Artists, Writers & Cultural Biography Books

"My New Year's Eve Toast: to all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle - may they never give me peace" - Patricia Highsmi…

The focus of this book is an utterly neglected, important figure from the period leading up to the foundation of the Gaelic League and the early years of that movement, Pádraig Ó Laoghaire (1870–1896) from the Béarra Peninsula in …

In her new collection, with her trademark blend of wryness, intelligence and wisdom, Ann Patchett explores family, friendship, marriage, failure, success and how all these forces have shaped her as a writer. Ranging from the perso…

A dazzling biography of two interwoven, tragic lives: John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald. John Keats died two hundred years ago, in February 1821. F. Scott Fitzgerald defined a decade that began one hundred years ago, the Jazz Age…

No, they weren't 'just friends'!Queer women have been written out of history since, well, forever. 'But historians famously care about women!', said no one. From Anne Bonny and Mary Read who sailed the seas together disguised as p…

A cultural storm swept through the 1960s - Pop Art, Bob Dylan, psychedelia, underground movies - and at its centre sat a bemused young artist with silver hair: Andy Warhol. Andy knew everybody (from the cultural commissioner of Ne…

From award-winning actor and food obsessive Stanley Tucci comes an intimate and charming memoir of life in and out of the kitchen. Before Stanley Tucci became a household name with The Devil Wears Prada, The Hunger Games, and the …

David Sedaris plays in the snow with his sisters. He goes on vacation with his family. He gets a job selling drinks. He attends his brother's wedding. He mops his sister's floor. He gives directions to a lost traveller. He eats a …

The definitive biography of a fascinating and paradoxical figure, one of the most influential artists of hisor anyage To this day, mention the name Andy Warhol to almost anyone and youll hear about his famous images of soup cans a…

When Galileo Galilei pointed his telescope to the skies, he ushered in a scientificrevolution: the Moon turned out to be covered with mountains and craters, starspopped out of nowhere, and four satellites were found to be orbiting…

A moving and darkly humorous family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Alison Bechdel's gothic drawings. If you liked Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis you'll love this. Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obse…

There's no right way to keep a diary, but if there's an entertaining way, David Sedaris seems to have mastered it. If it's navel-gazing you're after, you've come to the wrong place; ditto treacly self-examination. Rather, his obse…

This is a visual memoir of Alice Walker's remarkable life as a novelist, essayist, poet and activist in candid photographs, manuscript drafts - including handwritten drafts of The Color Purple - letters and other selections from t…

Over the past century, fans have elevated comics from the back pages of newspapers into one of our most celebrated forms of culture, from Fun Home, the Tony Award-winning musical based on Alison Bechdel's groundbreaking graphic me…

The New York Times bestseller from the Grammy-nominated indie rockstar Japanese Breakfast, an unflinching, deeply moving memoir about growing up mixed-race, Korean food, losing her Korean mother, and forging her own identity in th…

Following the international critical acclaim of The Cost of Living, this final volume of Deborah Levy's 'Living Autobiography' is an exhilarating, thought-provoking and boldly intimate meditation on home and the spectres that haun…

A decade in the making, based upon hundreds of interviews and extensive new material, Pulitzer Prize winners Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan have written a startlingly original portrait - rich, complex, and subtle - of a commanding …

Twelve early pieces never before collected that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of Joan Didion. Mostly drawn from the earliest part of her astonishing five-decade career, the wide-ranging pieces in this col…

Patrick Kavanagh (1904-67) was one of Ireland's foremost poets, best known for 'The Great Hunger' and novel Tarry Flynn. He is also remembered for his cantankerous, sometimes volatile nature, fuelled by alcohol. In A Poet in the H…

How did the first forty years of H. G. Wells' life shape the father of science fiction?From his impoverished childhood in a working-class English family, to his determination to educate himself at any cost, to the serious ill heal…

An attractive and approachable selection of the work of George Bernard Shaw. One of the most remarkable writers of the 20th century, Shaw contributed in a range of ways to both political and social writings as well as creating gre…

Bernardine Evaristo became the first black woman to win the Booker Prize since its inception fifty years earlier - a revolutionary landmark for Britain. Her journey was a long one, but she made it, and she made history. Manifesto …

What could be a more tempting Christmas gift than a compendium of David Sedaris's best stories, selected by the author himself? From a spectacular career spanning almost three decades, these stories have become modern classics and…

Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle AwardIn this long-awaited and candid memoir, Hitchens re-traces the footsteps of his life to date, from his childhood in Portsmouth, with his adoring, tragic mother and reserved Naval…

The Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending takes us on a rich, witty tour of Belle Epoque Paris, via the life story of the pioneering surgeon Samuel Pozzi. In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London fo…

An acclaimed biographer of James Joyce Edna O’Brien has written an intimate biography that suits her fiery and charismatic subject. She follows Byron from the dissipations of Regency London to the wilds of Albania and the Socratic…

More Letters of Note is another rich and inspiring collection, which reminds us that much of what matters in our lives finds its way into our letters. These letters deliver the same mix of the heartfelt, the historically significa…

A sharp and provocative new essay collection from the award-winning author of Purity, Freedom and The Corrections In The End of the End of the Earth, which gathers essays and speeches written mostly in the past five years, Jonatha…

A lot has changed since Kitchen Confidential - for the subculture of chefs and cooks, for the restaurant business-and for Anthony Bourdain. Medium Raw explores these changes, moving back and forth from the author's bad old days to…

Jonathan Swift was a man of contradictions: a man who satirized the powerful but aspired to political greatness, who mocked men's vanity but held himself in high esteem, a religious moralizer famed for his malice - a man sharply a…