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"Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography"
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Susan Sontag
In this new biography Jerome Boyd Maunsell assesses the astonishing scope of Sontag's life and work, tracing her growth during her academic career at Chicago, Oxford, the Sorbonne and Harvard, through her marriage to Philip Rieff at the age of 17, to the birth of her son David and her relationships with women.
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Winifred Sanford
Winifred Sanford is generally regarded by critics as one of the best and most important early twentieth-century Texas women writers, despite publishing only a handful of short stories before slipping into relative obscurity. First championed by her mentor, H. L. Mencken, and published in his magazine, The American Mercury, many of Sanford’s stories were set during the Texas oil boom of the 1920s and 1930s and offer a unique perspective on life in the boomtowns during that period. Four of her stories were listed in The Best American Short Stories of 1926. Questioning the sudden end to Sanford’s writing career, Wiesepape, a leading literary historian of Texas women writers, delved into the author’s previously unexamined private papers and emerged with an insightful and revealing study that sheds light on both Sanford’s abbreviated career and the domestic lives of women at the time. The first in-depth account of Sanford’s life and work, Wiesepape’s biography discusses Sanford’s fiction through the sociohistorical contexts that shaped and inspired it. In addition, Wiesepape has included two previously unpublished stories as well as eighteen previously unpublished letters to Sanford from Mencken. Winifred Sanford is an illuminating biography of one of the state’s unsung literary jewels and an important and much-needed addition to the often overlooked field of Texas women’s writing.
eBook
Sontag : her life and work
\"Benjamin Moser's Sontag, a biography of Susan Sontag, is a portrait of the iconoclastic and prolific essayist, novelist, and critic and her role in the history of American intellectualism\"-- Provided by publisher.
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Susan sontag
\"My idea of a writer: someone interested in 'everything.'\" This declaration by Susan Sontag (1933-2004) seemed to reflect her own life as an essayist, diarist, filmmaker, playwright, and novelist writing on a startling range of topics-from literature, dance, film, and painting to cancer, AIDS, and the ethics of war reportage. For many critics, her work captures the twentieth-century world better than almost any other. In this new biography, Jerome Boyd Maunsell draws on Sontag's extensive diaries to offer a far more intimate portrait than ever before of her struggles in love, marriage, motherhood, and writing. Exploring the astonishing scope of Sontag's life and work, Maunsell traces her growth during her intellectual career at Chicago, Oxford, and the Sorbonne. He discusses her short-lived marriage to Philip Rieff at seventeen, the birth of her son, and her subsequent relationships with women. As Maunsell follows the extraordinary arc of her life, he delves into her literary life in New York in the 1960s; travels with her to Hanoi, Cuba, and China; and surveys her work in Sweden and France in the 1970s, where she turned to filmmaking. Maunsell concludes by examining her miraculous rebirth as a novelist and critic in the 1980s and '90s after her diagnosis with cancer in the mid-1970s. Providing a full picture of Sontag as a private person and public figure, this concise biography casts new light on this pivotal figure in literary and cultural history.
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I am Scout : the biography of Harper Lee
This biography tells the story of how Harper Lee struggled to become an author and created one of the most popular novels of the 20th century.
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Dorothy West's Paradise
Dorothy West is best known as one of the youngest writers involved in the Harlem Renaissance. Subsequently, her work is read as a product of the urban aesthetics of this artistic movement. But West was also intimately rooted in a very different milieu-Oak Bluffs, an exclusive retreat for African Americans on Martha's Vineyard. She played an integral role in the development and preservation of that community. In the years between publishing her two novels, 1948'sThe Living is Easyand the 1995 bestsellerThe Wedding, she worked as a columnist forthe Vineyard Gazette.
Dorothy West's Paradisecaptures the scope of the author's long life and career, reading it alongside the unique cultural geography of Oak Bluffs and its history as an elite African American enclave-a place that West envisioned both as a separatist refuge and as a space for interracial contact. An essential book for both fans of West's fiction and students of race, class, and American women's lives, Dorothy West's Paradise offers an intimate biography of an important author and a privileged glimpse into the society that shaped her work.
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Lyrics of sunshine and shadow : the tragic courtship and marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore : a history of love and violence among the African American elite
A New York Times Notable Book of 2002! On February 10, 1906, Alice Ruth Moore, estranged wife of renowned early twentieth-century poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, boarded a streetcar, settled comfortably into her seat, and opened her newspaper to learn of her husband's death the day before. Paul Laurence Dunbar, son of former slaves, whom Frederick Douglass had dubbed \"the most promising young colored man in America,\" was dead from tuberculosis at the age of 33. Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow traces the tempestuous romance of America's most noted African-American literary couple. Drawing on a variety of love letters, diaries, journals, and autobiographies, Eleanor Alexander vividly recounts Dunbar's and Moore's tumultuous affair, from a courtship conducted almost entirely through letters and an elopement brought on by Dunbar's brutal, drunken rape of Moore, through their passionate marriage and its eventual violent dissolution in 1902. Moore, once having left Dunbar, rejected his every entreaty to return to him, responding to his many letters only once, with a blunt, one-word telegram (\"No\"). This is a remarkable story of tragic romance among African-American elites struggling to define themselves and their relationships within the context of post-slavery America. As such, it provides a timely examination of the ways in which cultural ideology and politics shape and complicate conceptions of romantic love.
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Influencing Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway embraced adventure and courted glamorous friends while writing articles, novels, and short stories that captivated the world. Hemingway’s personal relationships and experiences influenced the content of his fiction, while the progression of places where the author chose to live and work shaped his style and rituals of writing. Whether revisiting the Italian front in A Farewell to Arms, recounting a Pamplona bull run in The Sun Also Rises, or depicting a Cuban fishing village in The Old Man and the Sea, setting played an important part in Hemingway’s fiction. The author also drew on real people—parents, friends, and fellow writers, among others—to create memorable characters in his short stories and novels. In Influencing Hemingway: The People and Places That Shaped His Life and Work Nancy W. Sindelar introduces the reader to the individuals who played significant roles in Hemingway’s development as both a man and as an artist—as well as the environments that had a profound impact on the author’s life. In words and photos, readers will see images of Hemingway the child, the teenager, and the aspiring author—as well as the troubled legend dealing with paranoia and fear. The book begins with Hemingway’s birth and early influences in Oak Park, Illinois, followed by his first job as a reporter in Kansas City. Sindelar then recounts Hemingway’s experiences and adventures in Italy, France, Spain, Key West, Florida, and Cuba, all of which found their way into his writing. The book concludes with an analysis of the events that preceded the author’s suicide in Idaho and reflects on the influences critics had on his life and work. Though much has been written about the life and work of the Nobel prize-winning author, Influencing Hemingway is the first publication to carefully document—in photographs and letters—the individuals and locales that inspired him. Featuring more than 60 photos, many of which will be new to the general and academic reader, and unguarded statements from personal letters to and from his parents, lovers, wives, children, and friends, this unique biography allows readers to see Hemingway from a new perspective.
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