With an introduction by Harriet McDougal, Origins of The Wheel of Time by Michael Livingston explores the inspirations behind the acclaimed series The Wheel of Time, including a biography of Robert Jordan for the first time. 'Jordan has come to dominate the world Tolkien began to reveal' - New York Times on The Wheel of Time series Explore never-before-seen insights into The Wheel of Time, including: - A brand-new, redrawn world map by Ellisa Mitchell using change requests discovered in Robert Jordan's unpublished notes - An alternate scene from an early draft of The Eye of the World This companion to the internationally bestselling series will delve into the creation of Robert Jordan's masterpiece, drawing from interviews and an unprecedented examination of his unpublished notes. Michael Livingston tells the behind-the-scenes story of who Jordan was (including a chapter that is the very first published biography of the author), how he worked, and why he holds such an important place in modern literature. The second part of the book is a glossary to the 'real world' in The Wheel of Time. King Arthur is in The Wheel of Time. Merlin, too. But so is Alexander the Great and the Apollo Space Program, the Norse gods and Napoleon's greatest defeat - and so much more. Origins of The Wheel of Time will provide exciting knowledge and insights to both new and longtime fans looking either to expand their understanding of the series or unearth the real-life influences that Jordan utilized in his world-building - all in one accessible text.

Most famous as the author of "Gulliver's Travels", Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was one of the most important propagandists and satirists of his day. This study seeks to contextualize Swift within the political arena of his day.

In Facts and Fiction, Michael Holroyd reflects on the eccentricities of the art of writing about others. With characteristic playfulness and guilefulness, he considers the ways in which lives can be written about, with all the subtle differences of design and intention that this entails.

From Rudyard Kipling to forgetfulness, the glories of Mary Norton's Borrowers books to fellow biographers like Richard Holmes and Alexander Masters, Holroyd tackles an eclectic range of topics with wit, warmth and humour.

This is a unique insight into the mind of a master.

In the autumn of 1873, Wilkie Collins followed the example of fellow literary celebrities Dickens and Thackeray, and began a six-month reading tour of America. Hanes places this tour within the American lyceum movement of the later nineteenth century. Through close examination of personal letters, news accounts and newspaper reviews, she builds a picture of the relationship between Collins and the American reading public.

A dazzling biography of two interwoven, tragic lives: John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald. 'Highly engaging ... Go now, read this book' THE TIMES 'For awhile after you quit Keats,' Fitzgerald once wrote, 'All other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.' John Keats died two hundred years ago, in February 1821. F. Scott Fitzgerald defined a decade that began one hundred years ago, the Jazz Age. In this biography, prizewinning author Jonathan Bate recreates these two shining, tragic lives in parallel. Not only was Fitzgerald profoundly influenced by Keats, titling Tender is the Night and other works from the poet's lines, but the two lived with echoing fates: both died young, loved to drink, were plagued by tuberculosis, were haunted by their first love, and wrote into a new decade of release, experimentation and decadence. Luminous and vital, this biography goes through the looking glass to meet afresh two of the greatest and best-known Romantic writers in their twinned centuries.

"Shakespeare: A Life in Art" brings together in a single volume Fraser's previously published two-volume biography ("Young Shakespeare," 1988, and" Shakespeare: The Later Years," 1992). This volume includes a new introduction, which looks back on the author's lifelong commitment to Shakespeare's work and seeks to find the pattern in his carpet.

Fraser's approach places Shakespeare's work first but shows how the life and art interpenetrate, like "the yolk and white of one shell." What Shakespeare was doing in Stratford and London underlies what he was writing, or more exactly, the two flow together. Most of the book is devoted to Shakespeare the man and artist, but it simultaneously throws light on his literary and personal relations with contemporaries such as Jonson, Marlowe, and others known as the University Wits. His experience as an actor and man of theater is absorbingly recounted here, as well as his relations to well-born patrons like the Earl of Southampton and Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon (England's Lord Chamberlain). In 1603 when James I ascended the throne, the Chamberlain's Men became the King's Men, passing under the sovereign's protection. How Shakespeare responded to his ambiguous role--he was both servant to the great and their remorseless critic--is another of Fraser's subjects. In short, Fraser's principal purpose is to advance our understanding of Shakespeare, at the same time throwing light on the work of the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets had the "largest and most comprehensive soul." John Dryden, Shakespeare's first great critic, said that, and Fraser tries to estimate what he meant.

