Peter Ackroyd In this remarkable new biography, Peter Ackroyd offers a different view of Dickens to that presented in his earlier study of the author. In that book, Ackroyd's attempts to mimic the voice of the great writer were highly controversial, though some saw the book as a radical re-invention of the biography form. There is no arguing with the brilliant achievement of the more straightforward Charles Dickens: Public Life and Private Passion, however; the picture of Dickens and his complicated private life that emerges is fastidiously detailed and powerfully evocative, while Ackroyd's customary skill at creating a panoply of the city of London is as dazzling as ever (London, is, in fact, the subject of another biography by the author, who is unquestionably the keenest chronicler of the city's colourful history). Here, Ackroyd attempts to peel away the mask of a man whose life was outwardly a picture of Victorian rectitude, but whose love life was as complicated (and unconventional) as any modern writer. Dickens had everything—fame, success and riches—but he died harbouring a deep sadness he had experienced all his life. He was a man of mercurial character, had enormous vitality and humour, but he also had a sense of loss and longing that would constantly appear in his work. Like many eminent Victorians, he led a double life: although he insisted that nothing in the newspapers he edited should upset his middle-class readers, he regularly indulged in dubious night-time escapades with fellow author Wilkie Collins, and, for the last 13 years of his life, kept a secret mistress.

While presenting a warm but astringent portrait of the man who (along with George Eliot) can be classed as the greatest writer of his age, Ackroyd also masterfully recreates the relationship with the actress Ellen Ternan, a strong and intelligent woman (herself the subject of a biography by Claire Tomalin, The Inviisble Woman who, like her lover, outwardly observed the proprieties while living her real life behind closed doors. Ackroyd also vividly conjures the reality of Victorian life, the issues that sparked Dickens' fervent call for social reform, and the great landmarks of the time, which profoundly affected his life and work. —Barry Forshaw

Ann Atkinson

Michael Bakewell Melissa Bakewell Augusta Leigh lived, in the words of the old Chinese curse, through interesting times. The daughter of one of the most scandalous affairs of the 18th century, Augusta herself married the horse-mad Lieutenant-Colonel George Leigh, equerry and companion of the Prince of Wales. Leigh gambled and cheated, falling from grace into poverty and taking his wife and seven children with him. But it is Augusta's subsequent love affair with her half-brother, Byron the poet, that constitutes the most remarkable adventure of her life. This incestuous passion is one of the most famous, or notorious, in literary history: it led to the collapse of Byron's marriage and his exile from England, and remains a scandal even to this day. Byron's wife, Annabella, was a mild-mannered intellectual woman with a taste for mathematics; but she was driven to distracted jealousy by her husband's incestuous liaison and declared of Augusta "that there were moments when I could have plunged a dagger into her heart". It is all potent, hot-blooded stuff and the temptation to turn this gripping story into a lurid soap opera would be hard to resist. But the Bakewells do something much more compelling in this excellent biography; their restraint brings out the vividness and emotional complexity of the story better than any previous telling. Only occasionally does the prose become swayed by the passion of the subject—as when Byron and Augusta fall in love, "drawn irresistibly closer by a physical attraction that became more electric as each day carried their discovery of one another a little further". Byron himself emerges from the narrative as immature and spoilt to a near-monstrous degree, although the Bakewells try to be understanding (of his psychological torture of his wife they admit that Byron appears no more than "an overgrown schoolboy", and add "but he was feeling hurt, angry and deeply unhappy and was determined to make someone suffer for it"). Byron's wronged wife Annabella, and her lengthy campaign to blacken Augusta's reputation are also well handled, and Augusta herself emerges as a thoroughly compelling character: a deeply nice individual who "firmly believed that there was no harm in anything that did not damage others". With a passionate romantic streak running through her warm and easy-going personality, she emerges from this biography as a grounded and likeable human being. —Adam Roberts

Eric Wollencott Barnes

Maria Bellonci

Robert Browning Elizabeth Barrett Browning Love letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett.

GG Byron

GG Byron

GG Byron

GG Byron

Lord George Gordon Byron

Casanova

David Cecil

Agatha Christie

Matthew Arnold: edited by A. Dwight Culler

Roald Dahl Continuing the story begun in Boy, this book takes young Roald Dahl to Tanzania in 1938, where he enlists in the RAF when war is declared. After a crash landing on a solo flight, Dahl begins the long struggle toward restored health and home.

