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One of Canada's greatest journalists shares a half century of the stories behind the stories.From his vantage point harnessed to a tree overlooking the town of Huntsville (he tended to wander), a very young Roy MacGregor got in the habit of watching people—what they did, who they talked to, where they went. He has been getting to know his fellow Canadians and telling us all about them ever since. From his early days in the pages of Maclean's, to stints at the Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, National Post and most famously from his perch on page two of the Globe and Mail, MacGregor was one of the country's must-read journalists. While news media were leaning increasingly right or left, he always leaned north, his curiosity trained by the deep woods and cold lakes of Algonquin Park to share stories from Canada's farthest reaches, even as he worked in the newsrooms of its southern capitols. From Parliament to the backyard rink, subarctic shores to prairie expanses, MacGregor shaped the way Canadians saw and thought about themselves—never entirely untethered from the land and its history. When MacGregor was still a young editor at Maclean's, the 21-year-old chief of the Waskaganish (aka Rupert's House) Crees, Billy Diamond, found in Roy a willing listener as the chief was appealing desperately to newsrooms across Ottawa, trying to bring attention to the tainted-water emergency in his community. Where other journalists had shrugged off Diamond's appeals, MacGregor got on a tiny plane into northern Quebec. From there began a long friendship that would one day lead MacGregor to a Winnipeg secret location with Elijah Harper and his advisors, a host of the most influential Indigenous leaders in Canada, as the Manitoba MPP contemplated the Charlottetown Accord and a vote that could shatter what seemed at the time the country's last chance to save Confederation. This was the sort of exclusive access to vital Canadian stories that Roy MacGregor always seemed to secure. And as his ardent fans will discover, the observant small-town boy turned pre-eminent journalist put his rare vantage point to exceptional use. Filled with reminiscences of an age when Canadian newsrooms were populated by outsized characters, outright rogues and passionate practitioners, the unputdownable Paper Trails is a must-read account of a life lived in stories.

To study Katherine Phillips'career, focusing on her life and literary legacy, analysing some lines from a historicist perspective, with a particular emphasis on the socio-political context and the author's self-representation within her work. As a point of departure, I reflect on what position Katherine Philips occupied in the literary landscape of her time, what level of professionalisation she achieved, and the degree of success she attained through her work, both in her own time and subsequently. I will also enquire into what rhetorical, poetical and linguistic devices Orinda employs in her poetry, and what objectives these strategies suggest.

When Dymphna Stella Rees finds bundles of love letters buried in her parents'archive, she is intrigued by the discovery. Leslie Rees and Coralie Clarke Rees were a power couple of the Australian literary scene in the mid-twentieth century. They took their shared dream of being writers from Perth to London and launched themselves in Fleet Street, interviewing some of the century's literary greats, including James Joyce, AA Milne, and George Bernard Shaw. After settling in Sydney in the 1930s, they embraced the city's vibrant arts scene and established prolific careers. Leslie became an award-winning children's book author and the ABC's national drama editor, while Coralie was one of the country's first female broadcasters. They influenced the development of an authentically Australian arts culture and included among their friends Mary Gilmore, Ruth Park, D'Arcy Niland, Mary Durack and Vance and Nettie Palmer. Drawn from personal notebooks, letters and original transcripts, A Paper Inheritance is the engrossing story of what drove this literary couple to prominence and is a celebration of their love and their passion for words.

Set in a public housing project in San Francisco, Lam's memoir explores his transformation from a teenage graffiti writer to a high school teacher working with troubled youth while navigating the secret violence in his immigrant's family's past.

For the first time, novelist Iris Murdoch's life in her own words, from girlhood to her last yearsIris Murdoch was an acclaimed novelist and groundbreaking philosopher whose life reflected her unconventional beliefs and values. But what has been missing from biographical accounts has been Murdoch's own voice—her life in her own words. Living on Paper—the first major collection of Murdoch's most compelling and interesting personal letters—gives, for the first time, a rounded self-portrait of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers and thinkers. With more than 760 letters, fewer than forty of which have been published before, the book provides a unique chronicle of Murdoch's life from her days as a schoolgirl to her last years. The result is the most important book about Murdoch in more than a decade.The letters show a great mind at work—struggling with philosophical problems, trying to bring a difficult novel together, exploring spirituality, and responding pointedly to world events. They also reveal her personal life, the subject of much speculation, in all its complexity, especially in letters to lovers or close friends, such as the writers Brigid Brophy, Elias Canetti, and Raymond Queneau, philosophers Michael Oakeshott and Philippa Foot, and mathematician Georg Kreisel. We witness Murdoch's emotional hunger, her tendency to live on the edge of what was socially acceptable, and her irreverence and sharp sense of humor. We also learn how her private life fed into the plots and characters of her novels, despite her claims that they were not drawn from reality.Direct and intimate, these letters bring us closer than ever before to Iris Murdoch as a person, making for an extraordinary reading experience.

A beautifully designed, full-color collection of paper dolls created by Zelda Fitzgerald, lovingly compiled by her granddaughter, Eleanor Lanahan.Born in Montgomery, Alabama, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald has long been an American cultural icon. A Southern belle turned flapper, Zelda was talented in dance, painting, and writing but lived in the shadow of her writer husband F. Scott Fitzgerald's success. The golden couple of the Jazz Age, Zelda and her husband moved around—from hotels to rented villas to apartments in Paris—and Zelda always brought along her paints. Few people know she painted at all, and fewer still know she made paper dolls. But throughout her life, Zelda created dolls, whenever she could, in private. By design, paper dolls are delicate, fragile, and destined for destruction at the hands of children. Zelda's dolls began as playthings for her daughter, Scottie, born in 1921. Fortunately, Zelda continued to make figures after Scottie outgrew them, first of their family and then of storybook characters—lavish, graceful, bold figures. These unique characters were a portable troupe, a colorful paper caravan that travelled inside her luggage. Zelda chose subjects she relished: society figures of the French Court, or Red Riding Hood's predatory wolf, as vivacious as the girl. Whether they are cardinals, kings, or bears, the dolls are fashionably attired in ball gowns, armor, and capes. A gorgeous and unique keepsake and a perfect gift for book and art lovers, this delightful collection of Zelda's paper dolls offers an intimate peek into the life of one of the Lost Generation's most fascinating creative artists.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Original Papers Illustrative of the Life and Writings of John Milton

This volume aims to situate Virginia Woolf as a writer who, despite her fame as a leading modernist, also drew on a rich literary and cultural heritage. The chapters in this volume explore the role her family heritage, literary tradition and heritage locations play in Woolf's works, uncovering the influence the past had on her work, and particularly her deep indebtedness to the Victorian period in the process. It looks at how she reimagined heritage, including her queer readings of the past. This volume also aims to examine Woolf's own literary legacy: with essays examining her reception in Romania, Poland and France and her impact on contemporary writers like Alice Munro and Lidia Yuknavitch. Lastly, Woolf's standing in the increasingly popular field of biofiction is explored. The collection features an extended chapter on Virginia Woolf's relationship with her cousin H.A.L. Fisher by David Bradshaw, and an extended chapter by Laura Marcus on Woolf and the concept of shame.

