Secondhand Literary Biography Books

Angela Carter was one of the most vivid voices of the twentieth century. When she died in 1992 at the age of fifty-one, she had published fifteen books of fiction...

Hailed by Virginia Woolf and many others as the all-time great letter writer, Jane Welsh Carlyle, wife of Thomas Carlyle, is not as well known today as she should be....

In 1994, Anchee Min published Red Azalea, a memoir of growing up during the violent trauma of the Cultural Revolution. It became an international bestseller. Twenty years later, Min returns...

The biographer - so often in the shadows, kibbitzing, casting doubt, proving facts - here comes to the stage.James Atlas takes us back to his childhood in suburban Chicago, where...

In December 1991, Allende's daughter Paula, aged 28 fell gravely ill and sank into a coma. This book started as a letter to Paula written during the hours spent at...

*THE NO.3 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER* 'Raw, compelling, wise and tender' Dolly Alderton'Motherwell is razor-sharp, fearless and wonderful' Adam Kay'Utterly candid and staggeringly good, both as the history of a woman...

Autobiographical and idiosyncratic, this is a collection of Alan Bennett's prose writings, assembled by Bennett himself from 25 years of diaries, reminiscences, broadcasting and reviews. It includes his address at...

One bright day in December 2001, sixty-two-year-old Germaine Greer found herself confronted by an irresistible challenge in the shape of sixty hectares of dairy farm, one of many in south-east...

He was born in the year Dr Johnson died, and died in the year A.E. Houseman and Conan Doyle were born. The 75 years of Leigh Hunt's life uniquely span...

Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle AwardThe acid, hilarious, confessional, provocative bestselling memoirs of our greatest contrarian, and the author of god Is Not Great. In this long-awaited and...

'A daring and mesmerizing twist on the art of biography' - Douglas Smith, author of Rasputin: The Biography'Anyone who loves [Dostoevsky's] novels will be fascinated by this book' - Sue...

In this wonderful addition to the Eminent Lives series, widely acclaimed biographer Brenda Maddox sheds a fascinating new light on the life of legendary novelist George Eliot. On 22 November...

Written in an even more vivid and direct style than her celebrated memoirs, Diana Athill's letters to the American poet Edward Field reveal a sharply intelligent woman with a brilliant...

The first book after Doris' Nobel Prize takes her back to her childhood in Southern Africa and the lives, both fictional and factual, that her parents lead. 'I think my...

A brilliant memoir from the celebrated Chilean novelist on friends, family and life in California, her adopted home. Isabel Allende has sold more than 50 million copies of her books...