Monica Dickens

Monica Dickens

Gerald Durrell

Gerald Durrell As a self-described "champion of small uglies," English writer Gerald Durrell (1925-1995) devoted his life to writing and the preservation of wildlife, from the Mauritius pink pigeon to the Rodriques fruit bat. My Family and Other Animals was intended to embrace the natural history of the Greek island of Corfu, but ended up as a delightful account of his family's experiences that were, according to him, "rather like living in one of the more flamboyant and slapstick comic operas."

As a 10-year-old boy, Gerry left England for Corfu with "all those items that I thought necessary to relieve the tedium of a long journey: four books on natural history, a butterfly net, a dog, and a jam-jar full of caterpillars all in imminent danger of turning into chrysalids." Durrell's descriptions of his family and its many eccentric hangers-on (he stresses that "all the anecdotes about the island and the islanders are absolutely true") are highly entertaining, as is the procession of toads, scorpions, geckos, ladybugs, glowworms, octopuses, the puppies Widdle and Puke, and the Magenpies. This is a lovely book.

Benita Eisler

Elliot Engel • GEOFFREY CHAUCER • WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE • JANE AUSTEN • ROBERT BROWNING & ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING • EDGAR ALLAN POE • CHARLES DICKENS • CHARLOTTE & EMILY BRONTË • EMILY DICKINSON • MARK TWAIN • GEORGE ELIOT • THOMAS HARDY • OSCAR WILDE • SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE • D. H. LAWRENCE • F. SCOTT FITZGERALD • ERNEST HEMINGWAY • ROBERT FROST

They are icons of the literary world whose soaring works have been discussed and analyzed in countless classrooms, homes, and pubs. Yet for most readers, the living, breathing human beings behind the classics have remained unknown...until now! In this utterly captivating book, Dr. Elliot Engel, a foremost authority on the lives of great authors, illuminates the fascinating and flawed men and women of literature's elite. In lieu of stuffy biographical sketches A Dab of Dickens & A Touch of Twain reveals dozens of fascinating anecdotes:

• Why Sir Arthur Conan Doyle blamed his wife's death on Sherlock Holmes

• How Charles Dickens' pet launched Edgar Allan Poe on his way to literary immortality

• The strange connection between Jane Austen and Ernest Hemingway

• How Louisa May Alcott's attempt to get Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn banned backfired...and more!

You'll never look at these literary giants the same way again.

Olaudah Equiano

Amanda Foreman Georgiana Spencer was, in a sense, an 18th-century It Girl. She came from one of England's richest and most landed families (the late Princess Diana was a Spencer too) and married into another. She was beautiful, sensitive, and extravagant—drugs, drink, high-profile love affairs, and even gambling counted among her favorite leisure-time activities. Nonetheless, she quickly moved from a world dominated by social parties to one focused on political parties. The duchess was an intimate of ministers and princes, and she canvassed assiduously for the Whig cause, most famously in the Westminster election of 1784. By turns she was caricatured and fawned on by the press, and she provided the inspiration for the character of Lady Teazle in Richard Sheridan's famous play The School for Scandal. But her weaknesses marked the last part of her life. By 1784, for one, Georgiana owed "many, many, many thousands," and her creditors dogged her until her death.

Biographer Amanda Foreman describes astutely the mess that surrounded the personal relationships of the aristocratic subculture (Georgiana and the duke engaged for many years in a ménage à trois with Lady Elizabeth Fraser, who inveigled her way into the duke's bed and the duchess's heart). Foreman is, by her own admission, a little in love with her subject, which can lead to occasional lapses of perspective, but generally it adds zest to a narrative built on, rather than burdened by, scholarship, that is at once accessible and learned. An impressive debut, in every sense. —David Vincent, Amazon.co.uk

Margaret Greaves

Phyllis Grosskurth

James Herriot

Margaret Lane

Sydney Lee A biography of William Shakespeare by the eminent English critic Sidney Lee, this book was one of the first major biographies of the Bard of Avon and is now reissued by Coyote Canyon Press.

