This is history told in the most exciting way: through the lives of outstanding and accomplished people of the era in the small university town of Jena, Germany, 1794-1803.
Among figures such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and Novalis, we learn about the poet and thinker August Wilhelm von Schlegel, the philosopher Friedrich Schelling, the beautiful, gifted, and passionate Caroline Böhmer-Schlegel-Schelling, who inspired them all.
Readers will be surprised to find many sources of the art and thought of Romantics, such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Emerson, and Thoreau, in this account of a few revolutionary short years that created a new age.
Chosen as a BOOK OF THE YEAR in The Times, The Spectator, Prospect, Sunday Times, Economist, New Statesman, Telegraph, Financial Times, TLS, New York Times, and Washington Post.
'This is ridiculous. No book about German philosophy has any right to be this fun. This witty, gossipy, sparkling history . . . fizzed with creative energy' The Times, Book of the Year
Magnificent Rebels is - well - magnificent. This is how such books should be written, with clarity, passion and delight. A thrilling intellectual adventure' JOHN BANVILLE, Book of the Year 'History writing at its best' The Spectator, Book of…
Fans of Poe have been fascinated by his life since his mysterious death in Baltimore in 1849 at the age of 40. Nothing in his writing has drawn more attention than the questions about the cause of his death. Was it alcohol poisoning, rabies, or diabetes?
Mark Dawidziak thinks Poe was most likely a victim of tubercular meningitis, eating up his brain. Poe had been exposed to several family members dying of consumption, including his young mother, foster mother, brother, and wife.
I love the way this book unfolds through events leading up to Poe’s sad death.
A Mystery of Mysteries is a brilliant biography of Edgar Allan Poe that examines the renowned author’s life through the prism of his mysterious death and its many possible causes.
It is a moment shrouded in horror and mystery. Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849, at just forty, in a painful, utterly bizarre manner that would not have been out of place in one of his own tales of terror. What was the cause of his untimely death, and what happened to him during the three missing days before he was found, delirious and “in great distress” on…
Ann Patchett achieves another success in this colorful account of a retired actress telling her daughters the significant events of her life: theater, Hollywood, love, and marriage, at her home on a cherry farm in Michigan. Switching episodes from past to present and back, she opens windows on her former life, satisfying marriage, and the costs of the success of former loves.
In the best sense, this is a family story, told with humor and strong emotion, letting the reader in on secrets not revealed to the daughters.
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER * THE NO. 1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER *
A REESE WITHERSPOON AND BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK
'A new Ann Patchett novel is always cause for celebration ... and Tom Lake is one of her best' i
'This comforting summer read has it all ... Young love, sibling rivalry and deep mother-daughter relationships' REESE WITHERSPOON
'Filled with the moments I live for in a story' BONNIE GARMUS, author of Lessons in Chemistry
'One of the most beloved authors of her generation' SUNDAY TIMES
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This is a story about Peter Duke who went on…
In this new biography, Morgan uncovers some little-discussed aspects of Poe’s life and writing.
His brilliant descriptions of the natural world, his lifelong search for love, his fascination with marriage, his quest for a replacement for his mother(who was lost when he was almost three), his mother’s possible ethnicity, the ways Poe is both an insider and outsider to his time, the way Poe in Eureka resembles the transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau, the way readers feel an ongoing kinship with Poe’s writing, however strange and Gothic it might be.
