Charlotte Brontes years in Belgium (184243) had a huge influence both on her life and her work. It was in Brussels that she not only honed her writing skills but fell in love and lived through the experiences that inspired two of her four novels: her first, The Professor, and her last and in many ways most interesting, Villette. Her feelings about Belgium are known from her novels and letters her love for her tutor Heger, her uncomplimentary remarks about Belgians, the powerful effect on her imagination of living abroad. But what about Belgian views of Charlotte Bronte? What has her legacy been in Brussels? How have Belgian commentators responded to her portrayal of their capital city and their society? Through Belgian Eyes explores a wide range of responses from across the Channel, from the hostile to the enthusiastic. In the process, it examines what The Professor and Villette tell Belgian readers about their capital in the 1840s and provides a wealth of detail on the Brussels background to the two novels. Unlike Paris and London, Brussels has inspired few outstanding works of literature. That makes Villette, considered by many to be Charlotte Brontes masterpiece, of particular interest as a portrait of the Belgian capital a decade after the country gained independence in 1830, and just before modernisation and expansion transformed the city out of all recognition from the villette (small town) that Charlotte knew. Her view of Brussels is contrasted with those of other foreign visitors and of the Belgians themselves. The story of Charlotte Brontes Brussels legacy provides a unique perspective on her personality and writing.

Japan in the 10th century stood physically and culturally isolated from the rest of the world. Inside this bubble, a subtle and beautiful world was in operation, and its inhabitants were tied to the moment, having no interest in the future and disdain for the past. The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon was a product of a tenth-century courtier's experiences in the palace of Empress Teishi. A common custom of the time period, courtiers used to keep notes or a diary in a wooden pillow with a drawer. This "pillow book" reflects the confident aesthetic judgments of Shonagon and her ability to create prose that crossed into the realm of the poetic. The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon is one of the earliest examples of diary literature whose passages chronicle the events of the court calendar, the ceremonies and celebrations specific to Teishi's court, and the vignettes that provide brilliantly drawn glimpses into the manners and foibles of the aristocracy. A contemporary of Murasaki Shikibu, the author of The Tale of Genji, this small diary brings an added dimension to Murasaki's timeless and seminal work. Arthur Waley's elegant translation of The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon captures the beauty of its prose and the vitality of Shonagon's narrative voice, as well as her quirky personality traits. In a place and time where poetry was as important as knowledge and beauty was highly revered, Sei Shonagon's private writings give the reader a charming and intimate glimpse into a time of isolated innocence and pale beauty.

