Edition: Reprint
Publication date: 2007-01-30
Dewey code: 910.4
Price: £9.77
Review Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia / Penguin Books:
Publication date: 2008-09-19
Dewey code: 782.42164092
RRP: £14.99
Price: £9.17
Review When I Grow Up: A Memoir / John Wiley & Sons:
Publication date: 2002-07-05
Dewey code: 942.6084092
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.76
Review Betty's Wartime Diary 1939-1945 / Thorogood:
Publication date: 2006-02-09
Dewey code: 306.7092
RRP: £7.99
Price: £2.93
Review Diaries of an Internet Lover / Virgin Books:
Edition: Rev Ed
Publication date: 2004-03-25
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £10.99
Price: £5.91
Review The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens / Penguin:
Creator: Karen V. Kukil
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2001-04-09
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £17.99
Price: £10.23
Review The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962 / Faber and Faber:"I have experienced love, sorrow, madness and if I cannot make these experiences meaningful, no new experience will help me". -Sylvia Plath, November 15, 1959. In the decades that have followed the suicide of Sylvia Plath in February 1963, much has been written and speculated about her life; most particularly her marriage to fellow-poet Ted Hughes and her last months spent writing the stark, confessional poems that became Ariel and that posthumously made her name. The myths surrounding Plath were intensified by the strong grip her estate-managed by Hughes and his sister Olwyn-had over the release of her work. Sylvia Plath kept journals from the age of 11 until her death at 30. Previously only available in an abridged American edition, with heavy black scorings out of passages that Ted Hughes did not at the time want read, The Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962 is the first unabridged publication of Plath's diaries, scrupulously transcribed (with every spelling mistake and grammatical error left intact) and annotated by Karen V. Kukil, curator at Plath's US alma mater, Smith College. The Journals show the breathless adolescent obsessed with her burgeoning sexuality, the serious university student competing to get the highest grades while engaging in the human merry-go-round of 1950s dating, the graduate year spent at Cambridge University where Plath's auspicious first meeting with Ted Hughes took place; their marriage a few months later ("He is a genius. I his wife"). Plath's documentation of the two years (1957-1959) the couple spent in the US teaching and writing highlights explicitly the dilemma of the late 1950s' woman-still swaddled in expectations of domesticity, yet attempting to forge her own independent professional and personal life. [+]This period also reveals in detail the therapy sessions in which Plath lets loose her antipathy for her mother and her grief at her father's death when she was eight-a contrast to the bright, all-American persona she presented to her mother in the correspondence that was published as Letters Home. There are some notable omissions in terms of chronology. Plath's breakdown during the summer of 1953, attempted suicide and hospitalisation are not covered in any great detail in her journals, but she recorded the events minutely in her one novel, The Bell Jar. Fragments of diaries exist after 1959, which saw the couple's return to England and rural retreat in Devon, the birth of their two children, and their separation in late 1962. An extended piece on the illness and death of an elderly neighbour during this period is particularly affecting and was later turned into the poem "Berck-Plage". Much has been made of the "lost diaries" that Plath kept until her suicide-one simply appears to have vanished, the other was burnt by Hughes after her death. It would seem rapacious to wish for more details of Plath's despair in her final days, however. This was crystallised in the poems that became Ariel, and this is what the voice of her journals ultimately send the reader back to: Plath's life has for too long been obfuscated by anecdote, distorting her major contribution to late 20th-century literature. As she wrote in "Kindness": "The blood jet is poetry. There is no stopping it". -Catherine Taylor.
Authors
- Pierre-Henri Verlhac
- Yann-Brice Dherbier
Publication date: 2008-08-18
Dewey code: 778
RRP: £25.00
Price: £9.72
Review Elizabeth Taylor: A Life in Pictures / Pavilion Books:
Creator: Nicola Beauman
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 1984-11-15
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.47
Review The Diary of a Provincial Lady / Virago Press Ltd:
Publication date: 2007-10-04
Dewey code: 306.776092
RRP: £7.99
Price: £3.31
Review Dances with Werewolves (Memoirs of a Spanking Model) / Virgin Books:
Creator: Author
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2003-08-04
RRP: £15.99
Price: £8.56
Review Joyce Grenfell Requests the Pleasure (BBC Radio Collection: The "Woman's Hour" Serial) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Publication date: 2008-08-07
Dewey code: 941.693092
RRP: £6.99
Price: £2.41
Review Even on Days When it Rains: A True Story of Hardship and Maternal Love / Ebury Press:
Publication date: 2007-11
Dewey code: 700.92
RRP: £12.99
Price: £8.68
Review Akiane: Her Life, Her Art, Her Poetry / Nelson Books an imprint of Thomas Nelson Publishers:
Creator: John Miller
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2006-09-14
Dewey code: 792.028092
RRP: £14.99
Price: £6.93
Review Scenes From My Life / Phoenix:
Edition: Reprint
Publication date: 2003-04-22
Dewey code: 649
RRP: £10.42
Price: £4.80
Review Baby Catcher: Chronicles Modern / Simon & Schuster (Trade Division):
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2004-08-18
Dewey code: 782.42164092
RRP: £12.95
Price: £7.82
Review Edith Piaf: The Wheel of Fortune: the Official Autobiography / Peter Owen Ltd:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2004-04-01
Dewey code: 630.92
RRP: £7.99
Price: £2.75
Review The Funny Farm / Bantam Books:
Publication date: 2008-07-01
Dewey code: 782.42164092
RRP: £8.99
Price: £3.74
Review Memories, Dreams and Reflections / HarperPerennial:
Publication date: 2008-11-13
RRP: £17.99
Price: £11.89
Review Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women / Methuen Publishing Ltd:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2003-06-02
Dewey code: 70
RRP: £7.99
Price: £1.00
Review The Kindness of Strangers / Headline:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2002-08-01
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £9.99
Price: £1.99
Review Mary Queen Of Scots (Women In History) / Phoenix:
| Models & Brands:
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, When I Grow Up: A Memoir, Betty's Wartime Diary 1939-1945, Diaries of an Internet Lover, The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens, The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962, Elizabeth Taylor: A Life in Pictures, The Diary of a Provincial Lady, Dances with Werewolves (Memoirs of a Spanking Model), Joyce Grenfell Requests the Pleasure (BBC Radio Collection: The "Woman's Hour" Serial), Even on Days When it Rains: A True Story of Hardship and Maternal Love, Akiane: Her Life, Her Art, Her Poetry, Scenes From My Life, Baby Catcher: Chronicles Modern, Edith Piaf: The Wheel of Fortune: the Official Autobiography, The Funny Farm, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women, The Kindness of Strangers, Mary Queen Of Scots (Women In History) |
