biography france

Hardcover. Swan Isle Press, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 180 pages. Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel (1900-83), known for his surrealist themes and unflinching social criticism, was an artist defined by intellectual ambition and controversy. An exile who produced some of his most famous work in Mexico and France during Franco's dictatorship, he left a complicated imprint on the creative landscape of the twentieth century and on generations of younger filmmakers--including his Mexican friend Claudio Isaac. Drawn from Isaac's personal papers, Midday with Bunuel: Memories and Sketches, 1973-1983 is an intimate and unconventional portrait of this cinematic icon--and memoir of Isaac's own artistic development.The text includes sketches, vignettes, and anecdotes from Isaac's notebooks, revealing his perspective first as a precocious boy and then as a young man. Isaac reflects on Bunuel's presence among a community of exiles, artists, actors, writers, and intellectuals in Mexico City. These are at once touching, perceptive, and critical glimpses into Bunuel's roles as husband and father, friend and colleague, surrealist, philosopher, and iconoclast during his last years. Throughout, Isaac's words reveal his deep admiration and affection for an older friend full of contradictions. Intimate photographs from the Isaac family archive complement the writing, and Bryan Thomas Scoular's careful translation makes this text available for the first time in English.

Hardcover. NY, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. When the French designer Christian Dior presented his first collection in Paris in 1947, he changed fashion forever. Dior's "New Look" created a striking, romantic vision of femininity, luxury, and grace, making him-and his last name-famous overnight. One woman informed Dior's vision more than any other: his sister, Catherine, a Resistance fighter, concentration camp survivor, and cultivator of rose gardens who inspired Dior's most beloved fragrance, Miss Dior. Yet the story of Catherine's remarkable life-so different from her famous brother's-has never been told, until now. Drawing on the Dior archives and extensive research, Justine Picardie's Miss Dior is the long-overdue restoration of Catherine Dior's life. The siblings' stories are profoundly intertwined: in Occupied France, as Christian honed his couture skills, Catherine dedicated herself to the Resistance, ultimately being captured by the Gestapo and sent to Ravensbruck, the only Nazi camp solely for women. Seeking to trace Catherine's story as well as her influence on her brother, Picardie traveled to the significant places of Catherine's life, including Les Rhumbs, the Dior family villa with its magnificent gardens; the House of Dior in Paris; and La Colle Noire, Christian's chateau that he bequeathed to his sister. Remainder dot top edge.

Hardcover. NY, Brewer & Warren, 1st US, 1930, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, marbled boards with green cloth spine, 494 pages. A scholarly biography of the great French dramatist, b&w illustrations. Light shelf wear. Top of spine has some fading/sunning, no markings.

Hardcover. London, Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, 1st, 1857, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 286 pages. Hardcover with marbled covers and page block decoration, gilt lettering on spine. Previous owner's bookplate on front end paper. Previous owner's name on title page. Ex-Library with usual stamping and embossed seal on preliminary pages.

