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Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > Literary

A Lifetime of Words (Paperback): Jan Seale A Lifetime of Words (Paperback)
Jan Seale
R438 R372 Discovery Miles 3 720 Save R66 (15%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days
Conversations with Maurice Sendak (Hardcover): Peter C. Kunze Conversations with Maurice Sendak (Hardcover)
Peter C. Kunze
R3,088 Discovery Miles 30 880 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) stands out as one of the most respected, influential authors of the twentieth century. Though primarily known as a children's book writer and illustrator, he did not limit himself to these areas. He saw himself first and foremost as an artist. In this collection of interviews - the first of its kind - Sendak presents himself as a writer, illustrator, set designer, and librettist. From his early work with Randall Jarrell and Ruth Krauss through his later work with Tony Kushner and Spike Jonze, Sendak worked as a collaborator with a passion for the arts. The interviews here, many of which are hard to find or previously unpublished, span from 1966 through 2011. They show not only Sendak's shifting artistic interests, but also changes in how he understood himself and his craft. What emerges is a portrait of an author and an artist who was alternately solemn and playful, congenial and irascible, sophisticated and populist. The man who showed millions of children and adults alike what's cooking in the night kitchen and where the wild things are, Sendak remains an American original who redefined the picture book and changed children's literature - and its readers - forever.

Distant Sunflower Fields (Paperback): Li Juan Distant Sunflower Fields (Paperback)
Li Juan; Translated by Christopher Payne
R276 Discovery Miles 2 760 Ships in 12 - 17 working days
Iris Murdoch - A Centenary Celebration (Hardcover): Miles Leeson Iris Murdoch - A Centenary Celebration (Hardcover)
Miles Leeson
R787 Discovery Miles 7 870 Ships in 12 - 17 working days
Year of the Monkey (Paperback): Patti Smith Year of the Monkey (Paperback)
Patti Smith
R427 R267 Discovery Miles 2 670 Save R160 (37%) Ships in 12 - 17 working days
The Long Piece (Paperback): Alan Sillitoe The Long Piece (Paperback)
Alan Sillitoe
R139 Discovery Miles 1 390 Ships in 12 - 17 working days
George Orwell's Perverse Humanity - Socialism and Free Speech (Hardcover, HPOD): Glenn Burgess George Orwell's Perverse Humanity - Socialism and Free Speech (Hardcover, HPOD)
Glenn Burgess
R2,470 Discovery Miles 24 700 Ships in 9 - 15 working days

This is the first book to focus primarily on George Orwell's ideas about free speech and related matters - freedom of the press, the writer's freedom of expression, honesty and truthfulness - and, in particular, the ways in which they are linked to his political vision of socialism. Orwell is today claimed by the Left and Right, by neo-conservatives and neo-socialists. How is that possible? Part of the answer, as Glenn Burgess reveals, is that Orwell was an odd sort of socialist. The development of Orwell's socialism was, from the start, conditioned by his individualist and liberal commitments. The hopes he attached to socialism were for a fairer, more equal world that would permit human freedom and individuality to flourish, completing, not destroying, the work of liberalism. Freedom of thought was a central part of this, and its defence and use were essential parts of the struggle to ensure that socialism developed in a liberal, humane form that did not follow the totalitarian path of Soviet communism. Written in celebration of Orwell's dictum, 'We hold that the most perverse human being is more interesting than the most orthodox gramophone record,' George Orwell's Perverse Humanity is a portrait of Orwell that captures these themes and provides a new understanding of him as a political thinker and activist. Based on archival research and new materials that affirm his work as an activist for freedom, it also uncovers a socialist ideology that has been obscured in just the way that the author feared it would be - associated in many people's minds with totalitarian unfreedom.

Russian Roulette - 'A brilliant new life of Graham Greene' - Evening Standard (Hardcover): Richard Greene Russian Roulette - 'A brilliant new life of Graham Greene' - Evening Standard (Hardcover)
Richard Greene
R786 R651 Discovery Miles 6 510 Save R135 (17%) Ships in 9 - 15 working days

