biography england

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st US, 1954, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, decorative red cloth, 370 pages, no dust jacket, Abrahams was born in the slums of Johnannesburg and later moved to England. Autobiography of author's 22 years of struggle before he left South Africa. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise tight and clean copy.

Softcover. Madison WI, University of Wisconsin, reprint., 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wraps, 244 pages. The Blind African Slave recounts the life of Jeffrey Brace (ne Boyrereau Brinch), who was born in West Africa around 1742. Captured by slave traders at the age of sixteen, Brace was transported to Barbados, where he experienced the shock and trauma of slave-breaking and was sold to a New England ship captain. After fighting as an enslaved sailor for two years in the Seven Years War, Brace was taken to New Haven, Connecticut, and sold into slavery. After several years in New England, Brace enlisted in the Continental Army in hopes of winning his manumission. After five years of military service, he was honorably discharged and was freed from slavery. As a free man, he chose in 1784 to move to Vermont, the first state to make slavery illegal. There, he met and married an African woman, bought a farm, and raised a family. Although literate, he was blind when he decided to publish his life story, which he narrated to a white antislavery lawyer, Benjamin Prentiss, who published it in 1810. Upon his death in 1827, Brace was a well-respected abolitionist. In this first new edition since 1810, Kari J. Winter provides a historical introduction, annotations, and original documents that verify and supplement our knowledge of Brace's life and times. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st US, 1982-85, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Four hardcover volumes in bright dust jackets. Fabian socialist, social researcher and reformer, and cofounder of the London School of Economics, Beatrice Webb (1858-1943) was at the center of British intellectual and political life for nearly seventy years. Her diaries offer a remarkable record of her achievements, and they reveal the private face behind a formidable public persona. From age fifteen until her death, Webb confided in her diary. She describes her obsessive and self-thwarted passion for politician Joseph Chamberlain, her work as a young woman in London's East End, and the troubled courtship that led to her marriage and famous partnership with Sidney Webb. She tells of the books they wrote together and the people they knew-Winston Churchill, Lloyd George, Ramsay MacDonald, Leonard and Virginia Woolf-in pages rich in anecdote and insight. She describes their friendship with Bernard Shaw and despairs of H.G. Wells's peccadilloes. The Diaries chart the collapse of Liberalism and the rise of the Labour Movement, and set Beatrice Webb's faith in Social Communism against the growth of fascism in the 1930s. They encompass the Boer War and the devastation of two world wars, and bring to life the social and cultural changes that introduced the modern world. Alongside this record is an intensely moving account of a long life, of friendships and family, conviction, and self-doubt. From this unparalleled document emerges a woman whose shrewd judgement, skilled portraiture, and refreshingly ironic tone establish her as one of the greatest diarists of her time. No ownership inscriptions. Clean, bright and unfaded boards. Fresh pages and unmarked closed page edges. Tight bindings. No loose. No remainder marks. A handsome set. This is a heavy and oversized book and will require extra shipping. International customers please ask for a shipping quote before purchasing.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Clarendon Press, reprint, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in glossy boards, 639 pages. Volume 3 ONLY of a six volume set. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a nice dust jacket with a faded spine. 388 pages, b&w frontis. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in lightly worn dust jacket, 446 pages. A full review of the history of this initially small band of middle class intellectual socialists, the Mackenie's are undaunted in tackling what becomes a full and multi-character biography of the group that became and remains influential in British politics. This study includes a full and sensitive account of the lives and thought of the Webbs (usefully exploring their differences as well as their points of agreement), Shaw, Pease and Podmore, and even H.G. Wells, amongst others, as well as the history of the relationship of this band with the diverse groups and individuals in the broader British socialist movement - and their ambivalent relationships with the liberal and then the labour governments. Remainder stamp to bottom edge. Otherwise a clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Hodder & Stoughton , 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth with gilt titles on spine, 328 pages, index. Spender (1864-1926) was a leading journalist in England and later ran for office (and lost) as a Liberal candidate in 1922. He covered major events in British history for major newspapers like the Manchester Guardian and Daily News from 1899 until 1914. He was the father of poet Stephen Spender. A clean copy with minor shelf wear.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press , 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering and design to spine and front cover, 926 pages. Although Richard Hooker (1554-1600) is now known principally as the author of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, in his lifetime the Tractates and Sermons brought him greater notoriety. Hooker's views on justification, the perseverance of faith, and the relationship of the Church of Rome to the reformed Church of England were widely reported, and texts of the tracts were extensively circulated in manuscript. Thanks to the meticulous editing of Laetitia Yeandle, Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the contemporary impact of these debates can now be appreciated for the first time. These tracts provide a unique perspective on the turbulent world of late Elizabethan theology. In addition, they lay the doctrinal foundations of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity itself and-with the excellent commentary of Egil Grislis, Professor of Theology at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, enable us to trace the intellectual formation of sixteenth-century England's most innovative and provocative theologian. The volume includes a newly discovered letter; three newly attributed sermon fragments; and analysis by P. F. Forte of Hooker's distinctive preaching style. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Pantheon, 1st US, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A magisterial achievement: part biography, part history, part moral meditation on the resurrection of torture as an instrument of political power in the twentieth century, The Good Listener tells the story of Helen Bamber, a good but complex woman now in her seventies, who has spent her life battling to bring the dark side of history into the light. In almost every situation in our century where mankind has demonstrated its capacity to intensify evil--during the Nazi Holocaust, in Algeria, Chile, Africa, the USSR, and Israel, as well as in postwar Britain and Germany--Bamber has served as a witness, an expert, or a reproach, as well as a repository of our collective memory of debasement. Her father, a Polish Jew, had been so obsessed by the Fascist threat that he would read to Helen from Goebbels' speeches, teaching her how corrupting and manipulative language can be. She went to Bergen-Belsen after World War II had ended, and upon her return to London she dedicated herself to caring for the young survivors of the camp. So began Bamber's brave devotion to the grim and dangerous task of undoing the work of the torturer--culminating, after her participation as a central force in Amnesty International, in her establishment in England of the Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. Because Bamber's uncanny openness to others has been one of her great skills, Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1948, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Two hardcover volumes, light tan cloth with silver lettering on spines, 379 +438 pages, b&w illustrations. The first biography of Burney to be published after his daughter's 3-volume memoirs appeared in the 19th century. Endpaper maps. Clean copies.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Clarendon Press, 1st, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 550 pages. Fold-out chart in rear. "Stevens is included in the D.N.B. as a poet; he was much admired and liked by Anna Seward, The Swan of Lichfield. The journal is pre-eminantly a human document, the frank and full account of his meetings with Fanny Coutts and their love for one another. It is a period peice with an unhappy ending". Bookplate inside front cover, light stamp to copyright page.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 275 pages, b&w illustrations. Clean copy.

