Books about Writers Archives

Books about Writers

Considered controversial, Benson's superb diaries were sealed for one hundred years at his death. This selection shows the novelist, poet, don and Eton master to have been an acute and waspi... read more

The Benson Diary

A.C. Benson

Hardback
£60.00

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First edition. A fine copy in a very good dust jacket - marred only by creases to the lower back of the jacket.

Tarantula’s Web: John Hayward, T.S.Eliot And Their Circle ...

John Smart

Hardback
£60

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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

Book of Ruins

David Leatherbarrow

Hardback
£49.99

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A hefty, authoritative tome on the great writer whose earliest career was as a pilot on the Mississippi. Chernow is the author of several substantial North American pillars including Hamilto... read more

Mark Twain

Ron Chernow

Hardback
£40.00

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After publishing 24 volumes on his father's work over 40 years, the great Christopher Tolkien died in Jan 2022, aged 95.

Great Tales Never End, The: Essays in Memory of Christopher Tolkien ...

Richard Ovenden

Hardback
£40.00

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Immense and gorgeously written, this is the first major Baldwin biography in three decades. It uses four of his relationships (set around four locations: Greenwich Village, Paris, the 'Trans... read more

Baldwin: A Love Story

Nicholas Boggs

Hardback
£36.00

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Although an academic, the prolific historian was not limited to an ivory tower: he cared about the world, and this biography reflects the difficulty of engaging with its changes.

The Indefatigable Asa Briggs

Adam Sisman

Hardback
£35

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Shares an editor with the 4-vol Letters of Samuel Beckett

The Letters of Muriel Spark, Volume 1: 1944-1963

Dan Gunn

Hardback
£35

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A substantial and excellent biography, by the editor of his letters and diaries.

Christopher Isherwood Inside Out

Katherine Bucknell

Hardback
£35.00

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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 Fall of a Sparrow: Vivien Eliot’s Life and Writings ...

Ann Pasternak Slater

Hardback
£35.00

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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

The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell and ...

Robert Lowell

Hardback
£35.00

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Hard to recall that when PM - author of The Snow Leopard, Far Tortuga and other superb books - came to Sandoe's in the '90s, he was regarded almost as a god. An energetic environmental activ... read more

True Nature: The Lives of Peter Matthiessen

Lance Richardson

Hardback
£30.00

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Holland has written previous good books about his grandfather. In this new magnum opus, he considers not the life but the extraordinary array of legends, mysteries and industries that ensure... read more

After Oscar: The Legacy of a Scandal

Merlin Holland

Hardback
£30.00

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Carefully researched and sensitive to the influences of love and location, this is a fine account of the poet's life.

Alexandrian Sphinx: The Hidden Life of Constantine Cavafy ...

Peter Jeffreys

Hardback
£30

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A first biography and reassessment of this complex and under-rated writer.

Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence

Avril Horner

Hardback
£30.00

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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.

Ian Fleming: The Complete Man

Nicholas Shakespeare

Hardback
£30.00

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A version of this was published in 1991. This new edition contains a further 150 letters.

The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien

Christopher Tolkien

Hardback
£30.00

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The gardens and orchards of Agatha Christie, Walter Scott, Virginia Woolf, Roald Dahl; and, further afield, of Twain, Dickinson, Thoreau, Hemingway, Proust, Sand, Tolstoy...

The Writer’s Garden: How gardens inspired the world’s grea ...

Jackie Bennett

Hardback
£30.00

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Four generationsof this remarkable family, not least Thomas Henry Huxley ('Darwin's bulldog') and Aldous.

An Intimate History of Evolution: The Story of the Huxley Family ...

Alison Bashford

Hardback
£30.00

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Transcribed from his notoriously difficult handwriting, and carefully annotated.

Casting the Runes: The Letters of M. R. James

Jane Mainley-Piddock

Hardback
£30.00

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Edited by his son.

A Private Spy: The Letters of John Le Carré 1945-2020 ...

Tim Cornwell

Hardback
£30.00

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Photo-essays of 38 writers from Atwood (working in her garden) to Murakami and Zadie Smith.

The Writers: Portraits

Laura Wilson

Hardback
£30.00

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Students and tutors started going here on reading parties in the 1890s, and still do so. Looks at Macmillan, Hailsham, Brooke, Betjeman, Waugh etc...

Oxford University on Mont Blanc: The Life of the Chalet des Anglais ...

Stephen Golding

Hardback
£30.00

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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.

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath ...

Heather Clark

Hardback
£30.00

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The interviews underpinning this magnificent, substantial biography include many with Stoppard himself.

Tom Stoppard: A Life

Professor Dame Hermione Lee

Hardback
£30.00

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'The greatest literary biography of the twentieth century' and its intriguing author.

Ellmann’s Joyce: The Biography of a Masterpiece and Its Maker ...

Zachary Leader

Hardback
£29.95

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A scrapbook, a net of ideas, a cabinet of fragments both literary and artistic. The book is a small, stocky, gorgeous work of art. "Wholeness is an impossibility"...

An Archive

Edmund de Waal

Paperback
£28

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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

Pure Wit: The Revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish ...

Francesca Peacock

Hardback
£27.99

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The remarkable 'Decca' was the sister who went booted and spurred to the Spanish Civil War and later joined the Communist Party in the USA. The author of The American Way of Death, she had c... read more

Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford ...

Carla Kaplan

Hardback
£27.50

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Greenblatt's The Swerve was a codex for understanding the Early Modern period. This biography of Kit Marlowe (cobbler's son, playwright, spy) is similarly sprightly and erudite.

Dark Renaissance

Stephen Greenblatt

Hardback
£25.00

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'Me', in case you're wondering, is a cartoonist from California. And yes, this really is a graphic biography of the sisters - and it's sparkling with wit and energy. Delicious.

Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me

Mimi Pond

Hardback
£25.00

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Holmes's superb biographies of Shelley and Coleridge were followed by his dazzling study of the Romantic period, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terr... read more

The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief ...

Richard Holmes

Hardback
£25.00

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By pegging her narrative to White's diary entries of 1781, when White was 60 and still seven years short of publishing The Natural History of Selborne, the miraculously sensitive Uglow rele... read more

A Year with Gilbert White: The First Great Nature Writer ...

Jenny Uglow

Hardback
£25.00

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The allure of Catholicism in the C20th. Some were incensed.

Converts: From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark

Melanie McDonagh

Hardback
£25.00

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The author, who died in 2020 and left this book unfinished, knew Durrell well. Happily, the completed chapters cover the busiest portions of his friend's life: childhood in India, youthful m... read more

Larry: A New Biography of Lawrence Durrell, 1912-1945 ...

Michael Haag

Hardback
£25

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Alan Breck's glorious entrance into Kidnapped must be the most dramatic appearance of any character in fiction. His creator's all-too-short life was comparably romantic and adventurous. What... read more

Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson

Leo Damrosch

Hardback
£25.00

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