Secondhand Literary Biography Books

A fascinating collection of letters from the great English novelist - and prolific correspondent - Penelope Fitzgerald. Acclaimed for her exquisitely elegant novels - including the Booker Prize-winning 'Offshore' -...

Ranulph Fiennes has travelled to the most dangerous and inaccessible places on earth, almost died countless times, lost nearly half his fingers to frostbite, raised millions of pounds for charity...

Doris Lessing's long-awaited follow-up to the first part of her autobiography, the hugely successful Under My Skin. In Walking in the Shade we move into the dazzling heyday of Lessing's...

Koba the Dread is the successor to Martin Amis's celebrated memoir, Experience. It is largely political (while remaining personal). It addresses itself to the central lacuna of twentieth-century thought: the...

Kathleen Tynan traces her husband's life from his illegitimate birth, through his rebellious years at Oxford, to his career as the "first post-war British myth" - actor, director, writer, flamboyant...

A concise biography of one of the most popular of Victorian novelists.

A loving homage to one of the world's greatest writers. In this first-ever tribute to her grandfather, Mariel opens the family album to reveal all aspects of the man. More...

Philip Davis tells the story of Bernard Malamud (1914-1986), the self-made son of poor Jewish immigrants who went on to become one of the foremost novelists and short-story writers of...

Edwin Williamson's major new biography is the first in any language to encompass the entire span of Jorge Luis Borges's life and work. Drawing upon previously unknown or unavailable sources,...

Precociously brilliant in his youth, Cyril Connolly was haunted for the rest of his life by a sense of failure and a romantic yearning to recover a lost Eden. His...

A brilliant, controversial and insightful biography. Fifteen years ago, Iris Murdoch asked A. N. Wilson to be her biographer. This book is a tribute to the novelist he knew for...

Ford Madox Ford wrote nearly 80 books as well as editing two very influential literary magazines - the "English Review" and the "Transatlantic Review". This biography by the author of...

John Gross was the son of a Jewish doctor who practised in Mile End at the time of WW2. His parents were the children of immigrants, steeped in the language...

Joseph Heller was a Coney Island kid, the son of Russian immigrants, who went on to great fame and fortune. His most memorable novel took its inspiration from a mission...

'I loved this book... An exhilarating romp through Orwell's life and times' Margaret Atwood'Expansive and thought-provoking' IndependentOutside my work the thing I care most about is gardening - George OrwellInspired...

'Writers live as the work dictates, a solitary, sometimes deeply frustrating life, with moments of secret joy when the sentence hits the note, gets the meaning exactly as required.'For over...

This first full-length biography of the Nobel Laureate to appear in a quarter century explores John Steinbeck's long apprenticeship as a writer struggling through the depths of the Great Depression,...

This is the second volume in Janet Frame's autobiography, in which New Zealand's most distinguished living novelist tells of how she left the close-knit family home in Oamaru for teacher...

What we know of Raymond Chandler is shrouded in secrets and half-truths as deceptive as anything in his magisterial novel The Long Goodbye. Now, drawing on new interviews, previously unpublished...

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Running with Scissors comes Augusten Burroughs's most provocative memoir. Outrageously fuinny and scorchingly honest.You may not know it, but you've met...

In this richly illustrated portrait, a prize-winning biographer surveys the entire sweep of William Blake's creative work while telling the story of his life William Blake, overlooked in his time,...

A literary memoir of the highest calibre by this highly-regarded critic and academic. From a childhood of gothic proportions in a vicarage on the Welsh borders, through her adolescence, leaving...

During much of his life Voltaire's plays and verse made him the toast of society, but his barbed wit and commitment to reason also got him into trouble. Jailed twice...