'A marvel of clarity, fluency, and (Morris's favourite word in her final days) kindness.' The Sunday Times 'A measured and elegant biography that Morris aficionados will find fascinating.' The Times The first full account of a truly remarkable life. When Jan Morris passed away in 2020, she was considered one of Britain's best-loved writers. The author of Venice, Pax Britannica, Conundrum, and more than fifty other books, her work was known for its observational genius, lyricism, and humour, and had earned her a passionate readership around the world. Morris's life was no less fascinating than her oeuvre. Born in 1926, she spent her childhood amidst Oxford's Gothic beauty and later participated in military service in Italy and the Middle East, before embarking on a career as an internationally feted foreign correspondent. From being the only journalist to join the first ascent of Mount Everest in 1953 to covering the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Morris's reportage spanned many of the twentieth century's defining moments. However, public success masked a private dilemma that was only resolved when she transitioned genders in the late sixties, becoming renowned as a transgender pioneer. She went on to live happily with her wife Elizabeth in Wales for another five decades, and never stopped writing and publishing. Here, for the first time, the many strands of Morris's rich and at times paradoxical life are brought together. Based on a wealth of interviews, archival material, and hitherto unpublished documents, Jan Morris: life from both sides portrays a person of extraordinary talent, curiosity, and joie de vivre.

Nathanael West was a comic artist whose insight into the brutalities and absurdities of modern life proved prophetic. He is famous for two masterpieces, " Miss Lonelyhearts "and the most penetrating novel ever written about Hollywood, "The Day of the Locust." Eileen McKenney, accidental muse and literary heroine, fled Cleveland in search of romance and adventure, inspiring her sister's humorous stories, "My Sister Eileen," which led to stage, film, and television adaptations.
Until their tragic deaths in 1940, husband and wife were intimate with many of the literary, theatrical, and movie notables of the era, and in this dual biography, they provide a one-of-a-kind lens into a world that continues to capture artists' imaginations. With trenchant insight and erudite charm, acclaimed biographer Marion Meade restores the star-crossed lovers to their rightful places in the rich cultural tapestry of interwar America and paints a lively tableau of one of the country's most engrossing eras.

Sir John Hill (1714--1775) was one of Georgian England's most vilified men despite having contributed prolifically to its medicine, science and literature. Born into a humble Northamptonshire family, the son of an impecunious God-faring Anglican minister, he started out as an apothecary, went on to collect natural objects for the great Whig lords and became a botanist of distinction. But his scandalous behavior prevented his election to the Royal Society and entry to all other professions for which he was qualified. Today, we can understand his actions as the result of a personality disorder; then he was understood entirely in moral terms. When he saw the dye cast he turned to journalism and publication, and strove maniacally to succeed without patronage. As a writer he was also cut down in ferocious 'paper wars'. Yet by the time he died, he had been knighted by the Swedish monarch and become a household name among scientists and writers throughout Britain and Europe. His life was a series of paradoxes without coherence, perhaps because he was above all a provocateur.In time he would also become a filter for the century in which he lived: its personalities--great and small--as well as the broad canvas of its culture, and for this reason any biography necessarily stretches beyond the man himself to those whose profiles he also illuminates.

Best known for his novel ""Trout Fishing in America"", American writer, Richard Gary Brautigan (1935-1984) published eleven novels, ten poetry collections, and two story collections, as well as five volumes of collected work, several nonfiction essays, and a record album of spoken voice recordings. Brautigan's idiosyncratic style and humor caused him to be identified with the counterculture movement of the 1960s. The authors of many of these 32 essays knew Brautigan, personally and professionally; others came to know and respect him through a cultivated connection with his writings. The essays - many of which are new, others of which were published in obscure journals - combine personal remembrance of the man and critical appraisal of his still-controversial works. The book includes previously unpublished photographs and artworks.

'Peerless.' Daily Telegraph 'Sprinkled with magic.' Observer 'Full of mischief, romance, fun and kindness.' The Times Soldier, journalist, historian, author of forty books, Jan Morris led an extraordinary life, witnessing such seminal moments as the first ascent of Everest, the Suez Canal Crisis, the Eichmann Trial, the Cuban Revolution and so much more. From reflections on identity and nations to the importance of good marmalade, Allegorizings is the final despatch from one of the greatest chroniclers of the twentieth century. 'A precious few [writers] report with wisdom, kindness and intelligence from the end to which we shall all come - travel of a different kind. This is such a book.' Sarah Moss, New York Times 'She was one of the most extraordinary people I ever had the luck to meet. Please read her.' Robert MacFarlane

This biography came into being after extensive research in Moscow, Berlin, Paris, New York, and Los Angeles. The author is the first to analyze Eisenstein's diaries and correspondence' materials that were inaccessible in the past. Eisenstein's relations with Freemasons, Rosicrucians and Stalin, with rivals and admirers, with psychoanalysts who treated him are no longer faded out. Was Eisenstein homosexual? A Stalinist? A conformist? A dissident? He left no clear answers for his biographers. Oksana Bulgakowa's study of Eisenstein's life tries to uncover these themes in his films and drawings, between the lines of his diaries and letters, in his drafts to screenplays, projects, and research. Late in life Eisenstein viewed this research as his only possible means of salvation from the compromises he had consciously made with himself and his creativity. Oksana Bulgakowa (b. 1954) graduated from the Moscow Film Institute VGIK in 1977. In the same year she moved to Berlin/GDR and received her doctoral degree from Humboldt University in 1982. She works as an author, editor, translator, and filmmaker. Since 1998 she has been a visiting professor at Stanford University, USA. For further information go to www.PotemkinPress.com]

