Tag Archives: Biography

A Year in Books/Day 159: Emily Brontë

Posted on June 16, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: The British Writers’ Lives Emily Brontë
• Author: Robert Barnard
• Year Published: 2000 (The British Library)
• Year Purchased: 2012
• Source: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio
• About: I’m no Brontë virgin. There are many biographies of the famous literary family. I’ve read a lot of them, cut from various cloths. This entry in The British Library Writers’ Lives series is different from any of the others I’ve read. Focusing on middle daughter Emily (she of Wuthering Heights), it completes the feat of being a wonderful introduction to first-timers while bringing something new to the party for veterans. It is steady and insightful without ever resorting to the wild-child mystic trope that has followed Emily’s ghost around for decades. This biography is packed with original photographs, drawings, manuscripts, artwork and letters, which lend it a vivid immediacy that longer works often lack. It is a quick, quick read that you will want to return to time and again.
• Motivation: I bought this volume to continue my love affair with dead writers and classic literature.
• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 38: “There is a touch of cracker-barrel philosopher about this, as if Emily is only happy dealing with strong personal emotion when she can don a Gondal mask as a partial cover for her feelings. Confessional poetry was never to be her forte.”
• Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 146: A Memoir of Jane Austen

Posted on June 2, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: A Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections
• Author: J.E. Austen-Leigh
• Year Published: 1870/This Edition: 2002 (Oxford University Press)
• Year Purchased: 2002/2003
• Source: Unknown
• About: J.E. Austen-Leigh was Jane’s nephew, the son of her eldest brother. He was nineteen when his famous aunt died; his impressions of her were published 53 years later. Although there are more scrupulous works of scholarship available, this memoir is the closest we will ever get to the ‘real’ woman (other than her surviving letters and fiction). On the other hand, one can argue that a writer’s works are the best representative of their true self and that everything else-character, mannerisms, speech patterns, habits, loves, hates and proclivities-is the fiction. That is a bit deeper than I want to dive in this mini-review, so hold on to that thought if you’d like; I’m sure I will cover it here some other day. Where were we? Ah, yes! Jane as presented in the bosom of her family hearth and home, by her nephew. As biased as it obviously is, it is a really fantastic book. It is of key importance to Austen scholars and fans alike. This edition also includes reminiscences by her brother Henry and nieces Anna and Caroline, which is a touch that nicely rounds out the portrait of this truly compelling woman.
• Motivation: I love Jane Austen. Pick your jaw up off of the floor, you must be shocked.
• Times Read: 2
• Random Excerpt/Page 1: “More than half a century has passed away since I, the youngest of the mourners, attended the funeral of my dear aunt Jane in Winchester Cathedral; and now, in my old age, I am asked whether my memory will serve to rescue from oblivion  any events of her life or any traits of her character to satisfy the enquiries of a generation of readers who have been born since she died.”
• Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 144: Anthony Trollope

Posted on May 31, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Anthony Trollope
• Author: James Pope-Hennessy
• Year Published: 1971/This Edition: 2001 (Phoenix Press)
• Year Purchased: 2003/2004
• Source: Unknown
• About: The creator of fictional Barsetshire, and its memorable inhabitants, receives an excellent biographical treatment by Pope-Hennessy. To read a Trollope novel-especially one from this famed series-is to step into one of the greatest of all fictional worlds. It’s a beautifully self-contained experience. As part of the careful unfolding of the novelist’s life, we are introduced to his formidable mother, Fanny; a professional writer with a deep social conscience, she has been sadly neglected by most modern scholars. Her story offers an interesting counterpoint to that of her famous son.
• Motivation: I am a Trollope fan. I love dead writers. Biographies are an obsession.
• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 102: “To sum up: we know extremely little about the pretty Yorkshire girl whom Anthony Trollope met at Kingstown near Dublin in the summertime of 1842, to whom he was engaged for the best part of three years, and whom he finally married.”
• Happiness Scale: 9
  

  English: Anthony Trollope (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

   

A Year in Books/Day 138: Fanny Stevenson

Posted on May 20, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Fanny Stevenson Muse, Adventuress & Romantic Enigma
• Author: Alexandra Lapierre
• Translator: Carol Cosman
• Year Published: 1995/This Edition: 1996 (Fourth Estate)
• Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
• About: This book was my introduction to Fanny Stevenson, the wife and widow of Robert Louis Stevenson. Lapierre’s wonderful, detailed and complex biography neatly answers two questions: Why did the great Scots writer fall in love with, and sacrifice so much for, this unknown, controversial American woman? Who, exactly, was Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne? In order to explicate on the great mystery that is the former, Lapierre goes to impressive lengths of research to figure out the latter. In answering these questions, it is obvious that the subject and her extraordinary life would have been worth the resultant biography even had she never met and married the writer of the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Treasure Island and Kidnapped. As a plucky, resourceful, intelligent, resilient and talented woman, she emerges as much more than just a ‘great man’s’ muse.
  

