Download or read book Basil Street Blues written by Michael Holroyd and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2001-05 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Holroyd is a distinguished biographer, but was never interested in exploring his own family's history until his parents died in the 1980s. This encouraged him to find out more about his parents, their stories, and their origins.
Download or read book Basil Street Blues Book Club written by Michael Holroyd and published by Orbit Books. This book was released on 1999-11-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Basil Street Blues A Memoir written by Michael Holroyd and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-10-10 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A wonderful offbeat memoir.... Holroyd has written perhaps his best book yet."—Ben Macintyre, New York Times Book Review Renowned biographer Michael Holroyd had always assumed that his own family was perfectly English, or at least perfectly ordinary. But an investigation into the Holroyd past—guided by old photograph albums, crumbling documents, and his parents' wildly divergent accounts of their lives—gradually yields clues to a constellation of startling events and eccentric characters: a slow decline from English nobility on one side, a dramatic Scandinavian ancestry on the other. Fires, suicides, bankruptcies, divorces, unconsummated longings, and the rumor of an Indian tea fortune permeate this wry, candid memoir, "part multiple biography, part autobiography, but principally an oblique investigation of the biographer's art" (New York Times Book Review). "[A] perfect example of a memoir that entrances me."—Katherine A. Powers, Boston Sunday Globe "[O]ne of the few [biographers] who can convey what makes ordinary as well as extraordinary mortals live in our minds."—Los Angeles Times
Download or read book Basil Street Blues A Family Story written by Michael Holroyd and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-08-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Holroyd – the most famous biographer in Britain – turns his attention upon himself and his own family in Basil Street Blues (the title comes from the Basil Street Hotel where the author was conceived in the 1930s). Born into a family rich in eccentricity, Holroyd was largely brought up by his grandparents in Maidenhead because his exotic Swedish mother and reserved English father couldn't stand living together. (His grandparents' marriage provided no better model – his grandfather having had a four-year affair with a woman he met at a bus stop before coming back to his grandmother). Towards the end of Holroyd's parents' lives he persuaded them to write their own stories and using the results, plus his own memories and researches he has written this moving and self-revealing book.
Download or read book Basil Street Blues and Mosaic written by Michael Holroyd and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-11-04 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As read on BBC Radio 4 Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography for A Strange Eventful History and winner of the Lifetime Services to Biography Award. Michael Holroyd is one of the finest biographers of our time yet he was never interested in exploring his own family's history until the death of his parents in the 1980s. Then, faced with a sudden vacuum, he felt a desire to fill it with the stories of their lives. Basil Street Blues, the first of his volumes of memoir, is part detective story, part family memoir and part an oblique voyage of self-discovery which is both startlingly comic and profoundly moving. In his follow-up volume, Mosaic, he delves deeper into his family history. Witty, touching and wry, Mosaic shows the strange interconnectedness of our lives, and how other people's stories, however eccentric or extreme, echo our own dreams and experiences. These two volumes - published together for the first time here - form an extraordinary piece of writing, and an enthralling lesson in identity and perspective for both author and reader.
Download or read book Basil Street Blues by Michael Holroyd written by Gillian Bouras and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Strange Eventful History written by Michael Holroyd and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2010-03-02 with total page 772 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PLEASE NOTE: THIS EBOOK DOES NOT CONTAIN PHOTOS INCLUDED IN THE PRINT EDITION. Deemed "a prodigy among biographers" by The New York Times Book Review, Michael Holroyd transformed biography into an art. Now he turns his keen observation, humane insight, and epic scope on an ensemble cast, a remarkable dynasty that presided over the golden age of theater. Ellen Terry was an ethereal beauty, the child bride of a Pre-Raphaelite painter who made her the face of the age. George Bernard Shaw was so besotted by her gifts that he could not bear to meet her, lest the spell she cast from the stage be broken. Henry Irving was an ambitious, harsh-voiced merchant's clerk, but once he painted his face and spoke the lines of Shakespeare, his stammer fell away to reveal a magnetic presence. He would become one of the greatest actor-managers in the history of the theater. Together, Terry and Irving created a powerhouse of the arts in London's Lyceum Theatre, with Bram Stoker—who would go on to write Dracula—as manager. Celebrities whose scandalous private lives commanded global attention, they took America by stormin wildly popular national tours. Their all-consuming professional lives left little room for their brilliant but troubled children. Henry's boys followed their father into the theater but could not escape the shadow of his fame. Ellen's feminist daughter, Edy, founded an avant-garde theater and a largely lesbian community at her mother's country home. But it was Edy's son, the revolutionary theatrical designer Edward Gordon Craig, who possessed the most remarkable gifts and the most perplexing inability to realize them. A now forgotten modernist visionary, he collaborated with the Russian director Stanislavski on a production of Hamlet that forever changed the way theater was staged. Maddeningly self-absorbed, he inherited his mother's potent charm and fathered thirteen children by eight women, including a daughter with the dancer Isadora Duncan. An epic story spanning a century of cultural change, A Strange Eventful History finds space for the intimate moments of daily existence as well as the bewitching fantasies played out by its subjects. Bursting with charismatic life, it is an incisive portrait of two families who defied the strictures of their time. It will be swiftly recognized as a classic. Please note: This ebook edition does not contain photos and illustrations that appeared in the print edition.
