THE LIFE OF THE AUTHOR An expansive biography of John Milton, including an assessment of his poetry and prose and an account of the ways in which he has been presented over the past three and a half centuries--written by a leading scholar in the field It is hard to overstate the role that John Milton played in the historical, political and literary controversies of seventeenth century England; his writings and very life challenged the status quo. Living through one of the most tumultuous periods in British history, Milton was involved at every turn. Struggling to reconcile his private beliefs with his involvement with a radical political experiment, a republic which involved the killing of the monarch, his star rose and fell several times during his life. Married three times, struck blind at a cruelly early age, he was a famed pamphleteer and political activist whose revolutionary political credos placed him in mortal danger after the Restoration. Milton's varied life makes for fascinating reading but it also produced some of the most important poetry in the English language. Paradise Lost, the only poem in English recognized as an epic, challenged conventional thinking on widespread topics from religion and gender equality to the fundamental question of why we behave as we do. This fascinating new biography is divided into two parts. The first separates the man from the myth, and elucidates the complicated details of Milton's life from his early years as a literary artist uncertain of his destiny, through his work as a propagandist for the Cromwellian republic, to his rewriting of the Old Testament story of the Fall as a poetic allegory of more recent history. The second looks at how biographers and critics from the seventeenth century to the present day have distorted and manipulated the personality of Milton to suit their biases. Balancing accessibility with academic rigor, this volume: Examines the significant aspects of Milton's life and work, including his poetry and prose, his government writings, his travels, and his final years Explores Milton's Protestant and republican influences in Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and his other literary works Highlights the differences and similarities between Milton's poetry and political prose Follows the history of biographical and critical presentations of Milton from the seventeenth century onwards, including his adoption as a hero of Romanticism and his survival in the twentieth century as, allegedly, a sceptical humanist Addresses modern critiques of Milton in Marxism, Feminism, and other branches of Theory The Life of the Author: John Milton. Poet and Revolutionary is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students, university lecturers, and academic researchers in relevant fields, particularly seventeenth century poetry and history, as well as literary biography and the history of criticism.

The definitive biography of Soviet Jewish dissident writer Vasily Grossman If Vasily Grossman's 1961 masterpiece, Life and Fate, had been published during his lifetime, it would have reached the world together with Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago and before Solzhenitsyn's Gulag. But Life and Fate was seized by the KGB. When it emerged posthumously, decades later, it was recognized as the War and Peace of the twentieth century. Always at the epicenter of events, Grossman (1905-1964) was among the first to describe the Holocaust and the Ukrainian famine. His 1944 article "The Hell of Treblinka" became evidence at Nuremberg. Grossman's powerful anti-totalitarian works liken the Nazis' crimes against humanity with those of Stalin. His compassionate prose has the everlasting quality of great art. Because Grossman's major works appeared after much delay we are only now able to examine them properly. Alexandra Popoff's authoritative biography illuminates Grossman's life and legacy.

'A searing, triumphant story. A testament to the tenacity of the human spirit as well as a beautiful ode to an iconic figure' IRENOSEN OKOJIE Letters to Gil is Malik Al Nasir's profound coming of age memoir - the story of surviving physical and racial abuse and discovering a new sense of self-worth under the wing of the great artist, poet and civil rights activist Gil Scott-Heron. Born in Liverpool, Malik was taken into care at the age of nine after his seafaring father became paralysed. He would spend his adolescence in a system that proved violent, neglectful, exploitative, traumatising and mired in abuse. Aged eighteen, he emerged semi-literate, penniless with no connections or sense of where he was going - until a chance meeting with Gil Scott-Heron. Letters to Gil will tell the story of Malik's empowerment and awakening while mentored by Gil, from his introduction to the legacy of Black history to the development of his voice through poetry and music. Written with lyricism and power, it is a frank and moving memoir, highlighting how institutional racism can debilitate and disadvantage a child, as well as how mentoring, creativity, self-expression and solidarity helped him to uncover his potential.

Chloe has been very successful in building her audience, and they have a personal investment in and connection to her work (sales, and attention, for her previous books, far outstrip what you'd expect from such small publishing houses) Chloe's engaging frankness, her willingness to be openly muddled and messy, has earned her visible celebrity fans with very real power to support the work (including Cheryl Strayed, who she nannied for, and Lena Dunham) These essays are explicitly personal, but their underlying questions are relatable even if you have never been young and aimless in Berlin, or a 20-year-old jewelry saleswoman/scofflaw-they ask, to borrow from Heti, how should a person be. How do you grow up? How do you manage desires versus responsibilities? How do you know when you've gotten there? This is our second Emily Books title, and they are Chloe are already raring to go. Women was a selection for their book club, and that base will also be activated to promote the book via social media and events.

