Biography: literary

The Mystery of Charles Dickens [9781786497918]

Charles Dickens was a superb public performer, a great orator and one of the most famous of the Eminent Victorians. Although he specified an unpreten…

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Tolkien's Worlds: The places that inspired the writer's imagination [9780711241275]

This new book from renowned Tolkien expert John Garth investigates the places that inspired the Lord of the Rings author to create his fictional locat…

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Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time [9780141030791]

BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017 in The Sunday Times, Spectator, Mail on Sunday, Observer and Financial Times 'A landmark biography' The Times, Books of the …

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Keeping on Keeping on [9781781256497]

Alan Bennett's third collection of prose, Keeping On Keeping On, follows in the footsteps of the phenomenally successful Writing Home and Untold Stori…

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Jeoffry: The Poet's Cat [9780750995672]

Jeoffry was a real cat who lived 250 years ago, confined to an asylum with Christopher Smart, one of the most visionary poets of the age. In exchange…

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Orwell's Roses [9781783785452]

'Outside my work the thing I care most about is gardening' wrote George Orwell in 1940. Inspired by her encounter with the surviving roses that Orwel…

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The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah: The Autobiography [9781471168956]

*BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week* Benjamin Zephaniah, who has travelled the world for his art and his humanitarianism, now tells the one story that encom…

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Patrick Melrose Volume 1: Never Mind, Bad News and Some Hope [9781509897681]

Patrick Melrose Volume 1 contains the first three novels in Edward St Aubyn's semi-autobiographical series, filmed for Sky Atlantic and starring Bened…

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Patrick Melrose Volume 2: Mother's Milk and At Last [9781509897704]

Patrick Melrose Volume 2 contains the final two novels in Edward St Aubyn's semi-autobiographical series, filmed for Sky Atlantic and starring Benedic…

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Dostoevsky in Love: An Intimate Life [9781472964694]

Dostoevsky's life was marked by brilliance and brutality. Sentenced to death as a young revolutionary, he survived mock execution and Siberian exile t…

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Philip Roth: The Biography [9780224098175]

Appointed by Philip Roth and granted complete access and independence, Blake Bailey spent years poring over Roth's personal archive, interviewing his …

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Autumn in Venice: Ernest Hemingway and His Last Muse [9781782399384]

The remarkable story of Hemingway's love affair with both the city of Venice and the muse he found there - a young Italian girl who inspired him to co…

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Arthur & Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes [9781408858530]

'Carefully researched but thoroughly readable ... Will surely appeal to the millions of Holmes's admirers as well as students of crime writing' - Kirk…

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The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym [9780008322205]

A brilliant, intimate biography of English writer Barbara Pym. She was Pym to friends. Miss Pym in her diaries. Sandra in seduction mode. Pymska at h…

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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings [9780860685111]

'A truly phenomenal woman' - Barack Obama 'I know that not since the days of my childhood, when people in books were more real than the people one saw…

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The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Boxed Set [9780008214548]

Stunning three-volume slipcased set containing the most comprehensive in-depth companion to Tolkien's life and works ever published, including synopse…

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Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck [9780393292268]

This first full-length biography of the Nobel Laureate to appear in a quarter century explores John Steinbeck's long apprenticeship as a writer strugg…

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Robert Graves: From Great War Poet to Good-bye to All That (1895-1929) [9781472929143]

The writer and poet Robert Graves suppressed virtually all of the poems he had published during and just after the First World War. When his son,…

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The Making of Poetry: Coleridge Wordsworths and Their Year of Marvels [9780008126476]

Wordsworth and Coleridge as you've never seen them before in this new book by Adam Nicolson, brimming with poetry, art and nature writing. Proof that …

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Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath [9781787332539]

The first biography of this great and tragic poet that takes advantage of a wealth of new material, this is an unusually balanced, comprehensive and d…

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