Although his hilariously entertaining stories have touched the hearts of generations of children, there was much more to beloved author Roald Dahl than met the eye. His fascinating life began in Norway in 1916, and he became a highly rebellious teenager who delighted in defying authority before joining the RAF as a fighter pilot. But after his plane crashed in the African desert he was left with agonising injuries and unable to fly. He was dispatched to New York where, as a dashing young air attache, he enraptured societies greatest beauties and became friends with President Roosevelt. Roald soon found himself entangled with a highly complex network of British undercover operations. Eventually he grew tired of the secrecy of spying and retreated to the English countryside. He married twice and had five children, but his life was also affected by serious illness, tragedy and loss. He wrote a number of stories for adults, many of which were televised as the hugely popular Tales of the Unexpected, but it was as a children's author that he found greatest fame and satisfaction, saying "I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers...Books shouldn't be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful." From 1945 until his death in 1990, he lived in Buckinghamshire, where he wrote his most celebrated children's books including Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Fantastic Mr Fox.

Tolstoy as Man and Artist with an Essay on Dostoevsky (1901) is a work of literary criticism by Dmitriy Merezhkovsky. Having turned from his work in poetry to a new, spiritually charged interest in fiction, Merezhkovsky sought to develop his theory of the Third Testament, an apocalyptic vision of Christianity's fulfillment in twentieth century humanity. In this collection of essays on Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Merezhkovsky explores the spiritual dimensions of the written word by examining the interconnection of being and writing for two of Russian literature's most iconic writers. For Dmitriy Merezhkovsky, an author who always wrote with philosophical and spiritual purpose, the figure of the artist as a human being is a powerful tool for understanding the quality and focus of that artist's work. Leo Tolstoy, author of such classics as War and Peace and Anna Karenina, developed a reputation as an ascetic, deeply spiritual man who envisioned his art as an extension of his political and religious beliefs. Dostoevsky, while perhaps more interested in the psychological aspects of human life, pursued a similar path in such novels as The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment. In Merezhkovsky's view, these writers came to embody in their lives and works the particularly Russian conflict between truths both human and divine. Tolstoy as Man and Artist with an Essay on Dostoevsky is an invaluable text both for its analysis of its subjects and for its illumination of the philosophical concepts explored by Merezhkovsky throughout his storied career. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Dmitriy Merezhkovsky's Tolstoy as Man and Artist with an Essay on Dostoevsky is a classic work of Russian literature reimagined for modern readers.

This biography examines the long life of the traveller and author Stephen Graham. Graham walked across large parts of the Tsarist Empire in the years before 1917, describing his adventures in a series of books and articles that helped to shape attitudes towards Russia in Britain and the United States. In later years he travelled widely across Europe and North America, meeting some of the best known writers of the twentieth century, including H.G.Wells and Ernest Hemingway. Graham also wrote numerous novels and biographies that won him a wide readership on both sides of the Atlantic. This book traces Graham's career as a world traveller, and provides a rich portrait of English, Russian and American literary life in the first half of the twentieth century. It also examines how many aspects of his life and writing coincide with contemporary concerns, including the development of New Age spirituality and the rise of environmental awareness. Beyond Holy Russia is based on extensive research in archives of private papers in Britain and the USA and on the many works of Graham himself. The author describes with admirable tact and clarity Graham's heterodox and convoluted spiritual quest. The result is a fascinating portrait of a man who was for many years a significant literary figure on both sides of the Atlantic.

Thomas Carlyle was a major figure in Victorian literature and a unique commentator on nineteenth-century life. Born in humble circumstances in the Scottish village of Ecclefechan in 1795, his rise to fame was marked by fierce determination and the development of a highly distinctive literary voice. In this clear, authoritative and readable biography, John Morrow traces Carlyle's personal and intellectual career. Wide-ranging, prophetic and invariably challenging, his work ranged from the astonishing pseudo-autobiography Sartor Resartus to major historical works on the French Revolution and Frederick the Great, and to radical political manifestos such as Latter Day Pamphlets. Thomas Carlyle is an account of his work and of his life, including celebrity as the Sage of Chelsea and his tempestuous marriage to Jane Welsh Carlyle.

Critically acclaimed, award-winning biography of CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien and the brilliant group of writers to come out of Oxford during the Second World War. C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and their friends were a regular feature of the Oxford scenery in the years during and after the Second World War. They drank beer on Tuesdays at the 'Bird and Baby', and on Thursday nights they met in Lewis' Magdalen College rooms to read aloud from the books they were writing; jokingly they called themselves 'The Inklings'. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien first introduced The Screwtape Letters and The Lord of the Rings to an audience in this company and Charles Williams, poet and writer of supernatural thrillers, was another prominent member of the group. Humphrey Carpenter, who wrote the acclaimed biography of J.R.R. Tolkien, draws upon unpublished letters and diaries, to which he was given special access, in this engrossing story.

