A search for roots and identity has rarely been captured with such illegible], unusual insight, and surprising humor as in this memoir of heartbreak and hope. Today a distinguished American poet; Colette Inez first came to the United States when she was eight years old, as an illegible] Belgian orphan illegible] by two complete strangers. Growing up in post World War II America, a stranger to her own past, she survived a illegible] adolescence and an increasingly illegible] abusive adoptive family by learning to define her single solace, a developing passion for literature. illegible] possible illegible] in the 1950s, Inez set out to prove her claim to U.S. citizenship. The result, as she recounts in this eloquent, wrenching memoir, would span two illegible], a trail of discovery, and a buried secret, one that ultimately allowed Inez to reconcile her past and present and finally come of age as an artist.

The extraordinary character of Ben Jonson has only recently been brought into the light. Critics traditionally exalted Shakespeare, at Jonson's expense. In this biography, first published in 1986, the author presents a full and accurate account of Jonson's life in modern times. Rosalind Miles follows Jonson from his obscure beginnings to his burial in Westminster Abbey, as the first Poet Laureate, in 1637. Her Jonson is vivid and vigorous, equally alive in his life and in his work. This title will be of interest to students of history, English literature and Renaissance drama.

Met Adam Small se oorlye op 25 Junie 2016 het daar ’n einde gekom aan die lewe van ’n unieke mens en ’n unieke oeuvre: ’n digter, dramaturg en denker met besonderse insig in die aktualiteite van sy tyd. Hoewel die toekenning van die Hertzogprys aan Small in 2012 en die gepaardgaande publisiteit daarrondom die idee vir ’n huldigingsbundel by die SA Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns laat ontstaan het, was dit Small se dood wat die deurslag gegee het om die publikasie te verwesenlik: Wanneer ’n kunstenaar sterf en sy stem vir ewig verstom het, bied dit immers die geleentheid om oorkoepelend oor die geheel van sy kunstenaarskap te besin. Die bydraes in hierdie bundel dra die ondertoon van ’n afsluiting, ’n terugblik op die mens en kunstenaar Adam Small, met temas soos die toekoms van Afrikaans en die Afrikaanse letterkunde, die uitbreidende rol van Kaaps, en sosiale vraagstukke soos bendegeweld en armoede. Mense wat Small van naby geken het is hier aan die woord saam met literatore en kollegas uit die maatskaplikewerk-omgewing waarby Small lewenslank betrokke was. Adam Small: Denker, digter, dramaturg – ’n Huldiging hoef nie as afsluiting van die gesprek oor Small se lewe en werk beskou te word nie – inteendeel: Dit bied juis ook geleentheid om die oorkoepelende blik oor Small se kunstenaarskap as inleiding tot verdere ondersoek te benut.

The question of who wrote Shakespeare's plays has been the subject of furious debate among scholars for over 150 years. Everything known about the facts of William Shakespeare's life seems incompatible with the extraordinary genius of his writing. How could a man who left school at the age of 13, and apparently never travelled abroad have authored the incomparable Sonnets or so intricately described Renaissance Venice? Shakespeare 'candidates' abound, among them Sir Francis Bacon, The Earl of Oxford, even Queen Elizabeth I herself, but none have stood up to serious scrutiny. Until now.... This remarkable, intriguing, and provocative book offers a completely plausible new candidate; Sir Henry Neville.

Paul Leautaud was both one of the oddest characters in French literature and, as a staff member of the review Mercure de France, at the centre of Parisian literary life for over half a century. First published in 1974, this book represents the first full length biography of Leautaud in any language. The author recreates the world of a man who, once regarded as a mere eccentric, is now recognised as a significant figure in contemporary literature. It traces Leautaud's intimate friendships with many famous writers of the time and gives a lively panorama of the French literary scene and its vivid characters.

