Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2002-09-12
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £9.99
Price: £2.55
Review Painted Shadow: A Life of Vivienne Eliot / Robinson Publishing:In Painted Shadow, the first major biography of Vivienne 'wife of TS' Eliot, Carole Seymour-Jones succeeds where five previous biographers had allegedly failed, and in the process further reclaims the tattered reputation of the poet's tragic collaborative muse. Variously diagnosed with "moral insanity", anorexia and hysteria, Vivienne suffered from severe menstrual symptoms most of her life, as well as an inherited tendency for manic depression. Having collided in their desperation to escape their mothers, she and Tom married in 1915, to their families' disapproval and Tom's quickly encroaching disgust (newly married, he slept in a deckchair in the hall). He was revolted by the female form, and his wife's in particular, but during their 18 years together she was to inspire, and, on occasions, shape, his finest poetry; without her, "in all probability", The Waste Land would not have been written. Seymour-Jo! nes insists on a confessional, intimate reading of this landmark work, focusing on the influence of Jean Verdenal, the young French medic killed in the First World War, and whom Eliot idolised, and, in truth, idealised. Vivienne herself pursued a complicated menage à trois with Bertrand Russell, but she was as transparent as Tom was opaque, and when the cracks in their marriage became chasms he finally left her. After calling herself Daisy Miller she dabbled in music and fascism before finally being committed to a North London asylum in 1938, partly to prevent her besmirching Tom's reputation. She died there nine years later. Ultimately, her malady was less that she had gone out of her mind, than that she had gone out of her husband's. With apposite and rich quotation, Seymour-Jones' prose glides effortlessly through the mire of early 20th-century London literary society, and in and out of the Eliots' tangled lives and marriage, bringing together valuable archive materials, subtle reading of the poetry, and sensitive consideration to produce a compulsive biography of considerable appeal and art. [+]If ultimately Tom upstages the increasingly spectre-like Vivienne with his alcoholic rages, sadistic impulses, and sheer ferocious talent, Seymour-Jones unfurls a 'behind-every-great-man' life that proves as harrowing as it was doomed, and rescues the much-maligned Vivienne Eliot from the attic of literary madwomen. -David Vincent.
Edition: Reprinted Ed
Publication date: 1990-07-01
Dewey code: 788.92165092
RRP: £11.07
Price: £5.20
Review Miles, the Autobiography: The Autobiography / Pocket Books:
Creator: Barbara Becnel
Edition: Reprint
Publication date: 2007-11-13
Dewey code: 364.1523092
RRP: £10.42
Price: £4.76
Review Blue Rage, Black Redemption: A Memoir / Touchstone Books:
Creator: Danille Taylor-Guthrie
Publication date: 1994-04-01
Dewey code: 813.54
RRP: £13.50
Price: £9.29
Review Conversations with Toni Morrison (Literary Conversations) / University Press of Mississippi:
Edition: Revised edition
Publication date: 2005
Dewey code: 401.93
RRP: £49.99
Price: £38.77
Review Language Development (Sports Skills) / Wadsworth Publishing Co Inc:
Authors
- Janwillem Van de Wetering
- Van De
Publication date: 1999-05
Dewey code: 294.3657092
Price: £9.09
Review The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery / St. Martin's Griffin:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2002-07-18
Dewey code: 790
RRP: £8.99
Price: £8.91
Review Public Places: The Autobiography / Hodder & Stoughton Ltd:
Creator: Kevin Hegarty
Publication date: 1995-05
Dewey code: 364.1536
Price: £6.99
Review Betrayal of Trust, Fr. Brendan Smyth Affair and the Catholic Church (Paedophilia & Catholicism) / Marino Books:
Authors
- Janwillem Van de Wetering
- Van De
Publication date: 1999-05
Dewey code: 294.3657092
Price: £9.09
Review The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery / St. Martin's Griffin:
Publication date: 1999-05-20
Price: £10.00
Review From Stockport with Love / Sceptre:
Edition: Lrg
Publication date: 2004-02
Dewey code: 323.092
RRP: £19.51
Price: £2.51
Review The Dream: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Speech That Inspired a Nation (Thorndike American History) / Thorndike Press:
Publication date: 2006-04-15
Dewey code: 362.76092
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.25
Review Living with the Past / John Blake Publishing Ltd:
Edition: Reprint
Publication date: 2007-05-01
Dewey code: 790
RRP: £15.00
Price: £2.51
