Autobiography & Biography & Memoir > Literary Biography

The first time Brenda went into hospital to be treated for breast cancer, she wondered which book to take with her. In this book she writes about the five stages of her treatment and how different authors and books helped her through the scary, scarring process.

Although she started writing early in life it was not until her fifties that Elizabeth Jolley received the recognition her talent deserved. She won The Age Book of the Year Award on three occasions as well as the Miles Franklin Award. She has won the Western Australian Premiers Prize for both fiction and non-fiction. Elizabeth Jolley is one of Australias most acclaimed authors and has been awarded an honorary doctorate (Hon. D. Tech.) from the Western Australia Institute of Technology (now Curtin University) and an Order of Austral... read more

Kate Grenville's The Secret River moved and exhilarated thousands of readers when it was published in 2005. They marvelled at the subtlety of its language, and the power of Grenville's storytelling. And they recognised that this simple tale of a poor convict family settling on the banks of the Hawkesbury River in the early nineteenth century represented a landmark moment in Australian fiction. Grenville had taken the novel to the frontier of European settlement and written a profoundly original and disturbing work about what happen... read more

Bestselling author Sue Woolfe tracks the journey of her novel, "The Secret Cure", through her interest in theories about creativity from the field of neuroscience. Woolfe explores the relationship between mind and body as well as how both inform the writing process. It is designed to be a guide for emerging and student writers as well as readers interested in how the progress of an idea can develop in the hands of an acclaimed writer. This title continues the work Woolfe started with Kate Grenville of books about writing, this time... read more

The never before published diaries and letters of Iris Murdoch, during WWII. Includes correspondence with the poet Frank Thomson and the diplomat David Hicks. They shed a new light on the life and mind of a brilliant young writer. Edited by Peter Conradi, Murdoch's friend and the author of her biography

Keeley has had a life-long relationship with Greece, beginning with his childhood, when his father served in the diplomatic corp. This is his memoir of Greece, its life, culture, writers and people. It traces his childhood through the war years, when, unable to return due to the war, he became almost an exile in his home country. As an adult, he returns a professor, the translator and friend of the major Greek poets, and marries a Greek woman. "Borderlines" documents a writer's search for meaning in a life influenced by often confl... read more

A New Zealander at Tell el Amarna - the buried city of Akhenaten and Nefertiti - a site of momentous events in ancient Egypt. Published for the first time is Charles Bbrasch's vivid and engrossing account of his seasons on the renowned 1930s archaeological dig at Tell el Amarna, and his travels in Greece, Crete, and Palestine. brasch (1909-73), who founded the eminent literary journal Landfall, was a gifted poet and an outstanding patron of the arts. His time in the Middle East was a profound stimulus to his imagination; now reade... read more

The Triad was founded in 1893 and ran into the late 1920s. For its first twenty-two years it was published in New Zealand, but in 1915 publication was transferred to Sydney where it was re-launched as an Australasian magazine. The magazine offered well-informed coverage of cultural activities in New Zealand, Australia and internationally in a broad mix of critical and original writing. Notoriously outspoken, Baeyertz was feared and respected as a critic. His music criticism was particularly intelligent and rigorous, making no conce... read more

Plume Of Bees: a Literary Biography of C. K. Stead considers the temperament Stead brings to his art, and, conversely, the idiosyncrasies and preoccupations that are revealed through his work. The inquiry begins with an account of his childhood to seek situations or influences that may have contributed to his talent and ambition. As Plume of Bees develops, it focuses on reasons for the extremes of Stead's reputation, and for the fact that his reception in Britain often differs from that in New Zealand. Relying mainly on resources i... read more

Words Chosen Carefully brings together some of New Zealand's finest literary practitioners 15 writers and 15 literary critics - in discussions about each author's work, the nature of writing and the place of land, culture, belonging, society, family and art in their work.

In The Material Mansfield, the writer's possessions are collected and presented with what Mansfield and others have written about them. Here is poignant evidence of her home thoughts from abroad, her individual personal style, and some of the things she enjoyed and in which she found succour. Painstakingly put together by the The Katherine Mansfield Birthplace Society in conjunction with their exhibition, this book is beautifully produced and is a wonderful historical record and a gift for historians and Katherine Mansfield fans ... read more

Memoir, poetry and travel intertwine in this lively, thoughtful and very readable book that considers when the ordinary becomes vital. For Diane such moments come when crossing boundaries: of countries, cultures and language; from poetry to prose; from past to present; personal to universal. First published September 2006.

'Now - now I want to write recollections of my own country. Yes, I want to write about my own country till I simply exhaust my store. Not only because it is a "sacred debt" that I pay to my country because my brother and I were born there, but also because in my thoughts I range with him over all the remembered places. I am never far away from them. I long to renew them in writing.' In numerous letters and journals, Katherine Mansfield recorded her feelings, thoughts and observations about writing, about the New Zealand of her chil... read more

'There is no place in normal New Zealand society for the man who is different', wrote William Harrison (Bill) Pearson. One of New Zealand's most distinguished fiction writers and sharpest critics, Pearson's life was also fraught with contradiction and secrecy, largely because of his homosexuality. Born in Greymouth in 1922, he grew up in a society dominated by a rugged ideal of New Zealand manhood; not an easy childhood or adolescence for an unusually sensitive boy who preferred intellectual pursuits to sports. He went to universit... read more

In this beguiling book, Ann-Marie Priest considers the love lives of our greatest twentieth century writers and claims that our current notions of love have been shaped by the affairs of these influential figures.In exploring ideas of sexuality, marriage, same-sex relationships and passionate friendships, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, DH Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, Katherine Mansfield and Charmian Clift forged a darker, richer, more complex mythology of romantic love than the one that preceded it. In Great Writers, A... read more

With skill and candour, the acclaimed London book editor, who turned 90 in December 2007, tells the story of what it means to be old.Somewhere Towards the End tells the story of what it means to be old: how the pleasure of sex ebbs, how the joy of gardening grows, how much there is to remember, to forget, to regret, to forgive - and how one faces the inevitable fact of death. Athill has lost none of her skill or candour as a writer, her love of the intimate detail. Her book is filled with stories, events and people, and the kind of... read more

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First published in 1993, Blake Morrison's "And When Did You Last See Your Father?" is an extraordinary portrait of family life, father-son relationships and bereavement. It became a bestseller, and inspired a whole genre of confessional memoirs. This new edition includes a new afterword by the author."And When Did You Last See Your Father?" won the Waterstone's/Volvo/Esquire Award for Non-Fiction and the JR Ackerley Prize for Autobiography, 1993. First published 1993.

First published in 1993, Blake Morrison's "And When Did You Last See Your Father?" is an extraordinary portrait of family life, father-son relationships and bereavement. It became a bestseller, and inspired a whole genre of confessional memoirs. Winner of the J R Ackerley Prize for autobiography 1993. This new edition which includes a new afterword by the author was first published 2006.

Playwright Simon Gray's wonderfully witty and moving memoir, reflecting on a life filled with personal and professional triumphs and disasters When he turned sixty-five, the playwright Simon Gray began to keep a diary: not a careful honing of the day s events with a view to posterity but an account of his thoughts as he had them, honestly, turbulently, digressively expressed. The Smoking Diaries is the result, in which one of Britain s most amusing and original writers reflects on a life filled with cigarettes (continuing), alcoh... read more