  Fanny Osbourne, shortly before her meeting with Robert Louis Stevenson. Français : Fanny Osbourne, peu de temps avant sa rencontre avec Robert Louis Stevenson. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

• Motivation: I love obscure artistic ladies, especially when they are armed with an excessive amount of fighting spirit and intelligence.
• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 272: “Fifteen years later, on the eve of his own death, Robert Louis Stevenson described his wife to one of his friends: Hellish energy relieved by fortnights of entire hibernation…Doctors everybody, will doctor you, cannot be doctored herself.“
• Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 137: Lion in the White House

Posted on May 19, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Lion in the White House A Life of Theodore Roosevelt
• Author: Aida D. Donald
• Year Published: 2007 (Basic Books)
• Year Purchased: 2008/2009
• Source: History Book Club
• About: This short biography of the 26th President of the United States of America manages, in spite of its abbreviated length, to chip away at the bull in the china shop cliché that has followed T. Roosevelt down the decades. Ably written and engaging, it’s a remarkably satisfying read in a small package.
• Motivation: It was sent to me by mistake. I paid for it and kept it, anyway. Probably from sheer laziness.
• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 64: “The more prosaic Roosevelt plunged right in to his new social environment, entertaining as though he were still in a smaller world. In Washington, social life depended on officeholders who had money beyond their salaries and who could, therefore, entertain lavishly in sumptuous houses. These leading lights mixed business with pleasure all the time, something Roosevelt found new but bracing. That the Roosevelts lived in modest circumstances was irrelevant; he fit into the Washington social scene because he came from an elite background and held an important position.”
• Happiness Scale: 8
  

  Theodore Roosevelt (1904) English: President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing front.(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

   

A Year in Books/Day 125: The Way You Wear Your Hat

Posted on May 4, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: The Way You Wear Your Hat Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’
• Author: Bill Zehme
• Year Published: 1997 (HarperCollinsPublishers)
• Year Purchased: 2001/2002
• Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
• About: In an industry  known for its larger-than-life characters, Sinatra towered over them all. Love him or hate him, his talent, personality and legend cannot be ignored or discounted. Fourteen years after his death, many men still consider him the epitome of style, class and swagger. The Way You Wear Your Hat plays into that assumption. Born from an in-depth 1996 Esquire profile, the book is essentially a how-to guide for gents looking to tap into some of that ol’ Sinatra magic. The fact that Zehme had such privileged access to the source gives it an almost autobiographical quality, and supplies the book a wider appeal. It is obviously meant as a tribute, where even the distasteful habits and the dirty deeds are just another totally worship-worthy facet to this greatest of all men’s men. In print-as it must not have in the glowing presence of the flesh-and-blood person-it wears thin after awhile. Even then, you know that you are in the presence of someone formidable. That’s just it, really: he’s not always likable but he’s always unforgettable.
• Motivation: I know, I know! I already have all the swagger I can handle. Seriously, although I run hot and cold on Sinatra the man (Sinatra the singer and actor, I’ve no complaints with) I thought this looked like an interesting read, even though I am not its target audience. It was, and not always in the ways I expected.
• Times Read: 2
• Random Excerpt/Page 6: “Woe to those missing. More woe to those who greeted dawns by his side. It is there that scores of men slumped, trapped, for he insisted nobody leave. They could not hit the hay before he did, and they had to drink apace with him until the finish. It is a sore, but proud, subject among them all.”
• Happiness Scale: 8
  

  Frank Sinatra at Girl's Town Ball in Florida, March 12, 1960 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

   

A Year in Books/Day 113: Maria Callas

Posted on April 25, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Maria Callas an Intimate Biography
• Author: Anne Edwards
• Year Published: 2001 (St. Martin’s Press)
• Year Purchased: 2004
• Source: Unknown
• About: I’m always skeptical about any biography with the word ‘intimate’ in the title. It holds scuzzy connotations for me, as if I’m about to read the unnecessarily shameful details of a dead person’s life. If you’ve been following my Project 366, you know that I love, love, love a good biography; just not the sordid kind. As it turned out, there was nothing to worry about: there is no enumeration of distressing personal habits or focus on gross minutiae. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything to celebrate either. This book is entirely middle-of-the road. It is neither offensive nor illuminating. It’s a quick, surface study of the great singer. If you don’t know much about Callas , it’s probably a perfectly utilitarian introduction. The photo section is the best part.
  

