Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography "An exhilarating romp through Orwell's life and times and also through the life and times of roses." -Margaret Atwood "A captivating account of Orwell as gardener, lover, parent, and endlessly curious thinker." -Claire Messud, Harper's "Nobody who reads it will ever think of Nineteen Eighty-Four in quite the same way." -Vogue A lush exploration of politics, roses, and pleasure, and a fresh take on George Orwell as an avid gardener whose political writing was grounded by his passion for the natural world "In the spring of 1936, a writer planted roses." So be-gins Rebecca Solnit's new book, a reflection on George Orwell's passionate gardening and the way that his involvement with plants, particularly flowers, illuminates his other commitments as a writer and antifascist, and on the intertwined politics of nature and power. Sparked by her unexpected encounter with the roses he reportedly planted in 1936, Solnit's account of this overlooked aspect of Orwell's life journeys through his writing and his actions-from going deep into the coal mines of England, fighting in the Spanish Civil War, critiquing Stalin when much of the international left still supported him (and then critiquing that left) to his analysis of the relationship between lies and authoritarianism. Through Solnit's celebrated ability to draw unexpected connections, readers are drawn onward from Orwell's own work as a writer and gardener to encounter photographer Tina Modotti's roses and her politics, agriculture and illusion in the USSR of his time with forcing lemons to grow in impossibly cold conditions, Orwell's slave-owning ancestors in Jamaica, Jamaica Kincaid's examination of colonialism and imperialism in the flower garden, and the brutal rose industry in Colombia that supplies the American market. The book draws to a close with a rereading of Nineteen Eighty-Four that completes Solnit's portrait of a more hopeful Orwell, as well as offering a meditation on pleasure, beauty, and joy as acts of resistance.

In July 1943, the young Welsh poet and soldier Alun Lewis, already recognised as one of the outstanding writers of his generation, arrived on sick leave at the house near Madras of Freda Aykroyd, a devotee of literature and the wife of a British scientist. Lewis and Aykroyd fell in love instantly, recognising in each other similar temperaments and artistic interests. Their affair, which lasted until Lewis' mysterious death on the Arakan Front in March 1944, inspired some of the finest of his wartime poems as well as an extraordinary cache of letters published here for the first time. The letters throw fresh light on Lewis' passionate and troubled nature and the background to his literary output at a time when he was at the height of his creative powers. In her preface, Freda Aykroyd charts the haunting story of their relationship and its tragic outcome.

From one of the most famous poets in history comes a new selection of writings to bereaved friends and acquaintances, providing comfort in a time of grief and words to soothe the soul.

Throughout his life, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke addressed letters to individuals who were close to him, who had contacted him after reading his works, or whom he had met briefly - anyone with whom he felt an inner connection. Within his vast correspondence, there are about two dozen letters of condolence. In these direct, personal and practical letters, Rilke writes about loss and mortality, assuming the role of a sensitive, serious and uplifting guide through life's difficulties. He consoles a friend on the loss of her nephew, which she experienced like the loss of her own child; a mentor on the death of her dog; and an acquaintance struggling to cope with the end of a friendship. The result is a profound vision of mourning and a meditation on the role of pain in our lives, as well as a soothing guide for how to get through it.

Where things become truly difficult and unbearable, we find ourselves in a place already very close to its transformation...

Charles Dickens was a phenomenon: a demonicly hardworking journalist, the father of ten children, a tireless walker and traveller, a supporter of liberal social causes, but most of all a great novelist - the creator of characters who live immortally in the English imagination: the Artful Dodger, Mr Pickwick, Pip, David Copperfield, Little Nell, Lady Dedlock and many more. At the age of twelve he was sent to work in a blacking factory by his affectionate but feckless parents. From these unpromising beginnings, he rose to scale all the social and literary heights, entirely through his own efforts. When he died, the world mourned, and he was buried - against his wishes - in Westminster Abbey. Yet the brilliance concealed a divided character: a republican, he disliked America; sentimental about the family in his writings, he took up passionately with a young actress; usually generous, he cut off his impecunious children. This pictorial history will shed a new and alternative light on this literary giant.

