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All Sorts of Lives

Katherine Mansfield and the art of risking everything
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( 139 ratings, 31 reviews)
Brief Description
Accessible, lively new biography of an under-served female writer, from a bestselling, acclaimed literary biographer. The Sunday Times Best Literary Book of 2023 A Waterstones Best Book of 2023 All Sorts of Lives is a beautiful, fastidiously researched and fascinating exploration of Mansfield's life and work... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
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Accessible, lively new biography of an under-served female writer, from a bestselling, acclaimed literary biographer.

The Sunday Times Best Literary Book of 2023
A Waterstones Best Book of 2023

All Sorts of Lives is a beautiful, fastidiously researched and fascinating exploration of Mansfield's life and work — A.L. KENNEDY

Restless outsider, masher-up of form and convention, Katherine Mansfield's career was short but dazzling. She was the only writer Virginia Woolf admitted being jealous of, yet by the 1950s was so undervalued that Elizabeth Bowen was moved to ask, 'Where is she - our missing contemporary?'

In this inventive and intimate study, Claire Harman takes a fresh look at Mansfield's life and achievements, through the form she did so much to revolutionise — the short story. Exploring ten pivotal works, we watch how Mansfield's desire to grow as a writer pushed her art into unknown territory, and how illness sharpened her extraordinary vitality — 'Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small.'

'What a gift to the biographer, this life of adventure and sickness and sex and celebrity... Brilliant' — Sunday Times

'A searching, incisive and compulsive book. A lesson in how to read and connect and understand' — Sunjeev Sahota

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781529918342

Publisher: Vintage Publishing

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 11 January 2024

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Vintage

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 22.0mm

Width: 129.0mm

Height: 198.0mm

Weight: 263g

Pages: 304

About the Author

Claire Harman is an award-winning writer and critic. Her books include biographies of Sylvia Townsend Warner, Fanny Burney, Robert Louis Stevenson and Charlotte Bronte, as well as the bestselling Jane's Fame- How Jane Austen Conquered the World and Murder by the Book- A Sensational Chapter in Victorian Crime. She is a prizewinning poet and short-story writer and has been Professor of Creative Writing at Durham University since 2016. She lives in Oxford.

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  • Murder by the Book
    A gripping investigation into the crime that scandalised literary London, from Dickens to Thackeray. On a spring morning in 1840, on an ultra-respectable Mayfair street, a household of servants awoke to discover that their unobtrusive master, Lord William Russell, was lying in bed with his throat cut so deeply that the head was almost severed. The whole of London, from...
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  • All Sorts of Lives
    Accessible, lively new biography of an under-served female writer, from a bestselling, acclaimed literary biographer. Published to celebrate Katherine Mansfield's centenary, this is a compact but comprehensive new portrait of her life, work, relevance, and wonderfully inspiring personality. Restless outsider, masher-up of form and convention, Katherine Mansfield's short but dazzling career was characterised by struggle, insecurity and sacrifice — alongside...
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