Download or read book Dangerous Muse written by Nancy Schoenberger and published by Nan A. Talese. This book was released on 2012-07-18 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caroline Blackwood was born into the Guinness family in 1931, the daughter of the Fourth Marquess and Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava. Brought up on the ancestral estate in Northern Ireland, Blackwood moved easily among the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, the Soho bohemians of postwar England, and the liberal intelligentsia of 1960s New York. She was on intimate terms with some of the most celebrated artists and writers of her time. An unpredictable beauty known for her wit and her courage, she has been called a muse to genius. But her marriages to three brilliant men: the painter Lucian Freud, the composer Israel Citkowitz, and the poet Robert Lowell were as troubled as they were inspiring. During her marriage to Lucian Freud, Caroline became part of an artistic and literary group that included Francis Bacon and Cyril Connolly who was infatuated with her but eventually Freud's gambling caused irrevocable problems between them. Caroline was also in the grips of her own unfolding tragedy: a fatal attraction to alcohol that would plague the rest of her life. Upon the breakup of her first marriage, she moved to America , where she met her second and third husbands. Once regarded as the obvious successor to Aaron Copland, Israel Citkowitz had stopped composing long before he met Caroline. While he and Caroline had three children together, it was her subsequent seven year marriage to Robert Lowell that she considered her "main marriage." Her life with Lowell was probably the most difficult time of her life as she dealt with his increasingly frequent and worsening attacks of mania. And to Lowell she was not only an inspiration but_as he described in his Pulitzer-prize- winning book of verse The Dolphin, she was also "a mermaid who dines upon the bones of her winded lovers." In 1977, Robert Lowell fled London to return to his former wife Elizabeth Hardwick. He died from a heart attack in the backseat of a taxi, clutching Girl in Bed, Lucian Freud's haunting portrait of Caroline. Blackwood was an artist in her own right. Her literary talents were dark and satiric; her ten books of fiction and nonfiction betrayed an extraordinary eye for human physiognomy, attire, and behavior. Arguably her best book, Great Granny Webster described the comic terrors of her upbringing in Northern Ireland, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She herself died of cancer on Valentine's Day 1996, at the age of sixty-four. Dangerous Muse is the first biography of Lady Caroline Blackwood. Drawing upon numerous interviews and unpublished letters from Blackwood's mother, Maureen Dufferin, and friends and family, including Andrew Harvey, Jonathan Raban, John Richardson, and Caroline's sister Perdita Blackwood, Nancy Schoenberger eloquently captures one of the most original and provocative figures in contemporary letters of the twentieth century.

Download or read book The Stepdaughter written by Caroline Blackwood and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2024-08-06 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wicked stepmother finds her ideal prey in Carlone Blackwood's “quite brilliant” (The Times) debut. A lavish Upper West Side apartment is the site of a familial cold war about to enter a phase of dangerous escalation. J is a lonely woman without even the luxury of being alone. Her husband has fled to Paris with his latest flame, but he’s left J not only with their own four-year-old daughter, Sally Ann, but with the sulky cake-mix addicted, thirteen-year-old Renata, a leftover from his previous marriage. The presence of a pert au pair, Monique, serves only to make J feel more isolated and self-conscious. What she’d like is someone to blame. Writing letters in her head to imaginary friends, J delights in dwelling on the hapless Renata, who “invites a kind of cruelty.” This is an invitation J fully intends to take up—and like so many stepmothers before her, she will find that wickedness, once indulged, is a difficult habit to kick. A mordant black splinter of a book, Caroline Blackwood’s first novel stands as proof positive of her eternal mastery—and mockery—of the darkest depths of human feeling.

Download or read book BLACKWOOD S LADY written by Gail Whitiker and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2012-02-15 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Duty isn’t all that drives him… David, Marquis of Blackwood, needs an heir, but his requirements in a wife are precise. Lady Nicola Wyndham appears to fit the bill—she’s older, likes country living, has managed her father’s household for some time and nothing detrimental is known about her. But when he coolly proposes, Nicola’s brief look of hurt prompts him to a sudden show of warmth. It gives Nicola hope that they might have a good marriage and she accepts. But she has a secret—which he is bound to find out—and which goes against every idea David has of his future wife….

Download or read book A Duke in Shining Armor written by Loretta Chase and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-11-28 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Not all dukes are created equal. Most are upstanding members of Society. And then there’s the trio known as The Dis-Graces. Hugh Philemon Ancaster, seventh Duke of Ripley, will never win prizes for virtue. But even he draws the line at running off with his best friend’s bride. All he’s trying to do is recapture the slightly inebriated Lady Olympia Hightower and return her to her intended bridegroom. For reasons that elude her, bookish, bespectacled Olympia is supposed to marry a gorgeous rake of a duke. The ton is flabbergasted. Her family’s ecstatic. And Olympia? She’s climbing out of a window, bent on a getaway. But tall, dark, and exasperating Ripley is hot on her trail, determined to bring her back to his friend. For once, the world-famous hellion is trying to do the honorable thing. So why does Olympia have to make it so deliciously difficult for him . . . ?

Download or read book The Just So Woman written by Gary Blackwood and published by HarperColl. This book was released on 2007-10 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Just-So Woman has a day when nothing goes right, she learns an important lesson from her neighbor, the Any-Way Man. By the author of The Shakespeare Stealer. Jr Lib Guild.