A Sunday Times Book of the Year Shortlisted for The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize 'This magnificent, highly readable double biography...brings these two driven, complicated women vividly to life' The Financial Times 'A gripping saga of a double-biography' Daily Mail 'A masterful portrait' The Times 'Vastly enjoyable' Literary Review 'Deeply absorbing and meticulously researched' The Oldie In 1815, the clever, courted and cherished Annabella Milbanke married the notorious and brilliant Lord Byron. Just one year later, she fled, taking with her their baby daughter, the future Ada Lovelace. Byron himself escaped into exile and died as a revolutionary hero in 1824, aged 36. The one thing he had asked his wife to do was to make sure that their daughter never became a poet. Ada didn't. Brought up by a mother who became one of the most progressive reformers of Victorian England, Byron's little girl was introduced to mathematics as a means of calming her wild spirits. Educated by some of the most learned minds in England, she combined that scholarly discipline with a rebellious heart and a visionary imagination. As a child invalid, Ada dreamed of building a steam-driven flying horse. As an exuberant and boldly unconventional young woman, she amplified her explanations of Charles Babbage's unbuilt calculating engine to predict, as nobody would do for another century, the dawn today of our modern computer age. When Ada died - like her father, she was only 36 - great things seemed still to lie ahead for her as a passionate astronomer. Even while mired in debt from gambling and crippled by cancer, she was frenetically employing Faraday's experiments with light refraction to explore the analysis of distant stars. Drawing on fascinating new material, Seymour reveals the ways in which Byron, long after his death, continued to shape the lives and reputations both of his wife and his daughter. During her life, Lady Byron was praised as a paragon of virtue; within ten years of her death, she was vilified as a disgrace to her sex. Well over a hundred years later, Annabella Milbanke is still perceived as a prudish wife and cruelly controlling mother. But her hidden devotion to Byron and her tender ambitions for his mercurial, brilliant daughter reveal a deeply complex but unsuspectedly sympathetic personality. Miranda Seymour has written a masterful portrait of two remarkable women, revealing how two turbulent lives were often governed and always haunted by the dangerously enchanting, quicksilver spirit of that extraordinary father whom Ada never knew.

In this frank and witty memoir, Ken Ilgunas lays bare the existential terror of graduating from the University of Buffalo with $32,000 of student debt. Ilgunas set himself an ambitious mission: get out of debt as quickly as possible. Inspired by the frugality and philosophy of Henry David Thoreau, Ilgunas undertook a three-year transcontinental journey, working in Alaska as a tour guide, garbage picker, and night cook to pay off his student loans before hitchhiking home to New York. Debt-free, Ilgunas then enrolled in a master's program at Duke University, determined not to borrow against his future again. He used the last of his savings to buy himself a used Econoline van and outfitted it as his new dorm. The van, stationed in a campus parking lot, would be more than an adventure-it would be his very own "Walden on Wheels." Freezing winters, near-discovery by campus police, and the constant challenge of living in a confined space would test Ilgunas's limits and resolve in the two years that followed. What had begun as a simple mission would become an enlightening and life-changing social experiment. Walden on Wheels offers a spirited and pointed perspective on the dilemma faced by those who seek an education but who also want to, as Thoreau wrote, "live deep and suck out all the marrow of life."

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.

The final volume of the trilogy that began with The Smoking Diaries finds Simon Gray determined to give up smoking. Really. At last. Can he kick the habit of sixty years? Will he, sometime soon, be able to leave his house without nervously feeling for his two packets of twenty and his two lighters? As this wonderful, wayward record of Gray's life progresses, these questions are overtaken by much larger ones. What was sex like before 1963? Will his name be in lights on Broadway? Why leave the bedside of his dying mother? With their combination of comedy and serious reflection, of sharp observation and painful self-disclosure, Simon Gray's diaries reinvented the memoir form and are destined to become classics of autobiography.

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.

More than three decades after his death, John Steinbeck remains one of the nation's most beloved authors. Yet few know of his career as a journalist who covered world events from the Great Depression to Vietnam. Now, this original collection offers a portrait of the artist as citizen, deeply engaged in the world around him. In addition to the complete text of Steinbeck's last published book, America and Americans, this volume brings together for the first time more than fifty of Steinbeck's finest essays and jouralistic pieces.

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.

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.

