Publication date: 1993-11-04
Price: £7.95
Review Wilfred Owen: Poet and Soldier, 1893-1918 / Gliddon Books:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2002-11-08
RRP: £6.99
Price: £1.44
Review How I Came into My Inheritance and Other True Stories / Picador:
Edition: 1st Pbk. Ed
Publication date: 1996-12-31
Dewey code: 811.54
RRP: £8.71
Price: £35.27
Review Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton / Little, Brown and Company:
Creator: Claire Harman
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 1995-10-05
Dewey code: 828.91203
Price: £8.99
Review The Diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner (Virago classic non-fiction) / Virago Press Ltd:
Publication date: 1990-10-29
Price: £16.99
Review A Very Close Conspiracy: Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf / Jonathan Cape Ltd:
Publication date: 2001-06-14
RRP: £20.00
Price: £7.70
Review Dangerous Muse: A Life Of Caroline Blackwood: A Life of Caroline Blackwood / Weidenfeld & Nicolson:American academic-writer Nancy Schoenberger's candid yet sympathetic biography of Caroline Blackwood, Dangerous Muse, portrays a volatile, charismatic beauty of Guinness pedigree who embraced more than a touch of the dark stuff of life. After a miserable Anglo-Irish childhood belonging to an Elizabeth Bowen novel, Blackwood met her first husband, the "wolfishly handsome", and somewhat terrifying painter Lucian Freud, when he and Francis Bacon booed Princess Margaret as she sang a medley of Cole Porter numbers at a ball in 1949. Their marriage lasted three alcohol-led Soho years, before she moved on to American composer Israel Citkowitz. Where she inspired Freud, Citkowitz was silenced by their marriage, reduced to menial household activity that led guests to think he was the janitor. Her third, and main, marriage was to seminal American poet Robert Lowell, equipped with a lineage as distinguished as hers, and the manic depression to match. He was to refer to her in the bruisingly honest "The Dolphin" as "a mermaid who dines upon the bones of her winded lovers ". He also referred to their domestic life in Kent as "like two eggs cracking", and while their creative life was co-inspirational (she was a decent, if unblinking, writer), he was the first to fall apart, dying in the back of a New York cab clutching Girl in Bed, Freud's portrait of Blackwood, and a symbolism of which the painter's grandfather would have been proud. She was herself to die of cancer in 1996, aged 64. These were the three major partnerships of a tempestuous life, but all eventually came second to the bottle, which caused a dramatic transformation from wide-eyed debutante waif to haggardly haunted beauty, less faded than soaked, with heavily painted panda eyes. Drink loosened her wicked, inspired tongue, but also set free the demons that led her to neglect the children she loved, and to live in often abject conditions. [+]Nancy Schoenberger does a competent job with the "black Irish gothic" of her story, and manages to convey something of Blackwood's mercurial presence, though perhaps a better sense of the Lowell years is conveyed in Ian Hamilton's Robert Lowell. It will remain a pity that Blackwood did not live long enough to pen her own memoirs, but Schoenberger has written a shrewd, if occasionally timid, account of a talented, doomed beauty, a sometime muse who proved most dangerous, ultimately, to herself. -David Vincent.