Download or read book A Book of Secrets written by Michael Holroyd and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2011-08-02 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Time Magazine Top 10 Nonfiction book of 2011 A Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction title for 2011 On a hill above the Italian village of Ravello sits the Villa Cimbrone, a place of fantasy and make-believe. The characters that move through Michael Holroyd's new book are destined never to meet, yet the Villa Cimbrone unites them all. A Book of Secrets is a treasure trove of hidden lives, uncelebrated achievements, and family mysteries. With grace and tender imagination, Holroyd brings a company of unknown women into the light. From Alice Keppel, the mistress of both the second Lord Grimthorpe and the Prince of Wales; to Eve Fairfax, a muse of Auguste Rodin; to the novelist Violet Trefusis, the lover of Vita Sackville-West—these women are always on the periphery of the respectable world. Also on the margins is the elusive biographer, who on occasion turns an appraising eye upon himself as part of his investigations in the maze of biography. In A Book of Secrets, Holroyd gives voice to fragile human connections and the mystery of place.
Download or read book Mosaic A Family Memoir Revisited written by Michael Holroyd and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A love story, a detective story, a book of secrets, a beautifully written journey into a forest of family trees. After writing the definitive biographies of Lytton Strachey and George Bernard Shaw, Michael Holroyd turned his hand to a more personal subject: his own family. The result was Basil Street Blues, published in 1999. But rather than the story being over, it was in fact only beginning. As letters from readers started to pour in, the author discovered extraordinary narratives that his own memoir had only touched on. Mosaic is Holroyd's piecing together of these remarkable stories: the murder of the fearsome headmaster of his school; the discovery that his Swedish grandmother was the mistress of the French anarchist Jacques Prévert; and a letter about the beauty of his mother that provides a clue to a decade-long affair. Funny, touching, and wry, Mosaic shows how other people's lives, however eccentric or extreme, echo our own dreams and experiences.
Download or read book Lytton Strachey written by Michael Holroyd and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A triumphant success. . . . His prose is confident, clear . . . occasionally perfect." Dennis Potter, "The Times" (London)
Download or read book Life Writing written by Sara Haslam and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-23 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life Writing offers the novice writer engaging and creative activities, making use of insightful, relevant readings from well-known authors to illustrate the techniques presented. This volume makes use of new versions of key chapters from the recent Routledge/Open University textbook, Creative Writing: A Workbook with Readings for writers who are specializing in life writing. Using their experience and expertise as teachers as well as authors, Derek Neale and Sara Haslam guide aspiring writers through such key writing skills as: writing what you know, investigating biography and autobiography, using prefaces, finding a form, using memory, developing characters, using novelistic, poetic and dramatic techniques. The volume is further updated to include never-before published interviews and conversations with successful life writers such as Jenny Diski, Robert Fraser, Richard Holmes, Michael Holroyd, Jackie Kay, Hanif Kureishi and Blake Morrison. Concise and practical, Life Writing offers an inspirational guide to the methods and techniques of authorship and is a must-read for aspiring writers.
Download or read book Mosaic written by Michael Holroyd and published by Isis. This book was released on 2005-02 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Mosaic' is Michael Holroyd's second volume of family memoirs which relates to but is independent of 'Basil Street Blues'. The work begins with the author trying to make sense of his aunt's labyrinthian financial affairs, then moves onto Holroyd searching for a missing relative and uncovering his family tree.
Download or read book The Arvon Book of Life Writing written by Sally Cline and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essential reading for anyone interested in writing biography or memoir, with practical advice from successful biographers and creative writing teachers.
