Books by Norma Clarke

Oliver Goldsmith arrived in England a penniless Irishman and toiled for years in the anonymity of Grub Street. Norma Clarke tells how this destitute scribbler became one of literary London's most celebrated authors, transmuting dark truths about the empire into fable and nostalgia whose undertow of Irish indignation remains just barely perceptible.

She died in 1869. The Rise and Fall of the Woman of Letters tells the remarkable but little-known story of women writers in the eighteenth century - of poets, critics, dramatists and scholars celebrated in their own time but all but forgotten by the beginning of the new century.

This work explores Dr Johnson's relationships with six remarkable and successful female authors: Elizabeth Carter; Hannah More; Charlotte Lennox; Hester Thrale; Fanney Burney; and Elizabeth Montagu. These women's characters and achievements are also chronicled.