Hardcover. London, Arthur L Humphreys, 2nd pr., 1900, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth with gilt staping. 261 pages including index. 261 pages. Written almost 80 years after the Emperor's death, the author attempts to bring together all the contemporary biographies and memoirs relating to the sojourn on St Helena. Mild foxing, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, The Winchell Co., 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 297 pages, b&w illustrations, in a bright dust jacket. Clean. Helene Iswolsky, daughter of a Russian diplomat, grew up in Japan, Denmark, Russia, and France. In 1911, her father became Russian ambassador to France. She returned to Russia for her debut in 1914, to be presented to the Tsarina Alexandra. While there she attended the wedding of Prince Felix Yusupov, who was to murder Rasputin three years later. After the Tsar was overthrown, her father retired to Biarritz and died there in 1919, leaving unpaid debts. The author took up translating and writing. She had a religious awakening and became a Catholic. A sojourn in a Benedictine monastery left her changed, but she decided not to make the cloister her life. The author knew many notable people in the Paris area, especially writers, poets, critics, philosophers of the "new wave," Christian humanists, and Russian emigres. She attended the Sunday afternoon gatherings of Jacques Maritain and Nicholas Berdiaev, and worked on Emmanuel Mounier's journal "Esprit." When the Nazis occupied France, she escaped to America with her mother. Here she founded an ecumenical movement called "The Third Hour" and taught Russian at Fordham University and other schools. She was a close friend of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement. Scarce.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 347 pages. In 1971 Deirdre Bair was a journalist and recently minted Ph.D. who managed to secure access to Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett. He agreed that she could be his biographer despite her never having written--or even read--a biography before. The next seven years comprised of intimate conversations, intercontinental research, and peculiar cat-and-mouse games. Battling an elusive Beckett and a string of jealous, misogynistic male writers, Bair persevered. She wrote Samuel Beckett: A Biography, which went on to win the National Book Award and propel Deirdre to her next subject: Simone de Beauvoir. The catch? De Beauvoir and Beckett despised each other--and lived essentially on the same street. Bair learned that what works in terms of process for one biography rarely applies to the next. Her seven-year relationship with the domineering and difficult de Beauvoir required a radical change in approach, yielding another groundbreaking literary profile and influencing Bair's own feminist beliefs.Parisian Lives draws on Bair's extensive notes from the period, including never-before-told anecdotes. This gripping memoir is full of personality and warmth and gives us an entirely new window on the all-too-human side of these legendary thinkers.

Hardcover. NY, Longmans Green & Co., 1st US, 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a chipped, worn dust jacket, 303 pages."Charles Pierre Peguy (1873- 1914) was a noted French poet, essayist, and editor. His two main philosophies were socialism and nationalism, but by 1908 at the latest, after years of uneasy agnosticism, he had become a believing but non-practicing Roman Catholic. From that time, Catholicism strongly influenced his works. From his earliest years, he was influenced by socialism. He joined the Socialist Party in 1895. From 1900 until his death in 1914, he was the main contributor to and the editor of the literary magazine Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine, which at first supported the Socialist Party director Jean Jaures. However, Peguy ultimately ended this support after he began viewing Jaures as a traitor to the nation and to socialism. In the Cahiers, Peguy published not only his own essays and poetry, but also works by important contemporary authors such as Romain Rolland. His free-verse poem, "Portico of the Mystery of the Second Virtue", has gone through more than 60 editions in France."Charles Pierre Peguy (1873- 1914) was a noted French poet, essayist, and editor. His two main philosophies were socialism and nationalism, but by 1908 at the latest, after years of uneasy agnosticism, he had become a believing but non-practicing Roman Catholic. From that time, Catholicism strongly influenced his works. From his earliest years, he was influenced by socialism. He joined the Socialist Party in 1895. From 1900 until his death in 1914, he was the main contributor to and the editor of the literary magazine Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine, which at first supported the Socialist Party director Jean Jaures. However, Peguy ultimately ended this support after he began viewing Jaures as a traitor to the nation and to socialism. In the Cahiers, Peguy published not only his own essays and poetry, but also works by important contemporary authors such as Romain Rolland. His free-verse poem, "Portico of the Mystery of the Second Virtue", has gone through more than 60 editions in France.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1st US, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 588 pages, several color plates. Before Picasso became Picasso-the iconic artist now celebrated as one of France's leading figures-he was constantly surveilled by the French police. Amid political tensions in the spring of 1901, he was flagged as an anarchist by the security services-the first of many entries in an extensive case file. Though he soon emerged as the leader of the cubist avant-garde, and became increasingly wealthy as his reputation grew worldwide, Picasso's art was largely excluded from public collections in France for the next four decades. The genius who conceived Guernica in 1937 as a visceral statement against fascism was even denied French citizenship three years later, on the eve of the Nazi occupation. In a country where the police and the conservative Academie des Beaux-Arts represented two major pillars of the establishment at the time, Picasso faced a triple stigma-as a foreigner, a political radical, and an avant-garde artist. Picasso the Foreigner approaches the artist's career and art from an entirely new angle, making extensive use of fascinating and long-overlooked archival sources. In this groundbreaking narrative, Picasso emerges as an artist ahead of his time not only aesthetically but politically, one who ignored national modes in favor of contemporary cosmopolitan forms. Remainder dot to top edge, otherwise a bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1st US, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 240 pages, illustrated throughout in full color and b&w. Light edgewear to dust jacket, faint foxing to bottom edge. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan Company, 1st US, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 461 pages. Laval began his career as a socialist, but over time drifted far to the right. Following France's defeat and armistice with Germany in 1940, he served in prominent roles in Philippe Petain's Vichy Regime, first as the vice-president of the Council of Ministers from 11 July 1940 to 13 December 1940, and later as the head of government from 18 April 1942 to 20 August 1944. After the liberation of France in 1944, Laval was arrested by the French government under General Charles de Gaulle. In what was widely regarded as a flawed trial, Laval was found guilty of plotting against the security of the State and collaboration with the enemy, and after a thwarted suicide attempt, he was executed by firing squad. His manifold political activities left a complicated and controversial legacy, resulting in more than a dozen conflicting biographies of him. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise a bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. Garden City, Doubleday & Co., 1st, 1954, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 570 pages, b&w illustrations and frontispiece. Black cloth covers w/ edgewear, chipping. Previous owner's signature inside front cover. Else clean and tight.