"The five marriages that Carmela Ciuraru explores in Lives of the Wives provide such delightfully gossipy pleasure that we have to remind ourselves that these were real people whose often stormy relationships must surely have been less fun to experience than they are for us to read about."-Francine Prose, author of The Vixen A witty, provocative look inside the tumultuous marriages of five writers, illuminating the creative process as well as the role of money, power, and fame in these complex and fascinating relationships. "With an ego the size of a small nation, the literary lion is powerful on the page, but a helpless kitten in daily life-dependent on his wife to fold an umbrella, answer the phone, or lick a stamp." The history of wives is largely one of silence, resilience, and forbearance. Toss in celebrity, male privilege, ruthless ambition, narcissism, misogyny, infidelity, alcoholism, and a mood disorder or two, and it's easy to understand why the marriages of so many famous writers have been stormy, short-lived, and mutually destructive. "It's been my experience," as the critic and novelist Elizabeth Hardwick once wrote, "that nobody holds a man's brutality to his wife against him." Literary wives are a unique breed, requiring a particular kind of fortitude. Author Carmela Ciuraru shares the stories of five literary marriages, exposing the misery behind closed doors. The legendary British theatre critic Kenneth Tynan encouraged his American wife, Elaine Dundy, to write, then watched in a jealous rage as she became a bestselling author and critical success. In the early years of their marriage, Roald Dahl enjoyed basking in the glow of his glamorous movie star wife, Patricia Neal, until he detested her for being the breadwinner, and being more famous than he was. Elizabeth Jane Howard had to divorce Kingsley Amis to escape his suffocating needs and devote herself to her own writing. ("I really couldn't write very much when I was married to him," she once recalled, "because I had a very large household to keep up and Kingsley wasn't one to boil an egg, if you know what I mean.") Surprisingly, the most traditional partnership in Lives of the Wives is a lesbian couple, Una Troubridge and Radclyffe Hall, both of whom were socially and politically conservative and unapologetic snobs. As this erudite and entertaining work shows, each marriage is a unique story, filled with struggles and triumphs and the negotiation of power. The Italian novelists Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia were never sexually compatible, and it was Morante who often behaved abusively toward her cool, detached husband, even as he unwaveringly admired his wife's talents and championed her work. Theirs was an unhappy union, yet it fueled them creatively and enabled both to become two of Italy's most important postwar writers. These are stories of vulnerability, loneliness, infidelity, envy, sorrow, abandonment, heartbreak, and forgiveness. Above all, Lives of the Wives honors the women who have played the role of muses, agents, editors, proofreaders, housekeepers, gatekeepers, amaneunses, confidantes, and cheerleaders to literary trailblazers throughout history. In revisiting the lives of famous writers, it is time in our #MeToo era to highlight the achievements of their wives-and the price these women paid for recognition and freedom. Lives of the Wives is an insightful, humorous, and poignant exploration of the intersection of life and art and creativity and love.

Ford Madox Ford had a fascinating life, spent among several of the most important groups of artists and writers of his time. Friends with Henry James, H. G. Wells and above all Joseph Conrad, Ford was a leading figure of the avant-garde in pre-First World War London, publishing Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis and D. H. Lawrence in The English Review. After the warhe founded The Transatlantic Review in Paris, helping to launch Hemingway and Jean Rhys. A prolific writer in his own right, Ford's best-known books are the modernist tour de force The Good Soldier (1915) and the Parade's End tetralogy (1924-8). Drawing on recently discovered correspondence and photographs, this cogent new critical biography demonstrates Ford's vital contribution to modern fiction, poetry and criticism.

A 2010 "New York Times" Notable BookA 2010 Lambda Literary Award Winner
A 2009 Edgar Award Nominee
A 2009 Agatha Award Nominee
A "Publishers Weekly" Pick of the Week
Patricia Highsmith, one of the great writers of twentieth-century American fiction, had a life as darkly compelling as that of her favorite "hero-criminal," the talented Tom Ripley. Joan Schenkar maps out this richly bizarre life from her birth in Texas to Hitchcock's filming of her first novel, "Strangers on a Train, " to her long, strange self-exile in Europe. We see her as a secret writer for the comics, a brilliant creator of disturbing fictions, and an erotic predator with dozens of women (and a few good men) on her love list. "The Talented Miss Highsmith" is the first literary biography with access to Highsmith's whole story: her closest friends, her oeuvre, her archives. It's a compulsive page-turner unlike any other, a book worthy of Highsmith herself.

Shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award 'A gem of a book, informative, companionable, sometimes funny, and wholly original. MacLean must surely be the outstanding, and most indefatigable, traveller-writer of our time' John le Carre In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell. In that euphoric year Rory MacLean travelled from Berlin to Moscow, exploring lands that were - for most Brits and Americans - part of the forgotten half of Europe. Thirty years on, MacLean traces his original journey backwards, across countries confronting old ghosts and new fears: from revanchist Russia, through Ukraine's bloodlands, into illiberal Hungary, and then Poland, Germany and the UK. Along the way he shoulders an AK-47 to go hunting with Moscow's chicken Tsar, plays video games in St Petersburg with a cyber-hacker who cracked the US election, drops by the Che Guevara High School of Political Leadership in a non-existent nowhereland and meets the Warsaw doctor who tried to stop a march of 70,000 nationalists. Finally, on the shores of Lake Geneva, he waits patiently to chat with Mikhail Gorbachev. As Europe sleepwalks into a perilous new age, MacLean explores how opportunists - both within and outside of Russia, from Putin to Home Counties populists - have made a joke of truth, exploiting refugees and the dispossessed, and examines the veracity of historical narrative from reportage to fiction and fake news. He asks what happened to the optimism of 1989 and, in the shadow of Brexit, chronicles the collapse of the European dream.