Hardcover. UK, Routledge/Thoemmes, reprint, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 260 pages, b&w illustrations. A reprint of the 1949 edition with a new introduction by David Berman. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Los Angeles, The Augustan Reprint Society , reprint, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 29 pages. A facsimile reprint of a pamphlet published in 1727. The subject was a friend of Samuel Johnson who was pardoned after being sentenced to death for a murder in a coffeehouse altercation. The pamphlet, published anonymously, was a defense of Savage based on his character. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 557 pages, b&w and color illustrations. In this brilliant second and final volume of the definitive biography of Lucian Freud--one of the most influential, enigmatic and secretive artists of the twentieth century--William Feaver, the noted art critic, draws on years of daily conversations with Freud, on his private papers and letters and on interviews with his friends and family to explore the intimate life of Freud, from age forty-five to his death in 2011 at the age of eighty-nine. The final forty years of Freud's life were a period of increasing recognition and fame, and of prodigious output. He was obsessed with his art, and with the idea of producing paintings that "astonish, disturb, seduce, convince." He was equally energetic and ambitious in his private life. This book opens with his dramatic affair with Jacquetta Eliot, which led to some of his most intimate portraits and to the start of two important, lifelong friendships, with Jane Willoughby and Susanna Chancellor. Freud talks about his art at all stages, how it changed in the seventies and his first retrospective in London in 1974. Small remainder dot on bottom edge otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The first biography of the epic life of one of the most important, enigmatic and private artists of the 20th century. Drawn from almost 40 years of conversations with the artist, letters and papers, it is a major work written by a well-known British art critic. This is an extremely intimate, lively and rich portrait of the artist, full of gossip and stories recounted by Freud to Feaver about people, encounters, and work. Freud's art was his life--"my work is purely autobiographical"--and he usually painted only family, friends, lovers, children, though there were exceptions like the famous small portrait of the Queen. With his later portraits, the subjects were often nude, names were never given and sittings could take up to 16 months, each session lasting five hours but subjects were rarely bored as Freud was a great raconteur and mimic.Small remainder dot on bottom edge otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The first biography of the epic life of one of the most important, enigmatic and private artists of the 20th century. Drawn from almost 40 years of conversations with the artist, letters and papers, it is a major work written by a well-known British art critic. This is an extremely intimate, lively and rich portrait of the artist, full of gossip and stories recounted by Freud to Feaver about people, encounters, and work. Freud's art was his life--"my work is purely autobiographical"--and he usually painted only family, friends, lovers, children, though there were exceptions like the famous small portrait of the Queen. With his later portraits, the subjects were often nude, names were never given and sittings could take up to 16 months, each session lasting five hours but subjects were rarely bored as Freud was a great raconteur and mimic.Small remainder dot on bottom edge otherwise clean.

