Literary Biography

The year 2021 marks the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri. His, like ours, was a world of moral uncertainty and political violence, all of which made not only for the agony of exile but for an ever deeper meditation on the nature of human happiness. In Why Dante Matters, John Took offers - by way of three of Dante’s works in particular - an account, not merely of Dante’s development as a poet and philosopher, but of his continuing presence to us as a guide to man’s wellbeing as man.

John Clellon Holmes met Jack Kerouac on a hot New York City weekend in 1948, and until the end of Kerouac's life they were—in Holmes's words—"Brother Souls." Late one night as they sat talking, Kerouac spontaneously created the term "Beat Generation" to describe this new attitude they felt stirring around them. Brother-Souls: John Clellon Holmes, Jack Kerouac, and the Beat Generation is the remarkable chronicle of this cornerstone friendship and the life of John Clellon Holmes.

Why did Norman Mailer stab his second wife at a party? Who was Edith Wharton's secret transatlantic lover? What motivated Anais Nin to become a bigamist? Writers Between the Covers rips the sheets off these and other real-life love stories of the literati - some with fairy tale endings and others that resulted in break-ups, breakdowns, and brawls. Among the writers laid bare are Agatha Christie, who sparked the largest-ever manhunt in England as her marriage fell apart; Arthur Miller, whose jaw-dropping pairing with Marilyn Monroe proved that opposites attract, at least initially.

Look for heroes, far and near. Give your gifts to the world. Have compassion for all creatures. These are just a few of the lessons that Magic Tree House fans will learn on their magical journey through this book. With quotes from the series and classic art by Sal Murdocca, Mary Pope Osborne, beloved author of the number one best-selling Magic Tree House series, shares the wisdom she's gained from her own childhood and 30 years of whisking Jack and Annie away in the magic tree house.

Explore the life and career of Newbery-award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson.

Explore the life and career of award-winning author Nikki Grimes.

Presented here is Volume III of our Feminist Literary Classics series, featuring three of the most important feminist novels ever written: Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf, O Pioneers! by Willa Cather and So Big by Edna Ferber. The first book in this collection is Orlando: A Biography, a groundbreaking English novel by Virginia Woolf that explores English history, gender roles and sexual politics in a way few books have before or since.

An absorbing chronicle of a much overlooked chapter in Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ life - her 19-year editorial career. History remembers Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as the consummate first lady, the nation’s tragic widow, the tycoon’s wife, and the quintessential embodiment of elegance. Her biographers, however, skip over an equally important stage in her life: her nearly 20-year-long career as a book editor. Jackie as Editor, written by one of the authors Jackie edited, is the first book to focus exclusively on this remarkable woman’s editorial career.

Meet one of the most significant and notorious American writers of the 20th century. Ernest Hemingway is considered one of the greatest writers in modern history, and his novels and stories are read, studied, and imitated around the world. His concise prose style earned him both a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize. His name conjures up vivid images: grand adventurer, soldier, war correspondent, big-game hunter, bullfight aficionado, and writer.

Born into the household of a wealthy slave owner in Cuba in 1797, Juan Francisco Manzano spent his early years by the side of a woman who made him call her Mama, even though he had a mama of his own. Denied an education, young Juan still showed an exceptional talent for poetry. His verses reflect the beauty of his world, but they also expose its hideous cruelty.

The life of Letitita Elizabeth Landon - pen name L.E.L. - was one lived in a blaze of scandal and worship, one of the most famous women of her time, the Romantic Age in London's 1820s, her life and writing on the ascendency as Byron's came to an end. Lucasta Miller tells the full story and recreates the literary London of her time.

In The Position of Spoons, Deborah Levy invites the listener into the interiors of her world, sharing her most intimate thoughts and experiences, as she traces and measures her life against the backdrop of the literary and artistic muses that have shaped her. From Marguerite Duras to Colette and Ballard, and from Lee Miller to Francesca Woodman and Paula Rego, we can relish here the richness of their work and, in turn the richness of the author’s own.

It seems entirely fitting that Maurice Sendak was born on the same day that Mickey Mouse first made his cartoon debut - June 10, 1928. Sendak was crazy about cartoons and comic books, and at 12, after seeing Disney's Fantasia, he decided that he was going to become an illustrator. His love of children's books began early: Often sick and confined to bed, little Maurice read and read and read.

It is not often that an author and his editor strike up a relationship which survives forty years of epistolary exchanges and intellectual sparring. The strangely enduring and occasionally fractious friendship which developed between the famously outspoken historian Ramachandra Guha and his reticent editor Rukun Advani is the subject of this quite eccentric and thoroughly compelling literary memoir.

When Rebecca Barry and her husband moved to upstate New York to start their family, they wanted to be surrounded by natural beauty but close to a small urban center, doing work they loved, and plenty of time to spend with their kids. But living their dreams turned out not to be so simple.

James Baldwin (1924–1987) was a pivotal figure of the twentieth century, an influential author, intellectual, and activist who led a celebrated public life—and whose words and image and persona remain current in our culture. Baldwin's many incarnations have reemerged in the digital age as Baldwin's work becomes a touchstone for a new generation. It is the private, vulnerable, and messier Baldwin—the man behind the prophet and the online meme—who is the focus of this book.

Each featured novelist, playwright or poet has biographical entries tracing the friendships, loves and rivalries that inspired each individual and influenced their work, revealing insights into the larger-than-life characters, plots and evocative settings that they created. This audiobook introduces the key ideas, themes and literary techniques of each writer, revealing the imaginations and personalities behind some of the world's greatest novels, short stories, poems and plays.

Richard and Victoria Tinyes feared the worst when their thirteen year old daughter Kelly Ann vanished from their quiet suburban community of Valley Stream, New York, on March 3, 1999. But the nightmare to come was worse than they could ever imagine. Only five doors away, in the home of John and Elizabeth Golub, police found Kelly Ann's body stuffed in a plastic garbage bag. She'd been brutally beaten, stabbed, strangled, and mutilated. After weeks of intense investigation, police arrested the Golubs twenty-one-year-old son, Robert - a reclusive young man obsessed with bodybuilding and given to fits of rage. The sensational trial and subsequent conviction of Robert Golub shocked the nation and tore the once peaceful community apart. Neighbors took sides. So did the media. And no one who lived on Horton Road would ever be the same. Note on audio book: Except for the beginning and end of the book, there is no longer any music.

In literary circles of the mid-twentieth century, father and son, Ikbal and Idries Shah, spread seductive accounts of a mystical Middle East. Pitching themselves as the authentic voice of the Muslim world, they penned travelogues and exotic potboilers alongside weighty tomes on Islam and politics.

Phillis Wheatley was just another child kidnapped into slavery from Senegal, until she began to show enormous intellectual promise, eventually shocking a room of Boston scholars by translating Ovid at the age of 14. Wheatley would go on to become a major voice in the American literary scene and would pave the way for African American writers to come.