Thomas Carlyle was a major figure in Victorian literature and a unique commentator on nineteenth-century life. Born in humble circumstances in the Scottish village of Ecclefechan in 1795, his rise to fame was marked by fierce determination and the development of a highly distinctive literary voice. In this clear, authoritative and readable biography, John Morrow traces Carlyle's personal and intellectual career. Wide-ranging, prophetic and invariably challenging, his work ranged from the astonishing pseudo-autobiography Sartor Resartus to major historical works on the French Revolution and Frederick the Great, and to radical political manifestos such as Latter Day Pamphlets. Thomas Carlyle is an account of his work and of his life, including celebrity as the Sage of Chelsea and his tempestuous marriage to Jane Welsh Carlyle.

Byron Rogers' biography of Wales' s national poet and vicar, R.S. Thomas has been hailed as a ' masterpiece' , even as a work of ' genius' , by reviewers from Craig Brown to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Within someone considered a wintry, austere and unsociable curmudgeon, Rogers has unearthed an extremely funny story - ' riotously' so, in Rowan Williams' words. Thomas is widely considered as one of the twentieth-century' s greatest English language poets. His bitter yet beautiful collections on Wales, its landscape, people and identity, reflect a life of political and spiritual asceticism. Indeed, Thomas is a man who banned vacuum cleaners from his house on grounds of noise, whose first act on moving into an ancient cottage was to rip out the central heating, and whose attempts to seek out more authentically Welsh parishes only brought him more into contact with loud English holidaymakers. To Thomas' s many admirers this will be a surprising, sometimes shocking, but at last humanising portrait of someone who wrote truly metaphysical poetry.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'This is my kind of history: carefully researched but so vivid that you are convinced Lucy Worsley was actually there at the party - or the parsonage.' Antonia Fraser 'A refreshingly unique perspective on Austen and her work and a beautifully nuanced exploration of gender, creativity, and domesticity.' Amanda Foreman Lucy Worsley 'is a great scene-setter for this tale of triumph and heartbreak.' Sunday Times On the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's death, historian Lucy Worsley leads us into the rooms from which our best-loved novelist quietly changed the world. This new telling of the story of Jane's life shows us how and why she lived as she did, examining the places and spaces that mattered to her. It wasn't all country houses and ballrooms, but a life that was often a painful struggle. Jane famously lived a 'life without incident', but with new research and insights Lucy Worsley reveals a passionate woman who fought for her freedom. A woman who far from being a lonely spinster in fact had at least five marriage prospects, but who in the end refused to settle for anything less than Mr Darcy.

Japan in the 10th century stood physically and culturally isolated from the rest of the world. Inside this bubble, a subtle and beautiful world was in operation, and its inhabitants were tied to the moment, having no interest in the future and disdain for the past. The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon was a product of a tenth-century courtier's experiences in the palace of Empress Teishi. A common custom of the time period, courtiers used to keep notes or a diary in a wooden pillow with a drawer. This "pillow book" reflects the confident aesthetic judgments of Shonagon and her ability to create prose that crossed into the realm of the poetic. The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon is one of the earliest examples of diary literature whose passages chronicle the events of the court calendar, the ceremonies and celebrations specific to Teishi's court, and the vignettes that provide brilliantly drawn glimpses into the manners and foibles of the aristocracy. A contemporary of Murasaki Shikibu, the author of The Tale of Genji, this small diary brings an added dimension to Murasaki's timeless and seminal work. Arthur Waley's elegant translation of The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon captures the beauty of its prose and the vitality of Shonagon's narrative voice, as well as her quirky personality traits. In a place and time where poetry was as important as knowledge and beauty was highly revered, Sei Shonagon's private writings give the reader a charming and intimate glimpse into a time of isolated innocence and pale beauty.

Alex la Guma was a major twentieth century South African novelist. His first novel, A Walk in the Night, in 1966 brought him instant recognition as a pioneering writer on the African continent. Its ‘startling realism and accurate imagery’ drew high praise from his contemporaries. Wole Soyinka, later awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o . The critic and writer, Lewis Nkosi, likewise, compared La Guma’s intense and sombre vision of the individual in society to that of Dostoevsky. La Guma was also an important political figure. As leader of the South African Coloured People’s Organisation and a communist, he was charged with treason, banned, house arrested and eventually forced into exile. At the time of his death in 1985 he was serving as chief representative of the African National Congress in the Caribbean.

