Biografie

London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2010, cm.15,5x24, pp.328, hardcover, clothbound, dust jacket. The subtitle of this wonderful memoir declares its contents: this is 'my life with Harold Pinter', not Lady Antonia Fraser's complete life, and certainly not his. In essence, it is a love story and as with many love stories, the beginning and the end, the first light and the twilight, are dealt with more fully than the high noon in between. The result is a marvellously insightful testimony to modern literature's most celebrated marriage, between the greatest playwright of the age and a beautiful and famous prize-winning biographer.

London, Hutchinson 1983, cm.16x24, pp.568, hardcover, clothbound, dust jacket. This biography of Robert Louis Stevenson is written in the firm conviction that Stevenson is a major figure in English literature whose reputation has suffered unjustly in the 100 years since his death. With his deep knowledge of Jacobite history and the literature of travel and discovery, the author of this book investigates Stevenson's work including the writing of "Kidnapped", "Treasure Island" and "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde". Frank McLynn is the author of "Charles Edward Stuart" which was short-listed for the 1989 McVitie's Prize and "The Jacobite Army in England" which won the Cheltenham Prize.

Translated by German by Ruth Michaelis-Jena and Milly Merson. London, Routledge 1988, cm.14x22, pp.XV,245, legatura editoriale cartonata A remarkable account of the travels of Johanna Schopenhauer, mother of philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. This book should be of interest to general readers of literary and historical biography and travel and social historians.

Paris, Flammarion 2003, cm.15x24, pp.562, brossura copertina figurata. Collana Grandes Biographies. Nul n'ignore son nom. Il fait pourtant partie des grands inconnus. On le sait à la tête d'une oeuvre théâtrale, dont le monumental Soulier de satin fut sapé par le mot de Mauriac : "heureusement, il n'y avait pas la paire". On lui en veut d'avoir célébré avec la même ardeur Pétain et de Gaulle. Récemment, sa disgrâce s'est aggravée de la révélation en technicolor du destin de sa soeur Camille, sculpteur génial, qu'il laissa enfermer chez les fous. Mais était-il vraiment d'équerre, ce poète catholique, excursionniste, photographe, amateur de peinture et de musique, qui fut également, de la Chine au Brésil, du Japon à Washington, consul puis ambassadeur de France ? Apprécié de Briand, évincé par Daladier, il fut trente ans l'ami de Berthelot, "l'homme à la tête d'amant", tout-puissant secrétaire du Quai d'Orsay, qui le guida dans la carrière et dans le monde. Ainsi Claudel fraya-t-il avec princesses, auteurs, acteurs et metteurs en scène, Marthe Bibesco, Morand, d'Annunzio, l'inévitable abbé Mugnier... Car il fut aussi une haute figure des lettres parisiennes, auteur choyé de la N.R.F., en ces temps où, selon Gaston Gallimard, on n'y parlait que "de Dieu et des garçons". C'est là, d'ailleurs, que Claudel eut maille à partir avec l'autre fondateur de la maison, Gide le protestant, qui le compara un jour à un "cyclone figé". L'appellation est pertinente pour cet éruptif, cet intempestif, qui voyait en Rimbaud son père d'âme, en proie comme lui au tourment de "l'homme désirant". Sa vie consistera à creuser en lui le contenu de ce désir, à le convertir, saisi qu'il était, depuis une nuit de Noël, par l'amour de Dieu, puis par l'amour d'une femme - de la femme - rencontrée en mer. Ainsi apparaît Claudel, "demi-moine" aux dires de celle qu'il aima passionnément, partagé entre le Ciel et la Terre, et brûlant de les réconcilier.

London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1985, cm.14x21,5, pp.124, aclune tavole bn.ft. brossura copertina figurata.

Translated by Allan Blunden. London, Pushkin Press 2012, cm.16x24, pp.384, legatura editoriale cartonata, sopraccoperta figurata. This is the authorized biography of the world-famous Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. It includes the sort of personal detail conspicuously absent from Zweig's memoir The World of Yesterday, offering us a glimpse into the private world of this master of psychological insight. Drawing on a wealth of sources held by the Zweig estate, to which Oliver Matuschek had unique access, he recounts the eventful life of a writer spoilt by success, which changed direction under the influence of contemporary events and ended tragically in a suicide pact with his second wife Lotte. The title Three Lives refers to the three major phases in Zweig's life?his years of apprenticeship, his years of success as a professional "working writer" in Salzburg, and finally his years of exile in Britain, the United States, and Brazil.

(Autore britannico 1903 Londra-1966, Combe Florey, Regno Unito). Harper Collins 1975, cm.16x24, pp.814, legatura editoriale cartonata.

(1889, Tokyo, -1965, Londra). London, Victor Gollancz 1986, cm.15x23,5, pp.256, legatura editoriale cartonata, sopraccoperta figurata.

London, Collins 1990, cm.16x24, pp.IX,222, legatura editoriale cartonata, sopraccoperta figurata a colori.

London, J.M. Dent 1904, cm.13x19,5, pp.XVI,404, ill. legatura editoriale in tutta tela.