To coincide with the bicentenary of Jane Austen's death ( and her appearance on English banknotes ) in July 2017, this illuminating account of the novelist's life is told with particular reference to the great men and women who inspired and influenced her, and whose portraits, along with her own, are now in the Collection of the National Portrait Gallery.

During the early fifties, Kenya was a country in turmoil. While Ngugi enjoys scouting trips, chess tournaments and reading about Biggles at the prestigious Alliance School near Nairobi, things are changing at home. He arrives back for his first visit since starting school to find his house razed to the ground and the entire village moved up the road closer to a guard checkpoint. Later, his brother, Good Wallace, who fights for the rebels, is captured by the British and taken to a concentration camp. Finally, Ngugi himself comes into conflict with the forces of colonialism when he is victimised by a police officer on a bus journey and thrown in prison for six days. This fascinating memoir charts the development of a significant voice in international literature, as well as standing as a record of the struggles of a nation to free itself.

'We feasted on love, every mode of it - solemn and merry, romantic and realistic, sometimes as dramatic as a thunderstorm, sometimes as comfortable and unemphatic as putting on your soft slippers.' C. S. Lewis The celebrated scholar and writer C. S. Lewis achieved great success in his life - yet to many he remained an engima. Although he had many friends, few if any ever saw the real, private Lewis and for six decades of his life he remained a confirmed bachelor. Then, at the age of sixty, Lewis met Joy Davidman. Davidman, an unconventional American divorcee, turned his world upside down. It was with her that Lewis truly found love and was drawn out of his shell. This is the story of their brief but incandescent love, its tragic end and a faith that endures beyond even the deepest grief. This updated edition contains a new Introduction by author Brian Sibley and a Preface by the UK's leading Lewis scholar, Alister McGrath.

Soon after its publication on 30 September 1868, Little Women became an enormous international bestseller. When Anne Boyd Rioux read it in her twenties, it had a powerful effect on her and through teaching it, she has seen its effect on many others. In Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, she recounts Louisa May Alcott's inspiration for the book and examines why this tale set in the American Civil War has resonated through time. Alcott's novel has moved generations of women, amongst them writers such as Simone de Beauvoir, J.K. Rowling, Cynthia Ozick and Ursula K. Le Guin. Rioux sees the novel's beating heart in its portrayal of family resilience and its look at the struggles of girls growing into women. In gauging its current status, she shows why it remains a book with such power that people carry its characters and spirit throughout their lives.

'Speak, memory' said Vladimir Nabokov. And immediately there came flooding back to him a host of enchanting recollections - of his comfortable childhood and adolescence, of his rich, liberal-minded father, his beautiful mother, an army of relations and family hangers-on and of grand old houses in St Petersburg and the surrounding countryside in pre-revolutionary Russia. Young love, butterflies, tutors and a multitude of other themes thread together to weave an autobiography which is itself a work of art.

This Penguin Modern Classic edition contains an appendix, 'Chapter sixteen', a pseudo-review written by Nabokov in 1950 but only now published for the first time in paperback.

By examining the family and financial circumstances of Wordsworth s early years, this illuminating biography reshapes our understanding of the great Romantic poet s most creative period of life and writing. * Features new research into Wordsworth s financial situation, and into how the poet and his family survived financially * Offers a new understanding of the role of his great unwritten poem The Recluse * Presents a new assessment of the relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2020 WINNER OF THE ANISFIELD-WOLF BOOK AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 CARNEGIE MEDAL IN NON-FICTION 'This will be read for many, many years to come as a classic not just of the memoir genre but of contemporary writing' Simon Schama 'The work of a poet. A great poet' Financial Times 'A must-read classic' Mary Karr 'Trethewey writes elegantly, trenchantly, intimately as well about the fraught history of the south and what it means live at the intersection of America's struggle between blackness and whiteness. And what, in our troubled republic, is a subject more evergreen?' Mitchell S. Jackson Natasha Trethewey was born in Mississippi in the 60s to a black mother and a white father. When she was six, Natasha's parents divorced, and she and her mother moved to Atlanta. There, her mother met the man who would become her second husband, and Natasha's stepfather. While she was still a child, Natasha decided that she would not tell her mother about what her stepfather did when she was not there: the quiet bullying and control, the games of cat and mouse. Her mother kept her own secrets, secrets that grew harder to hide as Natasha came of age. When Natasha was nineteen and away at college, her stepfather shot her mother dead on the driveway outside their home. With penetrating insight and a searing voice that moves from the wrenching to the elegiac, Memorial Drive is a compelling and searching look at a shared human experience of sudden loss and absence, and a piercing glimpse at the enduring ripple effects of white racism and domestic abuse. Luminous, urgent, and visceral, it cements Trethewey's position as one of the most important voices in America today.

