The Lives of Writers
Delve into these life stories of famous writers.
Agatha Christie : a mysterious life
Thompson, Laura, 1964- author
2018
"It has been one hundred years since Agatha Christie wrote her first novel and created the formidable Hercule Poirot. A brilliant and award winning biographer, Laura Thompson now turns her sharp eye to Agatha Christie. Arguably the greatest crime writer in the world, Christie's books still sell over four million copies each year-- more than thirty years after her death-- and it shows no signs of slowing. But who was the woman behind these mystifying, yet eternally pleasing, puzzlers? Thompson reveals the Edwardian world in which Christie grew up, explores her relationships, including those with her two husbands and daughter, and investigates the many mysteries still surrounding Christie's life, most notably, her eleven-day disappearance in 1926. Agatha Christie is as mysterious as the stories she penned, and writing about her is a detection job in itself. With unprecedented access to all of Christie's letters, papers, and notebooks, as well as fresh and insightful interviews with her grandson, daughter, son-in-law and their living relations, Thompson is able to unravel not only the detailed workings of Christie's detective fiction, but the truth behind this mysterious woman"--dust jacket.
The fellowship : the literary lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams
Zaleski, Philip, author
2015
How to live ; or, a life of Montaigne : in one question and twenty attempts at an answer
Bakewell, Sarah
2010
I am Scout : the biography of Harper Lee
Shields, Charles J., 1951-
2008
This biography tells the story of how Harper Lee struggled to become an author and created one of the most popular novels of the 20th century.
Red comet : the short life and blazing art of Sylvia Plath
Clark, Heather L., author
2020
"An engrossing new biography of Sylvia Plath focuses on her remarkable literary and intellectual growth and achievement, restoring the vivid creative woman behind the longtime Plath myths perpetuated by a pathology-based approach to her life and art. With a wealth of never-before-accessed materials, Heather Clark here brings to life the brilliant daughter of Wellesley, MA who had poetic ambition from a very young age, and was an accomplished, published writer of poems and stories before she became the star English student at Smith College. Determined not to read Plath's work as if her every act, from childhood on, was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Clark presents new materials about Plath's scientist father, her juvenile writings, and her psychiatric treatment, and evokes a culture in transition in the mid-twentieth century, in the shadow of the atom bomb and the Holocaust, as she explores Sylvia's world: her early relationships and determination not to become a conventional woman and wife; her conflicted ties to her well-meaning, widowed mother; her troubles at the hands of an unenlightened mental health industry; her Cambridge years and thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes, a marriage of true minds that would change the course of poetry in English; and much more. Clark's clear-eyed sympathy for Hughes, his lover Assia Wevill, and other demonized players in the arena of Plath's suicide promotes a deeper understanding of her final days, with their outpouring of first-rate poems. Along with illuminating readings of the poems themselves, Clark's meticulous, compassionate research brings us closer than ever to the spirited woman and visionary artist who blazed a trail that still lights the way for women poets the world over"-- Provided by publisher.
The talented Miss Highsmith : the secret life and serious art of Patricia Highsmith
Schenkar, Joan
200
A thrilling biography of Patricia Highsmith, author of "The Talented Mr. Ripley", written with full access to the Highsmith archive.
Writer, sailor, soldier, spy : Ernest Hemingway's secret adventures, 1935-1961
Reynolds, Nicholas E., author
2017