Bringing together Islamic studies, a postcolonial literary perspective, and a focus on the interaction between aesthetics and politics, this book analyses Iqbal's Islamism through his poetry. It argues that his notion of an Islamist selfhood was expressed in his verse through the interplay between poetic tradition and creative innovation. It also considers how Iqbal expressed an Islamist geopolitical imagination in his work, and examines his exploration of the relationship between the modern West and a reconstructed Islam. For the first time, Iqbal's personal letters have been drawn upon to provide an insight into his inner conflicts as articulated in his poetry. Concentrating on the complexity of his work in its own right, the book eschews the standard appropriation of Iqbal into any one political agenda - be it Indian nationalism, Muslim separatism or Iranian Islamic republicanism. With its analytical and in-depth reading of Iqbal's verse and prose, this book opens a fresh perspective on Islam and postcolonialism. It will be a fascinating study for general readers and readers with interests in the intellectual and political history of modern South Asia, colonialism and postcolonialism, Islamic studies, and modern South Asian literature (especially Urdu and Persian poetry).

This book, first published in 1944, provides a comprehensive overview of the work and life of the writer and philosopher Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy. Widely considered one of the greatest novelists of all time, this title examines some of Tolstoy's most seminal works, including War and Peace and Anna Karenina. This book will be of interest to students of literature and philosophy.

Before writing his award-winning Going After Cacciato, Tim O'Brien gave us this intensely personal account of his year as a foot soldier in Vietnam. The author takes us with him to experience combat from behind an infantryman's rifle, to walk the minefields of My Lai, to crawl into the ghostly tunnels, and to explore the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war gone terribly wrong. Beautifully written and searingly heartfelt, If I Die in a Combat Zone is a masterwork of its genre.

The story both of the real world of the Brontes at Haworth Parsonage, their home on the edge of the lonely Yorkshire moors, and of the imaginary worlds they spun for themselves in their novels and poetry.Wherever possible, their story is told using their own words - the letters they wrote to each other, Emily and Anne's secret diaries, and Charlotte's exchanges with luminaries of literary England - or those closest to them, such as their brother Branwell, their father Patrick Bronte, and their novelist friend Mrs Gaskell. The Brontes sketched and painted their worlds too, in delicate ink washes and watercolours of family and friends, animals and the English moors. These pictures illuminate the text as do the tiny drawings the Bronte children made to illustrate their imaginary worlds. In addition, there are facsimiles of their letters and diaries, paintings by artists of the day, and pictures of household life. This beautifully illustrated book offers a unique and privileged view of the real lives of three women, writers and sisters.

A Finalist for the PEN/Bograd Weld Prize for Biography The most definitive biography to date of the poet Pablo Neruda, a moving portrait of one of the most intriguing and influential figures in Latin American history Few poets have captured the global imagination like Pablo Neruda. In his native Chile, across Latin America, and in many other parts of the world, his name and legacy have become almost synonymous with liberation movements, and with the language of erotic love. Neruda: The Poet's Calling is the product of fifteen years of research by Mark Eisner, writer, translator, and documentary filmmaker. The book vividly depicts Neruda's monumental life, potent verse, and ardent belief in the "poet's obligation" to use poetry for social good. It braids together three major strands of Neruda's life-his world-revered poetry; his political engagement; and his tumultuous, even controversial, personal life-forming a single cohesive narrative of intimacy and breadth. The fascinating events of Neruda's life are interspersed with Eisner's thoughtful examinations of the poems, both as works of art in their own right and as mirrors of Neruda's life and times. The result is a book that animates Neruda's riveting story in a new way-one that offers a compelling narrative version of Neruda's life and work, undergirded by exhaustive research, yet designed to bring this colossal literary figure to a broader audience.