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861), poet, skeptic, friend of Emerson and of Matthew Arnold, was a man concerned with the religious, political, and social issues of the turbulent times in which he lived. In this fresh examination of Clough, Greenberger traces the intellectual development of a poet who was considered a brilliant failure in his own day, a reputation that still persists despite the fact that Clough is now attracting considerable critical attention. Her study contradicts this traditional view of him as ineffectual and uncommitted and reveals instead a complex figure whose varied interests enriched his prose and poetry.

Greenberger has made a thorough study of all of Clough's prose on contemporary issues written between 1837 and 1853. These largely neglected writings, many of which remain unpublished, enable her to follow the poet's development through religious doubts and conflicts and to trace his political metamorphosis from naive idealism through radicalism to a final disenchantment with utopias. Having placed the poet's work in its proper historical context, the author goes on to reveal the great extent to which Clough succeeded in making the issues of his day viable subjects for poetry.

Greenberger, thoroughly versed in the intellectual history of the Victorian period, vividly depicts the English social and economic scene and contemporary life at unreformed Oxford. She suggests new insights into Clough's relations with Emerson, the influence of Carlyle upon the poet, and his reactions to the America of the early 1850's.

The author concludes that the techniques Clough developed for presenting his ideas in poetic form and the concerns that pervaded his thinking make him a precursor of twentieth-century literature. In the last chapter she relates her findings to Clough's three major poems. She includes in an appendix a number of new poems and other material by Clough found in manuscript during her research.

The diaries of Clara Mary Jane Clairmont are, so far as is known, the last of the major documents of the Shelley-Byron circle to be published. Only the writings of the Shelleys themselves surpass hers in importance for those interested in the careers of the poets and their friends. Best known as Byron's mistress and the mother of his daughter Allegra, "Claire," as she preferred to be called, is important to literary history for her role in bringing Byron and Shelley together.

Claire Clairmont began her journals in 1814, when she accompanied Shelley and her half-sister, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, on their elopement to the continent. She continued to write them until after Byron and Shelley were dead and she was living as a governess with a wealthy family in Moscow. The journals present a detailed and fascinating picture of life with the Shelley family their discovery of the European landscape, wretched days in London dodging bailiffs and bill collectors, happy days of opera and ballet and endless conversations. Our knowledge of the Shelleys' life in Italy is expanded by this intimate view of the brilliant society of artists, writers, musicians, actors, scholars, revolutionaries, and nobility who were their constant companions. The later entries provide an account of the daily life of an Englishwoman living in Russia during the exciting time of the Decembrist uprising.

In "The Journals of Claire Clairemont," Stocking has brought together five of Claire's journals, all that is known of the now-lost Russian journal, and two leaflets of Miscellanea dealing with the years 1828 to 1830. The interruptions in the diaries are bridged by narratives that allow the reader to follow her life, as she develops from an effervescent schoolgirl into a self-possessed, attractive, and talented young woman.

Appendices present reviews of theatrical performances seen by Claire and the Shelleys, biographical sketches of the varied personages they knew in Italy, a review by Mary Shelley (1826) describing people and life on the Continent as Claire and the Shelleys saw it, and the text of a manuscript fragment, possibly by Claire, containing thinly disguised romantic portrayals of the Shelleys and Jane and Edward Ellerker Williams. There is also a list of Claire's voluminous and systematic reading. Editorial comment within the body of the text has been kept to a minimum, and all of Claire's rewritings and crossings out are clearly indicated. Genealogical tables and numerous footnotes help to place Claire's journals in their proper social and historical perspective.

