Literature Biography

Hardcover. NY, Henry Holt, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 524 pages. Robert Graves was astonishingly prolific and worked in many genres. He wrote lyric poetry, scholarly studies of mythology, drama, criticism, and journalism, he translated from Latin, and is probably best known for his potboilers "I, Claudius" and "Claudius the God," works that he considered purely commercial and took little interest in. And, as Miranda Seymour makes clear, he was as odd a duck as ever walked. His life was defined by the women to whom he devoted himself. "Abased himself" would perhaps be the better term. The first and most influential was the American Laura Riding, a second-rate poet who fancied herself some sort of prophetess who would save the world from war and turned Graves into her adoring puppy. Later in life Graves devoted himself to a series of young women, each of whom he claimed embodied "the goddess" in whose service he thought he dwelled. Seymour (a novelist herself) writes beautifully, and with the cooperation of key members of the Graves family she has produced what will surely be the definitive biography of Graves for years to come.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 402 pages. Biography of American poet Sylvia Plath, author of the autobiographical "The Bell Jar" (1932-1963). Illustrated with black and white photographs. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Hanover NH, Dartmouth College Press, reprint, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 277 pages. One of Rousseau?s later and most puzzling works and never before available in English, this neglected autobiographical piece was the product of the philosopher?s old age and sense of persecution. Long viewed simply as evidence of his growing paranoia, it consists of three dialogues between a character named ?Rousseau? and one identified only as ?Frenchman? who discuss the bad reputation and works of an author named ?Jean-Jacques.? Dialogues offers a fascinating retrospective of his literary career. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Brattleboro, VT, Stephen Daye Press, 2nd Printing, 1937, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover, 39 pages, dust jacket edge fade and small chunks missing, otherwise, internally very clean and tight.

Hardcover. Bennington VT, Images from the Past, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Rudyard Kipling in Vermont tells the story of the dynamic years 1892-1896 with Kipling's own letters and memoirs, selected excerpts from his poetry, and the words of those who knew and admired him. More than thirty illustrations illustrate the little-known tale of a time he said "would be blessed to me for all my life." Kipling was born in Bombay, India, and was a prolific writer. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. He married an American wife and moved to the village of Brattleboro, VT. He only lived in Vermont for four years. But during that time he wrote his famous "Jungle Book" series. Family troubles forced him to move and the large estate he lived in over looking town fell into disrepair. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, John Day/Reynal & Hitchcock, 1st, 1937, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light tan cloth, 119 pages. B&w line illustrations by Bernadine Custer. Rudyard Kipling lived with his wife on a small estate in Dummerston, Vermont, in a house they built called Naulakha, from 1892 to 1896. It was while he was here that he wrote both "The Jungle Book" and "Captains Courageous". Kipling would have been content to live out his life there but in 1896, a dispute arose between the Kiplings an a neighbor led to a court case and the Kiplings left Vermont never to return. This volume, written by a Dummerston native and historian, tells the story of that dispute. Lacks dust jacket, otherwise clean, very good.

Hardcover. NY, John Day/Reynal & Hitchcock, 1st, 1937, Hardcover, red cloth. 119 pages, drawings by Bernadine Custer. Told for the first time, 40 years after author Rudyard Kipling and his family hurriedly left their home in Vermont, this story fills some blank pages in Kipling's life story. Author Fredric Van de Water had heard the true account from Kipling's brother-in-law, Beatty Balestier, which followed smoldering tensions and a public trial. The Kiplings left in 1896, never to return. Several of Kipling's writings were put to paper in the Vermont home. First trade edition after a limited edition of 700. Clean.

Hardcover. NY, Barnes & Noble, reprint, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 194 pages. Includes a bibliography of Bannerman's books and 47 reproductions of the first British and first American editions and her illustrations for them. Phyllis Yuill and Justin Schiller helped with the publishing history and supplied illustrations. Hay shows that it was the illustrations of later artists that provoked the controversy over THE STORY OF LITTLE BLACK SAMBO, not Bannerman's original text or pictures. Bound in the original gilt-stamped red boards. From the dust jacket: "This first biography of Helen Bannerman covers much new ground and is based on the vast collection of letters to the children, usually lovingly illustrated, in the possession of the Bannerman family. As well as telling the story of one of the most popular children's books of all time, Elizabeth Hay's biography offers an intimate picture of the daily life of a British memsahib in the heyday of the Raj." Clean copy.

NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 188 pages. SIGNED BY OFFUTT on title-page.

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.

Hardcover. NY, Bloomsbury Academic, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, glazed pictorial boards, 362 pages. The essays collected in this volume were written to mark the centenary of the birth of Sir Kenneth Dover, one of the twentieth centurys most influential classical scholars. Between them, they explore the two major sides of his career: his groundbreaking scholarship on Greek language, literature and history, and the more public-facing roles he assumed in universities and at the British Academy which brought him into the national spotlight, not without some notoriety, in his later years.The contributors consider the various facets of Dover's life and work from a range of perspectives which reflect the burgeoning field of the history of scholarship. Some contributors were students and colleagues of Dovers at different stages of his career, while others are themselves leading experts in areas of Classics to which he devoted his energies. Chapters on his academic publications and on the controversies he faced in the public realm are not bland celebrations of his legacy but offer critical assessments of his motivations and achievements, cumulatively demonstrating that there is much to be learned not just about Dover himself but also about the fields he helped to shape. Clean copy.