Probably the greatest British novelist of his generation, Graham Greene's own story was as strange and compelling as those he told of Pinkie the Mobster, Harry Lime, or the Whisky Priest. A restless traveller, he was a witness to many of the key events of modern history - including the origins of the Vietnam War, the Mau Mau Rebellion, the betrayal of the double-agent Kim Philby, the rise of Fidel Castro, and the guerrilla wars of Central America. Traumatized as a boy and thought a Judas among his schoolmates, Greene tried Russian Roulette and attempted suicide. He suffered from bipolar illness, which caused havoc in his private life as his marriage failed, and one great love after another suffered shipwreck, until in his later years he found constancy in a decidedly unconventional relationship. Often called a Catholic novelist, his works came to explore the no man's land between belief and unbelief. A journalist, an MI6 officer, and an unfailing advocate for human rights, he sought out the inner narratives of war and politics in dozens of troubled places, and yet he distrusted nations and armies, believing that true loyalty was a matter between individuals. A work of wit, insight, and compassion, this new biography of Graham Greene, the first undertaken in a generation, responds to the many thousands of pages of lost letters that have recently come to light and to new memoirs by those who knew him best. It deals sensitively with questions of private life, sex, and mental illness; it gives a thorough accounting for the politics of the places he wrote about; it investigates his involvement with MI6 and the Cambridge five; above all, it follows the growth of a writer whose works changed the lives of millions.

Something in the Blood - The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula (Hardcover): David J Skal Something in the Blood - The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula (Hardcover)
David J Skal
R818 Discovery Miles 8 180 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Bram Stoker, despite having a name nearly as famous as Count Dracula, has remained an enigma. David J. Skal, in a psychological and cultural portrait, exhumes the inner world and strange genius of the writer who conjured an undying cultural icon. Stoker was inexplicably paralysed as a boy and his story unfolds against a backdrop of Victorian medical mysteries and horrors: fever, opium abuse, bloodletting, quack cures and the obsession with "bad blood" that inform every page of Dracula. Stoker's ambiguous sexuality is explored through his acquaintance with Oscar Wilde, who emerges as Stoker's repressed shadow self-a doppelganger worthy of a Gothic novel. The psychosexual dimensions of Stoker's correspondence with Walt Whitman, his punishing work ethic and his adoration of the actor Henry Irving are examined in scholarly detail.

Such Mad Fun - Ambition and Glamour in Hollywood's Golden Age (Hardcover): Robin R. Cutler Such Mad Fun - Ambition and Glamour in Hollywood's Golden Age (Hardcover)
Robin R. Cutler
R730 Discovery Miles 7 300 Ships in 12 - 17 working days
The Sea Dreamer - A Definitive Biography of Joseph Conrad (Hardcover): Gerard Jean-Aubry The Sea Dreamer - A Definitive Biography of Joseph Conrad (Hardcover)
Gerard Jean-Aubry
R3,480 Discovery Miles 34 800 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Of Joseph Conrad, H.L. Mencken has written: 'There was something almost suggesting the vastness of a natural phenomenon. He transcended all the rules. There have been perhaps, greater novelists, but I believe that he was incomparably the greatest artist whoever wrote a novel.' Originally published in 1957, the year of the centenary of Conrad's birth, and although he was firmly established among the world's great literary figures, little was known about him generally, beyond the fact that he was himself once a sailor, and that the language he handled with such mastery was not the one to which he was born. This was described as the definitive biography, written by one of Conrad's closest friends, to whom the novelist willed his personal papers. It took many years to prepare and the author travelled extensively in the lands that Conrad knew and wrote about. He writes with clarity, compassion and understanding of Conrad's childhood in Russia (where the father was exiled for Polish nationalist activities); of how the youth of fifteen, who had never seen the sea before, became a sailor; of how at twenty-nine he became a British subject and master of his own ship; of how in 1894 he became a novelist almost by accident, rose rapidly to literary fame, found new friends and established himself in literary history. This is a record of the strangest and most enigmatic of lives, fascinating and authoritative at the same time.

Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz - The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton (Paperback): Gail Crowther Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz - The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton (Paperback)
Gail Crowther
R221 Discovery Miles 2 210 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

In this vividly rendered and empathetic biography of two of the greatest poets of the 20th century-Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton-"the friendship and rivalry that the pair shared-not to mention the titular cocktails at a Boston hotel-is explored in fascinating detail" (Town & Country). Introduced at a poetry workshop in Boston University, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton formed a friendship that would soon evolve into a fierce rivalry, colored by jealousy and respect in equal terms. In the years that followed, these two women would not only become iconic figures in literature, but also lead curiously parallel lives haunted by mental illness, suicide attempts, self-doubt, and difficult personal relationships. With weekly martini meetings at the Ritz to discuss everything from sex to suicide, theirs was a relationship as complex and subversive as their poetry. Based on in-depth research and unprecedented archival access, Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz will leave you "hungering for more of what these two literary comets burned with: the power of a little poetry. Deliriously fast-paced and erudite, this is highly recommended" (Library Journal, starred review).