Published on the centenary of Alex La Guma’s birth on 20 February 1925, The Early Writings of Alex La Guma contains a selection of his early work as a journalist and short story writer, before he became a published novelist and was forced into exile. It provides unique cameos of South African life and politics during a turbulent time in the country’s history – the late 1950s and early 1960s, the years around Sharpeville – at the same time giving us insight into the making of a novelist. The ‘hidden’ world of Alex La Guma – material, social, emotional, political and intellectual – at a time when he was developing into a serious writer, is revealed. Many of the themes in his fiction are first encountered and developed in these early newspaper articles, providing useful material for literary scholars seeking to understand the progression of his work.

A reviewer wrote that this book, like Alex La Guma’s novels, captures not only the misery of poverty and oppression in South Africa, but also the rich song of everyday life beneath the surface. It reads easily as fiction and adds significantly to our understanding of popular culture in Cape Town, as well as to the social and political history of the city. When asked what one of his novels was about, La Guma – born and bred in District 6 – replied, ‘Ag, just about the folks back home’. La Guma peels off, as if with a scalpel, the glossy covers of the Cape’s tourist-brochure ‘liberalism’ to reveal the hard realities faced by the majority of its (non-) citizens: This is District Six talking. It is unmistakable – terse, racy, humorous, as convincing as truth.’

La Guma’s insider accounts of contemporary politics also help with the recovery of important aspects of the history of the South African liberation movement.

'He who thinks freely for himself, honours all freedom on earth.' Stefan Zweig was already an emigre-driven from a Europe torn apart by brutality and totalitarianism-when he found, in a damp cellar, a copy of Michel de Montaigne's Essais. Montaigne would become Zweig's last great occupation, helping him make sense of his own life and his obsessions-with personal freedom, with the sanctity of the individual. Through his writings on suicide, he would also, finally, lead Zweig to his death. With the intense psychological acuity and elegant prose so characteristic of Zweig's fiction, this account of Montaigne's life asks how we ought to think, and how to live. It is an intense and wonderful insight into both subject and biographer.

This biography examines the long life of the traveller and author Stephen Graham. Graham walked across large parts of the Tsarist Empire in the years before 1917, describing his adventures in a series of books and articles that helped to shape attitudes towards Russia in Britain and the United States. In later years he travelled widely across Europe and North America, meeting some of the best known writers of the twentieth century, including H.G.Wells and Ernest Hemingway. Graham also wrote numerous novels and biographies that won him a wide readership on both sides of the Atlantic. This book traces Graham's career as a world traveller, and provides a rich portrait of English, Russian and American literary life in the first half of the twentieth century. It also examines how many aspects of his life and writing coincide with contemporary concerns, including the development of New Age spirituality and the rise of environmental awareness. Beyond Holy Russia is based on extensive research in archives of private papers in Britain and the USA and on the many works of Graham himself. The author describes with admirable tact and clarity Graham's heterodox and convoluted spiritual quest. The result is a fascinating portrait of a man who was for many years a significant literary figure on both sides of the Atlantic.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BARBELLION PRIZE 2021 'A manifesto for recalibrating' DAILY MAIL 'I can't think of many books where the reader feels so passionately on the side of the narrator' GUARDIAN 'A profound redefinition of the very idea of vitality' FINANCIAL TIMES Josie George lives in a tiny terraced house in the urban West Midlands with her son. Since her early childhood, she has lived with the fluctuating and confusing challenge of disabling chronic illness. But Josie's world is surprising, intricate, dynamic. She has learned what to look for: the routines of her friends at the community centre; the neighbourhood birds in flight; the slow changes in the morning light, in her small garden, in her growing son, in herself. In January 2018, Josie sets out to tell the story of her still life, over the course of a year. As the seasons shift, and the tides of her body draw in and out, Josie begins to unfurl her history. And against a world which values progress and productivity above all else, Josie sets out a quietly radical alternative: to value and treasure life for life itself, with all its great and small miracles. 'Full of kindness, A Still Life will make you a better person' CLARE MACKINTOSH 'A Still Life is joy-lit: vivid, lovestruck, hopeful and wise' MELISSA HARRISON 'Josie George is the kind of writer I strive to be ... A tough, tender, beautiful book about existing in a body in the world' ELLA RISBRIDGER 'Could not be more timely ... An immensely talented writer' LINDA GRANT

