But the world’s best-loved female authors are usually mythologized as solitary eccentrics or isolated geniuses. Coauthors and real-life friends Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney prove this wrong, thanks to their discovery of a wealth of surprising collaborations: the friendship between Jane Austen and one of the family servants, playwright Anne Sharp; the daring feminist author Mary Taylor, who shaped the work of Charlotte Brontë; the transatlantic friendship of the seemingly aloof George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe; and Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, most often portrayed as bitter foes, but who, in fact, enjoyed a complex friendship fired by an underlying erotic charge. Through letters and diaries that have never been published before, A Secret Sisterhood resurrects these forgotten stories of female friendships. They were sometimes scandalous and volatile, sometimes supportive and inspiring, but always—until now—tantalizingly consigned to the shadows.

    But this was far from the only difference between him and his predecessors. Neither of the previous Georges was faithful to his wife, nor to his mistresses. Both hated their own sons. And, overall, their children were angry, jealous, and disaffected schemers, whose palace shenanigans kick off Hadlow's juicy narrative and also made their lives unhappy ones.Pained by his childhood amid this cruel and feuding family, George came to the throne aspiring to be a new kind of king—a force for moral good. And to be that new kind of king, he had to be a new kind of man. Against his irresistibly awful family background—of brutal royal intrigue, infidelity, and betrayal—George fervently pursued a radical domestic dream: he would have a faithful marriage and raise loving, educated, and resilient children.The struggle of King George—along with his wife, Queen Charlotte, and their 15 children—to pursue a passion for family will surprise history buffs and delight a broad swath of biography readers and royal watchers.

    Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

    During the following ten years they were lovers, worked closely together and she became mother to two of his children, Claude and Paloma. Life with Picasso, her account of those extraordinary years, is filled with intimate and astonishing revelations about the man, his work, his thoughts and his friends - Matisse, Braque, Gertrude Stein and Giacometti, among others. Francois Gilot paints a compelling portrait of her turbulent life with the temperamental (and even abusive) genius that was Picasso. As one of the few intimate witnesses to Picasso as a human being and as an artist, her account of him is invaluable for assessing him on both counts.

    The brilliance of her two novels and her poetry belies the quiet, truthful girl who often lived in the shadow of her more outgoing sisters. Yet her writing was the most revolutionary of all the Brontës, pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable. This revealing new biography opens Anne’s most private life to a new audience, and includes unpublished letters from Anne to the family to which she was governess as well as first publication of a controversial image that could be the only photograph of the three Brontë sisters.

    As far as Mary Berry was concerned, writing from her home in Mayfair on 2 August 1798, Napoleon was still running riot in Europe; the prospect of a French invasion of Britain was on everyone's lips, and the Continent was closed off to travellers. Twelve months earlier, Mary thought she would by now be on the Continent -- her much looked forward to third trip there -- conversing personally with Bertie Greatheed. But, alas, she was stranded, left to lament through correspondence her inability to escape. 'Most thoroughly, ' she wrote, 'do I begin to feel the want of that "shake out of English ways, English whims, and English prejudices, which nothing but leaving England gives one.'This was hardly an appropriate time to condemn 'English ways' and a desire for the continental lifestyle. Mary Berry could have been accused of being a French sympathiser -- a Jacobin (a radical activist in support of the principles of the French Revolution), or, with equivalent indignity, a Catholic. Mary was politically aware, but her restlessness with forced domestic residence overrode her sense of discretion. And anyway, she could have claimed with some justification, when "was there a good time for a woman to talk about shaking loose 'English prejudices' and broadening her intellectual horizons? By 'English prejudices' she was in part referring to a deep-rooted antagonism towardswomen's enlightenment. Mary felt confined, both physically and intellectually. The world seemed to be shrinking around her and without a change of air, and marooned in England she feared intellectual suffocation: After a residence of four or five years we all begin to forget the existence of the Continent of Europe, till we touch it again with our feet. The whole world to me, that is to say the whole circle of my ideas, begins to be confined between N. Audley-Street and Twickenham. I know no great men but Pitt and Fox, no king and queen but George and Charlotte, no towns but London. All the other cities, and courts, and great men of the world "may be very good sort of places and of people, for aught we know or care; except they are coming to invade us, we think no more of them than of the inhabitants of another planet.Just a few years earlier, before relations with France disintegrated completely, another English woman abandoned London and headed for Paris. Mary Wollstonecraft had longed to visit the Continent for some time. She had dreamt about it for over a decade, while pursuing a catalogue of occupations open to middle-class women, before taking pen in hand and daringly writing herself into a new career as an author. By 1792, with her authorial voice and confidence gathering strength, she published the work for which she is most well known: "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, written while intoxicated on the champagne fizz of the French Revolution. In this work she expressed a desire to see the revolutionary principles of "liberte, e galite and "fraternite apply to women as well as to men. Things were happening abroad; the Continent was a model of change andliberation. 'In France or Italy, have women confined themselves to domestic life?, ' she asked her readers. 'No!' England was behind the times. 'I long for "independence!, ' she cried. 'I will certainly visit France, it has long been a desire floating in my brain.' Within months of the publication and immediate success of her book, she had embarked on her journey.Mary Berry and Mary Wollstonecraft had much in common. Both were from middle-class backgrounds, but had seen the prospects of family wealth squandered by rogue relatives. At the time of their travels, neither was married. Both had overcome prejudices against female advancement and become published authors. And both would find the experience of foreign travel stimulating and cathartic. It is no accident that the metaphor of travel has long been used to represent the twists and turns, discoveries and drudgery of intellectual and psychological development.Travel and the knowledge collected along the way gave currency to the metaphor of 'the path to enlightenment'. By the end of the eighteenth century, the term was taken much more literally, and directed many women in their quests for improvement to the Continent. Letters and journals recorded their responses to life abroad, and in turn their discoveries about themselves. Travel writing, which included letters written home, presented a rare opportunity for Georgian women to articulate views on the world around them and their responses to it. Partly personal, biographical and intimate, their writings were often also political, descriptive, forthright and polemical. Through travel women of a certain status could fashion themselves into informed, discriminating observers, acute socialcommentators and listened-to cultural critics.Berry and Wollstonecraft were but two of a wide range of women determined to elevate themselves through travel. By the end of the eighteenth century, 'ladies of letters' had begun to settle into their pursuit of a 'life of the mind': continental travel allowed them to carve out niches in the intellectual geography of Enlightenment England. Many women who had the chance to travel were changing the course of common assumptions and showing others how travel could help them arrive at a new position -- personally and socially -- in polite society.A number of 'bluestocking' women, noted for their intellectual accomplishments, also left the droning world of polite drawing-room conversation to exercise their minds, enjoy social independence and cultivate new tastes, and romances, abroad. Travel helped women to develop views on the opportunities and rights to education; it guided those seeking separation from unhappy domestic circumstances; it worked to improve mental and physical health...