Die Beiträgerinnen und Beiträger des Bandes betrachten das Werk von Christoph Ransmayr als poetische Kartographie. Ransmayr vermisst die Welt in Zeit und Raum und kartiert damit gleichsam die Rolle der Sprache und des Erzählens als das den Menschen mit seiner Umwelt und seiner Vergangenheit Verbindende. Die Aufsätze folgen vielfältigen methodischen Ansätzen – manche narratologischen, andere komparatistischen, wieder andere literaturhistorischen. Gemeinsam ist ihnen die Deutung von Ransmayrs Werk als Exploration – als Erkundung der Welt des Physischen, der Welt des Erzählens und der Welt der Literaturgeschichte, in deren Mitte stets Ransmayrs Subjekt als Bezeugender und Reisender steht. This collection of essays conceives of Christoph Ransmayr's work as an exercise in poetic cartography. Ransmayr maps the world in time and space, and in so doing, he maps the role of language and storytelling in connecting us to our environment and our past. The methodological approaches of these essays are diverse – some are narratological, some comparativist, some literary historical. They all share an interest in the exploration of Ransmayr's work as an exploration of time and space – the time and space of the physical world, of the world of storytelling and of the world of literary history, of which they themselves form a part. At the centre of all this stands Ransmayr's human subject as witness and traveller.

This volume contains selected papers from the XV International Graduate Conference, highlighting the latest scholarship from a new generation of Late Antique and Byzantine scholars from around the world. The theme of the conference explored the interaction between power and the natural and human environments of Byzantium, an interaction that is an essential part of the empire's legacy. This legacy has come down to us through buildings, literature, history and more, and has proved enduring enough to intrigue and fascinate scholars centuries after the fall of Constantinople. From religion and trade at the end of Antiquity, imperial propaganda and diplomacy at the end of the first millennium, to culture and conquest under the Komnenian and Palaeologan dynasties – this volume demonstrates the length and breadth of the forays being made by young academics into the still often undiscovered country of the Late Antique and Byzantine world.

L'entreprise de relecture et de mise en image des écrits et de la geste de saint François s'inscrit dans une tradition ancienne mais toujours prégnante. Elle va de Dante à Bobin ou Dario Fo, de Giotto à Altan, Pasolini ou Pistoletto. Une question surgit alors : François d'Assise est-il « actuel »? Le choix du Pape récemment élu du nom « François » et l'enthousiasme suscité par la découverte d'une Vie retrouvée de François d'Assise confortent cette intuition. La pensée du Poverello s'impose comme une référence cruciale face à l'urgence écologique et à la tension économique actuelles. Faisant suite au colloque, les Actes proposent une première cartographie des multiples discours, inspirés par François d'Assise, qui nourrissent la création littéraire et artistique contemporaine, italienne ou française. Les points de vue varient entre fascination, volonté de réappropriation et tentation de l'extrapolation. Ce livre contient trois articles en italien.

This book is a collection of papers on subjects related to poetry and its language. Scholars in literature, translation, linguistics, philosophy and history share their readings of poetic expression from various ages. The result is a multi-disciplinary perspective that affords the reader the rare opportunity of being reminded of the many layers of the appeal and the pleasure of poetry. The volume has been brought together to honour Professor Teresa Bela from the English Department of the Jagiellonian University, herself a teacher and interpreter of poetry.

Ma che idea, lasciare la California per un brumoso paesino della campagna gallese! Se non fosse che il paesino è Hay-on-Wye, la «Mecca dei bibliofili», dove c'è una libreria antiquaria ogni quaranta abitanti, e dove si celebra ogni anno uno dei più noti Festival della Letteratura – e se non fosse che il pellegrino è Paul Collins, instancabile e ardimentoso cacciatore di libri perduti e strampalati. Ingaggiato nel 2000 da Richard Booth, il libraio che nel 1977 si proclamò Re del Principato Autonomo di Hay, Collins si è potuto dedicare per sei mesi alla sua attività preferita: frugare tra cataste di libri effimeri «che fin dall'inizio non erano destinati a durare», e tramandarci le loro storie. Ed ecco le ponderose raccolte di riviste obsolete («La rivista delle meraviglie. Composta interamente di materiale classificabile come MIRACOLOSO! BIZZARRO! STRANO! STRAVAGANTE! SOPRANNATURALE! ECCENTRICO! ASSURDO! OSCURO! e INDESCRIVIBILE!»), le memorie apocrife ('Sono stata la cameriera di Hitler') o anonime ('Confessioni della moglie di uno scrittore'), gli autori che scrivono dall'aldilà, e le prime edizioni «grigie e pesanti come tombini». Mentre cerca casa, fantasticando di stabilirsi definitivamente in un grande «pub sconsacrato» del Seicento, il Sixpence House, Collins riesce anche a far domanda per un seggio alla Camera dei Lord (quella «specie di governo fondato sulla copula. Una spermocrazia, se preferite»). Oltre che una incantevole tranche de vie,'Al paese dei libri'è una sorprendente meditazione sul valore dei libri nel tempo – e sulla volubile incuranza del passato, «l'unico Paese dove è ancora permesso dileggiare gli indigeni».

In this deeply personal memoir, Ultan Macken writes movingly about his father's life and work. Ultan is the author of five books in his own right and has written extensively for national and regional newspapers and magazines. “A person who wants to write things will have to move about among the people he left behind” W. Macken, Quench the Moon. This new biography sheds light on the private life of one of Ireland's foremost writers, through his many unpublished and privately held papers and letters. Walter Macken was born in Galway in 1915 and died there in 1967. Originally an actor, principally with an Taidhbhearc in Galway and The Abbey Theatre, he played lead roles on Broadway and also acted in films, notably in Brendan Behan's The Quare Fellow. With the success of his third book, Rain on the Wind, he became a full-time writer. His novels include Rain on the Wind and The Bogman, but he is probably best known for his trilogy Seek the Fair Land, The Silent People and The Scorching Wind. He also published a number of books for children. Known for his romanticised portrayal of the Irish and the portrait he painted of the colonial oppression of the people, Macken's writings were a product of a more nationalistic time.

