James K. Baxter 1936-1972 - a memorial volume

$85.00 NZD

Category: New Zealand Literature | Reading Level: near fine

Bloomsbury by Quentin Bell

$10.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Series: Phoenix Giants Ser. | Reading Level: very good

Frank Sargeson - A Life by Michael King

$25.00 NZD

Category: New Zealand Literature | Reading Level: good-very good

Levels of Life by Julian Barnes

$8.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography

You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed. In Levels of Life Julian Barnes gives us Nadar, the pioneer balloonist and aerial photographer; he gives us Colonel Fred Burnaby, reluctant adorer of the extravagant Sarah Bernhardt; then, finally, he gives us the story of his own grief, unflinchingly observed. This is a book of intense honesty and insight; it is at once a celebration of love and a profound examination of sorrow. ...Show more

Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett, 1921-1960 by Dashiell Hammett; Richard Layman (Editor); Julie M. Rivett (Editor); Josephine Hammett Marshall (Introduction by)

$20.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: very good

This is a selection from the letters of Dashiell Hammett, the American writer of crime fiction. Here is Hammett the family man, distant but devoted; Hammett the student of politics, scanning the headlines from a Marxist perspective; and Hammett the lover of Lillian Hellman, delighting in her style, humo ur, accomplishments, but maintaining his independence. Celebrity, soldier, activist, survivor - these letters show how Hammett was each of these in turn, but was always, above all, a writer. ...Show more

John Keats: A Life by Stephen Coote

$10.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: very good

Beloved Chicago Man by Simone de Beauvoir

$16.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: good

Henry Miller, Happy Rock by Brassaï; Jane Marie Todd (Translator)

$30.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: very good

"In a world like this one, it's difficult to devote oneself to art body and soul. To get published, to get exhibited, to get produced often requires ten or twenty years of patient, intense labor. I spent half my life at it! And how do you survive during all that time? Beg? Live off other people until yo u're successful? What a dog's life! I know something about that! You're always recognized too late. And today, it's no longer enough to have talent, originality, to write a good or beautiful book. One must be inspired! Not only touch the public but create one's own public. Otherwise, you're headed straight for suicide." That's Henry Miller's advice for young aspiring artists, as remembered by his very good friend Brassaï in this lively book. One of two that Brassaï wrote about the man who called himself a "happy rock," this volume covers their lives and friendship from the 1950s to 1973. Over the course of a number of warm, intimate conversations, Brassaï and Miller revisit their careers; discuss art, literature, Paris, Greece, Japan, World War II, and more; and consider the lives and works of many others in their circle, including Lawrence Durrell, Henri Matisse, Salvador Dalí, Georges Simenon, André Malraux, Hans Reichel, Paul Klee, and Amedeo Modigliani. Throughout Miller's zest for life shines through, as do his love of art and his passionate intensity for just about everything he does, from discussing a movie or play he'd just seen to reminiscing about a decades-long love. Brassaï's Henry Miller, Happy Rock presents a vivid portrait of two close friends who thoroughly enjoy each other's company--and just happen to be world--famous artists too. ...Show more

Orwell: A Man of Our Time by Richard Bradford

$25.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: near fine

A vivid portrait of the man behind the writings. As one of the most enduringly popular and controversial novelists of the last century, the 70th anniversary of George Orwell's death in 2020 offers an opportunity to assess his relevance today. Despite the commonplace view that Animal Farm was aimed ex clusively at Stalinist Russia, it was far more broadly focused and the similarities between aspects of the novel and Trump's America are obvious. Not only the parallels with the current President, but also by those who feel that his cult of personality is a mandate for collective nastiness. "Doublethink" features in Nineteen Eighty Four and it is the forerunner to "Fake News." Aside from Orwell's importance as a political theorist and novelist his life in its own right is a beguiling narrative. His family was caught between upper middle-class complacency and uncertainty, and Orwell's time at Prep School and as a scholarship boy at Eton caused him to despise the class system that spawned him despite finding himself unable to fully detach himself from it. His life thereafter mirrored the history of his country; like many from his background he devoted himself to socialism as a salve to his conscience. He died at the point when Britain's status as an Imperial and world power had waned. An interest in him endures, principally because it is difficult to differentiate between the man who recorded the terrible events of the depression and the Spanish Civil War as an observer and the fiction writer who used literature to predict grim possibilities and diagnose horribly endemic inclinations. No other British writer of the 20th century has blended ideas, political commentary and literary art in such a manner. For an author whose work has been regarded as the most important in terms of the turbulent years of the mid-20th century and who eroded the boundaries between literature, journalism and political commentary, there have been relatively few attempts to present a vibrant portrait of the man behind the writings. Fifteen years (closer to eighteen when this book appears) is a long time for the absence of a life of one of one of the best-known authors of the twentieth century. ...Show more

The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde by Neil McKenna

$10.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: good

Neil McKenna argues that our view of Oscar Wilde, even after Ellman's magisterial volume, is determined by Victorian sentimentality. In his own much more modern version of Wilde's story, he is not only extremely promiscuous but also a sort of campaigner for sexual freedom. He reveals, for example, that Wilde's relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas was not an idealistic doting on a beautiful boy, but that Bosie was the more dominant, experienced of the two, who used to go out hunting together for young boys. Wilde's last days in Paris were not, McKenna shows, miserable and defeated; Paris was for him an idyllic, sensual and intellectual playground free from the narrowness of London. ...Show more

The Letters of A.R.D. Fairburn by Lauris Edmond (ed.)

$35.00 NZD

Category: New Zealand Literature | Reading Level: good-very good

Lady in the Van by Alan Bennett

$6.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: very good

Adapted by the author from his autobiographical memoir, The Lady in the Van tells the story of Miss Mary Shepherd, whom Alan Bennett first came across when she was living in the street near his home in Camden Town. Taking refuge with her van in his garden originally for three months, she ended up stayin g fifteen years. Funny, touching and unexpectedly spectacular, The Lady in the Van marked the return to the stage of one of our leading playwrights. The Lady in the Van with Maggie Smith opened at the Queen's Theatre, London, in December 1999. ...Show more