Going beyond previous traditional biographies which have traced Austen's daily life from Steventon to Bath to Chawton to Winchester, Byrne's portrait-organized thematically and drawn from the most up-to-date scholarship and unexplored sources-explores the lives of Austen's extended family, friends, and acquaintances. Through their absorbing stories we view Austen on a much wider stage and discover unexpected aspects of her life and character. Byrne transports us to different worlds-the East Indies and revolutionary Paris-and different events-from a high society scandal to a petty case of shoplifting, She follows Austen on her extensive travels, setting her in contexts both global and English, urban and rural, political and historical, social and domestic-wider perspectives of vital and still under-estimated importance to her creative life.Literary scholarship has revealed that letters and tokens in Austen's novel's often signal key turning points in the unfolding narrative. This groundbreaking biography explores Jane's own story following the same principle. As Byrne reveals, small things in the writer's world-a scrap of paper, a simple gold chain, an ivory miniature, a bathing machine-hold significance in her emotional and artistic development. The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things introduces us to a woman deeply immersed in the world around her, yet far ahead of her time in her independence and ambition; to an author who was an astute commentator on human nature and the foibles of her own age. Rich and compelling, it is a fresh, insightful, and often surprising portrait of an artist and a vivid evocation of the complex world that shaped her.

    Film adaptations of her books are nominated for Academy Awards. Chick lit bestsellers are based on her plots. And a new biopic of Austen herself Becoming Jane arrives in theaters this spring.For all those readers who dream about living in Regency England, The Jane Austen Handbook offers step-by-step instructions for proper comportment in the early nineteenth century. You'll discover:How to Become an Accomplished LadyHow to Run a Great HouseHow to Indicate Interest in a Gentleman Without Seeming Forward How to Throw a Dinner PartyHow to Choose and Buy ClothingFull of practical directions for navigating the travails of Regency life, this charming illustrated book also serves as a companion for present-day readers, explaining the English class system, currency, dress, and the nuances of graceful living.

    Spence's meticulous research has, perhaps most notably, uncovered evidence that Austen and the charming young Irishman Tom Lefroy fell in love at the age of twenty and that the relationship inspired Pride and Prejudice, one of the most celebrated works of fiction ever written. Becoming Jane Austen gives the fullest account we have of the romance, which was more serious and more enduring than previously believed. Seeing this love story in the context of Jane Austen's whole life enables us to appreciate the profound effect the relationship had on her art and on subsequent choices that she made in her life.Full of insight and with an attentive eye for detail, Spence explores Jane Austen's emotional attachments and the personal influences that shaped her as a novelist. His elegant narrative provides a point of entry into Jane Austen's world as she herself perceived and experienced it. It is a world familiar to us from her novels, but in Becoming Jane Austen, Austen herself is the heroine.

    This collection has more than twenty-five selections, including such important statements as "Modern Fiction" and "The Modern Essay."

    Passionate, witty and moving, the voices of the Lennox sisters reach us with immediacy and power, drawing the reader into their remarkable lives, and making this one of the most enthralling historical narratives to appear for many years

    Rider Haggard, whose work has recently attracted new attention from scholars and students. Contributors engage with topics such as industrial culture, religion and science and the broader issues of the politics of gender, sexuality and race. The Companion includes a chronology and a comprehensive Guide to Further Reading.

    Captivated by the secrets, the scandal and the servant-master divide of an Edwardian household, viewers religiously watched in their millions. In Life Below Stairs, bestselling author Alison Maloney responds to the public's desire to know more, going behind the scenes to reveal a detailed picture of what really went on 'downstairs', describing the true-life trials and tribulations of the servants in a gripping non-fiction account. Thoroughly researched and reliably informed, it also contains first-hand stories from the staff of the time. This charming and beautifully presented volume is a must-read for anyone interested in the lifestyle and conduct of a bygone era.

    In his work he brought to life the personalities of a diverse range of characters, and introduced a new immediacy, colloquial energy and psychological complexity to the poetry of his day. This selection brings together verse ranging from early dramatic monologues such as the chilling 'My Last Duchess' and the ribald 'Fra Lippo Lippi', which show his gift for inhabiting the mind of another, to the popular children's poem 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' and many lesser known works. All display his innovative techniques of diction, rhythm and symbol, which transformed Victorian poetry and influenced major poets of the twentieth century such as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and Robert Frost.

    Freed to read extensively, she discovered her talent for writing and, with her brother, the essayist Charles Lamb, collaborated on the famous Tales from Shakespeare. This narrative of a nearly forgotten woman is a tapestry of insights into creativity and madness, the changing lives of women, and the redemptive power of the written word.

    It is perhaps because of this that the poem is still popular with and of interest to modern readers. Owing to its length and its arguable breadth of focus, the poem might not be thought an elegy or a dirge in the strictest formal sense.The poem is not arranged exactly in the order in which it was written. The prologue, for example, is thought to have been one of the last things written. Critics believe, however, that the poem as a whole is meant to be chronological in terms of the progression of Tennyson's grief. The passage of time is marked by the three descriptions of Christmas at different points in the poem, and the poem ends with a description of the marriage of Tennyson's sister."In Memoriam" is written in four-line ABBA stanzas of iambic tetrameter, and such stanzas are now called In Memoriam Stanzas. Though not metrically unusual, given the length of the work, the meter creates a tonal effect which often divides readers - is it the natural sound of mourning and grief, or merely monotonous? The poem is divided into 133 cantos (including the prologue and epilogue), and in contrast to its constant and regulated metrical form, encompasses many different subjects: profound spiritual experiences, nostalgic reminiscence, philosophical speculation, Romantic fantasizing and even occasional verse. The death of Hallam, and Tennyson's attempts to cope with this, remain the strand that ties all these together.Excerpt: Strong Son of God, immortal Love,Whom we, that have not seen thy face,By faith, and faith alone, embrace,Believing where we cannot prove ;Thine are these orbs of light and shade ;Thou madest Life in man and brute ;[...]

