Samuel Johnson is famously known for single-handedly creating the first recognized dictionary of the English language, just one of many his many renowned accomplishments. The biography of this remarkable writer, dramatist, poet, and moralist was penned by his friend, James Boswell, in 1791. An immediate success upon its publication, this work has come to be considered the greatest biography produced in the English language, and has earned Boswell...

An Englishwoman writing a biography of her father, a famous novelist, discovers that as a young man he changed names, taking the name of a boy who died in infancy. She goes looking for the reason and discovers murder.

We know the facts of Mary Shelley's life in some detail-the death of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, within days of her birth; the upbringing in the house of her father, William Godwin, in a house full of radical thinkers, poets, philosophers, and writers; her elopement, at the age of seventeen, with Percy Shelley; the years of peripatetic travel across Europe that followed. But there has been no literary biography written this century, and previous...

From beloved English author D.E. Stevenson who has sold more than 7 million books worldwide!

The final charming installment in the life of nosy writer, Miss Buncle. Nothing goes unnoticed around Miss Buncle, even if she has to recruit more eyes.

Much as changed in Wandlebury since Barbara Buncle (now Barbara Abbott) first moved to the charming English village. If nothing else, World War II is keeping

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Jeanette Winterson's novels have establishing her as a major figure in world literature. She has written some of the most admired books of the past few decades, including her internationally bestselling first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, the story of a young girl adopted by Pentecostal parents that is now often required reading in contemporary fiction. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a memoir about a life's work to find happiness....

With an affectionate introduction by Sarah Vowell, this is the third and final collection of columns by celebrated novelist Nick Hornby from "The Believer" magazine. Hornby's monthly reading diary discusses cultural artifacts the way they actually exist in people's lives, and his notes on books--highbrow and otherwise--are accessible and hilarious.

A collection of Bennett's diaries and essays, covering 2005 to 2015 Alan Bennett's third collection of prose, Keeping On Keeping On, follows in the footsteps of the phenomenally successful Writing Home and Untold Stories. Bringing together the hilarious, revealing, and lucidly intelligent writing of one of England's best-known literary figures, Keeping On Keeping On contains Bennett's diaries from 2005 to 2015-with everything from his much celebrated...

When Lewis was 51 years old and long established at Magdalen College, Oxford, he wrote the first of this collection of letters to an American widow. She was described as a "very charming, gracious, southern aristocratic lady who loved to talk and speak well". In them are his antipathy to journalism, advertising, snobbery, psychoanalysis, and the petty practices that sap freedoms. They identify events in his life after 1950 including his marriage to...