From the author's study of the Austen family papers, this title paints a picture of the Austen clan and their neighbours, and concludes that the facts of Jane Austen's life were even more extravagant and romantic than her fiction.

A biography of Virginia Woolf which moves freely between a detailed life-story and attempts to understand significant questions. She is presented as occupying a distinct and even uneasy position within the Bloomsbury Set, and also as a radically sceptical, subversive, courageous feminist.

First published in 1990, this shorter edition takes the reader into the life of one of the world's greatest writers.

Thomas Hardy is one of the sacred figures in English writing, a great poet and a novelist with a world reputation. His life was also extraordinary: from the poverty of rural Dorset he went on to become the Grand Old Man of English life and letters, his last resting place in Westminster Abbey. This seminal biography, by our leading biographer, covers Hardy's illegitimate birth, his rural ...

A biography of Charlotte Bronte that describes her life of claustrophobic confinement in a Yorkshire parsonage belied by the heights of imagination to which she was able to soar in her writing. It also describes the 'extraordinary genius' that seemed to have touched her family and the intense suffering that also visited them.

This acclaimed biography has won both the James Tait Black and the Duff Cooper Memorial Prizes, and is considered by many to be the definitive account of Joyce's life and work.

This biography describes Virginia Woolf's family and childhood; her early writings; the formation of the Bloomsbury group; her marriage to Leonard Woolf; the mental breakdowns of 1912-15; the origins and growth of the Hogarth Press and the political and personal distresses of her last years.

The theatre for which Shakespeare wrote and acted was a cut-throat commercial entertainment industry. Yet his plays were also intensely alert to the social and political realities of their times.

The name 'Edith Wharton' conjures up 'Gilded Age' New York, in all its snobbery and ruthlessness - the world of The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth . This biography delves into various aspects of Wharton's extraordinary life-story. It shifts the emphasis towards Europe, placing her in her social context and her history.

Drawing on private letters and papers, and with the co-operation of Daphne du Maurier's family, the author explores the secret drama of her life - the stifling relationship with her father, actor-manager Gerald du Maurier; her troubled marriage to war hero and royal aide, 'Boy' Browning; her wartime love affair; and more.

Pursuing art and adventure across Europe, Katherine Mansfield lived and wrote with the Furies on her heels; but when she died aged only thirty-four she became one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. This biography describes this courageous, greatly gifted, haunted and haunting writer.

A biography of Samuel Johnson which concerns the last twenty years of his life. It establishes Johnson's centrality in 18th century letters. It places him in a literary and cultural context.

Samuel Pepys achieved fame as a naval administrator, a friend and colleague of the powerful and learned, a figure of substance. But for nearly ten years he kept a private diary in which he recorded, with unparalleled openness and sensitivity to the turbulent world around him, exactly what it was like to be a young man in Restoration London.

Geoffrey Chaucer has some claim to being the greatest poet in the English language. Yet he has also been considered to be an invisible poet, self-depreciating and ironic, leaving only the breath of his comedy behind. In truth a great deal is known of him. He was a royal servant, who was indicted for rape.

An intimate portrait of Virginia, the best-known and most influential Bloomsbury author of them all

The life of Vita Sackville-West, a key member of the Bloomsbury set and lover of Virginia Woolf

Using Virginia Woolf's own commentary on the creative process through her letters, diaries and essays, this book aims to put her nine great novels back absolutely at the centre of Woolf's life; to read that life through her books, using the novels themselves to create a biography.

Richard Holmes's great work of biographical exploration, rejacketed and republished alongside its sister volume Sidetracks.

The classic story of the relationship between Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, and a unique portrait of the Bloomsbury Group.

Presents the story of the life of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens. This book provides a truthful portrait of the great Victorian novelist.