This author excels in literary criticism and biography, delving into the lives and works of significant figures. Her writing is characterized by profound insight and meticulous examination of historical characters. Through her prose, she uncovers complex human relationships and the cultural contexts of different eras. Her contributions are recognized for their scholarly depth and compelling narrative approach.
Witty, courageous and unconventional, Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the most controversial figures of her day. She published A Vindication of the Rights of Women; travelled to revolutionary France and lived through the Terror and the destruction of the incipient French feminist movement; and produced an illegitimate daughter.
Alice Munro, who received the National Book Critics Circle Award for her latest collection of stories, The Love of a Good Woman , is widely acknowledged as a modern master of the short story. In this earlier collection, she demonstrates all of those strengths that have won her so many literary accolades. A divorced woman returns to her childhood home where she confronts the memory of her parents' confounding yet deep bond. The accidental near-drowning of a child exposes the fragility of the trust between children and parents. A young man, remembering a terrifying childhood incident, wrestles with the responsibility he has always felt for his younger brother. In these and other stories Alice Munro proves once again a sensitive and compassionate chronicler of our times. Drawing us into the most intimate corners of ordinary lives, she reveals much about ourselves, our choices, and our experiences of love.
This biography covers Hardy's illegitimate birth, his rural upbringing, his escape to London in the 1860s, his marriages, his status as a bestselling novelist, and in later life, his supreme achievements as a poet.
Claire Tomalin paints an unforgettable portrait of Dickens, capturing brilliantly the complex character of this great genius
"Shelley and His World" was universally acclaimed on publication as an ideal introduction to the poet's life and work. This much-requested reissue is guaranteed to delight Claire Tomalin's loyal readership. 'A vivid, amusing yet heartbreaking picture of Shelley poetry, politics, travel, friendships, love-affairs, scandals, mysteries, children, visions - all gracefully combined' - "London Review of Books".
From the author's study of the Austen family papers, this title paints a picture of the Austen clan and their neighbours, and concludes that the facts of Jane Austen's life were even more extravagant and romantic than her fiction.
A fascinating journey into the life of H.G. Wells, from one of Britain's best biographers How did the first forty years of H. G. Wells' life shape the father of science fiction? From his impoverished childhood in a working-class English family, to his determination to educate himself at any cost, to the serious ill health that dominated his twenties and thirties, his complicated marriages, and love affair with socialism, the first forty years of H. G. Wells' extraordinary life would set him on a path to become one of the world's most influential writers. The sudden success of The Time Machine and The War of The Worlds transformed his life and catapulted him to international fame; he became the writer who most inspired Orwell and countless others, and predicted men walking on the moon seventy years before it happened. In this remarkable, empathetic biography, Claire Tomalin paints a fascinating portrait of a man like no other, driven by curiosity and desiring reform, a socialist and a futurist whose new and imaginative worlds continue to inspire today. 'The finest of biographers' Hilary Mantel 'A most intelligent and sympathetic biographer' Daily Telegraph 'One of the best biographers of her generation' Guardian
Pursuing art and adventure across Europe, Katherine Mansfield lived and wrote with the Furies on her heels; but when she died aged only thirty-four she became one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Sexually ambiguous, craving love yet quarrelsome and capricious, she glittered in the brilliant circles of D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, her beauty and recklessness inspiring admiration, jealousy, rage and devotion. Claire Tomalin�s biography brings us nearer than we have ever been to this courageous, greatly gifted, haunted and haunting writer.
The Unequalled Self
"For ten years, from 1660, Samuel Pepys kept one of the most remarkable records ever made of a human life. With astounding candour and perceptiveness he described his ambitions and speculations, his professional success and failures, his pettinesses and meannesses, his tenderness towards his wife and the irritation and jealousies she provoked, his extramarital longings and fumblings, his coolly critical attitude towards the king he served and his watchful adaptation to the corrupt and treacherous society in which he lived."
he Invisible Woman by Claire Tomalin is the acclaimed story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens. It is the winner of the NCR Book Award, the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. 'This is the story of someone who - almost - wasn't there; who vanished into thin air. Her names, dates, family and experiences very nearly…
You will find it hard not to be amazed and impossible not to be moved by the indomitable spirit which drives this memoir...She comes across like the heroine of a great novel...a hugely entertaining book Anthony Quinn Guardian
"A wise and beautiful book about what it feels like to be alive—I really loved it."—Zadie Smith"Maggie Gee's account of her life as a writer cuts to the bone as she relives triumphs, rejections, despair and renewal. It's a wonderful book, for its boldness and vigour, and for its piercing honesty."—Claire TomalinHow do you become a writer, and why?Maggie Gee's journey starts in a small family in post-war Britain, a long way from the literary world. At seventeen, Maggie goes, a lamb to the slaughter, to university. From the 1960s onwards she lives the defining events of her generation: the coming of the Pill and sexual freedom, tremors in the British layer-cake of class and race. In the 1980s, Maggie finally gets published, falls in love, marries, and has a daughter—but for the next three decades and beyond, she survives, and sometimes thrives, by writing. This frank, bold memoir dares to explore the big questions: success and failure, sex, death, and parenthood—our animal life.Maggie Gee was chosen as one of Granta's original Best Young British Novelists. She has published many novels to great acclaim, including The White Family, shortlisted for the Orange and IMPAC prizes; My Cleaner; The Flood, longlisted for the Orange Prize; and The Ice People. She was the first female chair of the Royal Society of Literature from 2004–2008 and is now one of its vice presidents.
