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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorLiterary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs
Ted Morgan, William S. Burroughs · 659 pages
Describes the life of Burroughs, a renegade author who killed his wife, had his books banned, was educated at Harvard, came from an upper-middle-class family and lived his life as a gay man and heroin addict.
Let It Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America's Greatest Rock Critic
Jim Derogatis · 341 pages
"Let It Blurt is the biography of Lester Bangs (1949-82) - the gonzo journalist, gutter poet, and romantic visionary of rock criticism. He lived the rock 'n' roll lifestyle, guzzling booze and Romilar like water, matching its energy in prose that erupted from the pages of Rolling Stone, Creem, and The Village Voice. Bangs agitated in the seventies for sounds that were harsher, louder, more electri
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 Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith
Joan Schenkar · 704 pages
Patricia Highsmith, one of the great writers of 20th Century American fiction, had a life as darkly compelling as that of her favorite "hero-criminal," talented Tom Ripley. In this revolutionary biography, Joan Schenkar paints a riveting portrait, from Highsmith's birth in Texas to Hitchcock's filming of her first novel, Strangers On a Train, to her long, strange, self-exile in Europe. We see he
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.
The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë
Daphne du Maurier · 311 pages
Pursued by the twin demons of drink and madness, Branwell Bronte created a private world that was indeed infernal. This is the biography of the shadowy figure of the "unknown" Bronte.
Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace
D.T. Max · 356 pages
"The first biography of the most influential writer of his generation, David Foster Wallace David Foster Wallace was the leading literary light of his era, a man who not only captivated readers with his prose but also mesmerized them with his brilliant mind. In this, the first biography of the writer, D. T. Max sets out to chart Wallace's tormented, anguished and often triumphant battle to succee
The Life of Samuel Johnson
James Boswell · 624 pages
Poet, lexicographer, critic, moralist and Great Cham, Dr. Johnson had in his friend Boswell the ideal biographer. Notoriously and self-confessedly intemperate, Boswell shared with Johnson a huge appetite for life and threw equal energy into recording its every aspect in minute but telling detail. This irrepressible Scotsman was 'always studying human nature and making experiments', and the marv
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
Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith
Andrew Wilson · 539 pages
The first and highly anticipated biography of the author of such classics of suspense as Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley. The life of Patricia Highsmith was as secretive and unusual as that of many of the best-known characters who people her "peerlessly disturbing" writing. Yet even as her work - her thrillers, short stories, and the pseudonymous lesbian novel The Price of Salt
Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector
Benjamin Moser · 479 pages
Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
Stephen Greenblatt · 430 pages
"How did Shakespeare become Shakespeare? Stephen Greenblatt enables us to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life - full of drama and pageantry, and also cruelty and danger - could have become the world's greatest playwright. Greenblatt makes inspired connections between an entertainment presented to Queen Elizabeth on a vi
Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women
Harriet Reisen · 392 pages
A biography of Louisa May Alcott (1832 - 1888) that provides a solid description of the life and thoughts of the author most famous for "Little Women" (1968).
Sylvia Plath: A Biography
Linda Wagner-Martin · 282 pages
This new edition of Linda Wagner-Martin's study of Sylvia Plath's literary career includes a chapter discussing posthumous publications, recent biographies, the death of Ted Hughes and the publication of his 'Birthday Letters', as well as an updated bibliography and chronology.
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
Poe: A Life Cut Short
Peter Ackroyd · 176 pages
Gothic, mysterious, theatrical, fatally flawed, and dazzling, the life of Edgar Allan Poe, one of America's greatest and most versatile writers, is the ideal subject for Peter Ackroyd. Poe wrote lyrical poetry and macabre psychological melodramas; invented the first fictional detective; and produced pioneering works of science fiction and fantasy. His innovative style, images, and themes had a tre
Her Husband: Hughes and Plath - A Marriage
Diane Wood Middlebrook · 372 pages
Anaïs Nin: A Biography
Deirdre Bair · 654 pages
Deirdre Bair, renowned for her biographies of Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir, has now written the definitive biography of the complex and controversial Anais Nin. With exclusive and unprecedented access to all of Nin's unpublished archives, including more than 250,000 handwritten diary pages, Bair paints a startlingly different portrait of Nin, hitherto best known for her sexual peccadilloe
How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
Sarah Bakewell · 400 pages
Wish You Were Here: The Official Biography of Douglas Adams
Nick Webb · 370 pages
"Douglas Adams possessed one of the twentieth century's great imaginations. He was clever, funny, prescient, child-like and - to the dismay of some contemporaries - a polymath who combined intellect with a sense of wonder. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was both intimate and cosmic, bleak and funny, frivolous yet philosophical. In 1978 it sneaked out on BBC radio, but news of it cascaded thr