Book picks similar to
The Godwins and the Shelleys: A Biography of a Family by William St. Clair
biography
history
nonfiction
shelley
Papa Hemingway
A.E. Hotchner - 1955
E. Hotchner traveled together from New York to Paris to Spain, fished the waters off Cuba, hunted in Idaho, and ran with the bulls in Pamplona. And everywhere they talked. For 14 years, Hotchner and Hemingway shared a conversation. Hemingway reminisced about his childhood, recalled the Paris literary scene in the twenties, remembered his early years as a writer, and recounted the real events that lay behind his fiction. And Hotchner took it all down. His notes on the many occasions he spent with his friend Papa - in Venice and Rome, in Key West, on the Riviera, in Ketchum, Idaho, where Hemingway died by his own hand in 1961 - provide the material for this utterly truthful, profoundly compassionate bestselling memoir of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. What emerges is an extraordinary portrait of a great writer who had, and determined, the time of his life.
Ginger Lacey: Fighter Pilot
Richard Townshend Bickers - 1969
But who would have thought that the slim and pale looking boy would become one of the most successful fighter pilots of the war? Almost unknown outside the RAF, Sgt. Pilot J.H. Lacey shot down more enemy aircraft in the Battle of Britain than any other fighter pilot. He shot down the Heinkel 111 which had just bombed Buckingham Palace and had the highest score (twenty-three) of enemy aircraft destroyed, as late as 1941. Thereafter commissioned, early in 1941, he was for a time an instructor at an operational training unit, passing on to others the knowledge that he had won in the toughest series of air battles ever fought. Returning to operations, he served under another fabulous air fighter, ‘Paddy’ Finucane; then was posted to rocket (airborne weapons) development, a task almost as dangerous as combat flying. Later he commanded a famous fighter squadron in the Far East. and shot down the first Japanese he encountered. Unorthodox, autocratic in his command but resentful of unreasonable interference from those above him, Ginger Lacey was a boyish-looking figure with a fantastic gift for leadership, and sharp eyes, bravery and an innate sense of timing. He died in 1989, but his amazing story was recorded by an experienced writer who was a fellow officer in the RAF until 1951 and knew him well. It is a memorable and stirring biography. ‘The best all action war story yet produced.’ - Yorkshire Post ‘A top-scoring story.’ - Evening Standard ‘Fast-moving biography.’ - Sunday Times ‘The best biography of a fighter pilot ever written.’ - Yorkshire Evening Post Richard Townsend Bickers volunteered for the RAF on the outbreak of the second world war and served, with a Permanent Commission, for eighteen years. He wrote a range of military fiction and non-fiction books, including ‘Torpedo Attack’, ‘My Enemy Came Nigh’, ‘Bombing Run’, ‘Fighters Up’ and ‘Summer of No Surrender’. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.
The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of José Robles
Stephen Koch - 2005
Hemingway was fuming; Dos Passos was caught off guard. They were there to witness the Spanish Civil War firsthand, but something more personal was going on: as Spain was unraveling thread by thread, so was their friendship." "Dos Passos was widely regarded as the literary voice of America's new socially engaged generation - his face had been on the cover of Time the week the war broke out. And he had long considered Hemingway one of his best friends. Yet they were completely opposite in personality, with Dos Passos's calm temperament and mild manner standing in stark contrast to Hemingway's machismo. Dos Passos was probably oblivious even to Hemingway's envy of him - an envy that was soon to erupt into full-blown resentment." "They had arrived in Spain as comrades, leftist writers-in-arms. But when Dos Passos went looking for his close friend Jose Robles - a Spanish-born Johns Hopkins professor who had moved back to Spain to help save the Spanish Republic - Robles was nowhere to be found. Dos Passos's search for Robles would eventually take his literary career and his friendship with Hemingway to the breaking point." Stephen Koch explores the short time the two men shared in Spain, and how their split changed the life and work of each man - and changed the course of American literature. The Breaking Point is the story of two lives at the intersection of friendship and murder, of love and death, and of literature and history.