First published in 1957, this book explores what remained of Joyce's background, not only in Ireland but in those cities abroad where his books were written. With the co-operation of those who knew the author, including his brother, much new material was brought together to shed new light on Joyce's life, character and methods of writing. The author traces Joyce, and his writings, from his beginnings in Ireland, through Zurich, London and Paris, to his difficult final year at Vichy in 1940. Previously unpublished letters illustrate his relationships with important figures of the period like Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and H.G. Wells. This title will be of interest to student of literature.

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.

'Wise, witty and empathetic . . . outstanding' JIM CRACE 'A fascinating treatment of the age-old problem of writers and drink which displays the same subtle qualities as William Palmer's own undervalued novels' D. J. TAYLOR 'A vastly absorbing and entertaining study of this ever-interesting subject' ANDREW DAVIES, screenwriter and novelist 'In Love with Hell is a fascinating and beautifully written account of the lives of eleven British and American authors whose addiction to alcohol may have been a necessary adjunct to their writing but ruined their lives. Palmer's succinct biographies contain fine descriptions of the writers, their work and the times they lived in; and there are convincing insights into what led so many authors to take to drink.' PIERS PAUL READ Why do some writers destroy themselves by drinking alcohol? Before our health-conscious age it would be true to say that many writers drank what we now regard as excessive amounts. Graham Greene, for instance, drank on a daily basis quantities of spirits and wine and beer most doctors would consider as being dangerous to his health. But he was rarely out of control and lived with his considerable wits intact to the age of eighty-six. W. H. Auden drank the most of a bottle of spirits a day, but also worked hard and steadily every day until his death. Even T. S. Eliot, for all his pontifical demeanour, was extremely fond of gin and was once observed completely drunk on a London Tube station by a startled friend. These were not writers who are generally regarded as alcoholics. 'Alcoholic' is, in any case, a slippery word, as exemplified by Dylan Thomas's definition of an alcoholic as 'someone you dislike who drinks as much as you.' The word is still controversial and often misunderstood and misapplied. What acclaimed novelist and poet William Palmer's book is interested in is the effect that heavy drinking had on writers, how they lived with it and were sometimes destroyed by it, and how they described the whole private and social world of the drinker in their work. He looks at Patrick Hamilton ('the feverish magic that alcohol can work'); Jean Rhys ('As soon as I sober up I start again'); Charles Jackson ('Delirium is a disease of the night'); Malcolm Lowry ('I love hell. I can't wait to go back there'); Dylan Thomas ('A womb with a view'); John Cheever ('The singing of the bottles in the pantry'); Flann O'Brien ('A pint of plain is your only man'); Anthony Burgess ('Writing is an agony mitigated by drink'); Kingsley Amis ('Beer makes you drunk'); Richard Yates ('The road to Revolutionary Road'); and Elizabeth Bishop ('The writer's writer's writer').

Joseph Frank's award-winning, five-volume "Dostoevsky" is widely recognized as the best biography of the writer in any language--and one of the greatest literary biographies of the past half-century. Now Frank's monumental, 2500-page work has been skillfully abridged and condensed in this single, highly readable volume with a new preface by the author. Carefully preserving the original work's acclaimed narrative style and combination of biography, intellectual history, and literary criticism, "Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time" illuminates the writer's works--from his first novel "Poor Folk" to "Crime and Punishment" and "The Brothers Karamazov"--by setting them in their personal, historical, and above all ideological context. More than a biography in the usual sense, this is a cultural history of nineteenth-century Russia, providing both a rich picture of the world in which Dostoevsky lived and a major reinterpretation of his life and work.

Rimbaud was the original enfant terrible. A poetic genius, he destroyed all those who attempted to befriend him, most notoriously wrecking the marriage and sanity of the poet Verlaine. Having conquered the literary world of Paris, he abandoned France and in the dogdays of August 1880 he disembarked in Aden, on the coast of Yemen, a lean twenty-five-year-old Frenchman carrying only a brown suitcase fastened with four leather straps and a touch of fever. The subsequent period, the lost years , is the subject of this biographical quest.

