by [by] Roger Lancelyn Green & Walter Hooper (1974)
"Born in Belfast in 1898 and sent to England for a public school education with his elder brother, Warren, C.S. Lewis exhibited a genius for imagination and perception from his earliest years. Later, his Chronicles of Narnia became children's classics and he was deluged with correspondence from his young readers." "During his lifetime C.S. Lewis suggested to his friend, Roger Lancelyn Green, that he would undertake his biography one day. After Lewis's death in 1963 Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper, Lewis's personal secretary during the last months of his life, were approached by several of Lewis's friends who encouraged them to write his story. Lewis's brother Warren contributed a great deal to the research, and the authors had at their disposal a vast collection of letters and diaries and the unique recollections of many surviving family members and friends."--Jacket.
Fay Weldon
"From life as a poor unwed mother in London to becoming one of England's best-selling authors and most popular exports, Fay Weldon has crammed more than most into her years. Wife, lover, playwright, novelist, feminist, antifeminist, winer and diner--Fay leads us through her peripatetic life with barely a role she can't illuminate"--Dustjacket.
Patrick Marnham
Biography of Mary Farmar, a descendant of the Duke of Wellington, who married first Baron Swinfen and then Eric Siepmann. She started writing seriously at the age of 70 under the pen name of Mary Wesley to stave off poverty. Between the ages of 70 and 85 she produced a series of best sellers including "The Camomile Lawn", which appear to include significant autobiographical elements. Her life in pre-war and wartime Britain was remarkable, and almost scandalous. Her friends provided first hand experience of pre-war Europe, and then of the post war challenges that followed. A fascinating window into upper middle class Britain of the time.
Loraine Fletcher
Charlotte Turner Smith (1749-1806) was born into the landed gentry and married off at 15, on the insistence of a hostile stepmother, to a wastrel from a West Indian family whose money came from the slave trade. When her husband's fecklessness forced her to support herself and their nine surviving children alone, she at once became a celebrated poet and novelist. Writing at the time of the French Revolution, she wanted change in England too and commented sharply on the injustice of England's class system, on the legalized looting of Empire and the legal prostitution of arranged marriages. Her Elegiac Sonnets with their lonely landscapes greatly influenced William Wordsworth, while Jane Austen devoured her satirical fiction and adapted her plots and settings for novels of her own. Her personality comes across vividly from her letters, published here for the first time, and from Loraine Fletcher's sympathetic, scholarly narrative.
John Shelby Spong
"Early in his life, Spong witnessed injustices that were instrumental in awakening his moral consciousness. Growing up in the American south of the 1930s, Spong spent his childhood in an environment of racism, fundamentalism, sexism, and homophobia. The church of his time was no exception; its exclusionary attitudes and practices struck the young Southerner as contradictory to the Christianity he encountered in the Bible and heard preached from the pulpit and taught in Sunday school.". "Rather than becoming disillusioned with the church and dropping out, Spong has devoted himself to reforming it, working to integrate women, blacks, gays, lesbians, and other marginalized Christians fully into the faith community better known for rejecting or marginalizing them. In the process, he has challenged the views of leaders such as Jerry Falwell, John Cardinal O'Connor, and his own Episcopal hierarchy."--BOOK JACKET.