Hardcover. London, Frances Lincoln, 1st US, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial boards. A biography of the filmmaker told in a graphic novel format. From the set of 1993's Pulp Fiction, to a bar room meeting with Robert Rodriguez and an inspirational lunch with Leonardo di Caprio, this unique graphic novel takes us across a series of Hollywood-inspired vignettes covering the movie-obsessed life and career of one of modern cinema's greatest filmmakers - Quentin Tarantino. Join the conversation as Tarantino talks John Travolta into starring in Pulp Fiction, find out about the inspiration for his earliest screenplays and learn about Tarantino's obsessive childhood growing up in California. 126 pages in color. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Thunder's Mouth Press; Nation Books, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 464 pages, b&w photos. In a bright, unclipped dust jacket. As the McCarthyite witch hunt gathered momentum in the postwar years, screenwriter Norma Barzman and her husband were driven from Hollywood into an emotionally difficult thirty-year exile in France. The Red and the Blacklist is a unique record of the political tempests of the time, marked by the author's dazzling power of reflection and insight, and animated by a larger-than-life cast of supporting characters including Pablo Picasso, Harold Robbins, Sophia Loren, Charlton Heston, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Losey, John Wayne, Anthony Quinn, Groucho Marx and--in a delightful cameo--a very young Marilyn Monroe.

Hardcover. NY, Flammarion, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 224 pages, color and b&w illustrations. Rene Herbst's enduring furniture designs provide fundamental lessons for today's interior designers. A staunch modernist, Herbst was a founding member and later president of the Union des artistes modernes (UAM) in France, which sought to make domestic comfort accessible to all, regardless of class. The diversity of his work is testament to his prolific and creative output, and his design is marked by its simplicity and functionality. The French architect turned designer was nicknamed the "man of steel" because he pioneered the use of the material for furniture years before mass production on a large scale was possible. In 1929 he created several versions of his celebrated Sandow Chair, which ignited his research into serial production and inaugurated the era of mass production. This book presents a selection of the best works from the Herbst Collection held by the library of the Musee des Arts decoratifs in Paris, and demonstrates how Herbst was the catalyst of a new style of living that spurred the birth of modernity.