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

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

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

Although his hilariously entertaining stories have touched the hearts of generations of children, there was much more to beloved author Roald Dahl than met the eye. His fascinating life began in Norway in 1916, and he became a highly rebellious teenager who delighted in defying authority before joining the RAF as a fighter pilot. But after his plane crashed in the African desert he was left with agonising injuries and unable to fly. He was dispatched to New York where, as a dashing young air attache, he enraptured societies greatest beauties and became friends with President Roosevelt. Roald soon found himself entangled with a highly complex network of British undercover operations. Eventually he grew tired of the secrecy of spying and retreated to the English countryside. He married twice and had five children, but his life was also affected by serious illness, tragedy and loss. He wrote a number of stories for adults, many of which were televised as the hugely popular Tales of the Unexpected, but it was as a children's author that he found greatest fame and satisfaction, saying "I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers...Books shouldn't be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful." From 1945 until his death in 1990, he lived in Buckinghamshire, where he wrote his most celebrated children's books including Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Fantastic Mr Fox.

Critically acclaimed, award-winning biography of CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien and the brilliant group of writers to come out of Oxford during the Second World War. C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and their friends were a regular feature of the Oxford scenery in the years during and after the Second World War. They drank beer on Tuesdays at the 'Bird and Baby', and on Thursday nights they met in Lewis' Magdalen College rooms to read aloud from the books they were writing; jokingly they called themselves 'The Inklings'. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien first introduced The Screwtape Letters and The Lord of the Rings to an audience in this company and Charles Williams, poet and writer of supernatural thrillers, was another prominent member of the group. Humphrey Carpenter, who wrote the acclaimed biography of J.R.R. Tolkien, draws upon unpublished letters and diaries, to which he was given special access, in this engrossing story.

Shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award 'A gem of a book, informative, companionable, sometimes funny, and wholly original. MacLean must surely be the outstanding, and most indefatigable, traveller-writer of our time' John le Carre In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell. In that euphoric year Rory MacLean travelled from Berlin to Moscow, exploring lands that were - for most Brits and Americans - part of the forgotten half of Europe. Thirty years on, MacLean traces his original journey backwards, across countries confronting old ghosts and new fears: from revanchist Russia, through Ukraine's bloodlands, into illiberal Hungary, and then Poland, Germany and the UK. Along the way he shoulders an AK-47 to go hunting with Moscow's chicken Tsar, plays video games in St Petersburg with a cyber-hacker who cracked the US election, drops by the Che Guevara High School of Political Leadership in a non-existent nowhereland and meets the Warsaw doctor who tried to stop a march of 70,000 nationalists. Finally, on the shores of Lake Geneva, he waits patiently to chat with Mikhail Gorbachev. As Europe sleepwalks into a perilous new age, MacLean explores how opportunists - both within and outside of Russia, from Putin to Home Counties populists - have made a joke of truth, exploiting refugees and the dispossessed, and examines the veracity of historical narrative from reportage to fiction and fake news. He asks what happened to the optimism of 1989 and, in the shadow of Brexit, chronicles the collapse of the European dream.

The story of Mary Poppins, the quintessentially English and utterly magical children's nanny, is remarkable enough. She flew into the lives of the unsuspecting Banks family in a children's book that was instantly hailed as a classic, then became a household name when Julie Andrews stepped into the starring role in Walt Disney's hugely successful and equally classic film. Now she is a sensation all over again-both on Broadway and in Disney's upcoming film Saving Mr. Banks. Saving Mr. Banksretells many of the stories in Valerie Lawson's biography Mary Poppins, She Wrote, including P. L. Travers's move from London to Hollywood and her struggles with Walt Disney as he adapted her novel for the big screen. Travers, whom Disney accused of vanity for "thinking she knows more about Mary Poppins than I do," was a poet and world-renowned author as tart and opinionated as Andrews's big-screen Mary Poppins was cheery and porcelain-beautiful. Yet it was a love of mysticism and magic that shaped Travers's life as well as the very character of Mary Poppins. The clipped, strict, and ultimately mysterious nanny who emerged from her pen was the creation of someone who remained inscrutable and enigmatic to the end of her ninety-six years. Valerie Lawson's illuminating biography provides the first full look at the life of the woman and writer whose personal journey is as intriguing as her beloved characters.

Poet, artist, visionary and author of the unofficial English national anthem 'Jerusalem', William Blake is an archetypal misunderstood genius. In this radical new biography, we return to a world of riots, revolutions and radicals, discuss movements from the Levellers of the sixteenth century to the psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s, and explore the latest discoveries in neurobiology, quantum physics and comparative religion to look afresh at Blake's life and work - and, crucially, his mind. Taking the reader on wild detours into unfamiliar territory, John Higgs places the bewildering eccentricities of a most singular artist into context and shows us how Blake can help us better understand ourselves.