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.

The story of Mary Poppins, the quintessentially English and utterly magical children's nanny, is remarkable enough. She flew into the lives of the unsuspecting Banks family in a children's book that was instantly hailed as a classic, then became a household name when Julie Andrews stepped into the starring role in Walt Disney's hugely successful and equally classic film. Now she is a sensation all over again-both on Broadway and in Disney's upcoming film Saving Mr. Banks. Saving Mr. Banksretells many of the stories in Valerie Lawson's biography Mary Poppins, She Wrote, including P. L. Travers's move from London to Hollywood and her struggles with Walt Disney as he adapted her novel for the big screen. Travers, whom Disney accused of vanity for "thinking she knows more about Mary Poppins than I do," was a poet and world-renowned author as tart and opinionated as Andrews's big-screen Mary Poppins was cheery and porcelain-beautiful. Yet it was a love of mysticism and magic that shaped Travers's life as well as the very character of Mary Poppins. The clipped, strict, and ultimately mysterious nanny who emerged from her pen was the creation of someone who remained inscrutable and enigmatic to the end of her ninety-six years. Valerie Lawson's illuminating biography provides the first full look at the life of the woman and writer whose personal journey is as intriguing as her beloved characters.

Frank M. Robinson (1926-2014) accomplished a great deal in his long life, working in magazine publishing, including a stint for Playboy, and writing science fiction novels such as The Power, The Dark Beyond the Stars, and thrillers such as The Glass Inferno (filmed as The Towering Inferno). Robinson also passionately engaged in politics, fighting for gay rights, and most famously writing speeches for his good friend Harvey Milk in San Francisco. This deeply personal autobiography explains the life of one gay man over eight decades in America and contains personal photos. By turns witty, charming, and poignant, this memoir grants insights into Robinson's work not just as a journalist and writer, but as a gay man navigating the often perilous social landscape of twentieth-century life in the United States. The bedrock sincerity and painful honesty with which he describes this life makes Not So Good a Gay Man compelling reading.

"This work will change our understanding of Coleridge's politics and how we read his oeuvre." Dr. Michael John Kooy (Warwick University, U.K.) Samuel Taylor Coleridge is best known as a great poet and literary theorist, but for one, quite short, period of his life he held real political power - acting as Public Secretary to the British Civil Commissioner in Malta in 1805. This was a formative experience for Coleridge which he later identified as being one of the most instructive in his entire life. In this volume Barry Hough and Howard Davis show how Coleridge's actions whilst in a position of power differ markedly from the idealism he had advocated before taking office - shedding new light on Coleridge's sense of political and legal morality. Meticulously researched and including newly discovered archival materials, Coleridge's Laws provides detailed analysis of the laws and public notices drafted by Coleridge, together with the first published translations of them. Drawing from a wealth of primary sources Hough and Davis identify the political challenges facing Coleridge and reveal that, in attempting to win over the Maltese public to support Britain's strategic interests, Coleridge was complicit in acts of government which were both inconsistent with the the rule of law and contrary to his professed beliefs. Coleridge's willingness to overlook accepted legal processes and personal misgivings for political expediency is disturbing and, as explained by Michael John Kooy's in his extensive Introduction, necessarily alters our understanding of the author and his writing. Coleridge's Laws contributes in new ways to the current debates about Coleridge's achievements, British colonialism and its engagement with the rule of law, nationhood and the effectiveness of the British administration of Malta. It provides essential reading for anybody interested in Coleridge specifically and the Romantics more generally, for political and legal historians and for students of colonial government.

In recent years, under pressure from New Historicism and developments in the formal study of biography, scholars have become increasingly conscious of how deliberately fashioned were the images of Shelley, Byron and Wordsworth. In Byron's case, this was often with his consent or collusion; in Shelley's case, it was the active efforts of his widow and friends who struggled to construct a particular picture of both man and poet. With Wordsworth the picture is less clear, since the kind of scrutiny that his two counterparts have recently received has rarely extended to him. The memoirs in this collection are written by those who had personal knowledge of Shelley, Byron and Wordsworth, or who claimed to be recording the accounts of those who had such knowledge. Each volume in this set contains the original memoirs in facsimile together with introductions and headnotes. The headnotes set the relevant context for each document, cross-referencing controversial passages.