George Orwell's last novel has become one of the iconic narratives of the modern world. Its ideas have become part of the language - from 'Big Brother’ to the 'Thought Police', 'Doublethink', and 'Newspeak' - and seem ever more relevant in the era of 'fake news' and 'alternative facts’.

The cultural influence of 1984 can be observed in some of the most notable creations of the past seventy years, from Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid’s Tale to Terry Gilliam's Brazil, from Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta to David Bowie's Diamond Dogs – and from the launch of Apple Mac to the reality TV landmark, Big Brother. In this remarkable and original book, Dorian Lynskey investigates the influences that came together in the writing of 1984 from Orwell's experiences in the Spanish Civil War and war-time London to his book's roots in utopian and dystopian fiction. He explores the phenomenon that the novel became on publication and the changing ways in which it has been read over the decades since.

2019 marked the seventieth anniversary of the publication of what is arguably Orwell’s masterpiece, while the year 1984 itself is now as distant from us as it was from Orwell on publication day. The Ministry of Truth is a fascinating examination of one of the most significant works of modern English literature.

First published in 1909, with a second edition in 1923, this concise and easily accessible overview of Shelley's life and work presents the poet not as popular legend would have it, but in a more objective light. A.Clutton-Brock notes his forthright and imperious attitude to life - a life in which Shelley found himself increasingly unhappy - and critically examines many facets of his artistic career which are often overlooked or misrepresented.

In 1968 Egyptian novelist and political exile Waguih Ghali committed suicide in the London flat of his editor, friend, and sometime lover, Diana Athill. Ghali left behind six notebooks of diaries that for decades were largely inaccessible to the public. An Egyptian in the Swinging Sixties is the first publication of its kind of the journals, casting fascinating light on a likeable and highly enigmatic literary personality.Waguih Ghali (1930?-69), author of the acclaimed novel Beer in the Snooker Club, was a libertine, sponger, and manic depressive, but also an extraordinary writer, a pacifist, and a savvy political commentator. Covering the last four years of his life, Ghali's Diaries offer an exciting glimpse into London's swinging sixties.Moving from West Germany to London and Israel, and back in memory to Egypt and Paris, the entries boast of endless drinking, countless love affairs, and of mingling with the dazzling intellectuals of London, but the Diaries also critique the sinister political circles of Jerusalem and Cairo, describe Ghali's trepidation at being the first Egyptian allowed into Israel after the 1967 War, and confess in detail the pain and difficulties of writing and exile. Including two interviews conducted by Deborah Starr, with celebrated literary editor Diana Athill, OBE, and with Ghali's cousin, former director of UNICEF-Geneva, Samir Basta, the Diaries bring together those most familiar with Ghali's life and work, and offer a fresh take on a distinctive author and a vibrant decade.

Greil Marcus once said to an interviewer, "There is an infinite amount of meaning about anything, and I free associate." For more than four decades, Marcus has explored the connections among figures, sounds, and events in culture, relating unrelated points of departure, mapping alternate histories and surprising correspondences. He is a unique and influential voice in American letters.Marcus was born in 1945 in San Francisco. In 1968 he published his first piece, a review of "Magic Bus: The Who on Tour," in "Rolling Stone," where he became the magazine's first records editor. Renowned for his ongoing "Real Life Top Ten" column, Marcus has been a writer for a number of magazines and websites, and is the author and editor of over fifteen books. His critique is egalitarian: no figure, object, or event is too high, low, celebrated, or obscure for an inquiry into the ways in which our lives can open outward, often unexpectedly."In Conversations with Greil Marcus," Marcus discuses in lively, wide-ranging interviews his books and columns as well as his critical methodology and broad approach to his material, signaled by a generosity of spirit leavened with aggressive critical standards.