"The great virtue of McCormick's memoirs is their blunt honesty. He writes with a persuasive directness about what happened to him and what he believes..."--Arts and Letters The title of John McCormick's autobiographical book, may be taken both literally and symbolically. In a literal sense, going to sea was an early and powerful ambition, while seagoing is also a metaphor for the twists and turns in a rootless life, a long voyaging. This is not a conventional autobiography. It is personal only as necessary for continuity, and never confessional. The essays center upon telling episodes in the author's life and strive for objectivity and accuracy about the recent past, both personal and historical. He does so, as he writes, without "any pretension of producing a true history." The events of his life are necessarily unique to him, thus he finds uniqueness in the events that impinged upon him. McCormick begins with his early years, growing up in the American mid-West during the Depression, a time of broken family relations and random jobs. He relates his falling away from religious faith. He describes his first experience as a sailor in a tanker, which gave him physical liberation, a world free of constrictions, as with Hemingway. In discussing his early teaching experience, he gives a vivid portrayal of Germany in the immediate postwar years, along with observations of residual pro-Hitler sentiment and the awkward circumstances (for Germans) of the immediate past. He devotes a chapter to a moving memoir of his friend Francis Fergusson, eminent Rutgers University scholar. McCormick also relates his experience as an amateur bullfighter and reiterates his defense of bullfighting as an art. He paints a vivid picture of an adventure at sea while working on a definitive biography of George Santayana, reflecting also on changes in the genre of biography, with its prevailing emphasis on trivia and sensationalism. In describing his retirement to England, McCormick describes the conflict between nationalism and expatriation. He punctuates details of his naval war experiences with thoughtful observations on military combat. Finally, in his closing chapter, "Coda: Closet Space," McCormick attempts to make sense of old age and death. This autobiographical account of a well-lived life encompasses far more than a splendid teaching and literary career. It will provide insight and good reading for those who know McCormick's scholarly work, for students of the humanities, and for the general public interested in vivid prose. John McCormick is professor emeritus of comparative literature at Rutgers University, and honorary fellow of English and literature at the University of York. He is the author of George Santayana: A Biography, Catastrophe and Imagination, The Middle Distance, and Fiction as Knowledge.

Alive with adventure, rich with exotic detail, the voice of Rudyard Kipling carried readers to faraway locations and brought new, exciting scenes to their doorsteps. Born and raised in India, Kipling became the voice of the eastern British Empire, and his writing extensively covered Central Asia. Early in his career, Kipling drew inspiration not from travels of his own, but from working with far-flung correspondents at the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, Pakistan, where he served as assistant editor. One of his chief correspondents was Dr. Charles Owen, a close friend of his father's who served a tour of duty with the Afghan Boundary Commission between 1884 and 1886 addressing the border dispute between Great Britain and Russia. This historical biography provides a new perspective on Kipling's days as an employee of the Civil and Military Gazette. Information garnered from newly uncovered letters and diaries of Dr. Owen (acquired by the National Army Museum in 1998) gives personal insight into Kipling's life as well as firsthand perceptions of the Boundary Commission's work. In addition, appendices provide a wealth of information regarding articles by Kipling, articles attributed to Kipling or his supervisor Wheeler, Kipling's translations of Russian dispatches, and Boundary Commission reports.

The Unfinished Song of Francisco Urondo: When Poetry is Not Enough is a comprehensive, well-written, documented, and carefully developed study of the literary work and life of Francisco Urondo, an Argentine poet, intellectual, activist, cultural promoter, revolutionary, and clandestine guerilla member who died in 1976 fighting for a cause in which he believed, against the oppressive Argentine Military Junta. This methodical but never mechanistic work shows how life events, cultural milieu, political movements, and world circumstances interacted and impacted Urondo's temperament to produce his poetic voice, his prose, and his theatrical works. By studying the man, we get closer to his poetry. With his poetry, the author makes a compelling case for understanding the man. Francisco Urondo's life, work, and praxis were varied, agonizing at times, and always marked by imperatives. This book fills a significant lacuna in the scholarship on the work of this worthy, yet neglected and under-studied, writer. Readers of this book will come away with not only a deepened understanding of the man and his writings but also of a key period in recent Argentine political, social, and intellectual history.

Daphne du Maurier's correspondence with Oriel Malet began in the early 1950s, after they met at a cocktail party in London. At least twenty years separated them: Oriel was a gauche young writer while Daphne was the famous, much-feted author of bestselling novels including Jamaica Inn, My Cousin Rachel, and Rebecca. The friendship flourished for thirty years, fed by the letters that arrived faithfully from Menabilly, the du Maurier house in Cornwall. While Oriel tasted life on a houseboat on the Seine and mixed with the aristocratic Who's Who of Paris, Daphne's letters tell of her family, past and present, her marriage to General Sir Frederick Browning-a war hero known privately as 'Moper' whose fits of melancholy caused many a crisis at Menabilly-and events like Prince Philip coming for dinner: 'We've got only four knives with handles, and one silver candlestick must be glued!' Most of all, her letters are a valuable record of the complex and rigorous art of a fine and well-loved writer: the 'brewing' of a plot, the research, and the 'pegging' of secret fantasies onto a living person in order to create classical characters such as Cousin Rachel and Roger Kylmerth. Disarmingly frank about sex, an earnest seeker after spiritual and psychological truth, Daphne du Maurier is revealed in her letters as an inspiring and delightful correspondent-as well as a once-in-a-lifetime friend.

