Biography: writers

A brilliant follow-up to Hidden Lives, Margaret Forster's most personal book yet takes up the story of her gritty, northern father, Arthur, intertwined with that of her sister-in-law, Marion, who died of cancer at almost half the age of the 96 year-old Arthur.

Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World is widely recognised to be the fullest and most brilliant account ever written of Shakespeare's life, his work and his age.

Antonia White is best known for her masterpiece Frost in May, for having come back from Bedlam and madness, and for the public feud between her daughters over the editing of her diaries.

No modern philosopher has been more maligned and misunderstood or more cynically exploited than Friedrich Nietzsche.

A fascinating and wonderfully readable deconstruction of the countless myths that have grown up around the Bront s.

Auden's dedication as a writer was matched only by his commitment to challenging the received view of political and personal life.

John Cheever's journals reveal the inner life of this remarkable writer and the contradictions that drove him.

In a series of long essays, James Wood examines the connection between literature and religious belief, in a startlingly wide group of writers.

Elegant, provocative and hugely entertaining, Kingsley Amis's memoirs are filled with anecdotes, experiences and portraits of famous friends, family, acquaintances (and a few eminent foes).

Four questions consumed Shelley and coloured everything he wrote.

Anne Thackeray Ritchie, daughter of the author of Vanity Fair and step-aunt of Virginia Woolf, was also a fine writer.

Donkey's Years and Dog Days were the first two volumes of these remarkable memoirs, of which The Whole Hog now completes the Higgins Bestiary.

Victoria Glendinning provides a woman's view of Anthony Trollope, placing emphasis on family, particularly on his relationship with his mother.

This second volume of Christopher Isherwood's remarkable diaries opens on his fifty-sixth birthday as the fifties give way to the decade of social and sexual revolution.

How does a novelist write about the facts of his life after spending years fictionalising those facts with irrepressible daring and originality?

'Martin Amis is a seriously good writer, and never on better form than now.

The shocking, heart-breaking - and often very funny - true story behind Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.

'George Sand' (Aurore Dupin, 1804-1876) was France's bestselling writer, rivalled in her time only by Victor Hugo.

Airman, war hero, immigrant, law student, diplomat, novelist and celebrity spouse, Romain Gary had several lives thrust upon him by the history of the twentieth century, but he also aspired to lead many more.

The first volume of John Fowles's Journals ended with him achieving international literary renown after the publication of The Collector and The Magus, and leaving London behind to live in a remote house near Lyme Regis.

In 1963 John Fowles won international recognition with his first published novel The Collector.

In the early 80s, after a decade of drug abuse and borderline mental illness, John Burnside resolved to escape his addictive personality and find calm in a 'Surbiton of the mind'.

Philip Roth is the voice of our times.

Here, for the first time, is a riveting collection of Fowles's fugitive and intensely personal writings composed sinced 1963, ranging from essays and literary criticism to commentaries, autobiographical statements, memoirs and musings.

Leigh Hunt is the forgotten giant of English Romanticism.

"e;Wonderful .

A fascinating, evocative account of 19th-century London, so well-known from Charles Dickens' much-loved novels.

Journey to the seventeenth century and a dramatic period of political upheaval, plague, and fire, with this "e;vivid portrait of Restoration England"e; (History Today).

Jane and Cassandra Austen were the closest of sisters from early childhood.

Born near Berwick-on-Tweed in the Scottish Borders, and the son of a Church of Scotland minister, Patrick Brydone served as a second lieutenant in the Seven Years' War, returning from Portugal in 1763.

In the summer of 1894 Oscar Wilde spent eight weeks in Worthing, during which he wrote his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest.

On 26th April 1564, William Shakespeare was baptised in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Fiona MacCarthy makes a breakthrough in interpreting Byron's life and poetry drawing on John Murray's world-famous archive.

Wendy Cope has long been one of the nation's best-loved poets, with her sharp eye for human foibles and wry sense of humour.

In this vivacious memoir, Thomas Keneally conjures up his youthful self at a pivotal period in his life - as a red-haired teenager who idolised Gerald Manley Hopkins, had visions of being a sporting hero, and dreamed of winning the heart of the alluring Bernadette Curran.

The autobiography of Denise Robins, the 100-million-copy bestselling Queen of Romance, first published in 1965, and available now for the first time in eBook.

The incredible autobiography from Claire Lorrimer, bestselling romance novelist and daughter of 'Queen of Romance' Denise Robins.

What if you could ask C.

FROM THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF WHAT I LOVED AND A WOMAN LOOKING AT MEN LOOKING AT WOMEN'Lucid, absorbing and vigorous'Independent'Richly intelligent'Financial TimesIn these fascinating essays, Siri Hustvedt shows what lies behind her fiction: an abiding curiosity about who we are and how we got that way.

When we think of great events in the history of the world, we tend to think of war, revolution, political upheaval or natural catastrophe.

Elizabeth George is one of the most successful writers of crime fiction in the world.

Auberon Waugh was a philosopher savage, eccentric, but a philosopher nonetheless.

From New National to World English Literature offers a personal perspective on the evolution of a major cultural movement that began with decolonization, continued with the assertion of African, West Indian, Commonwealth, and other literatures, and has evolved through postcolonial to world or international English literature.

From the author of Thirteen Ways of Looking and TransAtlantic, a compassionate series of letters to young writers embarking on their careers, which grew out of the weekly advice McCann posts on his website.

Widely considered to be one of Canada's most important authors, David Adams Richards has been honoured with a Giller Prize and two Governor General's Literary Awards.

George Bernard Shaw's frequently stormy but always creative relationship with the British Broadcasting Corporation was in large part responsible for making him a household name on both sides of the Atlantic.

Allegorical Bodies begins with the paradoxical observation that at the same time as the royal administrators of late fourteenth and early fifteenth-century France excluded women from the royal succession through the codification of Salic law, writers of the period adopted the female form as the allegorical personification of France itself.

Strangers in Blood explores, in a range of early modern literature, the association between migration to foreign lands and the moral and physical degeneration of individuals.

Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796–1865) was one of pre-confederation Canada's best-known authors.

Northrop Frye's status as one of the most influential critics and intellectuals of the twentieth century makes it difficult to gauge the personal qualities of the man behind the work.