She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth
Helen Castor - 2011
For the first time, all the contenders for the crown were female.In 1553, England was about to experience the ‘monstrous regiment’ - the unnatural rule - of a woman. But female rule in England also had a past. Four hundred years before Edward’s death, Matilda, daughter of Henry I and granddaughter of William the Conquerer, came tantalisingly close to securing her hold on the power of the crown. And between the 12th and the 15th centuries three more exceptional women - Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, and Margaret of Anjou - discovered, as queens consort and dowager, how much was possible if the presumptions of male rule were not confronted so explicitly.The stories of these women - told here in all their vivid humanity - illustrate the paradox which the female heirs to the Tudor throne had no choice but to negotiate. Man was the head of woman; and the king was the head of all. How, then, could a woman be king, how could royal power lie in female hands?
The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects
Deborah Lutz - 2015
By unfolding the histories of the meaningful objects in their family home in Haworth, Lutz immerses readers in a nuanced re-creation of the sisters' daily lives while moving us chronologically forward through the major biographical events: the death of their mother and two sisters, the imaginary kingdoms of their childhood writing, their time as governesses, and their determined efforts to make a mark on the literary world.From the miniature books they made as children to the blackthorn walking sticks they carried on solitary hikes on the moors, each personal possession opens a window onto the sisters' world, their beloved fiction, and the Victorian era. A description of the brass collar worn by Emily’s bull mastiff, Keeper, leads to a series of entertaining anecdotes about the influence of the family’s dogs on their writing and about the relationship of Victorians to their pets in general. The sisters' portable writing desks prove to have played a crucial role in their writing lives: it was Charlotte's snooping in Emily’s desk that led to the sisters' first publication in print, followed later by the publication of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.Charlotte's letters provide insight into her relationships, both innocent and illicit, including her relationship with the older professor to whom she wrote passionately. And the bracelet Charlotte had made of Anne and Emily's intertwined hair bears witness to her profound grief after their deaths.Lutz captivatingly shows the Brontës anew by bringing us deep inside the physical world in which they lived and from which their writings took inspiration.
Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Kathryn Harkup - 2018
Frankenstein: Or, Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley had a huge impact on gothic horror and science fiction genres. The name Frankenstein has become part of our everyday language, often used in derogatory terms to describe scientists who have overstepped a perceived moral line. But how did a 19-year-old woman with no formal education come up with the idea for an extraordinary novel such as Frankenstein? The period of 1790-1820 saw huge advances in our understanding of electricity and physiology. Sensational science demonstrations caught the imagination of the general public, and newspapers were full of tales of murderers and resurrectionists.It is unlikely that Frankenstein would have been successful in his attempts to create life back in 1818. However, advances in medical science mean we have overcome many of the stumbling blocks that would have thwarted his ambition. We can resuscitate people using defibrillators, save lives using blood transfusions, and prolong life through organ transplants--these procedures are nowadays considered almost routine. Many of these modern achievements are a direct result of 19th century scientists conducting their gruesome experiments on the dead.Making the Monster explores the science behind Shelley's book. From tales of reanimated zombie kittens to electrical experiments on human cadavers, Kathryn Harkup examines the science and scientists that influenced Mary Shelley and inspired her most famous creation, Victor Frankenstein. While, thankfully, we are still far from being able to recreate Victor's "creature," scientists have tried to create the building blocks of life, and the dream of creating life-forms from scratch is now tantalizingly close.
Captives among the Indians: Firsthand Narratives of Indian Wars, Customs, Tortures, and Habits of Life in Colonial Times
Horace Kephart - 2015
This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
A Beautiful Game: My Love Affair with Cricket
Mark Nicholas - 2016
As both a former player and now a professional observer and commentator on the game he knows all the key figures of the sport and has witnessed first-hand some of cricket's greatest moments. His book is a personal account of the game as he's seen and experienced it across the globe. From epic test matches to titans of the game like Lara, Warne and Tendulkar, to his own childhood love for the sport, Mark gives us his informed, personal and fascinating views on cricket - the world's other beautiful game.
The Man in the Red Coat
Julian Barnes - 2019
One was a Prince, one was a Count, and the third was a commoner with an Italian name, who four years earlier had been the subject of one of John Singer Sargent’s greatest portraits. The commoner was Samuel Pozzi, society doctor, pioneer gynaecologist and free-thinker – a rational and scientific man with a famously complicated private life.Pozzi's life played out against the backdrop of the Parisian Belle Epoque. The beautiful age of glamour and pleasure more often showed its ugly side: hysterical, narcissistic, decadent and violent, a time of rampant prejudice and blood-and-soil nativism, with more parallels to our own age than we might imagine.The Man in the Red Coat is at once a fresh and original portrait of the Belle Epoque – its heroes and villains, its writers, artists and thinkers – and a life of a man ahead of his time. Witty, surprising and deeply researched, the new book from Julian Barnes illuminates the fruitful and longstanding exchange of ideas between Britain and France, and makes a compelling case for keeping that exchange alive.