Poet and Journalist, Max Eastman is perhaps the most famous example of an American intellectual who during his life moved across the entire political spectrum. This reexamination of his career and his place in history reveals the dynamics behind his several careers and political transformations, offering new insight into one of the most influential writers of this century. It is a model biography of a key intellectual of the twentieth century. It is also both a perspective social history of his times and a study in the history of ideas. The book will find a welcome place in history, literature, and political science courses, as well as in personal libraries.

Now a major motion picture starring Melissa McCarthy-Lee Israel's hilarious and shocking memoir of the astonishing caper she carried on for almost two years when she forged and sold more than three hundred letters by such literary notables as Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, Noel Coward, and many others. Before turning to her life of crime-running a one-woman forgery business out of a phone booth in a Greenwich Village bar and even dodging the FBI-Lee Israel had a legitimate career as an author of biographies. Her first book on Tallulah Bankhead was a New York Times bestseller, and her second, on the late journalist and reporter Dorothy Kilgallen, made a splash in the headlines. But by 1990, almost broke and desperate to hang onto her Upper West Side studio, Lee made a bold and irreversible career change: inspired by a letter she'd received once from Katharine Hepburn, and armed with her considerable skills as a researcher and celebrity biographer, she began to forge letters in the voices of literary greats. Between 1990 and 1991, she wrote more than three hundred letters in the voices of, among others, Dorothy Parker, Louise Brooks, Edna Ferber, Lillian Hellman, and Noel Coward-and sold the forgeries to memorabilia and autograph dealers. "Lee Israel is deft, funny, and eminently entertaining...[in her] gentle parable about the modern culture of fame, about those who worship it, those who strive for it, and those who trade in its relics" (The Associated Press). Exquisitely written, with reproductions of her marvelous forgeries, Can You Ever Forgive Me? is "a slender, sordid, and pretty damned fabulous book about her misadventures" (The New York Times Book Review).

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.

Academic - Scholarly - Defoe Studies - Political History - Eighteenth-Century History; In this new book, Furbank and Owens attempt to disentangle the story of Daniel Defoe's political career, as journalist, polemicist, political theorist and secret agent. They argue that this remarkable career calls for a good deal of rethinking, not least because biography and bibliography are here inextricably intertwined. The book challenges the current account of Defoe's political career - rather drastically in some cases. It argues, for example, that Defoe's cherished story of his intimacy with King William - a staple of all previous Defoe biographies - was most probably an (immensely bold) fiction, a view which, if correct, entails considerable revision of his personality and career. Likewise, it offers a new interpretation of the famous series of letters Defoe wrote in 1718 to his Government paymaster, the Whig Undersecretary of State Charles de la Faye,

?Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? . . . The Shadow knows!? And who knew The Shadow better than his creator, Walter B. Gibson. Relatively few people have heard of Gibson, but many more are familiar with The Shadow having heard the program on the Blue Coal Radio Program in the 1930s and read the Street & Smith Shadow novels. Walter B. Gibson's life and career come out from behind The Shadow in this biography. It covers his youth in Philadelphia, his development as a writer and magician, his wives, including the third, (Litzka, who was a harpist and magician in her own right), his time living in Maine and upstate New York, and his later years and death. In addition to being credited with creating The Shadow (he used the pseudonym Maxwell Grant), Gibson wrote 187 books, contributed 668 articles to periodicals, created 283 stories for The Shadow Magazine, wrote 48 separate syndicated feature columns, reported the adventures of The Shadow and Blackstone the magician in 394 comic books and newspaper strips, and helped develop 147 radio scripts and many other works under numerous pseudonyms. Gibson has invented many widely used magic tricks and traveled with and befriended Harry Houdini, Howard Thurston, Harry Blackstone, Sr., and Joseph Dunninger.

Now available for the first time in English, Oleg Lekmanov's critically acclaimed Mandelstam presents the maverick Russian poet's life and work to a wider audience and includes the most reliable details of the poet's life, which were recently found and released from the KGB archives. Through his engaging narrative, Lekmanov carries the reader through Mandelstam's early life and education in pre-revolutionary Petersburg, at the Sorbonne in Paris, and in Heidelberg and his return to revolutionary Russia. Bold and fearless, he was quoted as saying: "Only in Russia do they respect poetry. They even kill you for it." Osip Mandelstam compared a writer to a parrot, saying that once his owner tires of him, he will cover his cage with black cloth, which becomes for literature a surrogate of night. In 1938, Mandelstam was arrested and six months later became a statistic: over 500,000 political prisoners were sent to the Gulags in 1938; between 1931 and 1940, over 300,000 prisoners died in the Gulags. One of them was the poet Osip Mandelstam. This is the tragic story of his life, pre-empted by the black cloth of Stalinism.