This is a penetrating study of many aspects of life, thought, and everyday existence in Scandinavia, as experienced through the author's 9-year residence in the enlightened far north in the 1960s. Robert Corfe is primarily known as a thought-provoking writer of books published in the 21st century, but this work comprises a selection of his articles published in the Finnish press, popular magazines, and learned journals in the 1960s. The collected articles are put into context for a contemporary readership by a lively introductory chapter entitled, Seeing The Future Through The Past, which describes how Scandinavia was 50 years in advance of Britain in terms of political thinking and social development. And now Britain has caught up and shares in the benefits and also the dis-benefits of a modernised technological society. Of considerable interest are the articles on British society and its problems, as viewed through the eyes of a British resident acclimatised to the cultural environment of Finnish life. The articles reflect clearly the development of the author's political ideas on the need for a classless society in more effectively contributing to communal prosperity and internal harmony. The Scandinavians'enviable policy of neutrality and disengagement from the conflicts of the great power blocs in achieving national security is highlighted as contributing to the happiness of their people. In view of an impending new Cold War between Russia and the West, the arguments developed are perhaps of greater significance today than when they were formulated more than 40 years ago. Many of these ideas were to be given greater depth in the author's major works published many years later in the 21st century. Perhaps most entertaining in this collection is the delicious satirical story, What The Watchdog Saw, a savage attack on the absurdities of the British far left as well as those of the far right. As a percipient introduction to the mindset of the enlightened Scandinavian people, based on both scholarship and personal experience, this book could hardly be bettered for such a purpose.

The great diversity of contexts in which the term Postmodernism is currently encountered reflects the remarkable success of a coinage that has been in circulation for only about forty years. It has been used by philosophers, sociologists, art critics and literary historians to become, finally, a household word in the language of advertising and politics. Before letting it fade to a derelict cliché, an attempt is made in this volume of essays to use its potential as a cultural concept for the analysis and understanding of contemporary literature and thought.

Rooms of Their Own travels around the world examining the unique spaces, habits and rituals in which famous writers created their most notable works. The perennial question asked of all authors is,'How do you write?'. What do they require of their room or desk? Do they have favourite pens, paper or typewriters? And have they found the perfect daily routine to channel their creativity? Crossing centuries, continents and genres, Alex Johnson has pooled 50 of the best writers and transports you to the heart of their writing rooms – from attics and studies to billiard rooms and bathtubs.Discover the ins and outs of how each great writer penned their famous texts, and the routines and habits they perfected. Meet authors who rely on silence and seclusion and those who need people, music and whisky. Meet novelists who travel half-way across the world to a luxury writing retreat, and others who just need an empty shed at the bottom of the garden. Some are particular about pencils, inks, paper and typewriters, and some will scribble on anything – including the furniture. But whether they write in the library or in cars, under trees, private islands, hotel rooms or towers – each of these stories confirms that there is no'best way'to write.From James Baldwin, writing in the small hours of the morning in his Paris apartment, to DH Lawrence writing at the foot of a towering Ponderosa pine tree, to the Brontë sisters managing in a crowded co-working space, this book takes us into the lives of some of history's greatest ever writers, with each writing space illustrated in evocative watercolour by James Oses.In looking at the working lives of our favourite authors, bibliophiles will be transported to other worlds, aspiring writers will find inspiration and literature fans will gain deeper insight into their most-loved authors.

This book, Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir Munshi, is the most comprehensive, multi-disciplinary studies on Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, widely known as Munshi Abdullah (1796-1854). He was a prominent literary figure and thinker in the Malay world in the 19th century and was also an early'pioneer'of Singapore.The author, Professor Hadijah Rahmat, has spent more than 25 years studying Munshi Abdullah since her PhD studies in the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, in 1992 to date. This book is covered in two volumes and is based on her research conducted using unexplored primary sources at several missionaries'archives at SOAS, London, Houghton Library, University Harvard, Library of Congress, Leiden University, KITVL, Holland, and the Perpustakaan Nasional Indonesia, Jakarta.The book consists of numerous academic papers presented at the regional and international seminars, and also published in international journals and as chapters of books. Besides academic papers, the excerpt of play titled Munsyi, sketches, poetry, and song, and interviews by the national media are also included.This book provides new insight into Abdullah's life, backgrounds, writings, his influences and legacies and the reactions and thought provoking views of the western and eastern scholars on Abdullah. The book is indeed the key reference for studies on Munshi Abdullah, Malay literature, and the history of Singapore, Malaysia, and colonialism in Southeast Asia.

Peat starts out as Lynn Jenner's study of the Ka¯piti Expressway, built between 2013 and 2017 and passing, at its nearest point, about a kilometre from her own house. She decides to create a kind of archive of the construction of this so-called Road of National Significance. How did it come to be built? What is its character? Who will win and who will lose from its construction? What will be its impact on the local environment?Jenner begins a quest to find a fellow writer with different sensibilities to help her think about the natural world the road traverses. New Zealand-born poet, editor, art collector and philanthropist Charles Brasch is her choice. Researching Brasch will be her refuge from the constant pile-driving and the sprawling concrete, and perhaps the poet will offer some ways of thinking that will help her understand contemporary events.She reads and reflects on Brasch's memoir, some of his poems, his journals and his lettersto the local paper. She thinks about Brasch in the context of his family and New Zealand in the 1940s - 60s, and she reads local papers. She reads the official handouts about the road and listens to people in her local community when they talk about the road.From there Lynn Jenner carefully builds her unconventional text, layer upon layer, into an intelligent and beautifully refracted work that is haunting, fearless, and utterly compelling.

Thus Burst Hippocrene: Studies in the Olympian Imagination is a collection of nine papers in comparative literature. Discussing the greatest Olympians in world literature, including Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Li Bo, Du Fu, and the Bible authors, it is both daring in conception and wide-ranging in scope. Freely drawing on the author's knowledge of Classical Greek, Latin, Italian, French, German, Spanish, English, and Chinese as well as on his conversance with the literatures of these languages, the papers are truly comparative, making discoveries unique to the author's characteristic multi-lingual, multi-cultural approach. In going through the book, the reader will be pleasantly surprised by its originality, by its amazing depth and breadth, and by the new light it sheds on topics that are of interest to scholars and students of comparative literature. Written in lucid language with no pretentious jargon, it will also appeal to the general reader who picks up a book simply for the joy of reading or for horizon-broadening without tears.