This collection of seven essays, like the carefully linked collection of vignettes within Tim O'Brien's most popular book The Things They Carried, contains multiple critical and biographical angles with recurring threads of life events, themes, characters, creative techniques, and references to all of O'Brien's books. Grounded in through research, Herzog's work illustrates how O'Brien merges his life experiences with his creative production; he rarely misses an opportunity to introduce these critical life events into his writing.

'A searing, triumphant story. A testament to the tenacity of the human spirit as well as a beautiful ode to an iconic figure' IRENOSEN OKOJIE Letters to Gil is Malik Al Nasir's profound coming of age memoir - the story of surviving physical and racial abuse and discovering a new sense of self-worth under the wing of the great artist, poet and civil rights activist Gil Scott-Heron. Born in Liverpool, Malik was taken into care at the age of nine after his seafaring father became paralysed. He would spend his adolescence in a system that proved violent, neglectful, exploitative, traumatising and mired in abuse. Aged eighteen, he emerged semi-literate, penniless with no connections or sense of where he was going - until a chance meeting with Gil Scott-Heron. Letters to Gil will tell the story of Malik's empowerment and awakening while mentored by Gil, from his introduction to the legacy of Black history to the development of his voice through poetry and music. Written with lyricism and power, it is a frank and moving memoir, highlighting how institutional racism can debilitate and disadvantage a child, as well as how mentoring, creativity, self-expression and solidarity helped him to uncover his potential.

Originally published in 1962, Virginia Woolf, provides a commentary on the literary work of Virginia Woolf - examining not only her the novels, but also the considerable body of criticism surrounding her work. Along with the essential biographical details of Woolf, the books recreates the atmosphere of 'the Bloomsbury Group' and gives us a valuable insight into a very rich period of English literature, involving such figures as Leslie Stephen, Leonard Woolf, Clive Bell, Desmond MacCarthy, Christopher Isherwood, David Garnett and others. The book provides a comprehensive account of Virginia Woolf's body of work and will be of interest to academics and students alike.

Originally published in 1990, Women of Bloomsbury takes a fresh look at the lives of Virginia Woolf, her sister Vanessa Bell, and Dora Carrington. Connected by more than bonds of friendship and artistic endeavour, the three women faced similar struggles. Juxtaposing their personal lives and their work, Mary Ann Caws shows us with feeling and clarity the pain women suffer in being artists and in finding - or creating - their sense of self. Relying on unpublished letters and diaries, as well as familiar texts, Caws give us a portrait of the female self in the act of creation.

In 1903, after a fire completely destroyed her family home in Norfolk, UK, the 27- year-old Constance helped her mother redesign their house and recreate the garden. It was an experience from which she never looked back, going on to become an internationally recognised garden expert and connoisseur. A rich woman herself, she was attracted to the most spectacular and extravagant gardens in the world. From Shalimar Bagh, Lahore, to Nishat Bagh, Srinagar, to La Granja near Madrid, Constance earned her reputation studying Mughal and Moorish gardens as well as those in Great Britain, France, Italy and northern Europe. Between 1910 and 1955 she wrote about them, painted and photographed them and lectured on them. She produced two successful illustrated books, and numerous articles for magazines, including Country Life, Vogue, The Burlington Magazine, Harpers Bazaar, and The Times. When she died in 1966, she left paintings, photographs, diaries, press cuttings and scrapbooks to her grandchildren. It is upon this fascinating and hitherto unseen archive of memorabilia that Constance Villiers Stuart: In Pursuit of Paradise is based.

