Author: Irene Coates
Publisher: Soho Press
ISBN: 9781569472941
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 468
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Book Description
Was Virginia Woolf suicidal, or was she betrayed and driven to taking her own life? Irene Coates argues, with forensic precision, that Leonard Woolf was responsible for the unraveling of his wife's sanity and her subsequent suicide. These two people were at the heart of the Bloomsbury Group; one a mad genius, the other a so-called selfless husband. But underneath that caring veneer beat the heart of a pessimistic, repressed, bullying, and hypocritical man, one who may have been responsible for the death of Virginia Woolf
Author: Irene Coates
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Married people
Languages : en
Pages : 458
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Book Description
Author: Victoria Glendinning
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1582434115
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 531
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Book Description
This meticulously researched and compassionately rendered portrait of Leonard Woolf, the "dark star" of Bloomsbury, is the first to capture his troubled relationship with his wife, his own intellect, and the tumultuous world of artists and eccentrics around him. A man of extremes, Woolf was by turns ferocious and tender, violent and repressed, opinionated and nonjudgmental, always an outsider of sorts within the exceptionally intimate, fractious, and sometimes vicious society of brilliant but troubled friends and lovers. In telling Woolf's story, Victoria Glendinning traces the development of the Bloomsbury circle, bringing to life the group's literary and personal discussions. She also provides an unprecedented account of Woolf's marriage to the legendary Virginia, revealing his undying creative and emotional support for her amid her numerous breakdowns. Leonard Woolf is a perceptive and lively biography of a man whose far–reaching influence is long overdue the full appreciation Glendinning provides.
Author: Karen R. Lawrence
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813043220
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 261
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Book Description
The development of Joycean studies into a respected and very large subdiscipline of modernist studies can be traced to the work of several important scholars. Among those who did the most to document Joyce's work, Karen Lawrence can easily be considered one of that elite cadre. A retrospective of decades of work on Joyce, this collection includes published journal articles, book chapters, and selections from her best known work (all updated and revised), along with one new essay. Featuring engaging close readings of such Joyce works as Dubliners and Ulysses, it will be a welcome addition to any serious Joycean's library and will prove extremely useful to new generations of Joyce critics looking to build on Lawrence's expansive scholarship. Both readable and lively, this work may inspire a lifetime of reading, re-reading, and teaching Joyce.
Author: Gale, Cengage Learning
Publisher: Gale, Cengage Learning
ISBN: 1410392732
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 23
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Book Description
A Study Guide for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (lit-to-film), excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama for Students for all of your research needs.
Author: Sigrid Nunez
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1593765827
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 177
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Book Description
This "tender biography of a sickly marmoset that was adopted by Leonard Woolf and became a fixture of Bloomsbury society" (The New York Times) is an intimate portrait of the life and marriage of Leonard and Virginia Woolf from a National Book Award-winning author. In 1934, a "sickly pathetic marmoset” named Mitz came into the care of Leonard Woolf. After he nursed her back to health, she became a ubiquitous presence in Bloomsbury society. Moving with Leonard and Virginia Woolf between their homes in London and Sussex, she developed her own special relationship with each of them, as well as with their pet cocker spaniels and with various members of the Woolfs’ circle, among them T. S. Eliot and Vita Sackville-West. Mitz also helped the Woolfs escape a close call with Nazis during a trip through Germany just before the outbreak of World War II. Using letters, diaries, memoirs, and other archival documents, Nunez reconstructs Mitz’s life against the background of Bloomsbury’s twilight years. This tender and imaginative mock biography offers a striking look at the lives of writers and artists shadowed by war, death, and mental breakdown, and at the solace and amusement inspired by its tiny subject--and this new edition includes an afterword by Peter Cameron and a never-before-published letter about Mitz by Nigel Nicolson. “In short, glistening sentences that refract the larger world, Ms. Nunez describes the appealingly eccentric, fiercely intelligent Woolfs during a darkening time.” —The Wall Street Journal
Author: Mel Gussow
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476711704
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 663
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Book Description
In 1960, Edward Albee electrified the theater world with the American premiere of The Zoo Story, and followed it two years later with his extraordinary first Broadway play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Proclaimed as the playwright of his generation, he went on to win three Pulitzer Prizes for his searing and innovative plays. Mel Gussow, author, critic, and cultural writer for The New York Times, has known Albee and followed his career since its inception, and in this fascinating biography he creates a compelling firsthand portrait of a complex genius. The book describes Albee's life as the adopted child of rich, unloving parents and covers the highs and lows of his career. A core myth of Albee's life, perpetuated by the playwright, is that The Zoo Story was his first play, written as a thirtieth birthday present to himself. As Gussow relates, Albee has been writing since adolescence, and through close analysis the author traces the genesis of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Tiny Alice, A Delicate Balance, and other plays. After his early triumphs, Albee endured years of critical neglect and public disfavor. Overcoming artistic and personal difficulties, he returned in 1994 with Three Tall Women. In this prizewinning play he came to terms with the towering figure of his mother, the woman who dominated so much of his early life. With frankness and critical acumen, and drawing on extensive conversations with the playwright, Gussow offers fresh insights into Albee's life. At the same time he provides vivid portraits of Albee's relationships with the people who have been closest to him, including William Flanagan (his first mentor), Thornton Wilder, Richard Barr, John Steinbeck, Alan Schneider, John Gielgud, and his leading ladies, Uta Hagen, Colleen Dewhurst, Irene Worth, Myra Carter, Elaine Stritch, Marian Seldes, and Maggie Smith. And then there are, most famously, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who starred in Mike Nichols's acclaimed film version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The book places Albee in context as a playwright who inspired writers as diverse as John Guare and Sam Shepard, and as a teacher and champion of human rights. Edward Albee: A Singular Journey is rich with colorful details about this uniquely American life. It also contains previously unpublished photographs and letters from and to Albee. It is the essential book about one of the major artists of the American theater.
