical
contemporaries and the ways in which they influenced his writing *
Offers an intriguing account of the life and work of the great
poet-dramatist structured around the idea of memory * Explores
often neglected literary and historical contexts that illuminate
Shakespeare's life and works
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