Published for the first time as Ernest Hemingway intended, one of the great writer's most beloved and enduring works: his classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s.
Published posthumously in 1964, "A Moveable Feast" remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works. Since Hemingway's personal papers were released in 1979, scholars have examined and debated the changes made to the text before publication. Now, this spe- cial restored edition presents the original manuscript as the author intended it to be published.
Featuring a personal Foreword by Patrick Hemingway, Ernest's sole surviving son, and an Introduction by the editor and grandson of the author, Sean Hemingway, this new edi- tion also includes a number of unfinished, never-before-pub- lished Paris sketches revealing experiences that Hemingway had with his son, Jack, and his first wife Hadley. Also included are irreverent portraits of other literary luminaries, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ford Maddox Ford, and insightful recollections of Hemingway's own early experiments with his craft.
Sure to excite critics and readers alike, the restored edition of "A Moveable Feast" brilliantly evokes the exuberant mood of Paris after World War I and the unbridled creativity and unquenchable enthusiasm that Hemingway himself epitomized.

While working on his second novel, John Sedgwick spiraled into a depression so profound that it very nearly resulted in suicide. An author acclaimed for his intimate literary excursions into the rarified, moneyed enclave of Brahmin Boston, he decided to search for the roots of his malaise in the history of his own storied family--one of America's oldest and most notable. Following a bloodline that travels from Theodore Sedgwick, compatriot of George Washington and John Adams, to Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol's tragic muse, John Sedgwick's very personal journey of self-discovery became something far greater: a spellbinding study of the evolution of an extraordinary American family.

'During the Tang dynasty, the Chinese artist Wu Tao-tzu was one day standing looking at a mural he had just completed. Suddenly, he clapped his hands and the temple gate opened. He went into his work and the gates closed behind him.' Thus begins Sven Lindqvist's profound meditation on art and its relationship with life, first published in 1967, and a classic in his home country - it has never been out of print. As a young man, Sven Lindqvist was fascinated by the myth of Wu Tao-tzu, and by the possibility of entering a work of art and making it a way of life. He was drawn to artists and writers who shared this vision, especially Hermann Hesse, in his novel Glass Bead Game. Partly inspired by Hesse's work, Lindqvist lived in China for two years, learning classical calligraphy from a master teacher. There he was drawn deeper into the idea of a life of artistic perfectionism and retreat from the world. But when he left China for India and then Afghanistan, and saw the grotesque effects of poverty and extreme inequality, Lindqvist suffered a crisis of confidence and started to question his ideas about complete immersion in art at the expense of a proper engagement with life. The Myth of Wu Tao-tzu takes us on a fascinating journey through a young man's moral awakening and his grappling with profound questions of aesthetics. It contains the bracing moral anger, and poetic, intensely atmospheric travel writing Lindqvist's readers have come to love.

'What a rare gift Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett possesses: expansive compassion, empathy and warmth, and a scalpel precision with words' Emma Forrest 'A superbly written, special book' Olivia Sudjic 'Conjures a heady, terrifying time in beautiful detail' Nell Frizzell When Rhiannon fell in love with, and eventually married her flatmate, she imagined they might one day move on. But this is London in the age of generation rent, and so they share their home with a succession of friends and strangers while saving for a life less makeshift. The desire for a baby is never far from the surface, but can she be sure that she will ever be free of the anxiety she has experienced since an attack in the street one night? And after a childhood spent caring for her autistic brother, does she really want to devote herself to motherhood? Moving through the seasons over the course of lockdown, The Year of the Cat nimbly charts the way a kitten called Mackerel walked into Rhiannon's home and heart, and taught her to face down her fears and appreciate quite how much love she had to offer.