Focusing on the first 20 years of Katherine Mansfield's life, from her birth in 1888 to her final departure from New Zealand in 1908, this biography reveals the importance of Mansfield's childhood and adolescent years to her development as a writer and offers unique insights into her New Zealand stories. Gerri Kimber draws on detailed reminiscences of Mansfield's former school friends and acquaintances, early letters, personal papers, notebooks and family papers as well as on previously unused archive material and photographs. Kimber illuminates Mansfield's home life and school days, her friendships, first infatuations and sexual experimentation both with young men and young women and reveals the effect Mansfield's experiences had on her earliest stories. What emerges is a fascinating picture of a feisty and imaginative young girl who would turn into an expressive, non-conformist adolescent: the unruly Kass Beauchamp who would become Katherine Mansfield, the celebrated modernist writer.

The Maine Woods was the second volume collected from his writings after Thoreau's death. Of the material which composed it, the first two divisions were already in print.'Ktaadn and the Maine Woods'was the title of a paper printed in 1848 in The Union Magazine, and'Chesuncook'was published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1858. The book was edited by his friend William Ellery Channing. It was during his second summer at Walden that Thoreau made his first visit to the Maine woods. It was probably in response to a request from Horace Greeley that he wrote out the narrative from his journal, for Mr. Greeley had shown himself eager to help Thoreau in putting his wares on the market. In a letter to Emerson, January 12, 1848, Thoreau writes:'I read a part of the story of my excursion to Ktaadn to quite a large audience of men and boys, the other night, whom it interested. It contains many facts and some poetry.'He offered the paper to Greeley at the end of March, and on the 17th of April Greeley responded:'I inclose you $25 for your article on Maine scenery, as promised. I know it is worth more, though I have not yet found time to read it; but I have tried once to sell it without success. It is rather long for my columns, and too fine for the million; but I consider it a cheap bargain, and shall print it myself if I do not dispose of it to better advantage. You will not, of course, consider yourself x under any sort of obligation to me, for my offer was in the way of business, and I have got more than the worth of my money.'But this generous, high-minded friend was thinking of Thoreau's business, not his own, for in October of the same year he writes,'I break a silence of some duration to inform you that I hope on Monday to receive payment for your glorious account of'Ktaadn and the Maine Woods,'which I bought of you at a Jew's bargain and sold to The Union Magazine...

This remarkable gathering of previously unpublished writings shines new light on the On the Road author's life, from his French Canadian childhood to his meteoric rise to literary fame Edited and published with unprecedented access to the Kerouac archives, The Unknown Kerouac presents two lost novels, The Night Is My Woman and Old Bull in the Bowery, which Kerouac wrote in French during the especially fruitful years of 1951 and 1952. Discovered among his papers in the mid-nineties, they have been translated into English for the first time by Jean-Christophe Cloutier, who incorporates Kerouac's own partial translations. Also included are two journals from the heart of this same crucial period. In Private Philologies, Riddles, and a Ten-Day Writing Log, Kerouac recounts a brief stay in Denver—where he works on an early version of On the Road, reads dime novels, and even rides in a rodeo—and shows him contemplating writers like Chaucer and Joyce and playing with riddles and etymologies. Journal 1951, begun during a stay in a Bronx VA hospital, charts, in ecstatic, moving, and self-revealing pages, the wave of insights and breakthroughs that led Kerouac to the most singular transformation of American prose style since Hemingway. This landmark volume is rounded out with the memoir Memory Babe, a poignant evocation of childhood play and reverie in a robust immigrant community, in which Kerouac uncannily retrieves and distills the subtlest sense impressions. And finally, in an interview with his longtime friend and fellow Beat John Clellon Holmes and in the late fragment Beat Spotlight Kerouac reflects on his meteoric career and unlooked for celebrity. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

On a cold, dark winter day during the Second World War, a young Alan Bradley found hidden beneath a floorboard in his mother's bedroom closet a well-worn cardboard shoebox. At the time, he could make little sense of the ragtag things he found inside: cigarette packages, soup can labels, handbills, calendars, paper bags, pie boxes—any scrap of paper upon which his mother could copy out, in her old-fashioned handwriting, what seemed to be no more than unrelated snippets of Scripture. He only knew that the box, which he would later come to think of as the Shoebox Bible, had something to do with the fact that his father had run away from home. Many years would pass, and his mother would be on her deathbed before he would once again hold this treasure in his hands. And only then would he put together the pieces of the puzzle, and learn the complete truth. Beautifully and lovingly told, The Shoebox Bible is a wonderful memoir of a precocious family who manage to live and love despite the absence of their father. Interspersed with heartbreaking quotations from the Old and New Testaments, this sad, funny, and above all inspiring story will appeal to readers who fell in love with such inspirational books as Tuesdays with Morrie and Mister God, This Is Anna.

The authorized biography of the creator of Middle-earth. “One of the most interesting and readable biographies of a literary figure.” —The TimesIn the decades since his death in September 1973, millions have read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion and become fascinated about the very private man behind the books. Born in South Africa in January 1892, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was orphaned in childhood and brought up in near-poverty. He served in the first World War, surviving the Battle of the Somme, where he lost many of the closest friends he'd ever had. After the war he returned to the academic life, achieving high repute as a scholar and university teacher, eventually becoming Merton Professor of English at Oxford where he was a close friend of C. S. Lewis and the other writers known as “The Inklings.”Then suddenly his life changed dramatically. One day while grading essay papers he found himself writing “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”—and worldwide renown awaited him.Humphrey Carpenter was given unrestricted access to all Tolkien's papers, and interviewed his friends and family. From these sources he follows the long and painful process of creation that produced The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and offers a wealth of information about the life and work of the twentieth century's most cherished author.“J. R. R. Tolkien left his impress upon a whole generation as few recent writers have done... an excellent biography.” —Newsweek“A panorama of vignettes done with poise and exhaustive command. A man emerges whole.” —The Washington Post Book World

It is this group of papers, of special interest and significance to the student of Hearn, themselves marked by the rich beginnings of his characteristic charm, that have been selected to form the bulk of the present volume. Hearn himself at one time began to prepare for the press a collection of these papers, with the Floridian Reveries as its initial section. Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was born in Greece, grew up in Ireland, and worked as reporter in the United States before moving to Japan.