Author: Thomas Szasz
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 1412809452
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 177
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Book Description
The vast literature on Virginia Woolf's life, work, and marriage falls into two groups. A large majority is certain that she was mentally ill, and a small minority is equally certain that she was not mentally ill but was misdiagnosed by psychiatrists. In this daring exploration of Woolf's life and work, Thomas Szasz--famed for his radical critique of psychiatric concepts, coercions, and excuses--examines the evidence and rejects both views. Instead, he looks at how Virginia Woolf, as well as her husband Leonard, used the concept of madness and the profession of psychiatry to manage and manipulate their own and each other's lives. Do we explain achievement when we attribute it to the fictitious entity we call "genius"? Do we explain failure when we attribute it to the fictitious entity we call "madness"? Or do we deceive ourselves the same way that the person deceives himself when he attributes the easy ignition of hydrogen to its being "flammable"? Szasz interprets Virginia Woolf's life and work as expressions of her character, and her character as the "product" of her free will. He offers this view as a corrective against the prevailing, ostensibly scientific view that attributes both her "madness" and her "genius" to biological-genetic causes. We tend to attribute exceptional achievement to genius, and exceptional failure to madness. Both, says Szasz, are fictitious entities.
Author: Mark Harris
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399562249
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 720
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Book Description
A National Book Critics Circle finalist • One of People's top 10 books of 2021 • An instant New York Times bestseller • Named a best book of the year by NPR and Time A magnificent biography of one of the most protean creative forces in American entertainment history, a life of dazzling highs and vertiginous plunges—some of the worst largely unknown until now—by the acclaimed author of Pictures at a Revolution and Five Came Back Mike Nichols burst onto the scene as a wunderkind: while still in his twenties, he was half of a hit improv duo with Elaine May that was the talk of the country. Next he directed four consecutive hit plays, won back-to-back Tonys, ushered in a new era of Hollywood moviemaking with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and followed it with The Graduate, which won him an Oscar and became the third-highest-grossing movie ever. At thirty-five, he lived in a three-story Central Park West penthouse, drove a Rolls-Royce, collected Arabian horses, and counted Jacqueline Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Leonard Bernstein, and Richard Avedon as friends. Where he arrived is even more astonishing given where he had begun: born Igor Peschkowsky to a Jewish couple in Berlin in 1931, he was sent along with his younger brother to America on a ship in 1939. The young immigrant boy caught very few breaks. He was bullied and ostracized--an allergic reaction had rendered him permanently hairless--and his father died when he was just twelve, leaving his mother alone and overwhelmed. The gulf between these two sets of facts explains a great deal about Nichols's transformation from lonely outsider to the center of more than one cultural universe--the acute powers of observation that first made him famous; the nourishment he drew from his creative partnerships, most enduringly with May; his unquenchable drive; his hunger for security and status; and the depressions and self-medications that brought him to terrible lows. It would take decades for him to come to grips with his demons. In an incomparable portrait that follows Nichols from Berlin to New York to Chicago to Hollywood, Mark Harris explores, with brilliantly vivid detail and insight, the life, work, struggle, and passion of an artist and man in constant motion. Among the 250 people Harris interviewed: Elaine May, Meryl Streep, Stephen Sondheim, Robert Redford, Glenn Close, Tom Hanks, Candice Bergen, Emma Thompson, Annette Bening, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Lorne Michaels, and Gloria Steinem. Mark Harris gives an intimate and evenhanded accounting of success and failure alike; the portrait is not always flattering, but its ultimate impact is to present the full story of one of the most richly interesting, complicated, and consequential figures the worlds of theater and motion pictures have ever seen. It is a triumph of the biographer's art.
Author: R. Barton Palmer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107001013
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 307
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Book Description
The first comprehensive study of British and American films adapted from modern British plays.
