(Paperback)

(Paperback)

A title that involves us so deeply that Austen's final illness and death come almost as a personal tragedy to the reader. It presents Austen as remarkably clever; sensitive, but sentimental; tough, yet observant; guarded; and a woman with the devil of a genius in her.

(Paperback)

(Paperback)

Acclaimed as the greatest comic actress of her day, Dora Jordan lived a quite different role off-stage as lover to Prince William, third son of George III. Unmarried, the pair lived in a villa on the Thames and had ten children together until William, under pressure from royal advisers, abandoned her.

(Paperback)

Charles Dickens was a phenomenon: a hardworking journalist, the father of ten children, a tireless walker and traveller, a supporter of liberal social causes, and a great novelist. This book paints a fresh portrait of Dickens, capturing the complex character of this great genius.

(Paperback)

Pursuing art and adventure across Europe, Katherine Mansfield lived and wrote with the Furies on her heels; but when she died aged only thirty-four she became one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.

(Paperback)

Focuses on the remarkable diaries of Pepys and brings his story vividly to life once more.

(Paperback)

Witty, courageous and unconventional, Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the most controversial figures of her day. She published A Vindication of the Rights of Women; travelled to revolutionary France and lived through the Terror and the destruction of the incipient French feminist movement; and produced an illegitimate daughter.

(Paperback)

Paradox ruled Thomas Hardy's life. His birth was almost his death; he became one of the great Victorian novelists and reinvented himself as one of the twentieth-century's greatest poets; he was an unhappy husband and a desolate widower; he wrote bitter attacks on the English class system yet prized the friendship of aristocrats.