From Pliny and Piranesi to Alexander Pope and John Piper: a magnificent wander through ruins with writers, travellers and artists, through their eyes and in their words. Arranged chronologic... read more
A biographical account of Eliot's troubled first wife, presented alongside her writings. Married to T.S. Eliot in 1915, their marriage lasted until about 1933. Her circle included Ottoline M... read more
The last seven years of Lowell's life, including 'The Dolphin' sonnets controversy, his break up and reconciliation with EH, seen through their letters to each other, Elizabeth Bishop, Caro... read more
Fleming's own ideal of the 'complete man' is the source for the subtitle. NS has left no stone unturned in pursuit of a 'complete' portrait in writing this immense and engaging biography.
The gardens and orchards of Agatha Christie, Walter Scott, Virginia Woolf, Roald Dahl; and, further afield, of Twain, Dickinson, Thoreau, Hemingway, Proust, Sand, Tolstoy...
There have been many books on Plath, but this is in fact the first full biography. Sensitive and perceptive, it navigates both the controversies and poetry with skill.
Cavendish - the Duchess of Newcastle - was attached to the exiled court of Henrietta Maria when she published her amazing proto-sci-fi novel, The Blazing World. A clever and subtle debut bio... read more
From the editor of Gunn's Letters comes the first biography of the poet whose complex sexual and cultural life led him to the California hippies and the AIDS crisis.
The 40-year relationship between the prodigious writer and scholar (biographer of Gandhi, amongst other things, and a JS customer) and his original editor at Oxford University Press.
A rich study of the gulf between Hardy's fictional women, with whom he seems to have empathised, and the real women around him... who needed a certain hardiness (?) in their troubled relatio... read more
Originally published in 2 vols (1969 & 1970), this is a hugely welcome reissue of the amazing, rich memoir by the prolific novelist, journalist and political activist, friend of H.G. Wells a... read more
Anne Clifford's diaries, Mary Sidney's translations, Aemilia Lanyer's poems, Elizabeth Cary's playwriting: out of these a fine scholar of Renaissance literature constructs an illuminating gr... read more
His last book Time of the Magicians was a group biography of Benjamin, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Cassirer. Here, he looks at four women who created new ways of thinking in the aftermath of... read more
Published last year in the US, this account of the rich in mid-C20th New York, and Capote's multiple betrayals of friendships, is both fascinating and shocking.
The 'double life' of the title refers to Eliot's relationship with George Lewes, the married man with whom she lived for nearly a quarter of a century. CC looks at the ways in which this sca... read more
The recent unsealing of Eliot's letters revealed 1,131 written to Emily Hale, an American drama teacher. This careful book also considers the role of Vivienne, Valerie and Mary Trevelyan in ... read more
Born in Australia, she lived and worked in Hong Kong after WW2 and then for the UN in New York. After marrying the great Flaubert scholar Francis Steegmuller, she lived mostly on Capri. She ... read more
The author must presumably be glad to have used an alias on reading Dominic Sandbrook's review in the Sunday Times. An interminable, banal and exploitative account of her two-year affair.
The first biography of the extraordinary writer who died in 2020. An officer in the 9th Lancers, Morris was posted to Trieste in 1945. He was the only journalist to accompany the 1953 Britis... read more
Born near Lemburg in Galicia - now in Ukraine - the author of The Radetzky March and several other outstanding works died in alcoholic exile on the eve of WW2. This is a powerful account of ... read more