Civil Strife in a Complex and Changing World offers numerous perspectives of social conflict in the past and the present with a view toward academic classroom practices that may build strong connections both locally and globally between disparate social groups. Renaissance preachers, abolitionists, freethinkers, and even soldiers in Afghanistan provide thoughtful settings for the consideration of issues that at some times separate us and at other times bring us together.Participants of the 2012 Indiana College English Association conference presented their reflections to member colleagues on the conference theme of “Civil Strife.” They later submitted final papers for inclusion in this book. The papers selected here focus not only on past social conflicts, but also on recent events that have drawn us toward more global interpretations of social conflict. A third section ponders our modern reactions to social issues in the setting of the academic classroom. It also considers the origin of the academic environment itself, which provides the opportunity for the free expression of ideas that opens the door to further reflection and contemplation of the issue of civil strife.To complement the conference's civil strife theme, graphic design students from the host institution provided a special art display. Some of the artwork displayed was then selected for incorporation into this volume, in the hope that the student work might inspire readers toward further reflection on various issues that often lead to civil strife. The cover art was provided by the Fine Arts Department at Ivy Tech Community College's South Bend, Indiana campus.The Indiana College English Association is one of several regional affiliates of the national College English Association. ICEA has held an annual conference at an Indiana college or university since its inception in 1967. Information about ICEA may be found at www.icea.ausrc.org. The College English Association is a professional organization of scholar-teachers whose members include a broad and diverse group of professionals from around the world. More information about CEA and its affiliates may be found at www.cea-web.org.

This book reflects, comments on and adds to a fast growing field of travel writing studies. The twenty-five papers in this volume rely on a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches and explore a diverse body of travel writing texts created over the last three hundred years in English, Polish, Hungarian and French. The book is divided into three parts. The first one includes papers which apply the findings of post-structuralism, generic and cultural criticism as well as narratology to explore theories, canons and genres in travel writing drawing material not only from non-fictional and fictional prose narratives but also from poetry and tragedy. The second and third parts contain papers on a wide selection of travel writing texts, both fictional and non-fictional, written in Anglophone, as well as other literary traditions. They are arranged chronologically: the second part is devoted to texts written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while the third part focuses on those written in the twentieth and twenty first centuries.

Space and time, their infiniteness and/or their limit(ation)s, their coding, conceptualization and the relationship between the two, have been intriguing people for millennia. Linguistics and literature are no exceptions in this sense. This book brings together eight essays which all deal with the expression of space and/or time in language and/or literature. The book explores the issues of space, time and their interrelation from two different perspectives: the linguistic and the literary. The first section—Time and Space in Language—contains four papers which focus on linguistics, i.e. explore issues relative to the expression of time and space in natural languages. The topics under consideration include: typology regarding the expression of spatial information in languages around the world (Ch.1), space as expressed and conceptualized in neutral, postural and verbs of fictive motion (Ch. 2), prepositional semantics (Ch.3), aspectuality (in Tamil, Ch. 4). All articles propose innovative topics and/or approaches, crossreferring when possible between space and time. Given that all seem to propose at least some elements of “language universality” vs. “language variability”, the strong cognitivist nature of the approach (even when the paper is not written within a cognitive linguistic framework) represents a particularly strong feature of the section, with a strong appeal to experts from fields that need not necessarily be linguistic. The second section of this volume—Space and Time in Literature—brings together four essays dealing with literary topics. Inherent in each narrative are both temporal and spatial implications because a literary text testifies of a certain time, it is from and about a certain period, as well as about a certain space, even if virtual. A particularly strong feature of these papers is that they envision space and time as complementary parameters of experience and not as conceptual opposites, following the transfer of perspective through the whole century. Departing from the late nineteenth century England's and Croatia's fictive spaces (Ch. 5), the topic moves via the American Southern Gothic, focusing on Faulkner from the thirties to the early sixties (Ch. 6), via the post-WWII perspectives on history, probing the postmodern context of temporality (Ch 7), to finally reach the contemporary era of post 9/11 space-time (Ch 8). The voyage from chapter five to eight is thus a journey through space and time that allows for some answers to the nature of reality (of a variety of space-times) as conceived by both the authors of these essays as well as by the authors that these essays discuss.The main goal of the editors has been to bring together different scientific traditions which can contribute complementary concerns and methodologies to the issues under exam; from the literary and descriptive via the diachronic and typological explorations all the way to cognitive (linguistic) analyses, bordering psycholinguistics and neuroscience. One of the strengths of this volume thus lies in the diversity of perspectives articulated within it, where the agreements, but also the controversies and divergences demonstrate constant changes in society which, in turn, shapes our views of space-time/reality. All this also suggests that science and literature are not above or apart from their culture, but embedded within it, and that there exists a strong relativistic interrelation between (spatio-temporal) reality and culture. The only hope to objectively envisage any if not all of the above, is by learning how to move (our thought) through space, time or, to put it in simpler terms, how to shift perspectives.

«Mientras leo, tengo la sensaciónque me dala literatura que más me gusta: la de estar mirandoa través de una ventana y ver de pronto sobre el cristal,como un espectro, mi propio reflejo.» Este libro nos presenta a una Elena Garro que quizás solo conocieron sus amigas más cercanas. Una Elena humana y, por lo tanto,falible y multifacética. Para trazar este magnífico retrato, Jazmina Barrera hila con rigor científico y sentido del humor una colección personal en torno a la escritora: fragmentos de sus obras de teatro, novelas, cuentos, diarios, cartas y entrevistas se trenzan con citas de documentales sobre su vida, algunas carpetas de los Elena Garro Papers del archivo de Princeton, y hasta sesiones de tarot, I Ching y astrología. Aquí no hay certezas ni juicios; lo que hay es el vaivén de una personalidad camaleónica, mirada por los ojos apasionados de una investigadora que se transforma conforme avanzan sus pesquisas. La observación aguda que caracteriza la pluma de Jazmina Barrera se alianza a su infinita curiosidad y a su prodigiosa memoria para regalarnos una serie de instantáneas de una gran escritora del siglo xx. Y al hacerlo, demuestra ser parte de ese mismo linaje. Elena Garro renace con la fuerza de una mirada feminista e inteligente, que resalta su peculiar forma de habitar el mundo y su capacidad de crearle nuevos sentidos a través de los diversostemas que la obsesionaron: el tiempo, la catástrofe, los gatos, la lucha campesina, las puestas en escena y los viajes.