Lebanon NH, University of New Hampshire Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 294 pages, b&w illustrations. Presents a succinct, articulate examination of the work of the pioneering but controversial archaeologist Roland Wells Robbins (1908-1987) and the development of historical archaelogy in America. In 1945, the self-taught Robbins discovered the remains of Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond. He excavated the site, documented his findings, and in 1947 published a short book, Discovery at Walden, about the experience. This project launched Robbins's career in archaeology, restoration, and reconstruction, and he went on to excavate at a number of New England iron works and other sites, including the Philipsburg Manor Upper Mills in New York, Stawbery Banke in New Hampshire, and Shadwell, Thomas Jefferson's Virginia birthplace. Although lacking academic training, Robbins quickly developed remarkably sophisticated techniques for the period. However, his "pick and shovel" methods were considered suspect and increasingly frowned upon by the emerging American historical archaeological establishment. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. 393 pages plus a 16 page index. With eight pages of illustrations and a frontispiece. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Chicago, Ivan R. Dee, 1st US, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly edgeworn dust jacket. 239 pages including index. Author of The Moonstone and The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins is widely regarded as "the father of the detective story." How curious that his own life has puzzled investigators despite numerous attempts to unravel it. Collins lived a publicly Victorian existence as a contemporary of Dickens, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Blake in mid-19th-century England. Yet upon his death he left a will dividing his estate equally -- between two mistresses.

Hardcover. NY, E. P. Dutton, reprint, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. David Irving's The Trail of the Fox is the best work on Rommel ever written. The circumstances around Rommel's involvement with the attempt on Hitler's life, which is the most speculated aspect of Rommel's life, and how the Gestapo came to believe Rommel was involved, have not been made clear in most of the historiography on Rommel. Irving pieces together what really happened most effectively. There are so many strengths of this book, of which the greatest is probably the fact Irving had access to Rommel's dairy and many of his letters, which he got permission from the family to view. Other items he found in collections in the United States, England, and Germany. Since he worked on this in the 1970's he also was able to interview a number of German officers who were still alive that knew and served with Rommel. The whole work is the way historical research should be done; totally reliant on primary source material, and ignores secondary sources that often use conjecture or just repeat incorrect narratives from earlier books. Every source is from people who fought the war; Germans, Italians, British, French and American officers who were in these campaigns and had either first hand observation of Rommel or were major participants like Eisenhower, Churchill, Goebbels, etc. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 480 pages. A fascinating figure of English literary and political history, Radclyffe Hall was born in 1880 in Bournemouth, England. Hall suffered through an exceedingly unhappy childhood until her father's death. With her inheritance, Hall leased a house in Kensington and began to live the way she pleased. She started dressing in chappish clothes, called herself Peter, then John, and wrote her first collection of verse. She was a political reactionary, a reformed Catholic, a member of the Society for Psychical Research, fussy about food and obsessive about work. She got her pipes from Dunhill's, wore brocade smoking jackets, spats in winter, and had her hair cropped off at the barber's. Hall is most famous today for her book, The Well of Loneliness, which she wrote in 1928. A novel about lesbian love, the book caused an enormous scandal on its publication and it was suppressed both in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, where Hall was put on trial under the Obscene Publications Act.

Hardcover. Chevy Chase MD, Posterity Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 261 pages, hardcover with dust jacket. Meticulously researched account of the life of the prominent New England physician and churchman. Foreword by the Most Reverend Frank T. Griswold, with a preface by the Reverend Charles H. Clark. Slight cocking to front panel. Minor rubbing and edgewear to dust jacket. Unmarked. A bright and clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 728 pages. The long-awaited biography of the genius who masterminded Henry VIII's bloody revolution in the English government, which reveals at last Cromwell's role in the downfall of Anne Boleyn. Since the sixteenth century we have been fascinated by Henry VIII and the man who stood beside him, guiding him, enriching him, and enduring the king's insatiable appetites and violent outbursts until Henry ordered his beheading in July 1540. After a decade of sleuthing in the royal archives, Diarmaid MacCulloch has emerged with a tantalizing new understanding of Henry's mercurial chief minister, the inscrutable and utterly compelling Thomas Cromwell. History has not been kind to the son of a Putney brewer who became the architect of England's split with Rome. Where past biographies portrayed him as a scheming operator with blood on his hands, Hilary Mantel reimagined him as a far more sympathetic figure buffered by the whims of his master. So which was he--the villain of history or the victim of her creation? MacCulloch sifted through letters and court records for answers and found Cromwell's fingerprints on some of the most transformative decisions of Henry's turbulent reign. But he also found Cromwell the man, an administrative genius, rescuing him from myth and slander. Clean copy.