Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2004-02-18
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £9.99
Price: £3.99
Review Hilaire Belloc: A Biography / Gibson Square Books Ltd:
Publication date: 2006-09-20
RRP: £12.95
Price: £9.00
Review Romantic Communist: The Life and Work of Nazim Hikmet / C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd:
Creator: Federico Pietrobon
Publication date: 2006-10-17
Dewey code: 282.092
RRP: £6.48
Price: £2.54
Review The Life of Pope John Paul II in Comics / Papercutz:
Publication date: 1999-08-05
Dewey code: 813.54
RRP: £8.99
Price: £4.36
Review Just as I Thought / Virago Press Ltd:
Creator: Hugh Harter
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2004-03-31
Dewey code: 861.62
RRP: £51.50
Price: £42.98
Review Diary of a Newlywed Poet: A Bilingual Edition of Diario De Un Poeta Reciencasado / Susquehanna University Press:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 1992-10-29
Dewey code: 823.912
Price: £6.99
Review Yours, Plum: The Letters of P.G.Wodehouse / Penguin Books Ltd:
Creator: Jo Levy
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 1997-08-01
RRP: £6.99
Price: £5.58
Review Ghosts in the Mirror / Calder Publications Ltd:
Edition: New e.
Publication date: 1997-02-25
Dewey code: 809
RRP: £14.95
Price: £10.70
Review Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865-1871 / Princeton University Press:
Publication date: 1985-10-03
Dewey code: 821.912
RRP: £47.00
Price: £42.08
Review Edward Thomas: A Portrait / OUP Oxford:
Publication date: 2001-11-29
RRP: £12.99
Price: £8.57
Review P.G. Wodehouse: In His Own Words / Hutchinson:
Publication date: 1999-01-01
Dewey code: 813.54
RRP: £3.50
Price: £0.01
Review "Sula" (MaxNotes) / Research & Education Association,U.S.:
Creator: Camille Naish
Publication date: 1991-04-01
Dewey code: 843.6
RRP: £11.99
Price: £5.20
Review Sade: A Sudden Abyss / City Lights Books:
Publication date: 2003-02-28
Dewey code: 809
RRP: £5.99
Price: £13.13
Review Margaret Atwood: a Beginner's Guide / Hodder Arnold:
Publication date: 1991-04-30
Dewey code: 848.91409
RRP: £36.50
Price: £34.52
Review The Irish Beckett (Irish Studies) / Syracuse University Press:
Publication date: 2007-03-29
RRP: £12.99
Price: £4.89
Review A Life in Letters (Penguin Classics) / Penguin Classics:Wordsworth was a large-boned, somewhat shambling, brilliant and big-nosed man, and Juliet Barker has written a biography to match him on every one of these points. Like its subject it is huge, nearly a thousand pages, and it contains multitudes of fascinating facts-a biographer can hardly go wrong with a subject who lived through such interesting times and knew such interesting people: revolutionary France (where Wordsworth travelled and fathered an illegitimate child), the Napoleonic wars, Coleridge, Southey, and writing a series of astonishing poems. Barker's easy style draws on an enormous wealth of research, but is never bogged down by it, and she manages to make her sometimes obstinate subject always human and likeable. This is an especial achievement in the later years, when Wordsworth's politics calcified into hang 'em and flog 'em Toryism; Barker manages to make even this grumpy old poet a figure you care about. The passages at the end of the book when Wordsworth's daughter Dora dies of tuberculosis, are genuinely moving. It is not a perfect book; like its subject, too it is a little dull. Its readings of the poetry itself (and the poetry is the reason why Wordsworth is so important, after all) are a little meagre; Barker limits herself to observations along the lines of "this is a great poem", "this is an important poem", "this sonnet is an exquisite work of art" and the like. Of the "Intimations Ode" ("the greatest William ever wrote") she limits herself to observing that, so familiar is it nowadays, "reading it is like going through a dictionary of quotations". Steven Gill's William Wordsworth, which has been the standard biography hitherto, does the job of critical reading of the verse much better. And like its subject Barker's book is big-nosed too, in several senses. [+]For one thing, it traces the Wordsworthian "Roman" profile from father to children; Dora had a portrait painted of herself "with swept back black hair and large nose", and later travelled to the artist's London studio "to have my nose reduced a little". But Barker also sniffs haughtily at some of the modern attitudes to Wordsworth's life and times. To the notorious suggestion that Wordsworth had an incestuous relationship with his sister Dorothy, Barker snorts that people only think so because they view the couple "through Freud's distorting lens", and dismisses the-let's be honest, intriguing-notion as "prurient speculation". This said, however, this is nevertheless a noble biographical exercise, absorbing and solid. -Adam Roberts.
Publication date: 2007-06-28
Dewey code: 780.92
RRP: £60.00
Price: £54.00
Review Bruce Montgomery/Edmund Crispin: A Life in Music and Books / Ashgate:
Publication date: 1992-11-10
Dewey code: 371
RRP: £4.50
Price: £0.64
Review Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" (Cliffs Notes) / John Wiley & Sons:
Publication date: 1995-03-08
Dewey code: 823
RRP: £11.99
Price: £1.50
Review Tragic Life: Bessie Head and Literature in Southern Africa / Africa Research & Publications:
Publication date: 1997-01-01
Dewey code: 838.91409
RRP: £12.07
Price: £77.95
Review A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia / Viking/Allen Lane:
Publication date: 2003-02-06
Dewey code: 809
RRP: £15.99
Price: £9.25
Review The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling / Pimlico:
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Hilaire Belloc: A Biography, Romantic Communist: The Life and Work of Nazim Hikmet, The Life of Pope John Paul II in Comics, Just as I Thought, Diary of a Newlywed Poet: A Bilingual Edition of Diario De Un Poeta Reciencasado, Yours, Plum: The Letters of P.G.Wodehouse, Ghosts in the Mirror, Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865-1871, Edward Thomas: A Portrait, P.G. Wodehouse: In His Own Words, "Sula" (MaxNotes), Sade: A Sudden Abyss, Margaret Atwood: a Beginner's Guide, The Irish Beckett (Irish Studies), A Life in Letters (Penguin Classics), Bruce Montgomery/Edmund Crispin: A Life in Music and Books, Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" (Cliffs Notes), Tragic Life: Bessie Head and Literature in Southern Africa, A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia, The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling |
