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Hermione Lee sees Virginia Woolf afresh, in her historical setting and as a vital figure for our times. Her book moves freely between a richly detailed life-story and new attempts to understand crucial questions - the impact of her childhood, the cause and nature of her madness and suicide, the truth about her marriage, her feelings for women, her prejudies and obsessions. This is a vivid, close-up portrait, returning to primary sources, and showing Woolf as occupying a distinct, even uneasy position with 'Bloomsbury'. It is a writer's life, illustrating how the concerns of her work arise and develop, and a political life, which establishes Woolf as a radically sceptical, subversive, courageous feminist. Incorporating newly discovered sources and illustrated with photos and drawings never used before, this biography is a revelation -informed, intelligent and moving.
The key book for all time on Tom Stoppard: the biography of our greatest living playwright, by one of the leading literary biographers in the English-speaking world, a star in her own right, Hermione Lee.With unprecedented access to private papers, diaries, letters, and countless interviews with figures ranging from Felicity Kendal to John Boorman and Trevor Nunn to Steven Spielberg, Hermione Lee builds a metiucously researched portrait of one of our greatest playwrights.Drawing on several years of long, exploratory conversations with Stoppard himself, it tracks his Czech origins and childhood in India to every school and home he's ever lived in, every piece of writing he's ever done, and every play and film he's ever worked on; but in the end this is the story of a complex, elusive and private man, which tells you an enormous amount about him but leaves you, also, with the fascinating mystery of his ultimate unknowability.
Regarded as a witch and alienated by the majority of her peers, fourteen-year-old orphan Alexandria Richardson wants to be anybody but herself. However, this all changes one day, when the mysterious fountain in her school transports her and her three classmates to a world of magic— the Otherworld. The four of them are brought to the palace of the Otherworld on the rulers' orders, and the shocking truth of Alexandria's identity and parentage is revealed. As Alexandria then participates in a miraculous adventure with her companions, she explores the depths of courage, kindness, and friendship. But will she make it safely back to the Otherworld? Or will she eventually yield to her biggest enemy, someone no other than herself? It's not just an adventure. It's a journey of growth and redemption.
"A group of notable writers ... celebrate our fascination with the houses of famous literary figures, artists, composers, and politicians of the past"--Provided by publisher.
Biographies are one of the most popular and best-selling of the literary genres. Why do people like them? What does a biography do and how does it work? This Very Short Introduction examines different types of biographies, why certain people and historical events arouse so much interest, and how they are compared with history and fiction.
This intriguing and witty collection of essays looks at how biography deals with myths and legends, what goes missing and what can't be proved in the story of a life.
As readers, we seem to be increasingly fascinated by studies of individual lives. In this timely, unusual and exhilarating collection Hermione Lee is concerned in different ways with approaches to 'life-writing': the relation of biography to fiction and history; the exploration of writers' lives in connection with their works; the new and changing ways in which biographies, memoirs, diaries and autobiographies can be discussed. As the title suggests, she also unravels the complex links between physical, sensual details and the 'body' of a work. 'Shelley's Heart and Pepys' Lobsters', for example, deals with myths, contested objects and things that go missing, while 'Jane Austen Faints' takes five varied accounts of the same dramatic moment to ask how biography deals with the private lives of famous women, a theme taken up in 'Virginia Woolf's Nose', on the way that the author's life-stories have been transformed into fiction and film. Rich, diverting and entertaining, these brilliant studies by a leading critic and internationally acclaimed biographer raise profound and intriguing issues about every aspect of writing, and reading, a life.
Cather is usually read as a nostalgic celebrator of the American past. Lee explores a stranger and more complex Cather, whose life and work are rife with split identities, sexual conflicts and stoic fatalism. Illustrated.
On Life-Writing offers a sampling of approaches to the study of life-writing. The collection brings together eminent scholars and writers to reflect on specific examples of life-writing to reflect broader themes within the genre.
Born in 1862, during the Civil War, Edith Wharton broke away from her wealthy background. She travelled extensively in Europe, eventually settling in Paris. This biography delves into various aspects of Wharton's extraordinary life-story, shifting the emphasis towards Europe and placing her in her social context and her history.