Download or read book Great Granny Webster written by Caroline Blackwood and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2012-04-18 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Booker Prize The real-life Guinness heiress offers an inside look at the lives of eccentric aristocrats in this “masterful . . . macabre fairy-tale and blackly humorous family portrait” (Literary Hub). This macabre, mordantly funny, partly auto-biographical novel reveals the gothic craziness behind the scenes in the great houses of the aristocracy, as witnessed through the unsparing eyes of an orphaned teenage girl. Great Granny Webster herself is a fabulous monster, the chilliest of matriarchs, presiding with steely self-regard over a landscape of ruined lives. Great Granny Webster is Caroline Blackwood’s masterpiece. Heiress to the Guinness fortune, Blackwood was celebrated as a great beauty and dazzling raconteur long before she made her name as a strikingly original writer.

Download or read book The Last of the Duchess written by Caroline Blackwood and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Last of the Duchess is the account of Caroline Blackwood's attempts to write a final article on The Duchess of Windsor, who spent her last years under the thumb of her eccentric lawyer. • “A sharply observed (and sometimes very funny) portrait of the frivolous world of wealth and luxury inhabited by the Windsors.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times In 1980, Lady Caroline Blackwood was given what she thought would be a simple task: write a Sunday Times article on the aging Duchess of Windsor, who was said to be convalescing in her rambling French mansion. Unknown to Blackwood, what began as an easy assignment would become one of the most troubling experiences of her writing career, and would launch her into a cat-and-mouse game of wits with the Duchess's grande dame of a protector, Suzanne Blum. Fiercely protective of her client, Maitre Blum refused to let Blackwood near the Duchess, spinning elaborate excuses as to why she was unavailable but threatening to sue anyone who dared suggest that the woman who once inspired a king to abdicate his crown was in less than the best of health. Blackwood turned her experiences into this riveting and excoriating modern classic about the frailties of old age, the foibles of society, and the dual-edged nature of celebrity. “Beguiling. . . . Blackwood is witty, understated and perceptive.” —The Washington Post

Download or read book We Have Always Lived in the Castle written by Shirley Jackson and published by . This book was released on 1962 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate.

Download or read book BLACKWOOD S LADY S MAGAZINE written by and published by . This book was released on 1843 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Never Breathe a Word written by Caroline Blackwood and published by Counterpoint LLC. This book was released on 2010 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collects short stories spanning the author's career, including the tale of a beauty parlor owner upset by an employee's concentration camp tattoo and a birth mother who shares a horrible meal with her son's wealthy adopted mother.

Download or read book Blackwood s Lady s Magazine and Gazette of the Fashionable World Or St James s Court register of Belles Lettres Fine Arts Music Drama Fashions c written by and published by . This book was released on 1837 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy written by Stephen Blackwood and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-04-16 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, literature was read with the ear as much as with the eye: silent reading was the exception; audible reading, the norm. This highly original book shows that Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy - one of the most widely-read texts in Western history - aims to affect the listener through the designs of its rhythmic sound. Stephen Blackwood argues that the Consolation's metres are arranged in patterns that have a therapeutic and liturgical purpose: as a bodily mediation of the text's consolation, these rhythmic patterns enable the listener to discern the eternal in the motion of time. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy vividly explores how in this acoustic encounter with the text philosophy becomes a lived reality, and reading a kind of prayer.

Download or read book BLACKWOOD S LADY S MAGAZINE written by A. II. BLACKWOOD and published by . This book was released on 1849 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Blackwood s Lady s Magazine and Gazette written by and published by . This book was released on 1844 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Blackwood s Lady s Magazine of the Belles Lettres Music Fine Arts Drama Fashion c and Gazette of the Fashionable World Vol X 1841 written by Blackwood's Lady's Magazine VOL.X 1841 and published by . This book was released on 1841 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Blackwood s Magazine written by and published by . This book was released on 1920 with total page 860 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Sorrow Fierce and Falling Kingdom on Fire Book Three written by Jessica Cluess and published by Random House Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A pinch of Potter blended with a drop of [Cassandra Clare's] Infernal Devices." --JUSTINE MAGAZINE "Plot twists so good they will leave you reeling." --TRACI CHEE, New York Times bestselling author of The Reader IT'S TIME FOR HER POWER TO RULE. As Henrietta nervously awaits her marriage to Lord Blackwood, she discovers that Sorrow-Fell is not a safe haven from the bloodthirsty Ancients. It's a trap. So with her friend Maria and Magnus, the young man who once stole her heart, at her side, Henrietta plots a dangerous journey straight into the enemy's lair. Some will live. Some will die. All will be tested. In this stunning conclusion to the Kingdom on Fire series, Henrietta must choose between the love from her past, the love from her present, and a love that could define her future. The fate of the kingdom rests on her decision: Will she fall or rise up to become the woman who saves the realm? Praise for Jessica Cluess's A Shadow Bright and Burning, Kingdom on Fire, Book 1: "This is a novel that gives off light and heat." --The New York Times "Vivid characters, terrifying monsters, and world building as deep and dark as the ocean." --VICTORIA AVEYARD, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Red Queen "Devastatingly magical and monstrously romantic." --STEPHANIE GARBER, New York Times bestselling author of Caraval "Unputdownable. I loved the monsters, the magic, and the teen warriors who are their world's best hope! Jessica Cluess is an awesome storyteller!" --TAMORA PIERCE, #1 New York Times bestselling author