Review On the Couch / Berkley Publishing Group:
Creator: Nancy Harrison
Publication date: 2003-07
Dewey code: 362.41092
RRP: £9.18
Price: £7.98
Review Who Was Helen Keller? / Topeka Bindery:
Publication date: 2006-08-16
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £7.99
Price: £6.44
Review The Best That I Can Be / The Derwent Press:
Authors
- Sojourner Truth
- Nell Irvin Painter
- Olive Gilbert
Publication date: 2002-02-27
Dewey code: 305.567092
RRP: £3.99
Price: £2.76
Review Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Bondswoman of Olden Time, with a History of Her Labors and Correspondence Drawn from Her Book of Life ; Also, A Memorial Chapter (Penguin Classics) / Penguin Books Ltd:
Publication date: 2006-04-06
Dewey code: 306.730820973
RRP: £14.99
Price: £3.50
Review Check Please!: Dating, Mating, and Extricating / ReganBooks,U.S.:
Creator: Nancy Harrison
Publication date: 2003-07
Dewey code: 362.41092
RRP: £9.18
Price: £7.98
Review Who Was Helen Keller? / Topeka Bindery:
Creator: Jenny Pearson
Publication date: 2004-01-01
Dewey code: 616.8917092
RRP: £29.99
Price: £25.73
Review The Analyst of the Imagination: The Life and Work of Charles Rycroft / Karnac Books:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2002-02-28
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £8.99
Price: £8.99
Review Blood-dark Track: A Family History / Granta Books:In a literary age awash with father-fixation, Joseph O'Neill goes back a generation to recall the lives of not just one but both his grandfathers. This is not mere indulgence: their experiences connect beyond their mutual grandson, and bear comparison with each other. On the one side was Joseph Dakad, a Christian Turk living in the port of Mersin, running a hotel and an import-export business. Jim O'Neill was a Corkman with a fiercely republican heart, who supplemented his graft with salmon poaching. Both grew up among conflict and prejudice, and both suffered at the hands of the British in the Second World War: Joseph was imprisoned as a spy in British-controlled Palestine after a misconceived business trip to import lemons, while Jim was interned in the Curragh as an IRA terrorist. However, the circumstantial meat, or fruit in Joseph's case, of their lives in these famously hospitable, yet divided, countries had remained shrouded by a veil of silence for decades. While the impressively researched detail owes much to his legal training, O'Neill reconstructs his grandfathers' lives with the literary flair of the talented novelist he also is (The Breezes, and This is the Life), yet without ever losing sight of contemporary contexts such as the Good Friday Agreement, and the continuing turmoil in the Middle East. As an outsider with an "in", the conclusions he draws are subtle, profound, and in places bravely troubling, such as when considering the assassination of Protestants by Catholic extremists in the Irish Republic, and the Turkish massacre of the Armenians, of which each man respectively probably had knowledge. In identifying the unavoidable political stitch in the personal weave, though, he seeks to free both men from their exile in silence, if only, as he conjectures with admirable self-scrutiny, to perhaps "lock them up in words as a punishment for the hurt silence which they'd bequeathed my parents". The sense, however, in this splendid account, is of liberation; both of their stories, and from a silence that speaks louder than words could ever imprison. [+]-David Vincent.
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Painted Shadow: A Life of Vivienne Eliot, Miles, the Autobiography: The Autobiography, Blue Rage, Black Redemption: A Memoir, Conversations with Toni Morrison (Literary Conversations), Language Development (Sports Skills), The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery, Public Places: The Autobiography, Betrayal of Trust, Fr. Brendan Smyth Affair and the Catholic Church (Paedophilia & Catholicism), The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery, From Stockport with Love, The Dream: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Speech That Inspired a Nation (Thorndike American History), Living with the Past, On the Couch, Who Was Helen Keller?, The Best That I Can Be, Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Bondswoman of Olden Time, with a History of Her Labors and Correspondence Drawn from Her Book of Life ; Also, A Memorial Chapter (Penguin Classics), Check Please!: Dating, Mating, and Extricating, Who Was Helen Keller?, The Analyst of the Imagination: The Life and Work of Charles Rycroft, Blood-dark Track: A Family History |
