Literary Memoir

Since its publication on September 30, 1868, Little Women has been one of America's favorite stories. While we now think of it as a girls' book, it was initially read by both boys and girls, men and women of all ages. Professor Anne Boyd Rioux, who read it in her 20s, tells us how Louisa May Alcott came to write the book and drew inspiration for her story from her own life. Rioux sees the novel's beating heart in its honest look at adolescence and its inspiring vision of young women's resilience and hope.

"Over the last few years I've started writing a number of stories that, for various reasons, I never finished writing..." So begins Special Problems, the comic tale of Christie Hodges, a writer who can't seem to finish a story. The problem isn't that Hodges has nothing to write about - there's her recent divorce, her paralyzed foot, trouble with her daughter and job - it's that once she starts writing, she can't stop. One problem leads to another, and another.

When Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert of Green Gables, Prince Edward Island, send for a boy orphan to help them out at the farm, they are in no way prepared for the error that will change their lives. The mistake takes the shape of Anne Shirley, a redheaded 11-year-old girl who can talk anyone under the table. Fortunately, her sunny nature and quirky imagination quickly win over her reluctant foster parents. Anne's feisty spirit soon draws many friends - and much trouble - her way.

"Sono in questa vita da cinquant'anni, ne scruto l'enigma da quarantadue, e da trentacinque tengo un diario pieno di idee su come risolverlo. Appunti su successi e fallimenti, gioie e dolori, cose che mi hanno stupito o che mi hanno fatto ridere di cuore. Appunti su come essere sereno. Come stressarmi di meno. Come godermela. Come fare meno male agli altri. Come fare meno male a me stesso. Come diventare un brav'uomo. Come dare un significato alla mia vita. Come essere più io."

In this first scholarly biography of Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965), the author of A Raisin in the Sun, theater professor Soyica Diggs Colbert considers the playwright's life at the intersection of art and politics, with the theater operating as a "rehearsal room for [her] political and intellectual work". Colbert argues that the success of Raisin overshadows Hansberry's other contributions, including the writer's innovative journalism and lesser-known plays touching on controversial issues such as slavery, interracial communities, and Black freedom movements.

In 1963, Annie Ernaux, 23 and unattached, realizes she is pregnant. Shame arises in her like a plague: Understanding that her pregnancy will mark her and her family as social failures, she knows she cannot keep the child. In a France where abortion was illegal, she attempted, in vain, to self-administer the abortion with a knitting needle. Fearful and desperate, she finally located an abortionist and ended up in a hospital emergency ward where she nearly died. In Happening, Ernaux sifts through her memories and her journal entries dating from those days.

In Literary Life, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry opens up about the triumphs and trials of his abundant literary career. From his early interest in writing, which began with a creative writing class at Rice University, to a career that boasts over 40 novels and an Academy Award-winning screenplay, this intimate portrait of the author offers a glimpse into an intelligent, honest, and undeniably profound voice in contemporary American Literature.

Budo is lucky as imaginary friends go. He's been alive for more than five years, which is positively ancient in the world of imaginary friends. But Budo feels his age, and thinks constantly of the day when eight-year-old Max Delaney will stop believing in him. When that happens, Budo will disappear. Max is different from other children. Some people say that he has Asperger's Syndrome, but most just say he's "on the spectrum." None of this matters to Budo, who loves Max and is charged with protecting him from the class bully.

For twenty-five years, the trusted family doctor in a small Wyoming town had been raping and molesting the women and children who most relied on him. Mostly Mormons, the naive victims sometimes realized on their wedding nights the truth about what had happened in Dr. Story's office.

C. S. Lewis, long renowned for his children's books as well as his Christian apologetics, has been the subject of wide interest since he first stepped-up to the BBC's microphone during the Second World War. Until now, however, the reasons why this medievalist began writing books for a popular audience, and why these books have continued to be so popular, had not been fully explored. The Fame of C. S. Lewis is the most comprehensive account of Lewis' popularity to date, drawing on a wealth of fresh material and with much to interest scholars and C. S. Lewis admirers alike.

In this evocative work of what the author in his afterword calls “a kind of novelistic memoir”, Jay Parini takes us back 50 years, when he fled the United States for Scotland - in flight from the Vietnam War and desperately in search of his adult life. There, through unlikely circumstances, he meets the famed Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges.

After Unreliable Memoirs, Falling Towards England, and May Week Was in June comes the next instalment in the ongoing saga that is Clive James's life. His fourth volume of autobiography is every bit as eventful, entertaining, engrossing, and honest as the previous three.

Geneviève Halévy Bizet Straus; Laure de Sade, Comtesse de Adhéaume de Chevigné; and Élisabeth de Riquet de Caraman-Chimay, the Comtesse Greffulhe--these were the three superstars of fin-de-siècle Parisian high society who, as Caroline Weber says, "transformed themselves, and were transformed by those around them, into living legends: paragons of elegance, nobility, and style."

An account of the life and crimes of psychopath Mac Smith that describes how Seattle police, eager to make an arrest in the murders of the city's women, arrested the wrong man for Smith's crimes.

In 2024, one hundred years after his death at the age of forty, customers all over the world will reach for the works of Franz Kafka. Many of them will want to learn more about the enigmatic man behind the classic books. Who, exactly, was Franz Kafka? Karolina Watroba, the first Germanist ever elected as a fellow of Oxford's All Souls College, will tell Kafka's story beyond the boundaries of language, time, and space, traveling from the Prague of Kafka's birth through the work of contemporary writers in East Asia, whose award-winning novels are, in part, homages to the great man himself.

C. S. Lewis is the 20th century's most widely read Christian writer and J. R. R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met weekly in Lewis' Oxford rooms and a nearby pub. They read aloud from works in progress, argued about anything that caught their fancy, and gave one another invaluable companionship, inspiration, and criticism.

These letters between the pioneering environmentalist and her beloved friend reveal "a vibrant, caring woman behind the scientist" (Los Angeles Times). This very special collection of letters from Rachel Carson to her Maine summer neighbor Dorothy Freeman offers an intimate, spellbinding look at Carson's private life and thoughts.

Tania De Rozario was just twelve years old when she was gay-exorcised. Convinced that her boyish style and demeanor were a sign of something wicked, her mother and a pair of her church friends tried to “banish the evil” from Tania. That day, the young girl realized that monsters weren’t just found in horror tales. They could lurk anywhere—including your own family and community—and look just like you. Dinner on Monster Island is Tania’s memoir of her life and childhood in Singapore—where she discovered how difference is often perceived as deviant, damaged, disobedient, and sometimes, demonic.

When “The Fourth State of Matter”, her now famous piece about a workplace massacre at the University of Iowa, was published in The New Yorker, Jo Ann Beard immediately became one of the most influential writers in America, forging a path for a new generation of young authors willing to combine the dexterity of fiction with the rigors of memory and reportage, and in the process extending the range of possibility for the essay form. Now, with Festival Days, Beard brings us the culmination of her groundbreaking work.

Oscar Wilde's life – like his wit – was alive with paradox. He was both an early exponent and a victim of 'celebrity culture': famous for being famous, he was lauded and ridiculed in equal measure. His achievements were frequently downplayed, his successes resented. He had a genius for comedy but strove to write tragedies. Matthew Sturgis draws on a wealth of new material and fresh research, bringing alive the distinctive mood and characters of the fin de siècle in the richest and most compelling portrait of Oscar Wilde to date.