    In over 30 essays, written over 20 years, one of the world's great story-tellers meditates on story-telling. Warm, funny, generous, entertaining, and above all, deeply considered, they offer thoughts on a wide variety of topic, including the origin and composition of Philip's own stories, the craft of writing and the story-tellers who have meant the most to him. The art of story-telling is everywhere present in the essays themselves, in the instantly engaging tone, the vivid imagery and the striking phrases, the resonant anecdotes, the humour and learnedness. Together, they are greater than the sum of their parts.

    Grey and his wife, speculation is rife that one of them might marry the local apothecary, Edward Hope. Although he is immediately attracted to Margaret, Hope is ultimately persuaded to marry the beautiful Hester and becomes trapped in an unhappy marriage. His troubles are compounded when a malicious village gossip accuses Hope of grave-robbing, threatening his career. A powerful exploration of the nature of ignorance and prejudice, Deerbrook also may be regarded as one of the first Victorian novels of English domestic life.Excerpt:Every town-bred person who travels in a rich country region, knows what it is to see a neat white house planted in a pretty situation, - in a shrubbery, or commanding a sunny common, or nestling between two hills, - and to say to himself, as the carriage sweeps past its gate, "I should like to live there," - "I could be very happy in that pretty place." Transient visions pass before his mind's-eye of dewy summer mornings, when the shadows are long on the grass, and of bright autumn afternoons, when it would be luxury to saunter in the neighbouring lanes; and of frosty winter days, when the sun shines in over the laurustinus at the window, while the fire burns with a different light from that which it gives in the dull parlours of a city. Mr. Grey's house had probably been the object of this kind of speculation to one or more persons, three times a week, ever since the stage-coach had begun to pass through Deerbrook. Deerbrook was a rather pretty village, dignified as it was with the woods of a fine park, which formed the back-ground to its best points of view. Of this pretty village, Mr. Grey's was the prettiest house, standing in a field, round which the road swept. There were trees enough about it to shade without darkening it, and the garden and shrubbery behind were evidently of no contemptible extent. The timber and coal yards, and granaries, which stretched down to the river side, were hidden by a nice management of the garden walls, and training of the shrubbery. In the drawing-room of this tempting white house sat Mrs. Grey and her eldest daughter, one spring evening.

    He also examines the life and legacy of his cousin, Lucy Partington, who was abducted and murdered by one of Britain’s most notorious serial killers. Experience also deconstructs the changing literary scene, including Amis' portraits of Saul Bellow, Salman Rushdie, Allan Bloom, Philip Larkin, and Robert Graves, among others.

    One was a celebrity at twenty-three, the other virtually unknown until his dying days. One was right-wing and religious, the other a socialist and an atheist. Yet, as this ingenious and important new book reveals, at the heart of their lives and writing, Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell were essentially the same man. Orwell is best known for Animal Farm and 1984, Waugh for Brideshead Revisited and comic novels like Scoop and Vile Bodies. However different they may seem, these two towering figures of twentieth-century literature are linked for the first time in this engaging and unconventional biography, which goes beyond the story of their amazing lives to reach the core of their beliefs–a shared vision that was startlingly prescient about our own troubled times.Both Waugh and Orwell were born in 1903, into the same comfortable stratum of England’s class-obsessed society. But at first glance they seem to have lived opposite lives. Waugh married into the high aristocracy, writing hilarious novels that captured the amoral time between the wars. He converted to Catholicism after his wife’s infidelity and their divorce. Orwell married a moneyless student of Tolkien’s who followed him to Barcelona, where he fought in the Spanish Civil War. She saved his life there–twice–but her own fate was tragic.Waugh and Orwell would meet only once, as the latter lay dying of tuberculosis, yet as The Same Man brilliantly shows, in their life and work both writers rebelled against a modern world run by a privileged, sometimes brutal, few. Orwell and Waugh were almost alone among their peers in seeing what the future–our time–would bring, and they dedicated their lives to warning us against what was coming: a world of material wealth but few values, an existence without tradition or community or common purpose, where lives are measured in dollars, not sense. They explained why, despite prosperity, so many people feel that our society is headed in the wrong direction. David Lebedoff believes that we need both Orwell and Waugh now more than ever.Unique in its insights and filled with vivid scenes of these two fascinating men and their tumultuous times, The Same Man is an amazing story and an original work of literary biography.

    Early one autumn afternoon in pursuit of an elusive book on her shelves, Susan Hill encountered dozens of others that she had never read, or forgotten she owned, or wanted to read for a second time. The discovery inspired her to embark on a year-long voyage through her books, forsaking new purchases in order to get to know her own collection again. A book which is left on a shelf for a decade is a dead thing, but it is also a chrysalis, packed with the potential to burst into new life. Wandering through her house that day, Hill's eyes were opened to how much of that life was stored in her home, neglected for years. 'Howards End is on the Landing' charts the journey of one of the nation's most accomplished authors as she revisits the conversations, libraries and bookshelves of the past that have informed a lifetime of reading and writing.