Claire Harman brings a sharp, analytical focus to literary biography, blending critical insight with compelling narrative. Her work delves into the lives and oeuvres of notable writers, exploring the intricate connections between their personal experiences and their creative output. Harman is adept at uncovering the complexities of authorship and tracing how literary legacies evolve and permeate culture. Her thoughtful prose offers readers a fresh perspective on enduring literary figures.
The poet Sylvia Townsend Warner rose to sudden fame with the publication of her classic feminist novel Lolly Willowes in 1926, but never became a conventional member of London literary life, pursuing instead a long writing career in her own individualistic manner. This book deals with her life and work.
Raised motherless on remote Yorkshire moors, watching five beloved siblings sicken and die, haunted by unrequited love: Charlotte Bronte's life has all the drama and tragedy of the great Gothic novels it inspired. This book presents an illuminating account of one of our best-loved novelists.
The life of Robert Louis Stevenson was as captivating as his stories, filled with adventure and complexity. He navigated contrasting roles, from engineer to artist and devout to rebellious. His experiences—including extensive travels, health challenges, and intense personal relationships—shaped his literary genius. This biography explores the legendary writer's tumultuous journey, revealing the man behind iconic tales of pirates and monsters.
'All Sorts of Lives is a beautiful, fastidiously researched and fascinating exploration of Mansfield's life and work' A.L. KENNEDY Restless outsider, masher-up of form and convention, Katherine Mansfield’s career was short but dazzling. She was the only writer Virginia Woolf admitted being jealous of, yet by the 1950s was so undervalued that Elizabeth Bowen was moved to ask, 'Where is she – our missing contemporary?' In this inventive and intimate study, Claire Harman takes a fresh look at Mansfield’s life and achievements, through the form she did so much to revolutionise: the short story. Exploring ten pivotal works, we watch how Mansfield’s desire to grow as a writer pushed her art into unknown territory, and how illness sharpened her extraordinary vitality: ‘Would you not like to try all sorts of lives – one is so very small.’ ‘What a gift to the biographer, this life of adventure and sickness and sex and celebrity… Brilliant’ Sunday Times ‘A searching, incisive and compulsive book. A lesson in how to read and connect and understand’ Sunjeev Sahota
The most authoritative, comprehensive, perceptive biography of R. L. Stevenson to date, using for the first time his collected correspondence - which has been unavailable to all previous writers.
The first book about Jane Austen to dissect the industry around her - a completely original approach to one of Britain's most enduring popular novelists
Jane's Fame tells the fascinating story of Jane Austen's renown, from the years of rejection the author faced during her lifetime to the global recognition and adoration she now enjoys. Almost two hundred years after her death, Austen remains a hot topic, constantly open to revival and reinterpretation and known to millions of people through film and television adaptations as much as through her books. In Jane's Fame, Claire Harman gives us the complete biography—of both the author and her lasting cultural influence—making this essential reading for anyone interested in Austen's life, works, and remarkably potent fame.
On a spring morning in 1840, on an ultra-respectable Mayfair street, a household of servants awoke to discover that their unobtrusive master, Lord William Russell, was lying in bed with his throat cut so deeply that the head was almost severed. The whole of London, from monarch to maidservants, was scandalized by the unfolding drama of such a shocking murder, but behind it was another story, a work of fiction. For when the culprit eventually confessed, he claimed his actions were the direct result of reading the best-selling crime-novel of the day. This announcement amazed the key literary figures of the time, from Thackeray to Dickens, and posed the question- can a work of fiction do real harm?