Doris Leslie

Valerie Lester

Janet Malcolm

Janet Malcolm

Daphne du Maurier A poignant portrait of the unknown Brontë.

As a bold and gifted child, Branwell Brontë’s promise seemed boundless to the three adoring sisters over whom his rule was complete. But as an adult, the precocious flame of genius flickered and burned low. With neither the strength nor the resources to counter rejection, unable to sell his paintings or publish his books, Branwell became a specter in the Brontë story, in pathetic contrast with the remarkable achievements of Charlotte, Anne, and Emily. Daphne du Maurier concentrates all her biographer’s skill on the shadowy figure of Branwell Brontë, and no reader could fail to be intensely moved by Branwell’s final retreat into laudanum, alcohol—and death.

Dame Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989) wrote more than 25 acclaimed novels, short stories, and plays, including Rebecca and The House on the Strand. She was also a passionate and skillful biographer. Now, her finest biographical works are being reissued in the distinguished Virago Modern Classics series.

Daphne du Maurier An engaging biography of lawyer, writer, and philosopher Sir Francis Bacon.

"All rising to great place is by a winding stair," wrote Sir Francis Bacon. It wasn’t until he was forty-five that Bacon’s feet found the first step on that staircase, when King James I made him Solicitor-General, from where he rose through the ranks to become Lord Chancellor. Many accounts of the life of Sir Francis Bacon have been written for scholars, but du Maurier’s aim was to paint a vivid portrait of this remarkable man for the common reader. In The Winding Stair, she illuminates the considerable achievements of this Renaissance man: as a writer, lawyer, philosopher, scientist, and politician.

Dame Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989) wrote more than 25 acclaimed novels, short stories, and plays, including Rebecca and The House on the Strand. She was also a passionate and skillful biographer. Now, her finest biographical works are being reissued in the distinguished Virago Modern Classics series.

Elizabeth Mavor

Frances McCullough

Ian McIntyre

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Lucy Moore As vice chamberlain to George II, a favourite of the Queen and a loyal supporter of the prime minister, Lord Hervey was one of the most famous and influential aristocrats of the early 18th century. But behind the respectable public persona lay a disreputable private life. Scandalously for the time, Hervey had an almost open relationship with another man. Although publicly scorned and satirised (most famously by poet Alexander Pope), Hervey refused to retaliate; and retained a dignified and defiant silence. As a consequence, Hervey is remembered today as his detractors portrayed him over two-and-a-half centuries ago. Lucy Moore's Amphibious Thing sets about trying to readdress Hervey's negative press. By including extracts from private letters and two volumes of memoirs, Moore presents Hervey's posthumous defence. "They reveal a man more complex than the caricatures drawn up by his enemies, which are circumscribed by their topicality as well as their spite." According to Moore (author of the critically acclaimed The Thieves' Opera) Hervey's bisexuality just exemplified the ambiguity of his personality. "He hid behind a web of artifice and deception, of affectation and wit, never letting anyone get close enough to see his innermost self." Meticulously researched, Moore's book helps the reader to understand the make-up of an exceptionally modern man "who lived beyond the parameters of his age". An age Moore manages to recount so colourfully it is as if you were there. —Christopher Kelly

Dymphna Cusack Florence James Miles Franklin Marilla North

Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys

Nancy Phelan

James Boswell, Frederick A Pottle

Peter Quennell

Thomas De Quincey

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Charles J. Shields “A fine, well-rounded portrait of Harper Lee. Mockingbird is good reading.”—Star-Tribune (Minneapolis)
To Kill a Mockingbird—the twentieth century’s most widely read American novel—has sold thirty million copies and still sells a million yearly. Yet despite her book’s perennial popularity, its creator, Harper Lee, has become a somewhat mysterious figure. Now, after years of research, Charles J. Shields brings to life the warmhearted, high-spirited, and occasionally hardheaded woman who gave us two of American literature’s most unforgettable characters—Atticus Finch and his daughter, Scout.
At the center of Shields’s evocative, lively book is the story of Lee’s struggle to create her famous novel, but her colorful life contains many highlights—her girlhood as a tomboy in overalls in tiny Monroeville, Alabama; the murder trial that made her beloved father’s reputation and inspired her great work; her journey to Kansas as Truman Capote’s ally and research assistant to help report the story of In Cold Blood. Mockingbird—unique, highly entertaining, filled with humor and heart—is a wide-ranging, idiosyncratic portrait of a writer, her dream, and the place and people whom she made immortal.