First Published in 1959, The Life of John Middleton Murry is the first biography of one of the most controversial figures in English letters. Many people know Middleton Murry in one or other of his capacities: as editor (of the avant-grade magazine Rhythm, while he was still an undergraduate, of The Athenaeum in its last, most brilliant phase, The Adelphi in the 1920s, Peace News in the '40s); as the foremost critique of his day; as author of some forty books on literary, religious and social questions; as the husband of Katherine Mansfield and intimate of D.H. Lawrence; as prophet, politician or farmer.... Few, even of his most vigorous champions or opponents, discerned the consistent purpose uniting all his multifarious activities. To trace that is the principal aim of this book. Believing that the duty of the 'official biographer' is rather to present than interpret, the author makes no attempt to evaluate Murry's theories objectively, confining himself to showing how intimately they grew out of his strange, tragic (and occasionally comic) experience. At the same time, he makes no secret of his own view of Murry's significance both as a thinker and as 'the representative figure of an age of breakneck social transition'. The Life of John Middleton Murry will be of interest to scholars and researchers of historical biographies, British history, and literature.

Over the last 200 years, the novels of Jane Austen have been loved and celebrated across a diverse international readership. As a result, there is a bottomless appetite for detail about the woman behind the writing. Jane Austen traces her life and times; her relationships with family and friends; the attitudes and customs of the time that shaped her and were in turn shaped by her work; and the places where she lived, worked and set her novels, from rural Hampshire to fashionable Bath Spa. Chapters on each of her novels run throughout the book and place them in the context of her life. For such a renowned novelist, there is remarkably little direct material available, but this volume draws on archives for a truly insightful view.

First published in 1968. Richard Hengist Horne, virtually unknown today, was one of the more extraordinary figures of the nineteenth century literary scene. The author of an epic poem Orion was acclaimed a work of genius by almost every English critic. His voluminous literary output is for the most part forgotten, but his life and character, his widely romantic aspirations to be a Man of Genius, provide a fascinating tragi-comic study. As a background study to the literature and society of the time, Ann Blainey's book is packed with interest and anecdote, and as a study of a remarkable man it is consistently entertaining.

This is a personal history of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of Edith Kurzweil, author, teacher, editor of Partisan Review, and a recent recipient of the National Medal of Humanities. The book opens with Kurzweil early adolescence in Vienna during the Nazi takeover. It ends with the author finding herself in the new century. In between, she kept moving on and interrogating the world around her. The reader follows Kurzweil on her perilous journey, at the age of fourteen, to Belgium, through France, Spain, and Portugal, alone with her younger brother. Her fantasies of reunion with her parents in New York kept her going but came to naught: she had not expected to fall from a wealthy childhood into the life of the working-class poor, as a millinery apprentice or a diamond cutter. Instead of entering college life, she eventually became a conventional American housewife. Unhappy and anxious, she anticipated the social changes in America, and returned to Europe with her second husband and her two children. She arrived at the beginning of the Italian miracle--its post-war revitalization. In Milan she met many Americans as an active member of its community and of the British-American club. After personal tragedy she returned to New York, and only then pursued her early intellectual ambitions. The author eventually became a professor of sociology and quickly climbed up the academic ladder. Just as she had been as a little girl, she still "wanted to know everything," beginning with her study of Italian entrepreneurs and going on to European history and French thought, to psychoanalysis and anti-Semitism. Her early writings prompted William Phillips, co-founder and editor of Partisan Review, to invite her into the elite circle of New York intellectuals. She worked alongside him, first as a reader, then as executive editor, and took over the editorship of the legendary journal during its final period. Kurzweil's journey was one of courage, and of emotional and intellectual growth. Full Circle will be of interest to intellectual and cultural historians, literary and Holocaust scholars, and American studies specialists.