Samuel Beckett - The Last Modernist (Paperback): Anthony Cronin Samuel Beckett - The Last Modernist (Paperback)
Anthony Cronin
R412 Discovery Miles 4 120 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Intensely private, possibly saintly, but perhaps misanthropic, Samuel Beckett was the most legendary and enigmatic of writers. Anthony Cronin's biography is a revelation of this mythical figure as fully human and fallible, while confirming his enormous stature both as a man and a writer. Cronin explores how the sporty schoolboy of solid Protestant bourgeois stock became a prizewinning student at Trinity, flirted with scholarship, and, in Paris, found himself at the center of its literary avant-garde as an intimate friend of James Joyce. But he was a young man who struggled with complexities in his own nature as well as with problems of literary expression. In the small provincial city of Kassel, Germany, the cosmopolitan Beckett experienced a faltering entanglement with his cousin--one of the first in a series of problematic encounters with women. The war years, which he spent as a member of the Resistance and a refugee in the South of France, brought Beckett the self-probings and discoveries that led to the great works. Then, with his sudden and astonishing fame, the balloons of myth began to inflate and a stereotype was born--frozen in exile and enigma, solemnity and sanctity. Anthony Cronin bursts these balloons to see more clearly what lies behind. Without moralizing or psychologizing, without pretensions or piety, he uncovers the real Beckett, the way the life was lived, the way the art was made.

The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (Hardcover): Sir John Hawkins The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (Hardcover)
Sir John Hawkins; Edited by O. M. Brack Jr.
R2,331 Discovery Miles 23 310 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

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.

A Child's Christmas in Wales (Hardcover, 1st U.S. ed): Dylan Thomas A Child's Christmas in Wales (Hardcover, 1st U.S. ed)
Dylan Thomas; Illustrated by Edward Ardizzone
R462 R392 Discovery Miles 3 920 Save R70 (15%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days

A Welsh poet recalls the celebration of Christmas in Wales and the feelings it evoked in him as a child.

The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield - Volume 5: 1922 (Hardcover): Vincent O'Sullivan, Margaret Scott The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield - Volume 5: 1922 (Hardcover)
Vincent O'Sullivan, Margaret Scott
R5,042 R4,348 Discovery Miles 43 480 Save R694 (14%) Ships in 12 - 17 working days

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."

Virginia Woolf (Paperback): Dorothy Brewster Virginia Woolf (Paperback)
Dorothy Brewster
R1,012 Discovery Miles 10 120 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

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.

Women of Bloomsbury - Virginia, Vanessa and Carrington (Paperback): Mary Ann Caws Women of Bloomsbury - Virginia, Vanessa and Carrington (Paperback)
Mary Ann Caws
R1,018 Discovery Miles 10 180 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

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.

The Year of Magical Thinking (Paperback): Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking (Paperback)
Joan Didion
R438 R334 Discovery Miles 3 340 Save R104 (24%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Didion chronicles the experience of losing her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, to a massive coronary, just weeks after the two of them watched as their only daughter was put into an induced coma to save her life. With honesty and passion, Didion explores this intensely personal yet universal experience.

Percy Bysshe Shelley - Poet and Revolutionary (Paperback): Jacqueline Mulhallen Percy Bysshe Shelley - Poet and Revolutionary (Paperback)
Jacqueline Mulhallen
R478 Discovery Miles 4 780 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Percy Shelley (1792-1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets. This biography of emphasises the political, revolutionary side of his dramatic life. Shelley has long been revered for his poems To A Skylark and The Mask of Anarchy, but this was not always the case. During his short and tragic life he was regarded with loathing as an immoral atheist and his work received damning reviews as a result. His was a story of extremes - his radical ideas were unusual as he was the son of a wealthy landowner and set to become a Whig MP. Today, a focus on his belief in sexual freedom and vegetarianism often eclipses his informed internationalist and revolutionary politics. Admired by Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, W. B. Yeats and Karl Marx, Shelley's legacy remains with us today - his words have been used by popular movements from the Chartists and the Suffragettes to Tiananmen Square, the Poll Tax protesters and modern Greek solidarity movements.

Man Into Woman - A Comparative Scholarly Edition (Hardcover): Lili Elbe Man Into Woman - A Comparative Scholarly Edition (Hardcover)
Lili Elbe; Edited by Pamela L. Caughie, Sabine Meyer
R5,237 Discovery Miles 52 370 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

