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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorAnne Sexton: A Biography
Diane Wood Middlebrook · 488 pages
Explores the relationship between the emotional disturbances of poet Anne Sexton and her works.
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
And So it Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life
Charles J. Shields · 513 pages
This book is the first authoritative biography of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., a writer who changed the conversation of American literature. In 2006, Charles Shields reached out to Kurt Vonnegut in a letter, asking for his endorsement for a planned biography. The first response was no ("A most respectful demurring by me for the excellent writer Charles J. Shields, who offered to be my biographer"). Unwillin
Literary 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.
Shakespeare: The Biography
Peter Ackroyd · 572 pages
Drawing on an exceptional combination of skills as literary biographer, novelist, and chronicler of London history, Peter Ackroyd surely re-creates the world that shaped Shakespeare--and brings the playwright himself into unusually vivid focus. With characteristic narrative panache, Ackroyd immerses us in sixteenth-century Stratford and the rural landscape--the industry, the animals, even the flow
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,
Thomas Hardy
Claire Tomalin · 512 pages
Whitbread Award winner Claire Tomalin's seminal biography of the enigmatic novelist and poet Thomas Hardy.Today Thomas Hardy is best known for creating the great Wessex landscape as the backdrop to his rural stories, starting with Far from the Madding Crowd, and making them classics. But his true legacy is that of a progressive thinker. When he published Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obsc
J.D. Salinger: A Life
Kenneth Slawenski · 457 pages
One of the most popular and mysterious figures in American literary history, J.D. Salinger eluded fans and journalists for most of his life. Now comes a new biography. Filled with new information and revelations garnered from countless interviews, letters, and public records, this work presents his extraordinary life that spanned nearly the entire twentieth century. Kenneth Slawenski explores Sali
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.
Daughter Of Earth And Water: A Biography Of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Noel Bertram Gerson
A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates
Blake Bailey · 680 pages
"Yates's life was a tragicomic disaster. The favorite child of an unstable, impecunious mother, Yates described his youth as a "hysterical odyssey" through Depression-era America and beyond, from Westchester to Paris to Greenwich Village and back again, hounded by creditors every step of the way. Such an ordeal was the goad that made Yates determined to reveal the truth, no matter how bleak, that
Byron: Life and Legend
Fiona MacCarthy · 681 pages
"This is the first biography of Byron to originate from John Murray, Byron's own publisher, since Leslie Marchand's 3-volume biography, published in 1957. It makes a breakthrough in reinterpreting Byron's life and poetry for a new generation, drawing on John Murray's world-famous archive."--BOOK JACKET.
Agatha Christie
Gillian Gill · 243 pages
This volume is a biography of English writer Agatha Christie (1890-1976). Christie is best remembered for the detective novels and short story collections. She is perhaps the best-selling novelist of all time; her novels have sold roughly 4 billion copies, and claims exist that state her works rank third, after those of William Shakespeare and the Bible, as the world's most-widely published books.
Salinger
David Shields, Shane Salerno · 698 pages
The boy who became a rebel. The rebel who became a soldier. The soldier who became an icon. The icon who disappeared. This biography draws on extensive research and exclusive interviews to share previously undisclosed aspects of the enigmatic writer's life, from his private relationships and service in World War II to his legal concerns and innermost secrets. Raised in Park Avenue privilege, J.D.
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