Download or read book The New York Public Library Literature Companion written by Staff of The New York Public Library and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-11-06 with total page 2188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pick up The New York Public Library Literature Companion to check the dates of Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past or to find out how James Joyce's Ulysses changed U.S. obscenity laws, and you may find yourself hours later absorbed in the imaginary worlds of Camelot and The Matrix or sidetracked by the fascinating history of The New Yorker. Designed to satisfy the curious browser as well as the serious researcher, this exciting new resource offers the most up-to-date information on literature available in English from around the world, from the invention of writing to the age of the computer. Interwoven throughout the more than 2,500 succinct and insightful entries on Creators, Works of Literature, and Literary Facts and Resources are the fascinating facts and quirky biographical details that make literature come alive. Readers will discover, for instance, that Walt Whitman was fired from his government job after his personal copy of Leaves of Grass was discovered in his desk by the Secretary of the Interior, who was scandalized by it; that James Baldwin remembered listening to blues singer Bessie Smith ("playing her till I fell asleep") when he was writing his first book; and that a publisher turned down the serialization rights to Gone with the Wind, saying, "Who needs the Civil War now -- who cares?" Looking for information about book burning or how many Nobel laureates have come from Japan? You'll find it here. Trying to remember the name of that movie based on a favorite book? Read the "Variations" section -- you'll be amazed at the pervasive presence of great literature in today's entertainment. From Aristophanes to Allende, from Bergson to Bloom, the biographical entries will inform readers about the men and women who have shaped -- and are shaping -- the literary world. Look into "Works of Literature" to discover the significance of Beowulf, The Fountainhead, Doctor Zhivago, and nearly 1,000 other titles. Check the "Dictionary of Literature" to find out what the critics and theorists are talking about. And if you wish to delve even deeper, "Websites for Literature" and "Literary Factbooks and Handbooks" are just two of the bibliographies that will point readers in the right direction. Unique in scope and design and easy to use, The New York Public Library Literature Companion will be at home on every reader's shelf. Whether you are immersed in Stephen King or King Lear, this book has the insights, facts, and fascinating stories that will enrich your reading forever. With four major research centers and 85 branch libraries, The New York Public Library is internationally recognized as one of the greatest institutions of its kind. Founded in 1895, the library now holds more than 50 million items, including several world-renowned collections of literary manuscripts and rare books. Among the books published from the library in recent years are The New York Public Library Desk Reference (1998); The Hand of the Poet (1997); Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language, and Loss (1999); A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing, 1960-1980 (1998); and Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World (2000).
Download or read book Finding the Woman Who Didn t Exist written by Melanie Hawthorne and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gisèle d’Estoc was the pseudonym of a nineteenth-century French woman writer and, it turns out, artist who, among other things, was accused of being a bomb-planting anarchist, the cross-dressing lover of writer Guy de Maupassant, and the fighter of at least one duel with another woman, inspiring Bayard’s famous painting on the subject. The true identity of this enigmatic woman remained unknown and was even considered fictional until recently, when Melanie C. Hawthorne resurrected d’Estoc’s discarded story from the annals of forgotten history. Finding the Woman Who Didn’t Exist begins with the claim by expert literary historians of France on the eve of World War II that the woman then known only as Gisèle d’Estoc was merely a hoax. More than fifty years later, Hawthorne not only proves that she did exist but also uncovers details about her fascinating life and career, along the way adding to our understanding of nineteenth-century France, literary culture, and gender identity. Hawthorne explores the intriguing life of the real d’Estoc, explaining why others came to doubt the “experts” and following the threads of evidence that the latter overlooked. In focusing on how narratives are shaped for particular audiences at particular times, Hawthorne also tells “the story of the story,” which reveals how the habits of thought fostered by the humanities continue to matter beyond the halls of academe.
Download or read book Living With a Writer written by D. Salwak and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-05-23 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Living With A Writer brings together a group of prestigious contributors to discuss the writing lives of contemporary poets, novelists, critics, dramatists, editors and collaborators. What are the practical considerations of being a writer? What are the household dynamics? How do the circumstances contribute to the work? What does it tell us about the creative process? The book features pieces from well-known authors and partners in famous literary relationships, including John Bayley, Amanda Craig, Nadine Gordimer, Ann Thwaite, Paul Theroux and John Updike.
Download or read book Biography An Historiography written by Melanie Nolan and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-04-03 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biography: An Historiography examines how Western historians have used biography from the nineteenth century to the present – considering the problems and challenges that historians have faced in their biographical practice systematically. This volume analyses the strategies and methods that historians have used in response to seven major issues identified over time to do with evidence, including but not limited to the problem of causation, the problem of fact and fiction, the problem of other minds, the problem of significance or representativeness, the problems of perspective, both macro and micro, and the problem of subjectivity and relative truth. This volume will be essential for both postgraduates and historians studying biography.