Updike is Adam Begley's masterful, much-anticipated biography of one of the most celebrated figures in American literature: Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Updike--a candid, intimate, and richly detailed look at his life and work. In this magisterial biography, Adam Begley offers an illuminating portrait of John Updike, the acclaimed novelist, poet, short-story writer, and critic who saw himself as a literary spy in small-town and suburban America, who dedicated himself to the task of transcribing "middleness with all its grits, bumps and anonymities." Updike explores the stages of the writer's pilgrim's progress: his beloved home turf of Berks County, Pennsylvania; his escape to Harvard; his brief, busy working life as the golden boy at The New Yorker; his family years in suburban Ipswich, Massachusetts; his extensive travel abroad; and his retreat to another Massachusetts town, Beverly Farms, where he remained until his death in 2009. Drawing from in-depth research as well as interviews with the writer's colleagues, friends, and family, Begley explores how Updike's fiction was shaped by his tumultuous personal life--including his enduring religious faith, his two marriages, and his first-hand experience of the "adulterous society" he was credited with exposing in the bestselling Couples. With a sharp critical sensibility that lends depth and originality to his analysis, Begley probes Updike's best-loved works--from Pigeon Feathers to The Witches of Eastwick to the Rabbit tetralogy--and reveals a surprising and deeply complex character fraught with contradictions: a kind man with a vicious wit, a gregarious charmer who was ruthlessly competitive, a private person compelled to spill his secrets on the printed page. Updike offers an admiring yet balanced look at this national treasure, a master whose writing continues to resonate like no one else's.

George Eliot (1819-1880) was one of the leading writers of the Victorian period and she remains one of Britain's greatest novelists. This brief life offers new insights into Eliot's life and work focusing on the themes, patterns, relationships, feelings and language common to both her life and writing. Barbara Hardy discusses Eliot's relations with parents and siblings, her brave but joyful unmarried partnership with George Henry Lewes, her friendships and her late brief marriage to the younger John Cross. Setting her life and fiction side by side, Hardy reveals Eliot's ideas about society, home, foreignness, nature, gender, religion, sex, illness and death and her experiences as translator, journalist, editor and novelist. Drawing on letters, journals, journalism and the memoirs and biographies written by contemporaries, Hardy brings together a biographical approach with close reading of Eliot's novels to give a combined perspective on her life and art. This book offers students, academics and readers alike an illuminating portrait of George Eliot as a woman and a writer.

This is the first scholarly edition of Aubrey's Brief Lives since 1898, the first to include the complete text of the three Brief Lives manuscripts (including censored and deleted material, title pages, antiquarian notes, and the indices), and the first to provide a full general and critical introduction and comprehensive commentary. This edition is the first to respect the original arrangement of the Lives in Aubrey's manuscripts. Brief Lives is presented as an antiquarian and collaborative text, containing the autograph papers of biographical subjects, the annotations of those among whom the manuscripts circulated, and wax seals. As well as 25 facsimile pages, there are over 160 images, reproducing for the first time all Aubrey's horoscopes, pedigrees, coats of arms, and topographical sketches as they are found in the manuscripts. The text respects the mise-en-page of the manuscript and its status as an incomplete and heavily revised work-in-progress while presenting an edited, rather than a diplomatic, text. The commentary presents extensive new research on manuscript sources including much material not previously known to be Aubrey's or associated with him. It also reflects the state of current scholarship. Each life is introduced by a headnote placing the life in context. This gives the dates and sequence of composition and an account of Aubrey's relationship with the biographical subject, the circulation of knowledge of that subject in Aubrey's circle, and a full account of Aubrey's notes on the subject of the life in other manuscripts and correspondence. Aubrey's biographical informants also have a long note, as do uncompleted or missing Lives.

Based on a rich range of primary sources and manuscripts, "A Rossetti Family Chronology" breaks exciting new ground. Focusing on Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the "Chronolgy" deomstrates the interconnectedness of their friendships and creativity, giving information about literary composition and artistic output, publication and exhibition, reviews, finances, relationships, health and detailing literary and artistic influences. Drawing on many unpublished sources, including family letters and diaries, this new volume in the" Author Chronologies" series will be of value to all students and scholars of the Rossettis.

A superb autobiography by one of the great literary figures of the twentieth century, Simone de Beauvoir's Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter offers an intimate picture of growing up in a bourgeois French family, rebelling as an adolescent against the conventional expectations of her class, and striking out on her own with an intellectual and existential ambition exceedingly rare in a young woman in the 1920s.She vividly evokes her friendships, love interests, mentors, and the early days of the most important relationship of her life, with fellow student Jean-Paul Sartre, against the backdrop of a turbulent political time.