"This work will change our understanding of Coleridge's politics and how we read his oeuvre." Dr. Michael John Kooy (Warwick University, U.K.) Samuel Taylor Coleridge is best known as a great poet and literary theorist, but for one, quite short, period of his life he held real political power - acting as Public Secretary to the British Civil Commissioner in Malta in 1805. This was a formative experience for Coleridge which he later identified as being one of the most instructive in his entire life. In this volume Barry Hough and Howard Davis show how Coleridge's actions whilst in a position of power differ markedly from the idealism he had advocated before taking office - shedding new light on Coleridge's sense of political and legal morality. Meticulously researched and including newly discovered archival materials, Coleridge's Laws provides detailed analysis of the laws and public notices drafted by Coleridge, together with the first published translations of them. Drawing from a wealth of primary sources Hough and Davis identify the political challenges facing Coleridge and reveal that, in attempting to win over the Maltese public to support Britain's strategic interests, Coleridge was complicit in acts of government which were both inconsistent with the the rule of law and contrary to his professed beliefs. Coleridge's willingness to overlook accepted legal processes and personal misgivings for political expediency is disturbing and, as explained by Michael John Kooy's in his extensive Introduction, necessarily alters our understanding of the author and his writing. Coleridge's Laws contributes in new ways to the current debates about Coleridge's achievements, British colonialism and its engagement with the rule of law, nationhood and the effectiveness of the British administration of Malta. It provides essential reading for anybody interested in Coleridge specifically and the Romantics more generally, for political and legal historians and for students of colonial government.

What could be a more tempting Christmas gift than a compendium of David Sedaris's best stories, selected by the author himself? From a spectacular career spanning almost three decades, these stories have become modern classics and are now for the first time collected in one volume. For more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily existence. And it is almost impossible to read without laughing. Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work. In these stories, Sedaris shops for rare taxidermy, hitchhikes with a lady quadriplegic, and spits a lozenge into a fellow traveler's lap. He drowns a mouse in a bucket, struggles to say 'give it to me' in five languages and hand-feeds a carnivorous bird. But if all you expect to find in Sedaris's work is the deft and sharply observed comedy for which he became renowned, you may be surprised to discover that his words bring more warmth than mockery, more fellow-feeling than derision. Nowhere is this clearer than in his writing about his loved ones. In these pages, Sedaris explores falling in love and staying together, recognizing his own aging not in the mirror but in the faces of his siblings, losing one parent and coming to terms - at long last - with the other. Taken together, the stories in The Best of Me reveal the wonder and delight Sedaris takes in the surprises life brings him. No experience, he sees, is quite as he expected - it's often harder, more fraught and certainly weirder - but sometimes it is also much richer and more wonderful. Full of joy, generosity, and the incisive humor that has led David Sedaris to be called 'the funniest man alive' (Time Out New York), The Best of Me spans a career spent watching and learning and laughing - quite often at himself - and invites readers deep into the world of one of the most brilliant and original writers of our time.

George Eliot (1819-1880) was one of the leading writers of the Victorian period and she remains one of Britain's greatest novelists. This brief life offers new insights into Eliot's life and work focusing on the themes, patterns, relationships, feelings and language common to both her life and writing. Barbara Hardy discusses Eliot's relations with parents and siblings, her brave but joyful unmarried partnership with George Henry Lewes, her friendships and her late brief marriage to the younger John Cross. Setting her life and fiction side by side, Hardy reveals Eliot's ideas about society, home, foreignness, nature, gender, religion, sex, illness and death and her experiences as translator, journalist, editor and novelist. Drawing on letters, journals, journalism and the memoirs and biographies written by contemporaries, Hardy brings together a biographical approach with close reading of Eliot's novels to give a combined perspective on her life and art. This book offers students, academics and readers alike an illuminating portrait of George Eliot as a woman and a writer.

In recent years, under pressure from New Historicism and developments in the formal study of biography, scholars have become increasingly conscious of how deliberately fashioned were the images of Shelley, Byron and Wordsworth. In Byron's case, this was often with his consent or collusion; in Shelley's case, it was the active efforts of his widow and friends who struggled to construct a particular picture of both man and poet. With Wordsworth the picture is less clear, since the kind of scrutiny that his two counterparts have recently received has rarely extended to him. The memoirs in this collection are written by those who had personal knowledge of Shelley, Byron and Wordsworth, or who claimed to be recording the accounts of those who had such knowledge. Each volume in this set contains the original memoirs in facsimile together with introductions and headnotes. The headnotes set the relevant context for each document, cross-referencing controversial passages.