The Devil in France: My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940 by Lion Feuchtwanger

$14.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: near fine

Blue Nights by Joan Didion

$10.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: very good

From one of America's greatest and most iconic writers: an honest and courageous portrait of age and motherhood. Several days before Christmas 2003, Joan Didion's only daughter, Quintana, fell seriously ill. In 2010, Didion marked the sixth anniversary of her daughter's death. 'Blue Nights' is a shatter ingly honest examination of Joan Didion's life as a mother, a woman and a writer. Recently widowed, and becoming increasingly frail, 'Blue Nights' is Didion's attempt to understand our deepest fears, our inadequate adjustments to aging and to put a name to what we refuse to see and as a consequence fail to face up to, 'this refusal even to engage in such contemplation, this failure to confront the certainties of aging, illness and death. This fear.' This fear is tied to what we cherish most and fight to conserve, protect, and refuse to let go, for, 'when we are talking about mortality we are talking about our children.' To face death is to let go of memory, to be bereft once more, 'I know what it is I am now experiencing. I know what the frailty is, I know what the fear is.' The fear is not for what is lost. The fear is for what is still to be lost. You may see nothing still to be lost. Yet there is no day in her life on which I do not see her. A profound, poetic and powerful book about motherhood and the fierce way in which we continue to exalt and nurture our children, even if they only live on in memory. 'Blue Nights' is an intensely personal, and yet, strangely universal account of how we love. It is both groundbreaking and a culmination of a stunning career. ...Show more

Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

$10.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Series: Vintage International Ser. | Reading Level: very good

From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage--and a life, in good times and bad--that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

Leonard Woolf : A life by Victoria Glendinning

$12.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: good

Many people today know Leonard Woolf mainly through the surname of his wife, Virginia, or his role in supporting her through her mental illness. Some critics see him as his wife's oppressor. In Victoria Glendinning's biography, we see the whole man for the whole time. As well as being a prominent member of the Bloomsbury group, Leonard was a formidable figure in his own right, first as an innovative civil administrator in Ceylon, then as a writer, leading light of the Fabian society and publisher of TS Eliot, EM Forster, Robert Graves, Katherine Mansfield and of course Virginia Woolf. He was interested in everything and knew everybody. The achievement of Glendinning's book is to make its readers wish that they knew him too. ...Show more

The Animals: Love Letters Between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy by Christopher Isherwood

$14.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: very good

Christopher Isherwood was a celebrated English writer when he met the Californian teenager Don Bachardy on a Santa Monica beach in 1952. They spent their first night together on Valentine's Day 1953. Defying the conventions, the two men began living as an openly gay couple in an otherwise closeted Holly wood. The Animals provides a loving testimony of an extraordinary relationship that lasted until Chris' death in 1986 - and survived affairs (on both sides) and a thirty-year-age-gap. In romantic letters to one another, the couple created the private world of the Animals. Chris was Dobbin, a stubborn old workhorse; Don was the playful young white cat, Kitty. But Don needed to carve out his own identity - some of their longest sequences of letters were exchanged during his trips to London and New York, to pursue his career as an artist and to widen his emotional and sexual horizons. Amidst the intimate domestic dramas, we learn of Isherwood's continuing literary success - the royalty cheques from Cabaret, the acclaim for his pioneering novel A Single Man - and the bohemian whirl of Californian film suppers and beach life. Don, whose portraits of London theatreland were making his name, attends the world premiere of The Innocents with Truman Capote and afterwards dines with Deborah Kerr and the rest of the cast, spends weekends with Tennessee Williams, Cecil Beton, or the Earl and Countess of Harewood, and tours Egypt and Greece with a new love interest. But whatever happens in the outside world, Dobbin and Kitty always return to their 'Basket' and to each other. Candid, gossipy, exceptionally affectionate, The Animals is a unique interplay between two creative spirits, confident in their mutual devotion. ...Show more

Blake by Peter Ackroyd

$40.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: very good

Primo Levi: Tragedy of an Optimist by Anissimov

$20.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: very good

This edition of Myriam Anissimov's penetrating and thoughtful biography of Primo Levi, delves deeply into the life, mind and work of the influential and controversial writer, philosopher and Holocaust witness.

Sean O'Casey and His World by David Krause

$12.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: very good

Lewis Carroll and His World by John Pudney

$10.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: good

Edward Lear and His World by John Lehmann

$14.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: very good

Henry James and His World by Harry T. Moore

$12.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: very good

John Keats by Stephen Hebron

$12.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Series: The British Library Writers' Lives | Reading Level: very good

John Keats died at an early age, leaving what have become some of the best-known English poems, such as Ode to a Nightingale, Ode to a Grecian Urn, Ode to Melancholy and Ode to Autumn. In this biography of Keats, Stephen Hebron traces Keats' life and development as a poet, assessing his work in the cont ext of the contemporary social and literary scene. After leaving school, Keats gained an apprenticeship to a surgeon and went on to qualify as an apothecary. But increasingly poetry dominated as his principal interest. He began to move in poetic and artistic circles, counting among his friends and acquaintances Leigh Hunt, Benjamin Haydon, Charles Lamb and Percy Bysshe Shelley and it was not long before his poetry was published regularly. Despite admiration of him by contemporary literary figures, reviewers were not as favourable and in his lifetime the majority of his poetry met with harsh criticism. ...Show more