Tolkien: A Biography

Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953

Elizabeth Winder · 265 pages

In May of 1953, a twenty-one-year-old Plath arrived in New York City, the guest editor of Mademoiselle's annual College Issue. She lived at the Barbizon Hotel, attended the ballet, went to a Yankees game, and danced at the West Side Tennis Club. She was supposed to be having the time of her life. But what would follow was, in Plath's words, twenty-six days of pain, parties, and work which, ultimat

Byron in Love

Edna O'Brien · 228 pages

Biographer Edna O'Brien has written an intimate biography that suits her fiery and charismatic subject. She follows Byron from the dissipations of Regency London to the wilds of Albania and the Socratic pleasures of Greece and Turkey, culminating in his meteoric rise to fame at the age of 24 on the publication of Childe Harold. With her prismatic eye and novelistic style, O'Brien captures the spir

Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life

Howard Sounes · 309 pages

Locked in The Arms of a Crazy Life is the acclaimed biography of Charles Bukowski, the hard-drinking barfly whose semi-autobiographical books about low-life America made him a cult figure across the globe. Extensive research and unique contributions from friends, family and associates - including Mickey Rourke, Harry Dean Stanton, Robert Crumb, Sean Penn, Norman Mailer and Allen Ginsberg - as well

The Brontës: Wild Genius on the Moors: The Story of Three Sisters

Juliet Barker · 1,158 pages

A history of the Brontë family is based on years of research and correspondence by each family member, challenging traditionally accepted portraits of the patriarchal Patrick and revealing Charlotte's ruthless nature.

The Ghost in the Little House: A Life of Rose Wilder Lane

William Holtz · 448 pages

Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick

Lawrence Sutin · 352 pages

"With thirty-eight books currently in print and seven of his novels and short stories adapted into blockbuster films, Philip K. Dick is recognized worldwide as one of our time's greatest and most influential novelists. Lawrence Sutin's Divine Invasions, acknowledged by the Dick family as the official Philip K. Dick biography, illuminates the life of the man who loosed the bonds of the science fict

Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller

Judith Thurman · 511 pages

Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh

John Lahr · 765 pages

Here, celebrated drama critic John Lahr gives intimate access to the mind of one of the most brilliant dramatists of his century, whose plays reshaped the American theater and the nation's sense of itself. This astute, deeply researched biography sheds light on Williams's warring family, his guilt, his creative triumphs and failures, his sexuality and numerous affairs, his misreported death, even

Jane Austen: A Life

Carol Shields · 188 pages

With the same sensitivity and artfulness that are the trademarks of her award-winning novels, Carol Shields explores the life of a writer whose own novels have engaged and delighted readers for the past two hundred years. In Jane Austen, Shields follows this superb and beloved novelist from her early family life in Steventown to her later years in Bath, her broken engagement, and her intense relat

The Private World of Georgette Heyer

Jane Aiken Hodge · 222 pages

The classic biography of Georgette Heyer is, finally, back in print and will delight Heyer fans everywhere. She wrote more than fifty novels, yet her private life was inaccessible to any but her nearest friends and relatives. Lavishly illustrated, and with extracts from her correspondence and references to her work, The Private World reveals a formidable and energetic woman with an impeccable s

Hemingway: a Life Story

Carlos Baker · 367 pages

Carlos Baker's thorough profile of Ernest Hemingway, the American Nobel Laureate, journalist, war correspondent, and general legend, is the first telling of the Hemingway life and still stands as one of the best (perhaps put to second or third place after the publication of Michael S. Reynolds' stunning five-volume work on his life and Kenneth Lynn's fine bio/analysis from 1995). Baker brings both

J. R. R. Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth

Daniel Grotta · 197 pages

Surprisingly little is known about the personal life of the creator of Middle Earth. This man, who was embarrassed by success, lived most of his life as an Oxford scholar in the surrounds of a cloistered academic community. As a child in South Africa, Tolkien was kidnapped by a native and taken into the bush. As a youngster in the industrial city of Birmingham, England, Tolkien was raised by a Cat

Allen Ginsberg: A Biography

Barry Miles · 627 pages

Covering his life from his birth in 1926 to his career as a distinguished poet and professor, this is a biography of the beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Barry Miles draws on their long friendship and on Ginsberg's own journals and correspondence to give a full account of his life up to his death in 1997.

Rough Magic: A Biography of Sylvia Plath

Paul Alexander · 424 pages

Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor

Brad Gooch · 448 pages

The landscape of American literature was fundamentally changed when Flannery O'Connor stepped onto the scene with her first published book, Wise Blood, in 1952. Her fierce, sometimes comic novels and stories reflected the darkly funny, vibrant, and theologically sophisticated woman who wrote them. Brad Gooch brings to life O'Connor's significant friendships--with Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Hardwick,

Daughter Of Earth And Water: A Biography Of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Noel Bertram Gerson

The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion

Tracy Daugherty · 700 pages

"In The Last Love Song, Tracy Daugherty, the critically acclaimed author of Hiding Man (a New Yorker and New York Times Notable book) and Just One Catch, delves deep into the life of distinguished American author and journalist Joan Didion in this, the first printed biography published about her life. Joan Didion lived a life in the public and private eye with her late husband, writer John Gregory

Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961

Paul Hendrickson · 532 pages

Paul Hendrickson has delved into the life of Ernest Hemingway and done the seemingly impossible: present him to us in a whole new light. With poetic sensibility, tireless research, and dazzling writing, Hendrickson focuses on the period from 1934 to 1961, from the pinnacle of Hemingway's fame to his suicide.

Tolstoy: A Russian Life

Rosamund Bartlett · 552 pages

Bartlett draws extensively on key Russian sources, including much fascinating new material made available since the collapse of the Soviet Union. She sheds light on Tolstoy's remarkable journey from callow youth to writer to prophet; discusses his troubled relationship with his wife, Sonya, a subject long neglected; and vividly evokes the Russian landscapes Tolstoy so loved. Above all, she gives u

Edith Wharton

Hermione Lee · 866 pages

From Hermione Lee, the internationally acclaimed, award-winning biographer of Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather, comes a superb reexamination of one of the most famous American women of letters.Delving into heretofore untapped sources, Lee does away with the image of the snobbish bluestocking and gives us a new Edith Wharton-tough, startlingly modern, as brilliant and complex as her fiction. Born in

C.S. Lewis: A Biography

A.N. Wilson · 334 pages

Genet

Edmund White · 800 pages

A meticulously researched biography of Jean Genet, one of France's most notorious writers. Acclaimed novelist and essayist Edmund White illuminates Genet's experiences in the worlds of crime, homosexuality, politics, and high culture, and gives a compelling analysis of Genet's plays, novels, and essays. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography.

Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart

Claire Harman · 472 pages

"A groundbreaking biography that places an obsessive, unrequited love at the heart of the writer's life story, transforming her from the tragic figure we have previously known into a smoldering Jane Eyre. Famed for her beloved novels, Charlotte Brontë has been known as well for her insular, tragic family life. The genius of this biography is that it delves behind this image to reveal a life in whi

Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P.L. Travers

Valerie Lawson · 401 pages

A portrait of the English author of the classic children's story traces her long life, the creation of her mysterious and beloved title character, and her tumultuous relationship with Walt Disney.