Literary Biography

A gripping narrative history of Spain’s most brilliant and troubled literary family—a tale about the making of art, myth, and legacy—set against the upheaval of the Spanish Civil War and beyond. In this absorbing and atmospheric historical narrative, journalist Aaron Shulman takes us...

This is an ideal introduction to the ideas of a man whom many regard as the greatest thinker of our time. Here we encounter the stages in the development of his unique philosophy of consciousness, his key intellectual breakthroughs, his theory of history, and his diagnosis of the political ills of the modern age. The book provides a veritable catalog of the thinkers who created the intellectual foundation of the twentieth century.

With Virginia Woolf as a guide, the stories of eight radical 20th century women--wanderers, rebels, explorers, mentors--who made a life for themselves in spite of everything. Everything that changed in the 20th century changed more dramatically for women. Her Own Voice tells the stories of eight...

Frances Hodgson Burnett's favorite theme in her fiction was the reversal of fortune, and she herself knew extremes of poverty and wealth. Born in Manchester in 1849, she emigrated with her family to Tennessee because of the financial problems caused by the cotton famine. From a young age she published her stories to help the family make ends meet. Only after she married did she publish Little Lord Fauntleroy that shot her into literary stardom.

From the Nobel Prize-winning novelist and the acclaimed author of My Name is Red—an inspired, thoughtful, and deeply personal book of essays about reading and writing novels. In this fascinating set of essays, based on the talks he delivered at Harvard University as part of the distinguished...

Andy Griffith (1926-2012) is one of North Carolina's most beloved exports, capturing America's heart as Sheriff Andy Taylor. Evan Dalton Smith was born in the North Carolina Piedmont over four decades after Andy, just an hour south of Griffith's hometown of Mount Airy. Both were small-town boys who grew up in similar places, where the counties were dry and the churches plentiful. But for both, there was darkness, crushed hopes, and tragedy, hidden just below the surface.

Esta es la historia de un chico de barrio que, desde la distancia de sus 46 años, sale al encuentro del adolescente problemático, el joven perdido y el hombre en busca de destino que fue. A partir de capítulos muy cortos e intensos, que demuestran una capacidad de autoanálisis y de observación muy poco comunes y un sentido del humor sobresaliente, Juan del Val nos va contando cómo ha sido «madurar», nos relata sin tapujos las veces que se ha perdido, y compartimos su alegría y su asombro cada vez que siente que ha aprendido una lección.

A collection of the journals, fiction, and letters of the late Esther Grace Earl, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 16. Essays by family and friends will help to tell Esther’s story along with an introduction by award-winning author John Green who dedicated his #1 bestselling novel The Fault in Our Stars to her.

Considered one of the greatest—and most influential—writers of the twentieth century, Marcel Proust was also one of its most fascinating figures. A strange, reclusive genius who often lay in bed for days at a time obsessively rewriting his masterpiece, Remembrance of Things Past, Proust was...

Anthony Trollope is among the best-loved novelists in the English language. This Very Short Introduction will place Trollope's work in the context of his life and times, drawing on recent scholarship to illuminate his central interests and literary strategies. The major series of novels (the six novels located in the fictional Barsetshire, and the six Palliser novels) are explored alongside the novels set in Ireland, his travel writing, and his less well-known fiction.

A collection of short stories from The Big Garage on Clear Shot chronicles the offbeat lives of the colorful inhabitants of The End of the Road, a small town in Alaska...

Discover how Jorge Luis Borges forever redefined Argentine literature and transformed its reach across the world. In Borges and Argentine Literature: Influence and Legacy, Isaac Volpe offers a deep and revealing analysis of the work, ideas, and intellectual legacy of the author who reinvented the criollo tradition, expanded the limits of the fantastic, and built bridges between Buenos Aires and universal literature.

In this part-memoir, part-manifesto, an acclaimed poet interprets Black radical literary traditions to reimagine freedom through refusal. “In these fierce yet tender pages, Camonghne Felix reveals how imagination can become a form of governance—an instrument for creating a world rooted in...

From the legendary avant-garde poet Kim Hyesoon, a landmark collection documenting her first and only work of digital performance art to date. “Poetry in Korea has been a vaunted form—and traditionally left to men. Kim broke away from the masculine styles that came before her. . . . Kim has...

A Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by Ms. Magazine A raw and lyrical exploration of the confining expectations of womanhood and, if we dare, what lies beyond those limitations—from a writer Roxane Gay calls “vibrant and thoughtful.” Gorgeous, badass, and practically waiting to pounce, Good...

This highly enjoyable account of the life of Jane Austen is regarded as the classic biography of one of the greatest English novelists. It illustrates not only the character and opinions of an unusually perceptive and gifted woman, but also the social life amonst the county gentry of Georgian England. Outside her writing, Jane Austen's main interest was her large and affectionate family and their circle of friends.

All American Patriotism has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher...

A lively inquiry into a literary genius, the translators who immortalized him, and what it means to cultivate a rich inner life in turbulent times "What happens to a writer's work when it is translated–specifically, what happens if his name is Franz Kafka?" In Kafkaesque, Maïa Hruska traces...

Dr. Dino Martins, an awarding-winning entomologist of Kenya's Turkana Basin, where life was born, unspools the hidden, squirming world of parasites—some of the most misunderstood, and important, creatures with whom we share the Earth (and our bodies!). “May this tusk root out the lice of the...

Presented here is Volume III of our Feminist Literary Classics series, featuring three of the most important feminist novels ever written: Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf, O Pioneers! by Willa Cather and So Big by Edna Ferber. The first book in this collection is Orlando: A Biography, a groundbreaking English novel by Virginia Woolf that explores English history, gender roles and sexual politics in a way few books have before or since.