On June 23rd, 1950, Pavese, Italy's greatest modern writer received the coveted Strega Award for his novel Among Women Only. On August 26th, in a small hotel in his home town of Turin, he took his own life. Shortly before his death, he methodically destroyed all his private papers. His diary is all that remains and for this the contemporary reader can be grateful. Contemporary speculation attributed this tragedy to either an unhappy love aff air with the American film star Constance Dawling or his growing disillusionment with the Italian Communist Party. His Diaries, however, reveal a man whose art was his only means of repressing the specter of suicide which had haunted him since childhood: an obsession that finally overwhelmed him. As John Taylor notes, he possessed something much more precious than a political theory: a natural sensitivity to the plight and dignity of common people, be they bums, priests, grape-pickers, gas station attendants, office workers, or anonymous girls picked up on the street (though to women, the author could--as he admitted--be as misogynous as he was affectionate). Bitter and incisive, This Business of Living, is both moving and painful to read and stands with James Joyce's Letters and Andre Gide's Journals as one of the great literary testaments of the twentieth century.

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.

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.

The life story of the Victorian novelist George Eliot is as dramatic and complex as her best plots. This new assessment of her life and work combines recent biographical research with penetrating literary criticism, resulting in revealing new interpretations of her literary work. * A fresh look at George Eliot's captivating life story * Includes original new analysis of her writing * Deploys the latest biographical research * Combines literary criticism with biographical narrative to offer a rounded perspective

'Invention ... does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos' - Mary Shelley In the 200 years since its first publication, the story of Frankenstein's creation during stormy days and nights at Byron's Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva has become literary legend. In this book, Daisy Hay returns to the objects and manuscripts of the novel's genesis in order to assemble its story anew. Frankenstein was inspired by the extraordinary people surrounding the eighteen-year-old author and by the places and historical dramas that formed the backdrop of her youth. Featuring manuscripts, portraits, illustrations and artefacts, The Making of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein explores the novel's time and place, its people, the relics of its long afterlife and the notebooks in which it was created. Hay strips Frankenstein back to its constituent parts revealing an uneven novel written by a young woman deeply engaged in the process of working out what she thought about the pressing issues of her time: science, politics, religion, slavery, maternity, the imagination, creativity and community. This is a compelling and innovative biography of the novel for all those fascinated by its essential, brilliant chaos.

A E Housmans poetry (especially A Shropshire Lad) remains well-known, widely read and often quoted. However, Housman did not view himself as a professional poet, always making quite clear that his proper job was as a Professor of Latin. Housmans fame as a poet has often obscured the fact that he was the leading British classical scholar of his generation, and a Cambridge Professor. It has also sometimes been suggested that Housmans two areas of activity are the sign of a flawed or divided personality. This book argues that there is no fundamental tension between Housman the poet and Housman the scholar, and his career is presented very much as that of a working academic who also wrote poetry. The book gives a full account of what Housman described as the great and real troubles of my early manhood, and in particular his unrequited and life-long love for his undergraduate friend Moses Jackson. It resists the temptation to classify Housman too exclusively as a melancholic, and is sceptical about Housmans reputed rudeness and misanthropy, pointing out that, though Housman was famously aloof in manner, he was notably loyal and generous, courteous in his daily dealings and generally liked by those who knew him. He also possessed a highly developed sense of the absurd and a ready and often disconcerting wit, features which characterised not only his letters and miscellaneous writings, but also, famously, much of his scholarly work.

Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Manhood for Amateurs and Moonglow, returns with a collection of heartfelt, humorous and insightful essays on the meaning of fatherhood. You are born into a family and those are your people, and they know you and they love you and if you are lucky they even, on occasion, manage to understand you. And that ought to be enough. But it is never enough What are you allowed to talk about with your children? When to step in with advice, when to let them make their own mistakes? It's more complicated than you think. Somehow you muddle through. In this heartfelt, humorous and wise book, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon attempts to weigh in on difficult conversations with his children, on everything from texting girls to death. But it is when he hangs back that he catches them transforming into their own people. What emerges is a father's deep respect for his children's passions and for their bravery in the face of conformity. Whether you know the joy and struggles of being a father, or were shaped by one, you will find a home in these stunning essays.