Moments of Being: A Collection of Autobiographical Writing
Virginia Woolf - 1976
In "Reminiscences," the first of five pieces, she focuses on the death of her mother, "the greatest disaster that could happen," and its effect on her father, the demanding Victorian patriarch. Three of the papers were composed to be read to the Memoir Club, a postwar regrouping of Bloomsbury, which exacted absolute candor of its members."A Sketch of the Past" is the longest and most significant of the pieces, giving an account of Virginia Woolf's early years in the family household at 22 Hyde Park Gate. A recently discovered manuscript belonging to this memoir has provided material that further illuminates her relationship to her father, Leslie Stephen, who played a crucial role in her development as an individual and as a writer.
Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time
Hilary Spurling - 2017
He was a prolific literary critic and book reviewer. Between the two world wars, before making his name, he kept company with rowdy, hard-up writers and painters--and painters' models--in the London where Augustus John and Wyndham Lewis loomed large. He counted Evelyn Waugh and Henry Green among his lifelong friends, and his circle included the Sitwells, Graham Greene, George Orwell, Philip Larkin, and Kingsley Amis, among many others. Now, drawing on his letters, diaries, and interviews, Hilary Spurling--herself a longtime friend of Powell's-- has written a fresh and masterful portrait of the man, his work, and his time. Insightful, poignant, and cinematic in scope, this biography is as much a brilliant tapestry of a seminal moment in London's literary life as it is a revelation of an iconic literary figure.
The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism
Megan Marshall - 2005
The story of these remarkable sisters — and their central role in shaping the thinking of their day — has never before been fully told. Twenty years in the making, Megan Marshall's monumental biograpy brings the era of creative ferment known as American Romanticism to new life. Elizabeth, the oldest sister, was a mind-on-fire thinker. A powerful influence on the great writers of the era — Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau among them — she also published some of their earliest works. It was Elizabeth who prodded these newly minted Transcendentalists away from Emerson's individualism and toward a greater connection to others. Mary was a determined and passionate reformer who finally found her soul mate in the great educator Horace Mann. The frail Sophia was a painter who won the admiration of the preeminent society artists of the day. She married Nathaniel Hawthorne — but not before Hawthorne threw the delicate dynamics among the sisters into disarray. Marshall focuses on the moment when the Peabody sisters made their indelible mark on history. Her unprecedented research into these lives uncovered thousands of letters never read before as well as other previously unmined original sources. The Peabody Sisters casts new light on a legendary American era. Its publication is destined to become an event in American biography. This book is highly recommended for students and reading groups interested in American history, American literature, and women's studies. It is a wonderful look into 19th-century life.
Still on the Road: The Songs of Bob Dylan, 1974-2006
Clinton Heylin - 2010
Together these two volumes form the most comprehensive books available on Dylan's words. Clinton Heylin is the world's leading Dylan biographer and expert, and he has arranged the songs in a continually surprising chronology of when they were actually written rather than when they appeared on albums. Using newly discovered manuscripts, anecdotal evidence, and a seemingly limitless knowledge of every Bob Dylan live performance, Heylin reveals hundreds of facts about the songs. Here we learn about Dylan's contributions to the Traveling Wilburys, the women who inspired "Blood on the Tracks "and "Desire," " "the sources Dylan "plagiarized" for "Love and Theft "and "Modern Times," " "why he left "Blind Willie McTell" off of "Infidels "and "Series of Dreams" off of "Oh Mercy," " "what broke the long dry spell he had in the 1990s, and much more. This is an essential purchase for every true Bob Dylan fan.
Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan
Giles Milton - 2002
Beginning with Adams’s startling letter to the East India Company in 1611—more than a decade after he’d arrived in Japan—Samurai William chronicles the first foray by the Westinto that mysterious closed-off land. Drawing upon the journals and letters of Adams as well as the other Englishmen who came looking for him, Samurai William presents a unique glimpse of Japan before it once again closed itself off from the worldfor another two hundred years.
The Complete Poems
Percy Bysshe Shelley - 1839
Percy Bysshe Shelley endures today as the great Promethean bard of the High Romantic period who is best remembered for extolling the sublime and affirming the possibility of transcendence.From the Hardcover edition.