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"From the award-winning biographer of Chaucer, the story of his most popular and scandalous character, from the Middle Ages to #MeToo Ever since her triumphant debut in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognizably real woman in English literature, has obsessed readers-from Shakespeare to James Joyce, Voltaire to Pasolini, Dryden to Zadie Smith. Few literary characters have led such colourful lives or matched...
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"An electrifying, revelatory life of D.H. Lawrence, with a focus on his difficult middle years"--
Wilson focuses on Lawrence's decade of superhuman writing and travel between 1915, when The Rainbow was suppressed following an obscenity trial, and 1925, when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Taking after Lawrence's own literary model, Dante, Wilson's book pursues Lawrence around the globe and reflects his life of wild allegory. The result is a triptych...
3) Oscar Wilde
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Wilde the writer is known to us from his plays and prose fiction, but apparently it was in his conversation that his genius reached its summit. His talk is lost and his autobiography was never written, but his letters reveal him at his spontaneous, sparkling best. Wilde the writer is known to us from his plays and prose fiction, yet it was in his conversation that his genius reached its summit. His talk is lost, his autobiography was never written,...
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Samuel Johnson is famously known for single-handedly creating the first recognized dictionary of the English language, just one of many his many renowned accomplishments. The biography of this remarkable writer, dramatist, poet, and moralist was penned by his friend, James Boswell, in 1791. An immediate success upon its publication, this work has come to be considered the greatest biography produced in the English language, and has earned Boswell...
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A Memoir of Jane Austen is the Austen family's memoir of the beloved 19th century English novelist. Written and compiled by Austen's nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen reveals the author as her family knew her, while at the same time protecting the author's privacy in keeping with the Victorian conventions of the time. A Memoir of Jane Austen did, however, reveal for the first time Austen's authorship of such classic stories...
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An intimate exploration of the life, craft, and legacy of one of the most revered and influential writers, an artist who continues to inspire fans and creatives to cultivate practices of deep attention, rigorous interrogation and beautiful style. Joan Didion was a writer's writer; not only a groundbreaking journalist, essayist, novelist and screenwriter, but a keen observer who honed her sights on life's telling details. Her insights continue to influence...
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"Drawing on his personal experience, his work as a science fiction writer, and his deep knowledge of the classics of the science fiction genre, the author makes the case for what he calls intuitive atheism--an atheism drawn from everyday personal knowledge that doesn't depend on familiarity with the scholarly debate about theology and metaphysics, any more than a robust personal Christianity does"--
"Although humankind today can peer far deeper into...
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Almost one hundred years after the death of Jane Austen, William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh published Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters. A Family Record (1913). The book lovingly details Jane's birth, childhood, adolescence, and maturity, the everyday minutiae of her life, the circumstances in which she wrote her juvenilia and her six novels, and her early death. Using Jane Austen's own letters, additional letters sent between a...
9) Bacon
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This biography of philosopher, scientist, and writer Sir Francis Bacon (1561—1626), part of the “English Men of Letters” series, is an invaluable resource for students of history. Bacon, a highly influential figure in his era, is considered the father of scientific empiricism, and is also believed by some to have written some of the plays attributed to Shakespeare.
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Ivan Doig grew up in the rugged wilderness of western Montana among the sheepherders and denizens of small-town saloons and valley ranches. What he deciphers from his past with piercing clarity is not only a raw sense of land and how it shapes us but also of the ties to our mothers and fathers, to those who love us, and our inextricable connection to those who shaped our values in our search for intimacy, independence, love, and family. A powerfully...
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"The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau" is a one-of-a-kind autobiography. Up until its publication in 1782, only two autobiographies had ever been written, and both were written by devout religious saints. Highly scandalous yet witty in nature, calling Rousseau's work an "autobiography" is a loose categorization of the text, as many of the stories and tales have been proven false, yet Rousseau told the truth about the spirit of his life through...
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The Argonauts are the gold seekers of 1849 and the years immediately following. These adventurers came from all quarters of the globe and all ranks of society, and they had in common only the possession of the strength and determination necessary to reach the new Colchis. Here they lived, at first, wholly free from the conventional restraints imposed by an organized society, and each man showed himself for what he was. Many of these primitive social...
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A classic of American realism, A Son of the Middle Border (1917) is the true coming-of-age odyssey of a farm boy who-informed by the full brute force of a homesteaders' life on the vast unbroken prairie-would become a preeminent American writer of the early twentieth century. Pulitzer Prize winner Hamlin Garland's captivating autobiography recounts his journey from a rural childhood to the study of literature and the sciences in Boston, his vital...
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This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading. Samuel Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and James Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides recounts their tour of Scotland in 1773. While Johnson focuses on Scotland itself, Boswell is even keener on presenting his friend to the notables of his homeland. Together they form a complete account of a fascinating journey, two intriguing personalities,...
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Originally published in 1887, this is a moving and perceptive collection of Stevenson's memories of his youth and portraits of people he had known, sometimes loved, and lost. Inevitably, these wonderful reminiscences offer a wealth of insight into Stevenson's own personality, character, and opinions.
16) Gibbon
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This 1878 volume in the English Men of Letters series explores the life of Edward Gibbon, author of “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. According to a contemporary review by Mark Pattison in the Academy, "Future numbers of the series may imitate, they cannot surpass, the present specimen." A splendid perspective on the life of an intriguing man.
17) Sterne
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H. D. Traill examines the life of Laurence Sterne, from his clergyman days to the scandals created by his comic and bawdy novel The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman. This biography reveals a story about a man who discovered his literary talents late in life to become a man of notoriety and wealth.
18) Milton
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In this 1879 addition to the English Men of Letters series, Pattison explores the life and work of John Milton, the author of the definitive Paradise Lost. The volume touches on Milton's pamphlets, famous works of poetry, and even his religious beliefs. Pattison judges only Shakespeare to be Milton's superior in the realm of English poetry.
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Una colección de historias cortas llenas de valores morales y valiosas lecciones de vida. Aunque se centra en las tradiciones y estilos de vida de la gente de una pequeña ciudad siciliana, este libro cubre una variedad de sensaciones basadas en creencias religiosas, mitos, leyendas tradicionales, devoción, fuerza y valor, todas las características que a menudo damos por sentadas o que son algo descuidado en las ciudades más modernas. Se trata...
20) Spenser
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This biography of poet Edmund Spenser (c. 1552—1599), is an invaluable source for students of Spenser. Unparalleled in its information about one of the greatest poets in the English language, Church illuminates the life of a man who is best known for his epic poem “The Faerie Queene”, an adventure-filled tale that is also an allegory about living a moral, virtuous life.
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