Author Biographies

Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner and Virginia Woolf: they all wrote dazzling books that forever changed the way we see history. In "Outsiders", award-winning biographer Lyndall Gordon shows how these five novelists shared more than talent. In a time when a woman's reputation was her security, each of these women lost hers. They were unconstrained by convention, writing against the grain of their contemporaries, prophetically imagining a different future. We have long known the individual greatness of each of these writers, but in linking their creativity to their lives as outcasts, Gordon throws new light on the genius they share. All five lost their mothers in childbirth or at a young age. With no female role model present, they learned from books - and sometimes from an enlightened mentor. Crucially, each had to imagine what a woman could be in order to invent a voice of her own. The passion in their own lives infused their fiction. Writing with passionate intelligence of her own, Gordon reveals that these renegade writers inspired a new breed of women who wished to change a world locked in war, violence, exploitation and sexual abuse. Gordon's biographies have always shown the indelible connection between life and art: an intuitive, exciting and revealing approach that has been highly praised. In "Outsiders", she crafts nuanced portraits of Shelley, Brontë, Eliot, Schreiner and Woolf, naming each of these writers as prodigy, visionary, 'outlaw, ' orator and explorer, and shows how they came, they saw and they left us changed. Today, following the tsunami of women's protest at wide-spread abuse, we do more than read them; we listen and live with their astonishing bravery and eloquence.

The lives of the greatest writers of the world are explored in depth. In addition to a lengthy biography, an extensive critical analysis of the writer's work, as well as critical views by important literary critics throughout history.

(Summary via Goodreads)

Based on hundreds of hours of interviews with the author, as well as with nearly everyone who knew him, this biography follows Capote from his eccentric childhood in Alabama to the heights of New York society. It also candidly recounts a gifted and celebrated writer's descent into the life of alcohol and drugs that would ultimately consume his bulldog spirit and staggering talent--but not before he'd hobnob with the likes of Grace Paley and Lee Radziwill, feud outrageously with Gore Vidal and Jacqueline Susann, and stage at New York's Plaza Hotel the sensational Black and White Ball.

The definitive biography of an important American cultural intellectual of the twentieth century--Ralph Ellison, author of the masterpiece Invisible Man. In 1953, Ellison's explosive story of a young black man's search for truth and identity catapulted him to national prominence. Ellison earned many honors, but his failure to publish a second novel, despite years of striving, haunted him for the rest of his life. Rampersad, the first scholar given complete access to Ellison's papers, provides a complex portrait of an unusual artist and human being. This biography describes a man of magnetic personality who counted Saul Bellow, Langston Hughes, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wright, Richard Wilbur, Albert Murray, and John Cheever among his closest friends; a man whose life and art were shaped mainly by his unyielding desire to produce magnificent art and by his resilient faith in the moral and cultural strength of America.

"Wrapped in Rainbows" presents a full picture of Hurston as both a writer and a woman, shedding new light on her public and private lives. Drawing on meticulous research and a wealth of crucial information that has emerged over the past twenty years, Valerie Boyd delves into Hurston's thirst for the limelight, her sexuality and short-lived marriages, her mysterious relationship with Vodou, and her occasionally controversial political views. With the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Depression, and World War II as historical backdrops, "Wrapped in Rainbows" not only positions Hurston's work in her time but offers implications for our own.

(Summary via Goodreads)

Reading George Eliot's work was described by one Victorian critic as like the feeling of entering the confessional in which she sees and hears all the secrets of human psychology-'that roar which lies on the other side of silence'. This new biography of George Eliot goes beyond the much-told story of her life. It gives an account of what it means to become a novelist, and to think like a novelist: in particular a realist novelist for whom art exists not for art's sake but in the exploration and service of human life. It shows the formation and the workings of George Eliot's mind as it plays into her creation of some of the greatest novels of the Victorian era.

Arthur Conan Doyle was a prolific writer proficient in a number of genres. He authored historical works - Micah Clarke, The White Company, and The Great Shadow to name a few - and more than 100 short stories unrelated to Sherlock Holmes. He also wrote an operetta, the Professor Challenger and Captain Sharkey stories, three volumes of poetry, fifteen nonfiction books, and numerous newspaper articles calling attention to the plight of the less fortunate. And when this immensely talented man wasn't writing, he played cricket, rugby, or golf, sharpened his already impressive photographic skills, or crusaded for social justice. Here, in this essay by award-winning journalist Robert Wernick, is his extraordinary story.

Alice Walker: A Woman for Our Times offers a full examination of the intellectual underpinnings of Walker's life and her oeuvre from a philosophical standpoint. This philosophical biography draws a portrait of the author that reveals the nuances of her character, clarifies the relationship between her life experiences and her lifework, and the philosophical thought that underlies both. This work will be essential reading to those interested in Black studies, women's studies, the Civil Rights and Black Arts movements, peace studies, the American South, philosophy, psychology, sociology, spirituality and New Age literature, and ecology and eco-feminism.

(Summary via Goodreads)

One of the most influential and compelling books in American literature, Walden is a vivid account of the years that Henry D. Thoreau spent alone in a secluded cabin at Walden Pond. This edition--introduced by noted American writer John Updike--celebrates the perennial importance of a classic work, originally published in 1854. Much of Walden's material is derived from Thoreau's journals and contains such engaging pieces from the lively Where I Lived, and What I Lived For and Brute Neighbors to the serene Reading and The Pond in the Winter. Other famous sections involve Thoreau's visits with a Canadian woodcutter and with an Irish family, a trip to Concord, and a description of his bean field. This is the complete and authoritative text of Walden--as close to Thoreau's original intention as all available evidence allows.

This is the authoritative text of Walden and the ideal presentation of Thoreau's great document of social criticism and dissent.

(Summary via Goodreads)

It explores the body of work of Elmer Kelton, son and grandson of working cowboys, who writes of the lives and settings he knows best--the people and landscapes of West Texas.

(Summary via Google Books)

A biography of the English author and illustrator who grew up during the Victorian era and whose detailed drawings of plants and animals found their way into her famous picture books.

In the second of his trio of acclaimed memoirs, Rigoberto González looks at his past through a startling lens: hunger. A childhood of neglect, adolescent yearnings, and adult desire for a larger world, another lover, a different body—all are explored by González in a series of heartbreaking and poetic vignettes.