Kafka's Last Trial begins with Kafka's last instruction to his closest friend, Max Brod: to destroy all his remaining papers upon his death. But when the moment arrived in 1924, Brod could not bring himself to burn the unpublished works of the man he considered a literary genius--even a saint. Instead, Brod devoted his life to championing Kafka's writing, rescuing his legacy from obscurity and physical destruction.The story of Kafka's posthumous life is itself Kafkaesque. By the time of Brod's own death in Tel Aviv in 1968, Kafka's major works had been published, transforming the once little-k... View More...
This illustrated English-language edition of French writer-filmmaker Fr d ric Beigbeder's 2014 novel, Oona & Salinger. A nostalgic and bittersweet love story, Manhattan's Babe is a fictionalized account of the true-life romance between J.D. Salinger and Oona O'Neill, daughter of the great American playwright. The two first met in New York City in 1940, when Jerry Salinger, 21, was an up-and-coming writer, and Oona, 15, was a beautiful and charming socialite who partied at the Stork Club with Truman Capote and Gloria Vanderbilt. Their all-too-short romance blossomed during the summer of 1941, j... View More...
Looming large in the popular imagination as a serious poet and lively drunk who died in penury, Edgar Allan Poe was also the most celebrated and notorious writer of his day. He died broke and alone at the age of forty, but not before he had written some of the greatest works in the English language, from the chilling "The Tell-Tale Heart" to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"--the first modern detective story--to the iconic poem "The Raven."Poe's life was one of unremitting hardship. His father abandoned the family, and his mother died when he was three. Poe was thrown out of West Point, and marr... View More...
The definitive biography of Barbara Taylor Bradford, author of twenty-one top-of-the-lists blockbuster bestsellers, starting with "A Woman of Substance" For the first time ever, take a fascinating look at the remarkable life of Barbara Taylor Bradford. Her first book, "A Woman of Substance, " is one of the bestselling novels of all time and has made her one of the most successful authors in the world. Yet her rise to fame and fortune was not an easy one. Barbara came from humble beginnings in Yorkshire, the only daughter of a laborer and a nanny. From an early age, her mother Freda had marked ... View More...
A moving testament to one of the literary world's most celebrated marriages: that of the greatest playwright of our age, Harold Pinter, and the beautiful and famous prize-winning biographer Antonia Fraser. In this exquisite memoir, Antonia Fraser recounts the life she shared with the internationally renowned dramatist. In essence, it is a love story and a marvelously insightful account of their years together, beginning with their initial meeting when Fraser was the wife of a member of Parliament and mother of six, and Pinter was married to a distinguished actress. Over the years, they experie... View More...
In 1882, Emily Dickinson's brother Austin began a passionate love affair with Mabel Todd, a young Amherst faculty wife, setting in motion a series of events that would forever change the lives of the Dickinson family. The feud that erupted as a result has continued for over a century. Lyndall Gordon, an award-winning biographer, tells the riveting story of the Dickinsons, and reveals Emily as a very different woman from the pale, lovelorn recluse that exists in the popular imagination. Thanks to unprecedented use of letters, diaries, and legal documents, Gordon digs deep into the life and work... View More...
In this autobiography, first published in 1929, poet Robert Graves traces the monumental and universal loss of innocence that occurred as a result of the First World War. Written after the war and as he was leaving his birthplace, he thought, forever, Good-Bye to All That bids farewell not only to England and his English family and friends, but also to a way of life. Tracing his upbringing from his solidly middle-class Victorian childhood through his entry into the war at age twenty-one as a patriotic captain in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, this dramatic, poignant, often wry autobiography goes o... View More...
Mel Gussow's critically-acclaimed biography of the three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (Seascape, A Delicate Balance, The Zoo Story), who first electrified the American theatre scene in the 1960s with his groundbreaking The Zoo Story followed by the legendary Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? View More...
"Anyone who has ever wondered what it really means to be black will find the answer in this book."--MINNEAPOLIS TRIBUNE To Be Young, Gifted and Black is a special kind of autobiography, in a very special voice. Both the story and the voice belong to a young woman from Chicago who moved to New York, won fame with her first play, A Raisin in the Sun--and went on to new heights of artistry before her tragically early death. In turns angry, loving, bitter, laughing, and defi antly proud, the story, voice, and message are all Lorraine Hansberry's own, coming together in one of the major works of th... View More...
Few playwrights write as much of their lives into every work as did Tennessee Williams, and few had lives that were so obviously theatrical. Growing up amid abusive alcoholism, genteel posturing, and the incipient madness of his beloved sister, Rose, Williams produced plays in which violence exploded into rape, castration, and even cannibalism, projecting dramatic personal traumas. In this frank, compelling study, the distinguished biographer and critic Ronald Hayman explores the intersection of biography and art in one of the most exuberantly autobiographical dramatists of the American theate... View More...
Both revealing self-portrait and dramatic fictional chronicle of his final African safari, Ernest Hemingway's last unpublished work was written when he returned from Kenya in 1953. Edited by his son Patrick, who accompanied his father on the safari, "True at First Light" offers rare insights into the legendary American writer in the year of the hundredth anniversary of his birth.A blend of autobiography and fiction, the book opens on the day his close friend Pop, a celebrated hunter, leaves Ernest in charge of the safari camp and news arrives of a potential attack from a hostile tribe. Drama c... View More...