This celebration of the woman who took us to the heights of a secluded attic and the depths of our own dark psyches reveals an intimate portrait of the famously private V.C. Andrews-featuring family photos, personal letters, a partial manuscript for an unpublished novel, and more. Best known for her internationally, multi-million-copy bestselling novel Flowers in the Attic, Cleo Virginia Andrews lived a fascinating life. Born to modest means, she came of age in the American South during the Great Depression and faced a series of increasingly challenging health issues. Yet, once she rose to international literary fame, she prided herself on her intense privacy. Now, The Woman Beyond the Attic aims to connect her personal life with the public novels for which she was famous. Based on Virginia's own letters, and interviews with her dearest family members, her long-term ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman tells Virginia's full story for the first time. The Woman Beyond the Attic is perfect for V.C. Andrews fans who pick up every new novel or for fans hoping to return to the favorite novelist of their adolescence. Eye-opening and intimate, The Woman Beyond the Attic is for anyone hoping to learn more about the enigmatic woman behind one of the most important novels of the 20th century.

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647 - 1680), has long been notorious as one of the most entertaining, extravagant and scandalous members of Charles II's court. He was also the most brilliant, witty and insightful satirist and lyric poet of his time, limited only by his early death caused by venereal disease and alcoholism. Passion for Living provides a full discussion of his life and writings, set in the context of his Times - the licentious court of Charles II and his mistresses, the Dutch wars and the so-called Popish Plot - together with close readings and analyses of his love lyrics, bawdy songs and shrewd satires, related to the life of his contemporaries, such as Thomas Hobbes, Samuel Butler and John Dryden. This informative and readable study will be of interest to both the general reader and the student.

A compelling portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft that shows the intimate connections between her life and work Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, first published in 1792, is a work of enduring relevance in women's rights advocacy. However, as Sylvana Tomaselli shows, a full understanding of Wollstonecraft's thought is possible only through a more comprehensive appreciation of Wollstonecraft herself, as a philosopher and moralist who deftly tackled major social and political issues and the arguments of such figures as Edmund Burke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Adam Smith. Reading Wollstonecraft through the lens of the politics and culture of her own time, this book restores her to her rightful place as a major eighteenth-century thinker, reminding us why her work still resonates today. The book's format echoes one that Wollstonecraft favored in Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: short essays paired with concise headings. Under titles such as "Painting," "Music," "Memory," "Property and Appearance," and "Rank and Luxury," Tomaselli explores not only what Wollstonecraft enjoyed and valued, but also her views on society, knowledge and the mind, human nature, and the problem of evil-and how a society based on mutual respect could fight it. The resulting picture of Wollstonecraft reveals her as a particularly engaging author and an eloquent participant in enduring social and political concerns. Drawing us into Wollstonecraft's approach to the human condition and the debates of her day, Wollstonecraft ultimately invites us to consider timeless issues with her, so that we can become better attuned to the world as she saw it then, and as we might wish to see it now.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name of Mark Twain, is one of the most famous writers in American (and world) literature. Twain had a fascinating life that began in hardship in 1835 (only three of his seven siblings survived childhood) and ended shortly before the First World War. Best known for his writing, Twain was also a gifted raconteur, entrepreneur, publisher, freemason, and lecturer across a very busy life that saw him patent inventions, go bankrupt and receive a PhD from Oxford University, all the while putting out an enormous volume of superbly written literary work. Twain also recorded some of the most biting commentary and criticism of politics and culture and is famous for his brilliant words, aphorisms, one-liners and sayings. He was never a man stuck for words, and he lived through one of the most amazing eras of politics, social and scientific change and evolution. Many of his words are as relevant today as they were 100 years ago and plenty of his classic phrases grace the pages of The Little Book of Mark Twain, alongside numerous extracts from his writings, as well as comment and criticism from his contemporaries, fans and followers. It adds up to a superb overview of the man, his character, his writing and his incredible talent. SAMPLE QUOTE: 'It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.' - Mark Twain SAMPLE FACT: Twain was very close friends with Nikola Tesla and they worked together in Tesla's laboratory.