Books in the Literary Lives series

This book situates John Clare's long, prolific but often badly neglected literary life within the wider cultural histories of the Regency and earlier Victorian periods. The second half recreates asylum culture and places Clare's performances as Regency boxers and Lord Byron within this bleak new world.

This comprehensive account of the writing life of Henry James aims at providing a critical overview of all his important writings, firmly set in two contexts: that of James's practical career as a novelist in America, England, and Europe;

A concise study of the life and poetry of the Victorian priest-poet. Gerald Roberts gives a chronological description and analysis of Hopkins's career and writing, and pays due attention to the Victorian and Jesuit background.

Part of a series which follows the outline of writers' working lives, aiming to trace the professional, publishing and social contexts which shaped their writing. This is a sympathetic portrait of the poet who overcame the obscurity of his origins to become the uncrowned Laureate of his age.

This work relates Hardy's life to his career, his methodological preparation during the first 30 years of his life for that career, the writing of his 14 published novels and the fame they brought him. It also offers a culmination of his life as a writer.

Emphasizing Frances Burney's professionalism and her courage, Janice Farrar Thaddeus shows the protean writer who recognised her abilities and exercised them, always carefully shaping her career.

This comprehensive overview of Mary Shelley's life as an author frequently reads like an anthology of extracts from some of the most lurid and sensationalist novels of the early 19th century.

This largely chronological study of Iris Murdoch's literary life begins with her fledgling publications at Badminton School and Oxford, and her Irish heritage. It moves through the novels of the next four decades and concludes with an account of the biographical, critical and media attention given to her life and work since her death in 1999.

This largely chronological study of Iris Murdoch's literary life begins with her fledgling publications at Badminton School and Oxford, and her Irish heritage. It moves through the novels of the next four decades and concludes with an account of the biographical, critical and media attention given to her life and work since her death in 1999.

Drawing on a series of new sources, this biography of Ezra Pound - the first to appear in more than a decade - outlines his contribution to modernism through a detailed account of his development, influence and continued significance. His roles as editor, translator and critic, plus his attempt to complete The Cantos , are also studied.

Wilkie Collins: A Literary Life draws on recently available business and personal correspondence to establish a fresh portrait of one of Victorian Britain's busiest authors. The book takes in Collins's notoriously complicated private life as well as his work as a professional author in the changing world of Victorian publishing.

Despite all the studies devoted to William Faulkner, he continues to be variously perceived. Focussing on his fiction, this study of Faulkner's multifaceted literary life explores the distinctive blend of continuity and innvoation that characterizes his novels and looks at the extensive and varied reactions they have elicited.

This book charts the major events of Stoker's life, including friendships with many of the major figures of the age and as manager of Henry Irving's Lyceum, with his literary career. It offers critical evaluation of Dracula and of Stoker's lesser-known works, yielding much interest when reinserted into their original cultural contexts.

By the time of her death in 1992, Angela Carter had come to be regarded as one of the most successful and original British authors of the twentieth-century, and her writing has subsequently become the focus of a burgeoning body of criticism.

A clearly written, insightful study of Nabokov the novelist, providing an expert analysis of the 17 novels he wrote during a career spanning more than 50 years: one of the most impressive, challenging, and controversial literary achievements of our time.

Henry Fielding: A Literary Life characterizes Fielding's complex personality, in some ways full of contradiction, and yet resolved both by a deep knowledge of human nature, including his own, and by his innate social constructiveness and his gift for friendship and love.

This volume replaces the traditional image of George Herbert as meditative recluse with a portrait of the poet as engaged throughout his life with the religion, politics and society of his time.

Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life examines the way Plath made herself into a writer. Close analysis of Plath's reading and apprenticeship writing both in fiction and poetry sheds considerable light on Plath's work in the late 1960s.

This is a study of the forces and influences that shaped Kipling's work, including his unusual family background, his role as the laureate of empire and the deaths of two of his children, and of his complex relations with a literary world that first embraced and then rejected him.

Gary Waller surveys Spenser's career in terms of the material conditions of its production - the often overlooked material factors of race, gender, class, agency - and the resonant 'places' which influenced his career - court, church, nation, colony.

Emphasizing Frances Burney's professionalism and her courage, Janice Farrar Thaddeus shows the protean writer who recognised her abilities and exercised them, always carefully shaping her career.

In 'Percy Bysshe Shelly: A Literary Life' , Michael O'Neill gives a knowledgeable and balanced account of Shelley's literary career from his earliest published work to his last unfinished masterpiece, The Triumph of Life . For Shelley, a poet was the 'combined product' of 'internal powers' and 'external influences' (Preface to Prometheus Unbound );

A Literary life of William Makepeace Thackeray offers a new perspective on the relation between Thackeray's life and his novels.

The most sustained criticism and ambitious theory that had ever been attempted in English, the Biographia was Coleridge's major statement to a literary culture in which he sought to define and defend all imaginative life. This book offers a reading of Coleridge in the context of that culture and the institutions that comprised it.

The most sustained criticism and ambitious theory that had ever been attempted in English, the Biographia was Coleridge's major statement to a literary culture in which he sought to define and defend all imaginative life. This book offers a reading of Coleridge in the context of that culture and the institutions that comprised it.

Dylan Thomas: A Literary Life offers an account of the poet's life, along with a critical reading of his work, that is designed to close what has been called 'the yawning gap' between Dylan Thomas's popular and critical reputations.