'Leeworthy set out to write a biography which fully reflects the complexity of Thomas'life, especially foregrounding'the political character of Gwyn's character and creative output'but he does so much more, expanding the reader's knowledge by giving us not just the life but also the times... This punchy portrait of a real Welsh literary heavyweight hits home with the brutal realism of Thomas'jabbing prose and mordant wit.'– Jon Gower, Nation.Cymru'Fury of Past Time is a model of its kind. An immense amount of research has gone into this biography, which will be the standard work on Gwyn Thomas for many years to come. It deserves to be read by those who already admire the fiction and will be an invaluable introduction for anyone coming to his writing for the first time.'– John Barnie (A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Books Council of Wales)'Leeworthy knows his subject intimately, sympathises with him entirely, and locates him globally in such a way as to leave the reader with no doubt as to his importance as a writer... Fury of Past Time is destined to be the definitive work on'the Rhondda Runyon'for many years to come.'– Bethan Jenkins, Wales Arts Review Gwyn Thomas was born, the last of twelve children, into a Rhondda mining family in 1913. After a childhood marked by the strikes of the 1920s, he went off to study Spanish at Oxford University and in Madrid, where he met the poet Federico García Lorca and witnessed the turmoil which would lead to the Spanish Civil War. On his return, amidst the economic mire of the 1930s and his own burgeoning teaching career in Barry in the 1940s, he picked up his pen and began to write. For more than forty years, until his death in 1981, as novelist, screenwriter, master of the short story, and prizewinning playwright, Gwyn Thomas delivered compelling and comedic portraits of his world of South Wales. His creative genius earned enduring fame on both sides of the Atlantic and on both sides of the European Cold War divide. As a provocative and insightful broadcaster, he embraced the possibilities of radio and television, whilst leaving his hosts and guests alike in fits of knowing laughter. This landmark biography, enriched with unrivalled access to private papers and international archives, tells the remarkable story of one of modern Wales's greatest literary voices.

In the 1930s, iconic American author Ernest Hemingway spent five summers at a ranch on the edge of Yellowstone National Park. Here he did some of his best writing, and his experiences in the mountains are connected to twelve of his most famous works, including For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway declared that the ranch near the small, wilderness town of Cooke City, Montana, on the edge of Yellowstone, was one of his favorite places to write in the world, on par with Paris and Madrid.Yet Hemingway's time in the Yellowstone High Country has never been thoroughly examined—until now. After years of painstaking research, author Chris Warren takes readers on an astonishing journey into one of the most important periods in the life of one of the world's most important writers. Winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, Hemingway was at his best—as a man, father, and writer—when he was in the Yellowstone High Country, and in this fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable book, Warren examines what Hemingway did here, what he wrote here, and how his experiences and the people he met here shaped his life and work. This is a Hemingway that few readers knew existed, living in a place that few scholars knew was so essential to his writing.Author Chris Warren, a resident of Cooke City, Montana, has spent years researching Hemingway's connection to the area. In 2018 he presented a paper on Hemingway's final short story, which was set in Cooke City, to the Hemingway Society in Paris, France. Warren's research was instrumental in bringing the society's biennial conference to Cooke City, Montana, and Sheridan, Wyoming, in 2020.

This volume, the second volume in the Research Edition series of journals in Scotland, England and Ireland from the autumn of 1766 to May 1769. The journals covered by the volume record much of Boswell's life as a young advocate during the first few years of his practice at the Scottish bar. The journals also record much information about Boswell's composition and publication of his instant best-seller, Account of Corsica, his involvement as a volunteer for the Douglas camp in the great Douglas Cause and his search for a wife. During Boswell's visits to London and Oxford in 1768, he produced some of his finest journal-writing, including details of memorable and significant conversations with Samuel Johnson. The manuscript journals in the volume have been printed to correspond to the originals as closely as is feasible in the medium of print.

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 PLUTARCH AWARD • An evocative portrait of the beloved and acclaimed poet, whose late-in-life success took the literary world by storm.“Clampitt comes to life here...Spiegelman's Nothing Stays Put embodies a different kind of investigation, not surveillance but a thoughtful examination that at times still spins off into a kind of awe.” —The Washington PostWith the publication of her first book of poems in her sixty-third year, Amy Clampitt rose meteorically to fame, launching herself from obscurity to the upper ranks of American poetry all but overnight, and living a whirlwind eleven years, until her death in 1994. Years later, as renowned poetry scholar Willard Spiegelman wades into her papers and poems, he discovers a woman of dazzling intellect, staunch progressive politics, and an inexhaustible sense of wonder for the world and the words we've invented to describe it.Giving equal weight to the life and the poetry, Spiegelman untangles Clampitt's famously allusive lines to reveal the experiences they emerged from, pulling the curtain back on her nearly four decades of artistic anonymity, and in doing so assembling a rich period piece of Manhattan during the days in which Clampitt worked for Oxford University Press and the National Audubon Society—writing cheery, discursive office memos, and two novels that never got published, before hitting her stride in verse.Nothing Stays Put is a gift to poetry fans, an inspiration to artists striving at any age, and an ode to this most unlikely of literary celebrities, who would publish five acclaimed books and win a MacArthur “Genius Grant” nearly all in the final decade of her life.

A radical reassessment of the famed Victorian author, revealing the true story behind the creator of some of literature's best-known novels.This dynamic new study of Charles Dickens will make readers re-examine his life and work in a completely different light. First, partly due to the massive digitalization of papers and letters in recent years, Helena Kelly has unearthed new material about Dickens that simply wasn't available to his earlier biographers. Second, in an astonishing piece of archival detective work, she has traced and then joined the dots on revelatory new details about his mental and physical health that, as the reader will discover, had a strong bearing on both his writing and his life and eventual death. Together these have allowed her to come up with a striking hypothesis that the version of his life that Dickens chose to share with his public—both during his lifetime and from beyond the grave in the authorized biography published shortly after his death—was an elaborate exercise in reputation management. Many of the supposed formative events in his life—such as the twelve-year-old Dickens going to work in a blacking factory—may not have been quite as honestly-related as we have been led to believe. And, in many respects, who can blame him? Dickens's celebrity was on a scale almost unimaginable to any author writing today, with the possible exception of J. K. Rowling, and, like many people who become suddenly famous, he soon realized what a mixed blessing it was.

Carol Loeb Shloss creates a compelling portrait of a complex relationship of a daughter and her literary-giant father: Ezra Pound and Mary de Rachewiltz, Pound's child by his long-time mistress, the violinist Olga Rudge. Brought into the world in secret and hidden in the Italian Alps at birth, Mary was raised by German peasant farmers, had Italian identity papers, a German-speaking upbringing, Austrian loyalties common to the area and, perforce, a fascist education.For years, de Rachewiltz had no idea that Pound and Rudge, the benefactors who would sporadically appear, were her father and mother. Gradually the truth of her parentage was revealed, and with it the knowledge that Dorothy Shakespear, and not Olga, was Pound's actual wife. Dorothy, in turn, kept her own secrets: while Pound signed the birth certificate of her son, Omar, and claimed legal paternity, he was not the boy's biological father. Two lies, established at the birth of these children, created a dynamic antagonism that lasted for generations.Pound maneuvered through it until he was arrested for treason after World War II and shipped back from Italy to the United States, where he was institutionalized rather than imprisoned. As an adult, de Rachewiltz took on the task of claiming a contested heritage and securing her father's literary legacy in the face of a legal system that failed to recognize her legitimacy. Born on different continents, separated by nationality, related by natural birth, and torn apart by conflict between Italy and America, Mary and Ezra Pound found a way to live out their deep and abiding love for one another.Let the Wind Speak is both a history of modern writers who were forced to negotiate allegiances to one another and to their adopted countries in a time of mortal conflict, and the story of Mary de Rachewiltz's navigation through issues of personal identity amid the shifting politics of western nations in peace and war. It is a masterful biography that asks us to consider cultures of secrecy, frayed allegiances, and the boundaries that define nations, families, and politics.

