Leigh Hunt

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Annibel Jenkins

"On April 10, 1772, eighteen-year-old Elizabeth Simpson packed up her possessions, wrote her mother a note, and struck out alone to find fame and fortune as an actress. Late-eighteenth-century London was brimming with fascinating people, grand theatre, and political intrigue, and the beautiful young Elizabeth wanted a taste of it all. After several years touring the surrounding countryside with struggling theatre troupes, she would eventually find herself at the center of the city's social and cultural circles.". "I'll Tell You What: The Life of Elizabeth Inchbald follows Elizabeth Simpson on her journey to becoming the "Celebrated Mrs. Inchbald" - actress, playwright, novelist, and respected drama critic. Using material from Inchbald's own pocket books detailing her daily life (she destroyed most of her letters and journals late in life at the advice of a Catholic confessor) as well as a wealth of other sources, Annibel Jenkins provides a vibrant portrait of life in eighteenth-century London as well as the first full story of this fascinating and thoroughly modern woman."--BOOK JACKET.

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Gillian Gill

This volume is a biography of English writer Agatha Christie (1890-1976). Christie is best remembered for the detective novels and short story collections. She is perhaps the best-selling novelist of all time; her novels have sold roughly 4 billion copies, and claims exist that state her works rank third, after those of William Shakespeare and the Bible, as the world's most-widely published books. Christie's stage play "The Mousetrap" holds the record for the longest initial run; it opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in London in 1952 and as of 2012 is still running after more than 25,000 performances. This work analyzes the life and work of the popular mystery writer portrays a strong-willed, passionate woman whose fictional creations explode sexual and other stereotypes.

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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.

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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.