Books in British Library writers' lives series

Mary Shelley's authorship of the novel Frankenstein guaranteed her widespread renown, but her turbulent life and other literary works are equally fascinating. Born in 1797 to the writers Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, she inherited her parents' passion for literature, social justice and women's rights. At the age of just 16 she ran away with Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and was widowed by 24. During their eight years together (living mainly in Italy), she was estranged from her family and sometimes from her husband, suffered periods of depression, and saw three of their four children die in infancy. Despite her troubles, Mary Shelley maintained a busy social life, including a complicated friendship with the poet Lord Byron. She also wrote journals, short stories, mythical dramas, and several novels, including Frankenstein. After her husband's death in 1822 she returned to England with her surviving son. She continued to write, both in order to earn a living and to satisfy her literary ambitions. She also produced major editions of her husband's poetry and prose.

Described by a contemporary as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know," Byron has been haunted by his infamous reputation for over 200 years. This readable and lively biography of the poet examines his chaotic life story, full of contradictions--an aristocrat with republican views, a proponent of romantic love notorious for his casual relationships, a religious agnostic who admired Roman Catholicism. His work was sensational from the start; his first poetry collection was withdrawn from circulation because it contained explicit references to his romantic conquests. He traveled through Europe on horseback, and on his return to London published a poem--Childe Harold's Pilgrimage--based on his experiences abroad. The poem was a bestseller, which established Lord Byron's reputation as one of England's most talented poets and Romanticism's most recognizable symbol. Other successful poems followed, such as Don Juan and Bride of Abydos. Byron's scandalous love affairs made him a celebrity, but also forced him to spend more and more time away from England. He lived in Italy and Greece and actively participated in the revolutionary movements in both countries. He died in Greece from fever just as his soldiers were preparing to attack a Turkish position. About the series: The British Library is in a unique position when it comes to biographical research, especially concerning British authors. This revered institution boasts the world's largest collection of original manuscripts, as well as an outstanding collection of letters, personal diaries, first editions, and other literary treasures. The titles in this series take full advantage of this vast source of documentary evidence by illustrating each of these lively writers' biographies with state-of-the-art facsimiles of pertinent documents and reproductions of art from the period. Penned by expert biographers, each of these books also contains an index, further reading list, and a chronology of the writer's life.

This biography introduces the life of one of England's most popular writers. It gives an account of the main events of Jane Austen's life, emphasizing the importance of her family connections in developing the milieu from which she drew the inspiration for her novels. The illustrations, drawn from British Library manuscripts and many other sources, complement the text in conveying the people and places Jane knew and the social fabric of her world.

An introduction to the life and work of Lord Byron. Martin Garrett examines his poetry in the context of his short, eventful life. His work was sensational from the start - and the public association of the author directly with the hero of poems such as "Don Juan" and "Childe Harold" helped to make them the bestsellers of their day. However, Byron's position as the toast of society was eclipsed by public disgrace, not helped by the scandal of the breakdown of his marriage, the birth of a daughter to his half-sister Augusta, and Lady Caroline Lamb who spread rumours of his "unnatural practices". Martin Garrett relates how Byron spent the last ten years of his life travelling in Europe, and when he died aged 36 in 1824, his memoirs were burnt by friends who wished to protect his reputation from more scandal.

Largely self-educated, Emily Bronte (1818-1848) was her father's favorite daughter and spent most of her life at the rectory in Haworth, on the edge of the Yorkshire moors. She lead a protected, uneventful existence, with almost no social contacts. Robert Barnard examines her insulated childhood, peculiarities, social boorishness, and aversion to relationships. He includes excerpts of Emily's lyrical poems of her twenties which presage the raw intensity of Wuthering Heights. Many aspects of her only novel are shaped by her own experiences, and the author traces the real-life counterparts of characters, landscape, and buildings. He draws extensively from critical sources varying from early reviews of Wuthering Heights to Gaskell's appraisal of Emily's "stern selfishness," to Juliet Barker's recent biography of the Bronte family.

Jane Austen is now one of the most popular novelists in the English language, and yet on the face of it one of the most unlikely candidates for such a title. Austen died at the age of 41 and left behind only six completed novels. Yet her works have never been out of print, and in this century, within the last three decades in particular, never a year passes without some fresh adaptation of her stories for stage, screen, or television. In this skillfully crafted biography, Deirdre Le Faye brings Austen's tantalizingly elusive image into a distinct and refreshing light.

Almost 400 years after his death, interest in Shakespeare's life and work still persists. Much is often made of the fact that Shakespeare is an engima - the usual facets of biographical accounts are irretrevably missing, further enhancing his mystique. But as Dominic Shellard shows in this account, by viewing the playwright in the context of contemporary Elizabethan politics and the business of the theatre, we know more of his existence than is often generally thought, providing a background against which his literary output can be assessed.

The story of one of the important Romantic poets, Samuel Taylor Coleridge follows the life of Samuel Coleridge from his days as a poverty-stricken scholarship student to the publication of the opus Biographia Literaria. Seamus Perry looks at Coleridges friendship with Robert Southey; his fortuitous meeting with William Wordsworth and their work on Lyrical Ballads, which sparked the Romantic movement; and his numerous careers, which included governmental secretary and sometimes spy (in Malta), journalist in London, and writer of plays, poetry, philosophy, literary criticism, political analysis, theology, and translations. Samuel Taylor Coleridge includes drawings, paintings, and original manuscripts that illustrate this brilliant writers prolific and troubled life.