Caste and Outcast (1923) is an autobiography by Dhan Gopal Mukerji. Published the year after Mukerji moved from San Francisco to New York City, Caste and Outcast is a moving autobiographical narrative from the first Indian writer to gain a popular audience in the United States. Although he is more widely recognized for such children's novels as Gay Neck: The Story of a Pigeon (1927), which won the 1928 Newbery Medal, and Kari the Elephant (1922), Mukerji was also a gifted poet and memoirist whose experiences in India, Japan, and the United States are essential to his unique perspective on twentieth century life. "As I look into the past and try to recover my earliest impression, I remember that the most vivid experience of my childhood was the terrific power of faces. From the day consciousness dawned upon me, I saw faces, faces everywhere, and I always noticed the eyes. It was as if the whole Hindu race lived in its eyes." Raised in a prominent Brahmin family, Dhan Gopal Mukerji enjoyed immense privileges in his native India and came to trust in the effectiveness and fairness of the country's caste system. As a young man, however, no longer enthralled with the ascetic lifestyle explored in his youth, Mukerji devoted himself to nationalist politics and eventually left India for Japan. Unsatisfied with life as an engineering student, he emigrated once more to the United States, where he moved in anarchist and bohemian circles while embarking on a career as a popular poet and children's author. Although he never returned to his native country, Mukerji left an inspiring legacy through his literary achievement and unwavering commitment to Indian independence. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Dhan Gopal Mukerji's Caste and Outcast is a classic of Indian American literature reimagined for modern readers.

From a bilingual master of the literary memoir comes this moving and humorous story of losing immigrant baggage and trying to reclaim it for his American future. In this poignant literary memoir, internationally acclaimed author and Boston College professor Maxim D. Shrayer (Waiting for America) explores both material and immaterial aspects of immigrant baggage. Through a combination of dispassionate reportage, gentle irony, and confessional remembrance, Shrayer writes about traversing the borders and boundaries of the three cultures that have nourished him-Russian, Jewish, and American. The spirit of nonconformism and the power of laughter come to the rescue of Shrayer's autobiographical protagonist when he faces existential calamities and life's misadventures. The aftermath of a dangerous ski accident in Italy reminds the memoirist of history's black holes. A haunting, Soviet-era theatrical affair pushes the emigre protagonist to the brink of a disaster in a provincial Russian town. Attempting to collect overdue royalties from a Moscow publisher, the expatriate writer tips his hat to Kafka. The book's six interconnected tales are held together by the memorist's imperative to make the ordinary absurd and the absurd-ordinary. Shrayer parses a translingual literary life filled with travel, politics, and discovery-and sustained by family love and faith in art's transcendence.

The third son of a coalminer, David Storey takes us from his tough upbringing in Wakefield, to being 'sold' to Leeds Rugby League Club, to his escape to the Slade School of Art and his life in post-war London. He describes shocking scenes in the seventeen deprived East End schools in which he taught. He documents the childhood death of his eldest brother, addressing much of the memoir to him and exploring how this relates to his own sometimes paralysing depression, which haunted most of his life. And yet, a prolific and celebrated writer, he recalls heady spells in New York, close relationships in the theatre with Joycelyn Herbert, Ralph Richardson and Lindsay Anderson, early success with This Sporting Life, and winning the Booker Prize for his novel Saville.

The definitive and revealing biography of the author of The Secret Garden. Frances Hodgson Burnett's favourite theme in her fiction was the reversal of fortune, and she herself knew extremes of poverty and wealth. Born in Manchester in 1849, she emigrated with her family to Tennessee because of the financial problems caused by the cotton famine. From a young age she published her stories to help the family make ends meet. Only after she married did she publish Little Lord Fauntleroy that shot her into literary stardom. On the surface, Frances' life was extremely successful: hosting regular literary salons in her home and travelling frequently between properties in the UK and America. But behind the colourful personal and social life, she was a complex and contradictory character. She lost both parents by her twenty-first birthday, Henry James called her "the most heavenly of women" although avoided her; prominent people admired her and there were many friendships as well as an ill-advised marriage to a much younger man that ended in heartache. Her success was punctuated by periods of depression, in one instance brought on by the tragic loss of her eldest son to consumption. Ann Thwaite creates a sympathetic but balanced and eye-opening biography of the woman who has enchanted numerous generations of children.

"Invaluable."--Eric J. Sundquist in The New York Times Book Review