    Despite its remote location, the quirky German Renaissance–style castle, with its intricate façade, peculiar interior design, and gargoyle guardians peering down on Central Park, was an immediate hit, particularly among the city’s well-heeled intellectuals and artists.   Over the next century it would become home to an eclectic cast of celebrity residents—including Boris Karloff, Lauren Bacall, Leonard Bernstein, singer Roberta Flack (the Dakota’s first African-American resident), and John Lennon and Yoko Ono—who were charmed by its labyrinthine interior and secret passageways, its mysterious past, and its ghosts. Stephen Birmingham, author of the New York society classic “Our Crowd”, has written an engrossing history of the first hundred years of one of the most storied residential addresses in Manhattan and the legendary lives lived within its walls.

    Think of Hamlet, trapped in indecision, or Macbeth’s merciless and ultimately self-destructive ambition, or the Machiavellian rise and short reign of Richard III. They are so vital, so alive and real that we can see aspects of ourselves in them. But their world was at once familiar and nothing like our own. In this brilliant work of historical reconstruction Neil MacGregor and his team at the British Museum, working together in a landmark collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the BBC, bring us twenty objects that capture the essence of Shakespeare’s universe. A perfect complement to A History of the World in 100 Objects, MacGregor’s landmark New York Times bestseller, Shakespeare’s Restless World highlights a turning point in human history. This magnificent book, illustrated throughout with more than one hundred vibrant color photographs, invites you to travel back in history and to touch, smell, and feel what life was like at that pivotal moment, when humankind leaped into the modern age. This was an exhilarating time when discoveries in science and technology altered the parameters of the known world. Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation map allows us to imagine the age of exploration from the point of view of one of its most ambitious navigators. A bishop’s cup captures the most sacred and divisive act in Christendom. With A History of the World in 100 Objects, MacGregor pioneered a new way of telling history through artifacts. Now he trains his eye closer to home, on a subject that has mesmerized him since childhood, and lets us see Shakespeare and his world in a whole new light.