New edition revised and in part rewritten by Frederic G. Kenyon. With two portraits. London, Smith Elder 1908, cm.13x19,5, pp.XVII,432, (8), legatura editoriale in tutta tela.

Paris, Flammarion 1999, cm.15x24, pp.520, brossura copertina figurata a colori. Coll. Grandes Biographies. Le nom de Goethe évoque une ombre majestueuse, mais un peu désuète, du genre de ces personnages impressionnants devant lesquels on s'incline sans jamais oser solliciter leur intervention. Le poète s'est forgé, en effet, cette statue de "pontife des lettres" en une œuvre de cent cinquante volumes; il trône en bronze dans nombre de capitales d'Europe septentrionale; il cautionne des écrits en tous genres : sciences, lettres, journaux. Banalisation d'un personnage dont la réputation finit par occulter la réalité. Or, la vie de Goethe, inquiète, tourmentée, correspond à deux questions qui le taraudent jusqu'à ce qu'il leur ait apporté une réponse - le Faust - et qui déterminent l'ensemble de son action, multiple, dans le monde. Si la première question - que suis-je ? - le conduit assez vite à la conviction qu'il est poète, la seconde - "qu'est-ce qu'être poète ?" - comblera toute son existence, parce qu'il entend la poésie comme la confrontation avec le monde dont il s'agit de percer le mystère. D'où ses multiples études et son effort pour être à la fois ministre, savant, botaniste, minéralogiste, acousticien, anatomiste, peintre, directeur de théâtre et de revues, amateur de lettres étrangères, de femmes et de bon vin. Si bien que l'illustre habitant de Weimar, drapé dans son manteau de prophète et phare de l'Europe intellectuelle et politique de son temps, s'amusera à se définir comme un combattant certes, mais aussi comme "l'homme le plus gai et le moins accompli d'Europe".

London Hollis & Carter 1957, cm.14x22, pp.XV,552, legatura editoriale in tutta tela. sopraccoperta figurata.

London Hollis & Carter 1955, cm.14x22, pp.X,182, legatura editoriale in tutta tela.

London, Hamish Hamilton 1984, cm.16x24, pp.X,398, legatura editoriale cartonata, sopraccoperta figurata.

London, Heinemann 1995, cm.16,5x24, pp.406, legatura editoriale cartonata, sopraccoperta figurata.

London, Duckworth 1993, cm.16x24, pp.XII,478, legatura edirtoriale cartonata, sopraccoperta. Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) is a writer due for reappraisal. Well-known in his own lifetime, with a wide circle of friends - Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, Katherine Mansfield and Thomas Hardy - he has been largely ignored by recent critics. Few know of his personal life, of his loving but difficult marriage, and the passionate and platonic affair with Naomi Royde-Smith which was so crucial to his poetry. This biography examines all aspects of de la Mare's life and art.

London, Michael Joseph 1991, cm.16x24, pp.XXI,810, legatura editorirale cartonata, sopraccoperta figurata. This biography embraces the entire scope of Victorian science, religion and society in its panoramic sweep. It puts the man and his science back into context, posing the question of how such a stickler for respectability as Charles Darwin could not only rock the scientific establishment, but construct a theory that threatened the fabric of society in the 1830s, when England teetered close to revolution? The authors explore the fiery debates during Darwin's student days in Edinburgh, his drunken revelries in prostitute-ridden Cambridge, sobering up on the "Beagle" and his clandestine work on evolution in London before fleeing to rural Kent.

Michael Russell 1995, cm.16x24, pp.XIII,370, legatura editoriale cartonata, sopraccoperta.

London, Chatto & Windus 2013, cm.16x24, pp.528, legatura editoriale cartonata, sopraccoperta figurata a colori. Edizione con firma autografa dell'autrice. Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) was a great English writer, who would never have described herself in such grand terms. Her novels were short, spare masterpieces, self-concealing, oblique and subtle. The first group of these drew on her own experiences -- a boat on the Thames in the 1960s; the BBC in war time; a failing bookshop in a Suffolk; an eccentric stage-school. The later ones opened out to encompass historical worlds which, magically, she seemed to possess entirely: Russia before the Revolution; post-war Italy; Germany in the time of the Romantic writer Novalis. Fitzgerald's life is as various, as cryptic and as intriguing as her fiction. It spans most of the twentieth century, and moves from a Bishop's Palace to a sinking barge, from a demanding intellectual family to hardship and poverty, from a life of teaching and obscurity to a blaze of renown. She started publishing at sixty and became famous at eighty. This is a story of lateness, patience and persistence: a private form of heroism.

London, Constable 1993, cm.16,5x24, pp.336, legatura editoriale cartonata, sopraccoperta figurata a colori.

Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2007, cm.16x24, pp.VIII,436, ill. legatura editoriale cartonata, sopraccoperta figurata a colori.

Michael Russell 2003, cm.17x24, pp.290, legatura editoriale cartonata, sopraccoperta figurata.

A Paladin Book- Granada 1983, cm.13x19,5, pp.496, alcune tavole bn.ft. brossura copertina figurata a colori.