Secondhand Literary Biography Books

**Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize 2024**From one kiss comes a chain reaction - a masterpiece of memoir from the winner of the Baillie Gifford and the Booker prize'Extraordinary' Sarah...

It's not the dream that matters, it's the telling of the dream - the words you choose, the risks you take in externalising your mindThis is a dreamlike portrait of...

This captivating novel evolves like a detective story, as a family member airbrushed out of history sets out to uncover the well-kept secrets of the three Boleyn women: Why was...

In Let Me Make Myself Plain Catherine Cookson may be said to break new ground as an author. The title echoes her first surprised reaction to a television producer's suggestion...

The work of the poet Peter Redgrove is one of the great unexplored treasures of late twentieth century literature. His prolific output presents an intriguing variety of personae: magician, scientist,...

W.H. Auden was the greatest English poet of the twentieth century. It is nearly fifteen years since his last biography, and the publication and discovery of a mass of new...

He has written a masterful biography, rich in enlivened critical detail, which more than any other study of Waugh to date, works to redress the bias against its subject that...

Autobiography of Mark Twain READER'S EDITION Now Available! Half the Size, All the Twain! ISBN 978052027255 "I've struck it!" Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. "And...

This record of the early life of James Joyce is based on years of research into his education, religious and sexual experiences, family life and his roamings around Dublin -...

America's greatest living crime writer gives us a raw, brutally candid memoir-as high intensity and as riveting as any of his novels-about his obsessive search for "atonement in women."The year...

Reading George Eliot's work was described by one Victorian critic as 'the feeling of entering the confessional in which she sees and hears all the secrets of human psychology--that roar...

Martin Amis is perhaps the most gifted novelist of his generation. His prose refashions the English language into a lean and brillant instrument, dazzling readers with its energy and wit....

In the spring of 1895 the life of Constance Wilde changed irrevocably. Up until the conviction of her husband, Oscar, for homosexual crimes, she had held a privileged position in...

'Extraordinary . . . a profound and beautiful book . . . a moving meditation on grief and loss, but also a sparky celebration of joy, wonder and the miracle...

'I seem to have banged on this year rather more than usual. I make no apology for that, nor am I nervous that it will it make a jot of...

Intimacies with Marlowe, entanglements in London with the mysterious dark lady, the probable fathering of an illegitimate son -- the mysteries of Shakespeare's personal life have proven tantalisingly obscure. In...

*A NEW STATESMAN AND THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR**WINNER OF THE TONY LOTHIAN PRIZE*'Interesting women have secrets. They also ought to have sisters.'From the beginning of their lives, the...

At 35, despite his determination to be different from his parents, Jonathan Self found his life echoing theirs: he was a twice-divorced absent father with three young children, one in...

'A wise and heartfelt piece of writing' THE TIMES'A wonderful portrait of an age, and of a writer' RORY STEWART, author of Politics on the Edge'Utterly fascinating' DAVID KYNASTON, author...

From a critically acclaimed biographer, an engrossing narrative of Robert Louis Stevenson's life, a story as romantic and adventurous as his fiction "This magnificent biography of Robert Louis Stevenson reveals...

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Queen Victoria's favourite poet, commanded a wider readership than any other of his time. His ascendancy was neither the triumph of pure genius nor an accident of...

Dan Brown is already one of the bestselling authors that the world has ever seen.Due to the success of his gripping novels Digital Fortress, Deception Point, Angels and Demons, The...

Biography of one of the greatest of modern playwrights, Arthur Miller (1915-2005).This is the long-awaited biography of one of the twentieth century's greatest playwrights whose postwar decade of work earned...

Jay Cowan, who was caretaker on Thompson's ranch and a trusted friend, paints a sensitive portrait of a man who redefined participatory journalism, who captured the decadence of the era,...

Rose Macaulay was a woman of originality. The author of 36 books - several best-selling novels, culminating in "The Towers of Trebizond", criticism, poetry, history and travel - she was...

David Lodge's frank and illuminating memoir about the years where he found great success as a novelist and critic.Luck plays an important part in the careers of writers. In this...

Although his hilariously entertaining stories have touched the hearts of generations of children, there was much more to beloved author Roald Dahl than met the eye.His fascinating life began in...