  Publicity photo of Maria Callas (December 2, 1923 – September 16, 1977) as Violetta in La Traviata by Houston Rogers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

• Motivation: I needed 7 or 8 books for a long vacation. I bought this to round out the more intellectual fare I’d already purchased. This was my “easy, fun” read. Maria Callas was a diva when being a diva was something more complex and less hollow than it is now: talented, dynamic, demanding, always-changing, never boring. A great subject for the dull leg of a long car trip.
• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 53: “Maria knew no one on this boat, or the SS Stockholm, and had not yet learned where her father or Dr Lantzounis lived. She could think of no one else to contact in New York. In her purse were $100, her entire personal wealth. Yet she felt free for the first time in eight years. She was saying goodbye to Maria Kalogeropoulou. As her American passport stated, she was now Maria Callas.”
• Happiness Scale: 7

A Year in Books/Day 105: Truly Wilde

Posted on April 22, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Truly Wilde The Unsettling Story of Dolly Wilde, Oscar’s Unusual Niece
• Author: Joan Schenkar
• Year Published: 2000 (Basic Books)
• Year Purchased: 2002/2003
• Source: Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller Company
• About: Only five when her famous uncle died, as an adult she blossomed into the spitting, female image of Oscar. She was an It Girl of epic proportions, with a life and end even more complicated than his. If she never approached his creative genius, it’s largely due to the wanton neglect of her talent (which those who knew her insisted she had an excess of) in favour of fast, impulsive living. She was a scintillating, thorny, frank and witty woman: she would have made an ideal Wilde heroine. Instead, hers was a real-life tragedy.
• Motivation: The Wildean pedigree + a decidedly strange, strong woman in her own right=a heady combination.
• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 51: “A single photograph of Dolly’s mother, Lily Wilde, with her infant daughter has survived the dissolution of the Wilde family. It is notable both for the attractiveness of its two subjects and for the fact that Dolly’s father, Willie Wilde, though ‘out of the picture’, signed it, dated it, labelled its contents, and dedicated it, inscribing himself for posterity on what is the only image of the ‘second’ Wilde family.”
• Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 95: John Sloan Painter and Rebel

Posted on April 8, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: John Sloan Painter and Rebel
• Author: John Loughery
• Year Published: 1995 (Henry Holt and Company, Inc.)
• Year Purchased: 2001-2003
• Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
• About: Even though I’ve worked in galleries on and off for years, I had never heard of John Sloan before I bought this book; he’s now one of my favourite twentieth century painters AND iconoclasts. Although he is considered a founder and leading light of the “Ash Can” school of painting, it is a term and categorization that he disliked. Loughery’s biography is almost a twin study-that of its avowed subject and the New York City that he called home for decades. This now-vanished world was peopled by an inspiring cast of real-life eccentrics (Robert Henri, John Butler Yeats, Sloan’s wife Dolly). The result? It almost reads like a novel.
• Motivation: I’m such a sucker for a good biography, even (especially?) someone I have never heard of or know little about.
• Times Read: 2
• Random Excerpt/Page 273: “He wanted no budding academic painters in his class, but neither was he sparing of those students who didn’t worry about technique because of some natural facility. Facility struck him as dangerous. Anything that mattered should come hard, should require thought and labor. To one student whose drawings seemed effortless, Sloan suggested that he use his left hand or, failing that, his feet. Resist anything that comes too easily, he warned. Resist an empty show.”
• Happiness Scale: 9
  

  Yeats at Petitpas (1910) by John French Sloan oil on canvas, Corcoran Gallery of Art (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

   

A Year in Books/Day 92: Herself Defined H.D. and Her World

Posted on April 7, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Herself Defined H.D. and Her World
• Author: Barbara Guest
• Year Published: 1984/This Edition: 2003 (Schaffner Press, Inc.)
• Year Purchased: 2008
• Source: Daedalus Books
• About: ‘Herself Defined’ follows Hilda Doolittle from Pennsylvania to Europe, where she became the eccentric, world-famous Imagist poet H.D. She was engaged to Ezra Pound before her transformation; they remained close for the rest of their lives. The life story of H.D. reads like particularly imaginative fiction, with the woman poised at the center of it all a robust and singularly odd specimen. In some ways she reminds me of Ottoline Morrell: striking, commanding, polarizing but always interesting. This book is also a damn fine reminder of how thoroughly distasteful I have always found Pound (and his poetry).
• Motivation: I’m always excited to expand the Eccentric Literary Ladies section of my personal library (yes, that’s a real thing).
• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 25: “Although Hilda was only at Patchin Place a short time, she detested it and this was an unhappy period. The bitterly cold city was unfamiliar. How could she anticipate that Patchin Place would become a famous address because of its occupants, Djuna Barnes and E.E. Cummings, writers with whom H.D. later would be associated. What mainly preoccupied her in 1910 was Pound’s neglect.
• Happiness Scale: 8