Biography Book List ·

An African American in South Africa

The Travel Notes of Ralph J. Bunche 28 September 1937–1 January 1938

Ralph Bunche, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950, traveled to South Africa for three months in 1937. His notes, which have been skillfully compiled and annotated by historian Robert R. Edgar, provide unique insights on a segregated society.…

Amy Levy

Her Life and Letters

After a century of critical neglect, poet and writer Amy Levy is gaining recognition as a literary figure of stature.This definitive biography accompanied by her letters, along with the recent publication of her selected writings, provides a critical appreciation of Levy's importance in her own time and in ours.…

Antonin Artaud

Man of Vision

The extraordinary actor–director–writer who developed his talent for self-torture into art to become one of the most vital creative forces of the century.

Arrows of Longing

The Correspondence between Anais Nin and Felix Pollak, 1952-1976

In the winter of 1951-52, Anaïs Nin was a writer in despair. More than a dozen publishing houses had rejected her new novel, A Spy in the House of Love, and Nin became desperate for literary acceptance.…

The Bassett Women

Grace McClure has created an even-handed account of the Bassets. Drawing on interviews with surviving family, friends and enemies, on memoirs, and on oral and written records from local libraries, newspapers, and archives she presents believable, life-size characters who respond realistically to the demands of pioneer life.…

Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin

On January 1, 1928, Bazhanov escaped from the Soviet Union and became for many years the most important member of a new breed—the Soviet defector. At the age of 28, he had become an invaluable aid to Stalin and the Politburo, and had he stayed in Stalin’s service, Bazhanov might well have enjoyed the same meteoric careers as the man who replaced him when he left, Georgy Malenkov.…

Body Story

Something other than a memoir of a life well lived, Body Story conveys Julia K. De Pree's troubling journey from adolescence to adulthood and from anorexia to health. For De Pree, between being a girl and being a woman, there was starvation.…

Booking Pleasures

“The covetous foraging for old and rare books,” is how Matthews defines “booking.” It is an act which leads naturally to the pleasures of adding them to one's personal library, then reading them as instruments of light and measure in a murky and chaotic world.…

Brave Are My People

Indian Heroes Not Forgotten

Pontiac, Sequoyah, Geronimo, Sitting Bull, Chief Joseph, and Chief Seattle. These legendary names are familiar even to the uninitiated in Native American history, yet the life stories of these great spiritual leaders have been largely unknown.…

Breaking With Burr

Harman Blennerhassett's Journal, 1807

For fifty-three days in the steamy summer of 1807, Harman Blennerhassett, arrested for his part in Aaron Burr’s conspiracy to sever the United States, was confined in the Richmond Penitentiary awaiting his trial for treason.…

The Ceramic Career of M. Louise McLaughlin

In 1877 the thirty-year-old artist Mary Louise McLaughlin wrote China Painting, the first manual on the subject in the United States written by a woman for women. Extremely successful, it is now accepted as the book that launched the china painting movement in America.…

The Collected Letters of George Gissing Volume 1

1863–1880

For many years, the only Gissing letters available to the public were those in the modest selection of letters to his family published in 1927. In the following years a good number were published separately in such places as journals, memoirs, and sales catalogues, but like the single and small groups of unpublished letters scattered in libraries around the world, they remained in practical terms inaccessible.…

The Collected Letters of George Gissing Volume 2

1881–1885

For many years, the only Gissing letters available to the public were those in the modest selection of letters to his family published in 1927. In the following years a good number were published separately in such places as journals, memoirs, and sales catalogues, but like the single and small groups of unpublished letters scattered in libraries around the world, they remained in practical terms inaccessible.…

The Collected Letters of George Gissing Volume 3

1886–1888

For many years, the only Gissing letters available to the public were those in the modest selection of letters to his family published in 1927. In the following years a good number were published separately in such places as journals, memoirs, and sales catalogues, but like the single and small groups of unpublished letters scattered in libraries around the world, they remained in practical terms inaccessible.…

The Collected Letters of George Gissing Volume 4

1889–1891

Gissing's career, which spanned the period of about 1877 to his death in 1903, was characterized by prodigious output (almost a novel a year in the early days), modest recognition, and modest income. He wrote of poverty, socialism, class differences, social reform, and later on, about the problems of women and industrialization.…

The Collected Letters of George Gissing Volume 5

1892-1895

Gissing's career, which spanned the period of about 1877 to his death in 1903, was characterized by prodigious output (almost a novel a year in the early days), modest recognition, and modest income. He wrote of poverty, socialism, class differences, social reform, and later on, about the problems of women and industrialization.…

The Collected Letters of George Gissing Volume 6

1895-1897

Gissing's career, which spanned the period of about 1877 to his death in 1903, was characterized by prodigious output (almost a novel a year in the early days), modest recognition, and modest income. He wrote of poverty, socialism, class differences, social reform, and later on, about the problems of women and industrialization.…

The Collected Letters of George Gissing Volume 7

1897–1899

Gissing's career, which spanned the period of about 1877 to his death in 1903, was characterized by prodigious output (almost a novel a year in the early days), modest recognition, and modest income. He wrote of poverty, socialism, class differences, social reform, and later on, about the problems of women and industrialization.…

The Collected Letters of George Gissing Volume 8

1900–1902

For many years, the only Gissing letters available to the public were those in the modest selection of letters to his family published in 1927. In the following years a good number were published separately in such places as journals, memoirs, and sales catalogues, but like the single and small groups of unpublished letters scattered in libraries around the world, they remained in practical terms inaccessible.…

The Collected Letters of George Gissing Volume 9

1902–1903

This ninth volume concludes the widely-acclaimed edition of The Collected Letters of George Gissing, which not only renders obsolete all other collections and selections of his letters, but also contains a considerable quantity of hitherto unpublished or inaccessible materials.…