William Plomer (1903-73) was a novelist and literary figure of reputation, author of the powerful novel of miscegenation Turbott Wolfe, founder of the magazine Voorslag, principal reader for the Publisher Jonathan Cape, and a homosexual. Here, Alexander paints a fascinating portrait of this man, from his beginnings in turn-of-the-century South Africa to his rise to literary and publishing prominence in England in the 1930s and 40s. Dealing frankly with all areas of Plomer's private and professional life and the central role his homosexuality played in them, this book looks at his success at bringing such authors as Vladimir Nabokov and Ian Fleming to prominence, his work as editor of Francis Kilvert's diaries, his librettos for several of Benjamin Britten's operas, including Gloriana, and his other literary works, which include five novels and ten volumes of verse.

William Plomer: A Biography

Alexander, Peter F.

Oxford University Press

William Plomer: A Biography (Oxford Lives)

Biographies & Memoirs

This is the first biography of one of Australia's finest poets--a famed lyricist, polyglot, and polemicist. Alexander draws on extensive interviews with Murray to reveal how this complex man endured the harshest and most anti-intellectual of childhoods to develop into one of the most famous poets writing in English today.

Les Murray: A Life in Progress

Arts & Literature

Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country, a classic of modern literature still read by thousands of people every year, brought international attention to the political turmoil in South Africa and its repressive system of apartheid when it was published in 1948. Few people, however, are aware of Paton's astonishing range of abilities, abilities which gave him success in four separate careers: as a teacher, prison reformer, writer, and politician. In Alan Paton: A Biography, Peter F. Alexander, a scholar and writer who knew Paton personally for fifteen years, brings us the first full biography of the South African novelist, written with the cooperation of the writer's widow, his two sons, and based on the most intimate biographical documents, ranging from Paton's and his first wife's diaries to love-letters. Alan Paton: A Biography is the first book to provide insight into those aspects of Paton's life which he chose to exclude from his autobiographies. From the diffculties of his first marriage to his driving ambition to enter South African politics and reform his native country, Paton is shown here as a much more complex and colorful figure than the public perception of him suggests. Alexander reveals that Paton was a man of extreme passions, capable, as a teacher and prison principal, of displays of a violent temper. Towards the end of his life, he became a heavy drinker in spite of a rigorously puritanical upbringing. Yet Paton's highly developed sense of humor, evinced in both his writing and his public speeches, and the generous Christian faith that provided him with an all-embracing philosophy, transcended these flaws, and emerge as perhaps his most distinguishing traits. Alan Paton: A Biography is a "warts and all" portrait of a man whose greatness was hard-won, and whose sympathy and tolerance for others was based on his own moral struggles--and victories. It is also a portrait of 20th Century South Africa and the amazing political metamorphosis that country saw during Paton's lifetime.

Alan Paton: A Biography

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Alexander, Peter F.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Alexander, Peter F.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Alexander, Peter F.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

William Plomer: A Biography

William Plomer: A Biography (Oxford Lives)

Les Murray: A Life in Progress

Alan Paton: A Biography