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The papers of the poet Siegfried Sassoon are probably headed to Cambridge University thanks to a grant from a British national fund for emergency acquisitions, BBC News reported. On Wednesday the National Heritage Memorial Fund in Britain said that it would give about $900,000 toward the purchase of Sassoon's archives, which include notebooks he kept on the Western Front during World War I, as well as correspondence, poetry books, photographs and love letters to his wife, Hester. Sassoon, who dealt with the human toll of war in poems like ''They'' and ''Suicide in the Trenches,'' volunteered for military service just before Britain entered World War I, and he was a decorated soldier before he refused to return to duty in 1917. In June several authors, including Sebastian Faulks and Sassoon's official biographer, Max Egremont, started a campaign to acquire Sassoon's papers after the death of his son, George, in 2006. With the grant, Cambridge is about $180,000 short of the estate's asking price of nearly $2 million for the archive. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WHEN Caravaggio arrived in Rome in 1592 he was just another young, aspiring painter. It took only a few years for his unconventional aesthetic vision and colorful, often violent lifestyle to transfix Roman society. To read his 17th-century biographers, Caravaggio was more likely to have a sword in his hand than a paintbrush, and court papers from the time amply substantiate his bad-boy behavior, which ranged from churlish (hurling artichokes at a waiter) to deadly (murder). But it was his naturalistic style, along with his tendency to set religious scenes in the contemporary world, that really captured the public imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three weeks after the death of John Updike, HarperCollins said in a release that it had acquired a biography of the author, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and two National Book Awards, to be written by Adam Begley, the books editor of The New York Observer. In an interview, Mr. Begley said he had profiled Updike for Mirabella magazine in the 1990s and for The Observer in 2003. ''He was the world's smoothest interview,'' Mr. Begley said. ''Almost every word out of his mouth was quotable.'' Additionally, he said, his father, the novelist Louis Begley, and Updike had been classmates at Harvard, where they both received degrees in English literature. Adam Begley said that although he had written a letter of condolence to the author's widow, Martha Updike, it was ''too soon'' to ask her about access to her husband's papers at the Houghton Library at Harvard. The biography is expected to be published in 2011. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Describes the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, a set of books that contain essays on British history. How the series was created; Use of acid-free paper for the books; Comments of Brian Harrison, editor of the books; Length of time it took to create the series; History of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Assertion that most libraries will prefer the electronic version.

Focuses on A. Scott Berg's investigation of the life of Charles Lindberg for his biography `Lindbergh.' Publication date; Berg's unrestricted access to Lindbergh's papers by his family; Lindbergh's background; His 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic; Marriage to Anne Morrow; Impact on the family of the kidnapping of their first child; Berg's estimate of Lindbergh.