Catherine Hogarth, who came from a cultured Scots family, married Charles Dickens in 1836, the same year he began serializing his first novel. Together they traveled widely, entertained frequently, and raised ten children. In 1858, the celebrated writer pressured Catherine to leave their home, unjustly alleging that she was mentally disordered unfit and unloved as wife and mother. Constructing a plotline nearly as powerful as his stories of Scrooge and Little Nell, Dickens created the image of his wife as a depressed and uninteresting figure, using two of her three sisters against her, by measuring her presumed weaknesses against their strengths. This self-serving fiction is still widely accepted.

In the first comprehensive biography of Catherine Dickens, Lillian Nayder debunks this tale in retelling it, wresting away from the famous novelist the power to shape his wife's story. Nayder demonstrates that the Dickenses' marriage was long a happy one; more important, she shows that the figure we know only as "Mrs. Charles Dickens" was also a daughter, sister, and friend, a loving mother and grandmother, a capable household manager, and an intelligent person whose company was valued and sought by a wide circle of women and men. Making use of the Dickenses' banking records and legal papers as well as their correspondence with friends and family members, Nayder challenges the long-standing view of Catherine Dickens and offers unparalleled insights into the relations among the four Hogarth sisters, reclaiming those cherished by the famous novelist as Catherine's own and illuminating her special bond with her youngest sister, Helen, her staunchest ally during the marital breakdown.

Drawing on little-known, unpublished material and forcing Catherine's husband from center stage, The Other Dickens revolutionizes our perception of the Dickens family dynamic, illuminates the legal and emotional ambiguities of Catherine's position as a "single" wife, and deepens our understanding of what it meant to be a woman in the Victorian age."

This book, first published in 1944, provides a comprehensive overview of the work and life of the writer and philosopher Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy. Widely considered one of the greatest novelists of all time, this title examines some of Tolstoy's most seminal works, including War and Peace and Anna Karenina. This book will be of interest to students of literature and philosophy.

Broken Hallelujah offers a unique perspective on one of the most prolific and celebrated twentieth-century European writers, Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957). Marking the fiftieth anniversary of Kazantzakis's death, author Darren J. N. Middleton looks back on Kazantzakis's life and literary art to suggest that, contrary to popular belief, Kazantzakis and his views actually comport with the ideals of Christianity. As a theologian and ordained Baptist minister, Middleton approaches Kazantzakisas as a broadly sympathetic spiritual seeker rather than the traditional religious villain as he is routinely portrayed. Based on archival work conducted at the Kazantzakis library in Iraklion and at various monasteries on Athos, Middleton finds important connections between Kazantzakis's work and key themes in Eastern Orthodox theology, especially the "hesychastic" and "apophatic" traditions. This book advances modern Greek studies as well as general theological studies by acknowledging and celebrating Kazantzakis's clear if admittedly uneasy alliance with Christianity. Broken Hallelujah is a fascinating text that will interest scholars in Christianity and Literature studies, as well as those thinking through the faith in this era.

After falling in love with and marrying a man two lifetimes older than her, Irving Layton's last wife shares the story of her life with the acclaimed poet. While a student at Dalhousie University, Anna Pottier attended a poetry reading featuring Irving Layton. Walking out of the auditorium that night, she knew two things: she wanted more than ever to be a writer, and she wanted to be with Layton. At the age of twenty-three she became Layton's fifth and final wife; she was forty-eight years his junior. She shared the entirety of his world and was intimately involved in the writing and publication of such books as The Gucci Bag, Fortunate Exile, and Waiting for the Messiah. She accompanied Layton on his last major overseas reading tour, broke bread with Pierre Trudeau and Leonard Cohen, met other luminaries, and watched Layton write his very last poem. But slowly, Layton was changing. In 1992, a doctor put names to these changes: Parkinson's disease and early-stage Alzheimer's. Life carried on, but once-easy things grew more difficult, and then the day came in 1995, after nearly fourteen years, when Pottier had nothing left to give. Good as Gone is a startling, at times searing, account of one of the most unusual love stories of the twentieth century.