Her True-True Name (Caribbean Writers Series)

Sample

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.

Sample

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.

Sample

Andrew Norman

When Agatha Christie, the so-called “Queen of Crime”, disappeared from her home in Sunningdale in Berkshire for eleven days on 3 December 1927, the whole nation held its breath. The following day, when her car was found abandoned fourteen miles away, a nationwide search was instigated. From a painstaking reconstruction of Agatha’s movements and behavior during those eleven days, Dr Andrew Norman is able to shed new light on what, in many ways, has remained a baffling mystery. Only now, fifty years after Agatha’s death, is it possible to explain fully, in the light of scientific knowledge, her behaviour during that troubled time. By deciphering clues from her celebrated works, Agatha Christie: The Finished Portrait sheds light on what is perhaps the greatest mystery of all to be associated with Britain’s best-loved crime writer, namely that of the person herself.

Sample

Jeanette Winterson

Memories of the author about her difficult childhood as the adopted daughter of an English mother with strong religious convictions, and her subsequent search for her biological mother.