Publication date: 2006-10-13
Dewey code: 821.914
RRP: £45.00
Price: £42.00
Review Ted Hughes: A Literary Life (Literary Lives) / Palgrave Macmillan:
Publication date: 2001-09-30
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £5.99
Price: £1.91
Review Donald Writes No More: a Biography of America's Best Selling Black Author Donald Goines / Holloway House Publishing,U.S.:
Authors
- Gillian Hodson
- Michael Darlow
Publication date: 1979-07
Dewey code: 822.912
Price: £11.95
Review Terence Rattigan / Quartet Books:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2007-05-01
Dewey code: 811.52
RRP: £11.99
Price: £6.29
Review The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden / W. W. Norton & Co.:
Publication date: 1999-09-20
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £3.99
Price: £3.18
Review Alpine Path: The Story of My Career / Fitzwarren Publishing:
Publication date: 2003-04-07
Dewey code: 809
RRP: £8.99
Price: £3.50
Review About Hare (About...the Playwrights & Their Works) / Faber and Faber:
Authors
- Ralph Ellison
- Albert Murray
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2001-11-08
Dewey code: 818.5409
RRP: £8.99
Price: £7.19
Review Trading Twelves: Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray (Vintage) / Vintage Books:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2005-02-28
Dewey code: 821.912
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.74
Review Siegfried Sassoon / Metro Books,London:Siegfried Sassoon is mostly remembered for the devastating poetry he wrote during World War One as a result of leading his troops "over the top" to certain death. This episode in his life-when he was sent to military hospital suffering from shell-shock and his heroic return to the Front-is covered extensively in his own writing, and has overshadowed his later literary output. But his more mature poetry is resuscitated in this sensitive, exhaustively researched biography. As well as recounting the friendships "Siggy" famously had with fellow poets Robert Graves and Wilfred Owen, Roberts delves into the more private arena of Sassoon's covert homosexuality and his ill-fated marriage. We learn about Sassoon the passionate golfer and bloodthirsty fox-hunter, all of which adds greater depth to this complex man. Roberts also digs deep into his subject's psyche to reveal a fixation with father figures which started during the War when he was under analysis (and arose from the early death of his father); and uncovers new sources of information concerning Sassoon's conversion to Catholicism. This fresh material means that the earlier life is somewhat neglected, but, then, as Sassoon himself said "My real biography is my poetry. " -Lilian Pizzichini.
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 1992-07-31
Dewey code: 823.912
RRP: £23.99
Price: £15.85
Review The Cambridge Biography of D. H. Lawrence 3 volume hardback set: D. H. Lawrence - The Early Years 1885 - 1912 (The Cambridge Biography) / Cambridge University Press:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 1998-06-04
RRP: £9.99
Price: £0.01
Review Peggy: Life of Margaret Ramsay, Play Agent / Methuen Publishing Ltd:
Creator: Arnold Rampersad
Edition: Reissue
Publication date: 1993-08
Dewey code: 818.5209
Price: £10.42
Review The Big Sea: An Autobiography (American Century) / Hill & Wang:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 1990-07-05
Price: £9.99
Review Timebends: A Life / Minerva:
Authors
- Brian W Pugh
- Paul R Spiring
Publication date: 2008-03-01
Dewey code: 823.912
RRP: £12.99
Price: £6.13
Review On the Trail of Arthur Conan Doyle: An Illustrated Devon Tour / Book Guild Ltd:
Creator: Hannah Arendt
Publication date: 2002-05-30
Dewey code: 809
Price: £9.99
Review Illuminations / Random House Inc:
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Models & Brands:
Wilfred Owen: Poet and Soldier, 1893-1918, How I Came into My Inheritance and Other True Stories, Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton, The Diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner (Virago classic non-fiction), A Very Close Conspiracy: Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, Dangerous Muse: A Life Of Caroline Blackwood: A Life of Caroline Blackwood, Ted Hughes: A Literary Life (Literary Lives), Donald Writes No More: a Biography of America's Best Selling Black Author Donald Goines, Terence Rattigan, The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden, Alpine Path: The Story of My Career, About Hare (About...the Playwrights & Their Works), Trading Twelves: Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray (Vintage), Siegfried Sassoon, The Cambridge Biography of D. H. Lawrence 3 volume hardback set: D. H. Lawrence - The Early Years 1885 - 1912 (The Cambridge Biography), Peggy: Life of Margaret Ramsay, Play Agent, The Big Sea: An Autobiography (American Century), Timebends: A Life, On the Trail of Arthur Conan Doyle: An Illustrated Devon Tour, Illuminations |