One of the leading poets and cultural icons of the 20th century, Stephen Spender was a prominent writer, literary critic, and social commentator--and close friend of some of the best-know creative talents of his day. Now, in this penetrating biography, John Sutherland paints a vivid portrait of Spender and of the glittering literary world of which he was a part, drawing on exclusive access to Spender's private papers. This briskly paced, compelling narrative illuminates the vast range of Spender's literary, political, and artistic interests. We follow Spender from childhood to his days at Oxford (where he first became friends with W.H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, and Isaiah Berlin); to his meteoric rise as poet in the 1930s, while still in his twenties; to his later years as cultural statesman, at home in both Britain and America. We witness many of the century's defining moments through Spender's eyes: the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Cold War, the 1960s sexual revolution, and the rise of America as a cultural force. And along the way, we are introduced to many of Spender's accomplished friends, including Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Cecil Day-Lewis, Joseph Brodsky, Lucian Freud, George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, and T.S. Eliot. Perhaps most important, Sutherland has been granted exclusive access to Spender's private papers by his wife Natasha Spender. Thus he is able to provide a far more intimate look at the poet's personal life than has appeared in previous biographies. Featuring 36 unpublished photographs, Stephen Spender: A Literary Life throws light not only on this supremely gifted writer, but also on the literary and social history of the twentieth century.

This first biography of poet and writer Margaret Walker (1915-98) offers a comprehensive close reading of a pillar in American culture for a majority of the 20th century. Without defining herself as a radical or even a feminist, Walker followed the precepts of both. She promoted the idea of the artist of tradition and social change, a public intellectual and an institution builder. Among the first to recognize the impact of black women in literature, Walker became a chief architect of what many have called the new Black South Renaissance. Her art was influenced early by Langston Hughes, her political understanding of the world by Richard Wright. Walker expanded both into a comprehensive view on art and humanism, which became a national platform for the center she founded in Mississippi that now bears her name. The House Where My Soul Lives provides a full account of Walker's life and new interpretations of her writings before and after the publication of her most well-known poem in the 1930s in Chicago. The book rejects the widely held view of Walker as the'angry black woman'and emphasizes what contemporary American culture owes to her decades of foundational work in what we know today as Black Studies, Women's Studies, and the Public Humanities. She was fierce in her claim to be'black, female and free'which gave her the authority to challenge all hierarchies, no matter at what cost. Featuring 80 archival photos and documents and based on never before examined personal papers and interviews with those who knew Walker personally, this book is required reading for all readers of biographies of American writers.

Colin Bateman grew up in the pleasant seaside town of Bangor in Northern Ireland. Ten miles away, the IRA, the UDA and the UVF were blowing Belfast apart, but he was more concerned with making his first million through the GBA – the Gerbil Breeding Association (sadly short-lived when his gerbils turned out to be cannibals). Inspired by All the President's Men and The Odessa File to become a crusading journalist, Bateman joined the local paper when he was a seventeen-year-old punk rocker, where instead of bringing down Presidents and finding Nazis, he found himself being hunted down by the notorious Kilcooley Strollers, a dance troupe with an axe to grind. So close to the Troubles, yet so far away – Thunder and Lightning is the story of one boy's journey through the rather soft side of life in a town which lacked tough streets but boasted many cul-de-sacs. A town where an occasional terrorist bomb was seen as an opportunity to profiteer and where his father became a paramilitary by accident.

“A vivid and painstakingly researched account of Emerson's late-in-life, seven-week trek across the North American continent in 1871.” —New York Review of BooksIn the spring of 1871, Ralph Waldo Emerson boarded a train in Concord, Massachusetts, bound for a month-and-a-half-long tour of California—an interlude that became one of the highlights of his life. On their journey across the American West, he and his companions would take in breathtaking vistas in the Rockies and along the Pacific Coast, speak with a young John Muir in the Yosemite Valley, stop off in Salt Lake City for a meeting with Brigham Young, and encounter a diversity of communities and cultures that would challenge their Yankee prejudices.Based on original research employing newly discovered documents, The California Days of Ralph Waldo Emerson maps the public story of this group's travels onto the private story of Emerson's final years, as aphasia set in and increasingly robbed him of his words. Engaging and compelling, this travelogue makes it clear that Emerson was still capable of wonder, surprise, and friendship, debunking the presumed darkness of his last decade.“Wilson effectively conveys Emerson's cultural myopia, along with its late-Victorian context.” —Times Literary Supplement“Deeply researched, enjoyably readable.” —San Francisco Chronicle“What Wilson offers the Emersonian reader today is a unique story of Emerson in motion, having a particularly American experience in looking westward.” —Emerson Society Papers“A welcome addition to Emerson scholarship and the first comprehensive treatment of his journey westward to the Pacific state.” —Ronald A. Bosco, general editor of The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2023For readers of Prairie Fires and The Peabody Sisters, a fascinating, insightful biography of the most famous sister novelists before the Brontës. Before the Brontë sisters picked up their pens, or Jane Austen's heroines Elizabeth and Jane Bennet became household names, the literary world was celebrating a different pair of sisters: Jane and Anna Maria Porter. The Porters-exact contemporaries of Jane Austen-were brilliant, attractive, self-made single women of polite reputation who between them published 26 books and achieved global fame. They socialized among the rich and famous, tried to hide their family's considerable debt, and fell dramatically in and out of love. Their moving letters to each other confess every detail. Because the celebrity sisters expected their renown to live on, they preserved their papers, and the secrets they contained, for any biographers to come. But history hasn't been kind to the Porters. Credit for their literary invention was given to their childhood friend, Sir Walter Scott, who never publicly acknowledged the sisters'works as his inspiration. With Scott's more prolific publication and even greater fame, the Porter sisters gradually fell from the pinnacle of celebrity to eventual obscurity. Now, Professor Devoney Looser, a Guggenheim fellow in English Literature, sets out to re-introduce the world to the authors who cleared the way for Austen, Mary Shelley, and the Brontë sisters. Capturing the Porter sisters'incredible rise, from when Anna Maria published her first book at age 14 in 1793, through to Jane's fall from the pinnacle of fame in the Victorian era, and then to the auctioning off for a pittance of the family's massive archive, Sister Novelists is a groundbreaking and enthralling biography of two pioneering geniuses in historical fiction.

