Joseph Conrad's letters to R. B. Cunninghame Graham

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Richard Greene

Cassis reveals the private side of Greene - an opinionated, charming, articulate, controversial, complex person who was always at odds with conventional wisdom. The fifty-seven excerpts included in this book contain interviews with Greene as well as personal impressions, diary entries, articles, essays, literary pieces, and recollections by friends and contemporaries that span fifty years. Topics range from Greene's conversion to Catholicism to the writer's role in society. Contributors include such well-known writers as Anthony Burgess, John Mortimer, V. S. Pritchett, Kathleen Raine, A. L. Rowse, Israel Shenker, Kenneth Tynan, and Evelyn Waugh. In this collection of essays, A. F. Cassis sheds light on the mystery of Graham Greene. Novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, journalist, and playwright, Greene (1904-91) is considered one of the finest literary talents of the twentieth century. He combined his abilities as a wonderful storyteller and a master craftsman to bring respectability to the thriller genre, or what the author himself called "entertainments." In his writings, Greene expressed serious and controversial views on religious, political, and social issues.

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David Hannay

Biography of the author of some of the first novels written about the sea war against Napoleon, and some of the few written by a man actually present.

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Piers Dudgeon

"Captivated is a true story of genius and possession at a crossroads in time, when the late nineteenth-century world of the occult and the psychic arts gave way to the new science of psychology." "The central characters are J.M. Barrie, a man tormented by inner demons since childhood; George du Maurier, the creator of Svengali, who showed how it is possible by means of hypnosis for one person to gain control over the mind of another; and Daphne du Maurier, George's enigmatic granddaughter, author of Rebecca and secret chronicler of her family's story." "This book delves deep, makes links and yields up secrets. It tells how Barrie brought his victims to nervous breakdown, early death and suicide, and how three writers formed an image of their dark side - in Svengali, Peter Pan and Rebecca - and how these images cleaved to reality and took control."--Jacket.

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Thomas Hobbes

This first of two volumes contains the letters of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), supplemented with explanatory notes, and full biographical and bibliographical information. This publication sheds new light on the intellectual life of a major European thinker.