England Biography

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1934, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, chipped dust jacket, 362 pages. Richard Steele, best known for his essays in The Tatler and The Spectator, was a powerful and humane influence in letters, the theatre and politics during the times of Queen Anne and the first George. B&w frontis. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cleveland, OH, The World Publishing Company, Reprint, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 130 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrations throughout. Gray cloth cover boards, gold gilt title on spine. Some tanning to top and bottom of spine. Dust jacket unclipped, has some agewear. "Humor, drama and beauty woven out of memories of a fantastic boyhood by Hugh Falkus..."

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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

Hardcover. London, England, Hammond, Hammond & Co. Ltd., 1st Edition, 1953, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 2 Volume Set, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY. 1560 total pages. Hardcovers. Black cover boards, gilt title on spine. Light tanning from age to pages. Bindings good. Spines straight. A record of one of America's most distinguished diplomatic careers.

Hardcover. NY, Free Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 478 pages, b&w illustrations. When the young, insignificant scion of an unremarkable German principality first came to England to serve as consort to the youthful Queen Victoria, no one could have guessed that he would grow to become one of Britain's great--if uncrowned--kings. Albert's life could not have been an easy one; a man of great intelligence, pride, and ambition, he was forced to move behind the scenes, playing major roles in running the Crimean War and working to keep Britain out of the Civil War being waged in the United States. He was interested in industry and technology, and worked to stage the Crystal Palace exhibition--the first World's Fair. Yet, while his wife adored him, his adopted people scorned him for his German accent, his foreign ways, and his covert activities as a surrogate ruler. Clean copy.

Softcover. London, Verso, 1st Thus, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 174 pages. Softcover. Light marginal wear to covers. Clean & unmarked.

Hardcover. London, Routledge, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 212 pages, b&w illustrations. SIGNED and INSCRIBED by the author with a note by the author laid-in. Light edgewear to dust jacket, faint foxing to top edge. Clean, tight copy. This book discusses the home life of Queen Victoria in the context of her marriage to Prince Albert and her relationships with her children. Whittle describes the purchase, remodeling and rebuilding of Osborne House and Balmoral Castle, a subject often given little attention in other books on the couple's life together.

Hardcover. London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2nd imp., 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 635 pages. Contains black and white illustrated plates, and a pull out family tree. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1st, 1941, Book: Good, 345 pages. Hardcover. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR. Gilt title on spine, faded. Covers have some age wear. Age yellowing to edges and pages.

Hardcover. NY, Penguin Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 642 pages. Gray cloth boards with silver titles to spine. Black & white illustrations throughout. Crisp dust jacket with only minor wear. Very clean & unmarked. Crisp, tight copy.

Hardcover. Columbia OH, Ohio State University Press, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 368 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to corners. While "freaks" have captivated our imagination since well before the nineteenth century, the Victorians flocked to shows featuring dancing dwarves, bearded ladies, "missing links," and six-legged sheep. Indeed, this period has been described by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson as the epoch of "consolidation" for freakery: an era of social change, enormously popular freak shows, and taxonomic frenzy. Victorian Freaks: The Social Context of Freakery in Britain, edited by Marlene Tromp, turns to that rich nexus, examining the struggle over definitions of "freakery" and the unstable and sometimes conflicting ways in which freakery was understood and deployed. As the first study centralizing British culture, this collection discusses figures as varied as Joseph Merrick, "The Elephant Man"; Daniel Lambert, "King of the Fat Men"; Julia Pastrana, "The Bear Woman"; and Laloo "The Marvellous Indian Boy" and his embedded, parasitic twin. The Victorian Freaks contributors examine Victorian culture through the lens of freakery, reading the production of the freak against the landscape of capitalist consumption, the medical community, and the politics of empire, sexuality, and art. Collectively, these essays ask how freakery engaged with notions of normalcy and with its Victorian cultural context.