In 1930 Danish artist Einar Wegener underwent a series of surgeries to live as Lili Ilse Elvenes (more commonly known as Lili Elbe). Her life story, Fra Mand til Kvinde (From Man to Woman), published in Copenhagen in 1931, is the first popular full-length (auto)biographical narrative of a subject who undergoes genital transformation surgery (Genitalumwandlung). In Man Into Woman: A Comparative Scholarly Edition, Pamela L. Caughie and Sabine Meyer present the full text of the 1933 American edition of Elbe's work with comprehensive notes on textual and paratextual variants across the four published editions in three languages. This edition also includes a substantial scholarly introduction which situates the historical and intellectual context of Elbe's work, as well as new essays on the work by leading scholars in transgender studies and modernist literature, and critical coverage of the 2015 biopic, The Danish Girl. This print edition has a digital companion: the Lili Elbe Digital Archive (www.lilielbe.org). Launched on July 6, 2019, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science (Institut fur Sexualwissenschaft) where Lili Elbe was initially examined, the Lili Elbe Digital Archive hosts the German typescript and all four editions of this narrative published in Danish, German, and English between 1931 and 1933, with English translations of the Danish edition and the typescript. Many letters from archives and contemporaneous articles noted in this print edition may be found in the digital archive.

Liberation Diaries, Volume Three - 1970-1983 (Paperback): Christopher Isherwood Liberation Diaries, Volume Three - 1970-1983 (Paperback)
Christopher Isherwood
R614 R546 Discovery Miles 5 460 Save R68 (11%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days

In this final volume of Christopher Isherwood's diaries, the celebrated writer greets advancing age with poignant humor and an unquenchable appetite for the new. Isherwood deepens his study of Hinduism, writes his final books, and immerses himself in the vibrant creative scenes of the 1970s. With his long-term companion, Don Bachardy, Isherwood delves into the art worlds of Los Angeles, New York, and London, where he meets Rauschenberg, Ruscha, Warhol, and Hockney. Collaborating with Bachardy on scripts for Broadway and Hollywood, he encounters John Huston, Merchant and Ivory, John Travolta, David Bowie, Jon Voight, Armistead Maupin, Elton John, and Joan Didion. This volume is a densely populated human comedy, sketched with both ruthlessness and benevolence against the background of the Vietnam War, the energy crisis, and the Nixon, Carter, and Reagan White Houses. The final installment of Isherwood's masterwork reveals a man candidly fearful of his approaching death, and yet engaged in the vitality and energy of daily life.

Because Japan (Hardcover, New edition): Ash Watson Because Japan (Hardcover, New edition)
Ash Watson
R593 Discovery Miles 5 930 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Because Japan , is a truly unabashed account of the less publicised side of life in Tokyo for a 'foreigner'. The book offers a witty, vivid and honest insight into the daily life of a British Expat over the course of two years. The author narrates stories taken from his "Journal of Firsts" which depict many new events including his first struggle, first mental challenge, and first exciting moment he faced living in this strange and fascinating new world. Through the use of newly learned Japanese phrases whilst travelling the country, themes of soul-searching, overcoming mental health obstacles, sexual orientation, racial discrimination, and culture shock are explored with honesty and candour. With the addition of a train-based mini series of hilarious encounters, Because Japan offers a behind the scenes insight into the 'real' Japan.

Edmund Curll, Bookseller (Hardcover): Paul Baines, Pat Rogers Edmund Curll, Bookseller (Hardcover)
Paul Baines, Pat Rogers
R2,716 Discovery Miles 27 160 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Edmund Curll was a notorious figure among the publishers of the early eighteenth century: for his boldness, his lack of scruple, his publication of work without author's consent, and his taste for erotic and scandalous publications. He was in legal trouble on several occasions for piracy and copyright infringement, unauthorized publication of the works of peers, and for seditious, blasphemous, and obscene publications. He stood in the pillory in 1728 for seditious libel. Above all, he was the constant target of the greatest poet and satirist of his age, Alexander Pope, whose work he pirated whenever he could and who responded with direct physical revenge (an emetic slipped into a drink) and persistent malign caricature. The war between Pope and Curll typifies some of the main cultural battles being waged between creativity and business. The story has normally been told from the poet's point of view, though more recently Curll has been celebrated as a kind of literary freedom-fighter; this book, the first full biography of Curll since Ralph Straus's The Unspeakable Curll (1927), seeks to give a balanced and thoroughly-researched account of Curll's career in publishing between 1706 and 1747, untangling the mistakes and misrepresentations that have accrued over the years and restoring a clear sense of perspective to Curll's dealings in the literary marketplace. It examines the full range of Curll's output, including his notable antiquarian series, and uses extensive archive material to detail Curll's legal and other troubles. For the first time, what is known about this strange, interesting, and awkward figure is authoritatively told.

The Fairy Tale Girl (Hardcover): Susan Branch The Fairy Tale Girl (Hardcover)
Susan Branch; Illustrated by Susan Branch
R798 R688 Discovery Miles 6 880 Save R110 (14%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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