Biography: Literary

Johnson, born weak and half-blind, shambolic and poverty-stricken, became the most admired and quoted man in the eighteenth century. Thrown out of ...

Jane Austen traces the author's life and times, her personal relationships, the attitudes and customs of the time that shaped her and were in turn ...

Orwell's Nose, now available in paperback, is an original and imaginative account of the life and work of George Orwell, exploring the 'scent narra...

At the age of seventeen, Rebecca Mead read Middlemarch for the first time, and has read it again every five years since, each time interpreting and...

A renowned scholar of the English language, Tolkien is today celebrated as the father of the high fantasy genre. Drawing on his knowledge of langua...

Over the last twenty years, critical discussion of Thomas Mann has highlighted the role of his homosexuality for his creative work. This not only i...

The story of the group of extraordinary eighteenth-century writers, artists, and thinkers who gathered weekly at a London tavern  Selected by New Y...

'A woman's defiant fight to write.' ObserverBeing categorised as black and female does not constrain my writing. Writing assures me that I am more ...

''Hitchings is extremely good at unravelling Johnsons most bullish assertions . . . lucid and empathetic, scholarly but lively. A model Johnsonian,...

The Forging of a Rebel is an unsurpassed account of Spanish history and society from early in the twentieth century through the cataclysmic events ...