    It chronicles the events of her brief life, examines each of her novels, and looks at why her stories - of women and marriage, class and money, scandal and hypocrisy, emotion and satire - still have meaning for us today. Discover * Why Austen is so popular * The impact on manners, courtships, and dating * Love and life in Austen's world * Her life and key influences * Her most memorable characters

    The extraordinary true story of the 'Red Queen', Lady Margaret Beaufort, matriarch of the Tudors. Born in the midst of the Wars of the Roses, Margaret Beaufort became the greatest heiress of her time. She survived a turbulent life, marrying four times and enduring imprisonment before passing her claim to the crown of England to her son, Henry VII, the first of the Tudor monarchs. Margaret's royal blood placed her on the fringes of the Lancastrian royal dynasty. After divorcing her first husband at the age of ten, she married the king's half-brother, Edmund Tudor, becoming a widow and bearing her only child, the future Henry VII, before her fourteenth birthday. Margaret was always passionately devoted to the interests of her son who claimed the throne through her. She embroiled herself in both treason and conspiracy as she sought to promote his claims, allying herself with the Yorkist Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, in an attempt to depose Richard III. She was imprisoned by Richard and her lands confiscated, but she continued to work on her son's behalf, ultimately persuading her fourth husband, the powerful Lord Stanley, to abandon the king in favour of Henry on the eve of the decisive Battle of Bosworth. It was Lord Stanley himself who placed the crown on Henry's head on the battlefield. Henry VII gave his mother unparalleled prominence during his reign. She established herself as an independent woman and ended her life as regent of England, ruling on behalf of her seventeen-year-old grandson, Henry VIII.

    She was a dedicated patron of the arts, a lively and talented intellectual, a victim of violence and adultery, and a passionate advocate for the rights of women. Above all she is portrayed as a woman of reason in the Age of Reason.

    It is democratic, everchanging and ingenious in its assimilation of other cultures. English runs through the heart of the world of finance, medicine and the Internet, and it is understood by around two thousand million people across the world. It seems set to go on. Yet it was nearly wiped out in its early years.Embracing elements of Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, Hindi and Gullah, this 1500-year story covers a huge range of countries and people. The Adventure of English is not only an enthralling story of power, religion and trade, but also the story of people, and how their day-to-day lives shaped and continue to change the extraordinary language that is English.

    It is the extraordinary tale of an exceptional woman, Katherine Swynford, who became first the mistress and later the wife of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.Katherine Swynford’s charismatic lover was one of the most powerful princes of the 14th century, the effective ruler of England behind the throne of his father Edward III in his declining years, and during the minority of his nephew, Richard II. Katherine herself was enigmatic and intriguing, renowned for her beauty, and regarded by some as dangerous. Her existence was played out against the backdrop of court life at the height of the age of chivalry and she knew most of the great figures of the time — including her brother-in-law, Geoffrey Chaucer. She lived through much of the Hundred Years War, the Black Death, and the Peasants’ Revolt. She knew loss, adversity, and heartbreak, and she survived them all triumphantly. Although Katherine’s story provides unique insights into the life of a medieval woman, she was far from typical in that age. She was an important person in her own right, a woman who had remarkable opportunities, made her own choices, flouted convention, and took control of her own destiny — even of her own public image. Weir brilliantly retrieves Katherine Swynford from the footnotes of history and gives her life and breath again. Perhaps the most dynastically important woman within the English monarchy, she was the mother of the Beauforts and through them the ancestress of the Yorkist kings, the Tudors, the Stuarts, and every other sovereign since — a legacy that has shaped the history of Britain.

    With little experience as a painter (though famed for his sculpture David), Michelangelo was reluctant to begin the massive project. Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling recounts the four extraordinary years Michelangelo spent laboring over the vast ceiling while the power politics and personal rivalries that abounded in Rome swirled around him. Battling against ill health, financial difficulties, domestic problems, the pope's impatience, and a bitter rivalry with the brilliant young painter Raphael, Michelangelo created scenes so beautiful that they are considered one of the greatest masterpieces of all time. A panorama of illustrious figures converged around the creation of this great work-from the great Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus to the young Martin Luther-and Ross King skillfully weaves them through his compelling historical narrative, offering uncommon insight into the intersection of art and history.

    Drawn from over 180 interviews with friends, rivals, lovers, and collaborators, some of whom have never before spoken about their relationship with Bowie, this oral history weaves a hypnotic spell as it unfolds the story of a remarkable rise to stardom and an unparalleled artistic path. Tracing Bowie's life from the English suburbs to London to New York to Los Angeles, Berlin, and beyond, its collective voices describe a man profoundly shaped by his relationship with his schizophrenic half-brother Terry; an intuitive artist who could absorb influences through intense relationships and yet drop people cold when they were no longer of use; and a social creature equally comfortable partying with John Lennon and dining with Frank Sinatra. By turns insightful and deliciously gossipy, DAVID BOWIE is as intimate a portrait as may ever be drawn. It sparks with admiration and grievances, lust and envy, as the speakers bring you into studios and bedrooms they shared with Bowie, and onto stages and film sets, opening corners of his mind and experience that transform our understanding of both artist and art. Including illuminating, never-before-seen material from Bowie himself, drawn from a series of Jones's interviews with him across two decades, DAVID BOWIE is an epic, unforgettable cocktail-party conversation about a man whose enigmatic shapeshifting and irrepressible creativity produced one of the most sprawling, fascinating lives of our time.