Nominated for the Chicago Review of Books AwardA work of unflinching honesty, Autoportrait is a hypnotic memoir of reflection, loss, and everyday joy from one of America's best contemporary novelistsJesse Ball has produced fourteen acclaimed works of deeply empathetic absurdism in poetry and fiction. Now, he offers readers his first memoir, one that showcases his “humane curiosity” (James Wood) and invites the reader into a raw and personal account of love, grief, and memory. Inspired by the memoir Édouard Levé put to paper shortly before his death, Autoportrait is an extraordinarily frank and intimate work from one of America's most brilliant authors.The subtle power of Ball's voice conjures the richness of everyday life. On each page, half-remembered moments are woven together with the joys and triumphs—and the mistakes and humiliations, too—that somehow tell us who we are, why we are here. Held at the same height as tragic accounts of illness or death are moments of startling beauty, banality, or humor:'I wake in the morning, I sit, I walk long distances. If there is somewhere to swim, I may swim. If I have a bicycle, I will ride it, especially to meet someone. There is no more preparing for me to do, other than preparing for death, and I do that by laughing. Not laughing at death, of course. Laughing at myself.'An extraordinary memoir that reminds us what is possible and builds to the kind of power one might feel reading Anne Carson's Glass Essay, or Joe Brainard's I Remember. Autoportrait will leave you feeling utterly invigorated, inspired, and a little afraid.

William Faulkner has been the topic of numerous biographies, papers, and international attention. Yet there are no collected resources providing a comprehensive scope of Faulkner's life and work before now. William Faulkner Day by Day provides unique insight into the daily life of one of America's favorite writers. Beyond biography, this book is an effort to recover the diurnal Faulkner, to write in the present tense about past events as if they are happening now. More importantly, this book is concerned with more than the writer's life. Instead, it examines the whole man—the daily, mundane, profound, life changing, and everything in between. Spanning from the 1825 birth of Faulkner's great-grandfather to Faulkner's death 137 years later to the day, author and biographer Carl Rollyson presents for the first time a complete portrait of Faulkner's life untethered from any one biographical or critical narrative. Presented as a chronology of events without comment, this book is accompanied by an extensive list of principal personages and is supported by extensive archival research and interviews. Populated by the characters of Faulkner's life—including family and friends both little known and internationally famous—this book is for Faulkner readers of all kinds with a wide variety of interests in the man and his work.

Part of the Hero Classics series“As far as she could see, her life was ordained to be lonely, and she must her nature to her life, and, if possible, bring the two into harmony. When she could employ herself in fiction, all was comparatively well. The characters were her companions in the quiet hours, which she spent utterly alone, unable often to stir out of doors for many days together.”When Charlotte Bronte's father asked Gaskell to write his daughter's biography, his main concern was to preserve the legacy of Charlotte and present an authorised take on her life as opposed to the speculations and gossip in the yellow papers. Gaskell and Charlotte had met on just a few occasions, so the biographer had to do profound research to actually delve into her mysterious life. From Charlotte's own notes to various letters she had access to, Gaskell is seen mapping through a range of sources to find out the truth of her life. Right from the first pages of the text, we can distinctly spot Gaskell's artistic infusions of metaphors and the poetic descriptions of the setting as well as doing justice with the life of Charlotte Bronte. This biography is all that is needed for Bronte's readers as well as the admirers of inventive stylistic takes in non-fictional writing.Upon its publication in 1857, The Life of Charlotte Bronte quite predictably caused controversy, so much so that the biographer was threatened with a legal action. Exciting exploration into Charlotte's life and the criticism which followed, this makes it a must read for Bronte students and fans.The Hero Classics series:MeditationsThe ProphetA Room of One's OwnIncidents in the Life of a Slave GirlThe Art of WarThe Life of Charlotte BronteThe RepublicThe PrinceNarrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American SlaveUtopia

A provocative collection of interviews with the sublimely talented author of The Journalist and the MurdererThe legendary journalist, Janet Malcolm, opened her most famous work The Journalist and the Murderer with the line: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.”Ever since its publication in 1980, she only increased her reputation as a devastatingly sharp writer, whose eye for observation is matched only by her formal inventiveness and philosophical interrogations of the relationship between journalist and subject.Predictably, as an interview subject herself, she was an intimidating mark. In this collection, interviewers tangle with their own projections and identifications, while she often, gamely, plays along. Full of insights about her writing process, the craft of journalism, and her own analysis of her most famous works, this collection proves that Janet Malcolm is just as elusive and enlightening in conversation as she was on paper.

Celebrated essayist, biographer, and non-fiction book writer Robert Kanigel presents a memoir of his meandering, serendipitous path from engineer to writer. Kanigel invites the reader back in time for a journey rich with a sense of time and place, beginning with his childhood as the son of Jewish parents in Brooklyn. He attends Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, then moves to Baltimore and begins working at an ammunition lab. The Vietnam War lurks as a shadow just offstage, coloring his need for work and various engineering jobs he takes. He pursues a string of romances, all ending in heartbreak, until he meets Maura, a firebrand of a woman pursuing her Ph. D. in biology, who beckons him to Europe, where he spends several lonely months as an anglophone in Paris. Spared the military draft by a high lottery number, he returns to Baltimore with Maura, finally quits his engineering job, and becomes a writer, “not,” Kanigel says, “because I decided to become a writer, but because I began to write.” His first writing job, a series of essays for a local paper he proposed on a whim, spirals into a prestigious career. Kanigel is not the hero of his own story, but his sometimes self-deprecating honesty makes for a deeply moving tale of a young man who, in his words, “muddled” his way into writing.

Margery Kempe. Aemilia Lanyer. Aphra Behn. Lady Mary. Jane Austen. Warned not to write – and certainly not to bite – these women put pen to paper anyway and wrote themselves into history. ‘Smart, funny and highly readable... a tour de force.'A.L. Kennedy Ever since Sappho first put stylus to papyrus, women who write have been labelled mad, undisciplined and dangerous. Funny and provocative, Eve Bites Back offers an alternative history of English literature. Placing the female contemporaries of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton centre stage, Anna Beer builds a vibrant new canon through Restoration wits, scandalous sensation novelists and medieval mystics. Delving into the lives and work of eight pioneers – Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Aemilia Lanyer, Anne Bradstreet, Aphra Behn, Mary Wortley Montagu, Jane Austen and Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Beer uncovers the struggles and triumphs of these gamechangers, ground-breakers and genre-makers.