Robert Lance Snyder

Anne Somerset

Lytton Strachey

David Sweetman A biography of Van Gogh which provides information about his early years - his struggle to become an artist and the relatively short time in which he painted his masterpieces. The author has previously "ghosted" on Franco Zeffirelli's autobiography.

MADAME DE SEVIGNE & TANCO

Ellen Terry

Flora Thompson

Anthony Trollope

George Holbert Tucker

Ethel Sybil Turner

Catherine Turney

Joyce A. Tyldesley She was the beloved wife of "heretic king" Akhenaton, who defied ancient custom by practicing monotheism and by elevating Nefertiti far above the role of subservient consort previously played by Egyptian queens. Her image has ravished Western viewers ever since a magnificent limestone bust unearthed at the royal retreat of Amarna went on display in Berlin in 1924. But frustratingly few facts are known about this woman who lived more than three millennia ago. As she did in Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh, British archeologist Joyce Tyldesley makes a virtue of necessity by writing a book that is as much a cultural history as a biography. As Akhenaton swept away the plethora of old gods, dismaying many of his subjects, he needed a strong female figure to soften the abstract austerity of Aten, the sun deity; his beautiful queen was celebrated in official art and inscriptions that focused on the domestic life of the royal family. Tyldesley meticulously analyzes this iconography to evaluate Nefertiti's position in Egypt and her importance to her husband, who clearly cherished her beyond the demands of propriety or political necessity. The author cannot give readers a strong sense of Nefertiti's personality—the evidence simply isn't there—but she paints a wonderfully evocative picture of life at the civilized heart of the ancient world. —Wendy Smith

Christina Vella

John Vincent

Elizabeth Webby

Alison Weir The tempestuous, bloody, and splendid reign of Henry VIII of England (1509-1547) is one of the most fascinating in all history, not least for his marriage to six extraordinary women. In this accessible work of brilliant scholarship, Alison Weir draws on early biographies, letters, memoirs, account books, and diplomatic reports to bring these women to life. Catherine of Aragon emerges as a staunch though misguided woman of principle; Anne Boleyn, an ambitious adventuress with a penchant for vengeance; Jane Seymour, a strong-minded matriarch in the making; Anne of Cleves, a good-natured and innocent woman naively unaware of the court intrigues that determined her fate; Catherine Howard, an empty-headed wanton; and Catherine Parr, a warm-blooded bluestocking who survived King Henry to marry a fourth time.

Alison Weir

Alison Weir On the night of 10 February 1567 an explosion devastated the Edinburgh residence of Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots. The noise was heard as far away as Holyrood Palace, where Queen Mary was attending a wedding masque. Those arriving at the scene of devastation found, in the garden, the naked corpses of Darnley and his valet. Neither had died in the explosion, but both bodies bore marks of strangulation. It was clear that they had been murdered and the house destroyed in an attempt to obliterate the evidence. Darnley was not a popular king-consort, but he was regarded by many as having a valid claim to the English throne. For this reason Elizabeth I had opposed his family's longstanding wish to marry him to Mary Stuart, who herself claimed to be the rightful queen of England. Alison Weir's investigation of Darnley's murder is set against one of the most dramatic periods in British history. Her conclusions shed a brilliant new sight on the actions and motives of the conspirators and, in particular, the extent of Mary's own involvement.

Raymond Wiliams

Norman Lloyd Williams

Simon Winchester The making of the "Oxford English Dictionary" was a monumental 50 year task requiring thousands of volunteers. One of the keenest volunteers was a W C Minor who astonished everyone by refusing to come to Oxford to receive his congratulations. In the end, James Murray, the "OED's" editor, went to Crowthorne in Berkshire to meet him. What he found was incredible - Minor was a millionaire American civil war surgeon turned lunatic, imprisoned in Broadmoor Asylum for murder and yet who dedicated his entire cell-bound life to work on the English language.

James Woodforde

Dorothy Wordsworth

William Wordsworth Dorothy Wordsworth