Penrose' wrote Andre Breton `est Surrealiste dans l'amitie' and `The Friendly Surrealist' is an apt description for the man who more than any other nurtured friendships and connections which introduced European Surrealism to the British art world. Roland Penrose embraced the fantasies and rebellions of the Surrealist movement through his friendships with artists such as Picasso, Man Ray, Miro, Ernst and Tapies. His own works, which often reveal the true emotions behind his relationships with his wives, Valentine Boue and Lee Miller, constitute an important contribution to British Surrealist art.

J.M. Coetzee: a life in writing is the first biography of Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee. A global publishing event of the rarest kind, the book has been written with the full cooperation of Coetzee, who granted the author interviews and put him in touch with family, friends, and colleagues who could talk about events in Coetzee's life. For the first time, Coetzee allowed complete access to his private papers and documents, including the manuscripts of his 16 novels. J.C. Kannemeyer has also made a study of the enormous body of literature on Coetzee, and through archival research has unearthed further information not previously available. The book deals in depth with Coetzee's origins, early years, and first writings; his British interlude from 1962-1965; his time in America from 1965-1971; his 30 years back in South Africa, when he achieved international recognition and won the Booker prize; and his Australian years since 2002, during which time he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. J.M. Coetzee: a life in writing is a major work that corrects many of the misconceptions about Coetzee, and that illuminates the genesis and implications of his novels.This magisterial biography will be an indispensable source for everybody concerned with Coetzee's life and work.

In reproducing sixty-six letters in the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library, plus eight letters or portions of letters previously published, this book offers one of the best sources available for the last fourteen years of Browning's life.

Written to a dear friend who was also a "learned lady," the letters deal with Browning's poetry, his social life, and his friendships. They also give some of his views on the nature of poetry, of art, and of religion. The editor's introduction offers the reader a view of Mrs. Fitzgerald and her family, of the social background with which many of the letters are concerned, and of Browning, his sister, and his son.

Notes clarify the many allusions that appear in the letters. An appendix by Marcelle Thiebaux includes careful bibliographical descriptions of the manuscripts and a classified list of the writing paper Browning used, information which should enable future editors to assign at least approximate dates to some of the letters Browning himself left undated.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is recognised as a giant of world literature; an exceptionally prolific and versatile writer. As a student, he composed pastoral plays in the style of the waning Rococo. With Gotz von Berlichingen, a drama conceived in the spirit of Shakespeare, he joined the avant-garde Sturm und Drang authors. His epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther elicited fervent responses among those who rejected the traditions of the Enlightenment, and in his tragedy Faust, which evolved over a 60-year period, he created a prototype of the Romantic hero. Furthermore, based on his studies in literary theory, he developed a concept of 'world literature' that he hoped would foster communication among writers of different nations.

In this study of the imaginary universe of Germany's most famous author of fantasy, Kenneth Negus attempts to establish the coherency and fathom the depth of the "other world" manifested in Hoffmann's many tales. Proceeding mainly from Der Goldene Topf, Hoffmann's most fully developed mystical work, Negus shows how the figures, themes, and motifs Hoffmann established permeate his tales, forming a basic overall structure that embodies creation, destruction, and the interaction of the two extremes in a mythology that is a fantastic distillation of the real world with which it is often in conflict. This close and careful scrutiny of the work of E. T. A. Hoffmann should be of major interest to all teachers and students of German and Comparative Literature.

In this second edition of William Wordsworth: A Life, Stephen Gill draws on knowledge of the poet's creative practices and his reputation and influence in his life-time and beyond. Refusing to treat the poet's later years as of little interest, this biography presents a narrative of the whole of Wordsworth's long life-1770 to 1850-tracing the development from the adventurous youth who alone of the great Romantic poets saw life in revolutionary France to the old man who became Queen Victoria's Poet Laureate. The various phases of Wordsworth's life are explored with a not uncritical sympathy; the narrative brings out the courage he and his wife and family were called upon to show as they crafted the life they wanted to lead. While the emphasis is on Wordsworth the writer, the personal relationships that nourished his creativity are fully treated, as are the historical circumstances that affected the production of his poetry. Wordsworth, it is widely believed, valued poetic spontaneity. He did, but he also took pains over every detail of the process of publication. The foundation of this second edition of the biography remains, as it was of the first, a conviction that Wordsworth's poetry, which has given pleasure and comfort to generations of readers in the past, will continue to do so in the years to come.