Chicago, Ivan Dee, 1st US, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 239 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Author of The Moonstone and The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins has been hailed as "the father of the detective story." His own life story has a similar mysterious ring to it. When Collins died in 1899 he shocked Victorians by dividing his estate equally between two mistresses. He also acknowledged the three children of one of the mistresses as his own. In The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins, William Clarke has pieced together the truth behind this menage a trois, uncovering and exploring, with insight and sympathy, the private relationships of a fascinating writer who was a contemporary of Dickens, Constable, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, and Rossetti. "A literary coup ... casts a fresh beam of light on the great, dark seam of Victorian sexual mores."--The Observer.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 867 pages. Over the course of a nearly sixty-year career, Norman Mailer wrote more than 30 novels, essay collections, and nonfiction books. Yet nowhere was he more prolific or more exposed than in his letters. All told, Mailer crafted more than 45,000 pieces of correspondence (approximately 20 million words), many of them deeply personal, keeping a copy of almost every one. Now the best of these are published most for the first time in one remarkable volume that spans seven decades and, it seems, several lifetimes. Together they form a stunning autobiographical portrait of one of the most original, provocative, and outspoken public intellectuals of the twentieth century. Compiled by Mailer s authorized biographer, J. Michael Lennon, and organized by decade, Selected Letters of Norman Mailer features the most fascinating of Mailer s missives from 1940 to 2007 letters to his family and friends, to fans and fellow writers (including Truman Capote, James Baldwin, and Philip Roth), to political figures from Henry Kissinger to Bill and Hillary Clinton, and to such cultural icons as John Lennon, Marlon Brando, and even Monica Lewinsky.

Hardcover. New York, Random House, 1st, April 30, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 274 pages. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. In The Shadow Man, the bestselling author of Final Payments and The Company of Women elevates the memoir into an uncompromising and unforgettable art form as she seeks to learn the truth about her lost father. 20 photos.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 1941, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcovrt in a lightly worn dust jacket, 141 pages. Frontis photo of Pinero. Sir Arthur Wing Pinero (24 May 1855 - 23 November 1934) was an English actor and later an important dramatist and stage director. He became a prolific and successful playwright, authoring fifty-nine plays. These include serious social dramas, some dealing with social hypocrisy surrounding attitudes to women in second marriages. 'Pinero's talent was stagecraft. He knew how to organize material for effective presentation on the stage. He understood the mass psychology, the emotional reaction of the group in the theater, and thought little of the individual reader. As a result, the dialogue in his plays is right for the actor and the audience, but disconcerting to the readers. But in particular, Pinero was the master of suspense, motivating the turns in his plot sequence with unerring skill. For he understood stage business, the timinng of motion and sound, and, above all, the reactions of an audience to the physical properties on the stage itself. ' Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Random House, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 255 pages. A very clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Macmillan, 1st, 1917, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 467 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR - ("SPECIAL AUTOGRAPHED EDITION"). Previous owners notes and related clippings adhered to inside front cover and front endpaper. Illustrations by Alice Barber Stephens. Covers show light wear, with some rubbing to cloth at top and bottom of spine. Clean, unmarked text.

Hardcover. London, Hogarth Press, Reprint, 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket. 206 pages. Ex-library copy with minimal marking. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, ZE Books, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth with white lettering. No dust jacket issued. With Stay, acclaimed poet, artist, and bestselling memoirist Nick Flynn presents a self-portrait via a constellation of topics that have circled his work. Ranging from the impact of suicide and homelessness to addiction, political engagement, and the vital power of artistic friendships, Stay is a mixed-media retrospective that shows nothing is created in isolation. Mirroring Flynn's life, this work of visual and literary memoir is populated by examples of his collaborations since the 1980s with such luminaries as the photographers Amy Arbus and Catherine Opie, composer Guy Barash, actor Robert De Niro, cartoonist Josh Neufeld, author Sarah Sentilles, filmmaker Paul Weitz, and artists John Baldessari, Marilyn Minter, and Bill Shuck. In Flynn's refusal to conform to narrative or the safety of his own perspective, Stay grasps for an essential truth, an answer to what art, in the end, can and cannot reflect. Illustrated in color, b&w.

Hardcover. Middlebury, VT, Paul Eriksson, 1st collected ed., 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a nice dust jacket. The relationship between the novelist and his editor Pascal Covici. Some fade, light wear to dj. Steinbeck and Covici is a major contribution to the literature about John Steinbeck. "Steinbeck Quarterly" magazine wrote, "Thomas Fensch offers the first comprehensive account of one of John Steinbeck's most enduring, intimate, and important relationships: his association with his editor, Pascal Covici. The results are revealing, and broaden the dimension of Steinbeck studies." This book was first published in l979 and received not one, but two separate reviews in "The New York Times." It was also widely reviewed elsewhere and won the Book of the Year Award in Biogaphy from the Ohioana Library Association, in l980.

Softcover. Middlebury VT, Paul S. Eriksson, 1st pbk, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pictorial wraps. 248 pages. Appendix, bibliography and notes. A study of the relationship between John Steinbeck, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist, and his editor, Pascal Covici, based upon their correspondence. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 627 pages, b&w illustrations. The literary, political, and artistic interests of poet and cultural icon Stephen Spender (1909-1995) are illuminated in this narrative based on his private papers, tracing his rise to success as a poet in the 1930s through his later years as cultural statesman of the twentieth century, and examining his relationships with such luminaries as Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, T. S. Eliot, and Virgina Woolf. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Faber & Faber, 1st, 2008, Hardcover, 524 pages, b&w illustrations. SIGNED BY BOTH HEANEY & O'DRISCOLL on title page. Widely regarded as the finest poet of his generation, Seamus Heaney is the subject of numerous critical studies; but no book-length portrait has appeared until now. Through his own lively and eloquent reminiscences, Stepping Stones retraces the poet's steps from his early works, through to his receipt of the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature and his post-Nobel life. It is supplemented with a large number of photographs, many from the Heaney family album and published here for the first time.

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.