Books in British Library writers' lives series

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning captures the remarkable love story of the renowned poets behind these famous words, from their dramatic elopement in 1846 to Elizabeth's tragic death in 1861. Their romance began with a letter from Robert admiring Elizabeth's highly acclaimed book, Poems. When her father disapproved, they married in secret and boldly moved to Florence, Italy. Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning describes how their love and lives flourished there, producing one son, writing some of their most renowned works, and maintaining friendships with some of the most prominent literati of their time, including John Ruskin, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and William Makepeace Thackeray.

This illustrated biography examines the life and legacy of Emily Bronte. The enigma that a young woman from such a closed and protected environment as a Yorkshire rectory could write the wildly romantic and complex "Wuthering Heights" has long been a source of fascination. Largely self-educated, Emily spent most of her life at the rectory in Haworth. Her solitary instincts are well-known, and the biographer's task has been made no easier by her refusal to give anything of herself away to anyone during her lifetime. Robert Barnard examines her insulated childhood, and the stories of Gondal and Angria, leading to the lyrical poems of her twenties which prefigure the raw intensity of "Wuthering Heights". He demonstrates that many aspects of "Wuthering Heights" were shaped or stimulated by her own experiences, many of which can be traced to real examples. He also refers extensively to other critical sources, from early reviews of "Wuthering Heights" to Mrs. Gaskell's appraisal of Emily's "stern selfishness", to Juliet Barker's recent biography of the Bronte family.

English novelist and essayist Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) remains one of the most fascinating and enigmatic writers of this century. The daughter of Leslie Stephen, editor of Oxford's own Dictionary of National Biography, she was educated privately and married critic and journalist Leonard Woolf. Together they founded the Hogarth Press and were at the center of the Bloomsbury circle, which included Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Roger Fry, Vita Sackville-West, and many other notable intellectuals, all of whom appear frequently in the narrative. Webb deftly puts into this context Woolf's large and varied literary output--diaries, letters, journalism, essays, short stories, and novels--as well as her constant battles with mental illness that culminated in her suicide by drowning. Woolf's writing, especially Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, A Room of One's Own, and her diaries, are favorites of high school students and adults of all ages. 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.

Charlotte Bronte won great fame with her semi-autobiographical novels Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, and The Professor. Her life story is almost as well-known as the history of her most popular herione, from her bereaved yet extraordinarily creative childhood in a bleak Yorkshire parsonage to her early death just months into a happy marriage to her father's curate. Few writers have had the facts of their lives so inextricably linked with the fiction they wrote. This book, written by an acknowledged expert on the Brontes and beautifully illustrated throughout, provides a fluent, objective and compassionate account of the life of a much loved genius of English literature.

Deploying a wide range of illustrations, from manuscripts in Wordsworth's hand in The British Library, and at the Wordsworth Trust at Dove Cottage in Grasmere, to photographs, portraits and paintings in many other collections, Stephen Hebron discusses the life of a writer whose works had a tremendous influence on his contemporaries and later poets alike. He recounts how Wordsworth left his upbringing in Cumbria for Cambridge University and travelled extensively in Revolutionary France and the rest of Europe, before returning to Dove Cottage where he created some of the leading works of the Romantic period, becoming an establishment figures in his later years.

John Keats is one of the best-loved, admired, and most frequently studied Romantic poets, though he wrote only three volumes of poetry in his short life. This extraordinary biography looks at how Keats developed as a poet against the backdrop of the major events of his life. John Keats follows the poet through intense family ties and friendships, a medical apprenticeship and subsequent decision to pursue poetry, participation in the literary circles of London, travels within Britain, illness, and finally, death from tuberculosis at age 25. A vivid and authoritative introduction to Keats's remarkable life, John Keats is filled with photographs of landscapes and cityscapes from his life, portraits of the poet and his family, evocative paintings, and manuscripts of his works and letters.

Poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was the leader of the Romantic movement in British literature. He was strongly influenced by the ideology of the French Revolution and by the landscape of Britain's Lake Country, where he lived for most of his life. Among his most famous poems are "Tintern Abbey" (published in Lyrical Ballads, which he wrote with his friend and colleague Samuel Taylor Coleridge), "Ode: Intimations of Immortality," "The Solitary Reaper," "Daffodils," and numerous sonnets. Wordsworth's poetry is a staple of the U.S. high school English curriculum, and his home, Dove Cottage, is a much-visited tourist site in Britain's Lake District. 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.

Mary Shelley traces the unusual life of the author of one of the most famous and terrifying novels of all time, Frankenstein. Martin Garrett looks at Mary Shelley's unconventional early life as the daughter of the free-thinking feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who died soon after Shelley's birth, and the radical philosopher William Godwin, her elopement with Percy Bysshe Shelley and his encouragement of her writing, and her life after Percy's death. With prominent literary figures such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Hazlitt, and Lord Byron appearing throughout, Mary Shelley features photographs, paintings, journal entries, and manuscripts that help re-create the life of an extraordinary woman

Charles Dickens (1812-70) is probably Britain's best-known and well-loved author. His novels such as Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol and Hard Times have provided generations of readers with a unique insight into the realities of nineteenth-century Victorian society, and his own colourful and turbulent life helped to shape some of his most vibrant scenes and famous characters. His impoverished childhood - dogged by his father's debts and imprisonment in London - and years as a parliamentary journalist and legal clerk, brought Dickens first-hand experience of city life, enabling him to expose its realities, injustices and hardships in works such as Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickleby. Father of ten children, Dickens struggled with an unhappy marriage, but worked prolifically throughout his lifetime to achieve fame and fortune from his writing and editing. He was often disillusioned with society and championed the welfare of the common man through social, education and housing reforms. His reading tours indulged his love of the stage and enabled him personally to reach his audiences, both in Britain and America. Illustrated throughout with letters, manuscripts, engravings and photographs, Elizabeth James's concise biography provides a clear and revealing portrait of a prolific, talented and highly esteemed literary genius.

The romance between the ethereal invalid Elizabeth Barrett and urbane Robert Browning has been the subject of numerous books and films. Yet the reality was rather different: Elizabeth, whilst physically weak, was a tough intellectual with strong opinions, and Robert Browning, so long seen as his wife's husband, emerges as a complex and often troubled character. What is indisputable is the great love between them, which sustained Elizabeth's estrangement from her father, long periods of illness and (relative) poverty. Martin Garrett looks at their productive working relationship, and examines Robert Browning's life after his wife's death.