Hardcover. Francestown NH, Marshall Jones Company, 3rd pr., 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, blue cloth stamped in gilt. Dust jacket edgeworn, chipped. 295 pages. Revised Edition. Third Printing. INSCRIBED by Rosamond Thaxter ("Rosie") on half title page.

Softcover. New York , Random House, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 279 pages, b&w photos. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to wrappers. This book exposes Chanel's anti-Semitism and her long affair with 'Spatz' Baron von Dincklage, a Nazi spy who ran an intelligence ring and reported to Goebbels. It explains how she became a German intelligence operative, how she lived in exile, how Winston Churchill supported her and how she reinvented herself in the early 1950s.

Softcover. New Lebanon NY, Omega Publications, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 234 pages, b&w photos. Everything about Noor Inayat Khan was extraordinary. A great-great-great granddaughter of Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, she was born in Moscow to an American mother and an Indian Sufi Muslim father. Due to the unrest in Russia the family moved to London and from there to France where she spent the happiest years of her life studying music, child psychology and writing children's books. In 1940, her father having deserted the family and died in India years before, the family moved once again to England where Noor was trained as a wireless operator with the aim of sending her to German-occupied France to join up with the resistance. Noor was small and delicate, emotional, imaginative, shy, easily flustered and distracted. On the other hand there was her steely determination to serve her country, the desperate need for wireless operators and her perfect French. She was sent on her mission in June 1943. Her biography contains all the elements of an exciting spy novel but it was horrific and deadly reality. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, W.W. Norton & Co , 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 331 pages, b&w illustrations. 'Born in Hull. But moved to London at the age of 3 and has lived in the same house ever since.', wrote Stevie Smith when asked by an editor for a biographical note. The lack of external events in her life is to many people the best known thing about her. Yet she was far from reclusive, as this new critical biography shows, and was actively involved in the social as well as intellectual life of literary London, with interruptions, from the early thirties. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper, 1st, 2025, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 324 pages. Surreal, the long-awaited, definitive biography of Gala Dali, unmasks this famous yet little-known queen of the twentieth-century art world, who graced the canvases, inspired the poetry, and influenced the careers of her illustrious lovers and husbands with tenderness, courage, and agency. Using previously undiscovered material, Surreal tells the riveting story of Gala Dali, (1894-1982) who broke away from her cultured but penurious background in pre-Revolutionary Russia to live in Paris with both France's most famous poet Paul Eluard and Max Ernst. By the time she met the budding artist Salvador Dali in 1929, Gala was known as the Mother of Surrealism. She rapidly became his mentor, muse, and protector, marrying him in 1934 and subsequently engineering their vast fortune. At a time when artists were celebrities, Gala acted as the ambassador of the Surrealist movement, spreading its popularity across the globe. Remainder mark to top edge otherwise clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1st, 1925, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, purple cloth gilt lettering and decoration on spine, gilt medallion on front cover. 355 pages, color frontispiece. Illustrated with several B&W maps and reproductions. Mild fade to spine. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. London, Alcove Press , 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket with foxing, tanning. No markings.

Hardcover. Philadelphia , Hogan and Thompson, reprint, 1836, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, leather bound, 285 pages with index. Front fly leaf gone, book opens to title page. Hinges cracked, rear cover barely holding on. No markings.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2nd pr, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 312 pages, color and b&w illustrations. A bristling and brilliant memoir of the mid-twentieth-century New York School of painters and their times by the renowned artist and critic Edith Schloss, who, from the early years, was a member of the group that shifted the center of the art world from Paris to New York. Schloss was born in Germany and moved to New York City during World War II. She became part of a thriving community of artists and intellectuals that included Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Larry Rivers, John Cage, and Frank O'Hara. She married the photographer and filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt. She was both a working artist and an incisive critic, and was a candid and gimlet-eyed witness of the close-knit community that was redefining the world of art. In Italy she spent time with Giorgio Morandi, Cy Twombly, Meret Oppenheim, and Francesca Woodman. Remainder dot to top edge otherwise clean.