Award-winning historian Frances Wilson delivers a gripping new account of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, looking at the collision and its aftermath through the prism of the demolished life and lost honor of the ship’s owner, J. Bruce Ismay. In a unique work of history evocative of Joseph Conrad’s classic novel Lord Jim, Wilson raises provocative moral questions about cowardice and heroism, memory and identity, survival and guilt—questions that revolve around Ismay’s loss of honor and identity as his monolithic venture—a ship called “The Last Word in Luxury” and “The Unsinkable”—was swallowed by the sea and subsumed in infamy forever.

How to Survive the Titanic: The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay

Biographies & Memoirs

Wilson, Frances

Historical

Harper

Harper-perennial

A fascinating and revealing look at complex relationships that mix love, ambition, talent, and need explores the dynamics between such artistic couples as Robert Graves and Laura Riding, Anans Nin and Henry Miller, and W. B. and George Yeats.

Literary Seductions: Compulsive Writers and Diverted Readers

Arts & Literature

St Martins Pr

Described by the writer and opium addict Thomas De Quincey as ?the very wildest . . . person I have ever known,? DorothyWordsworth was neither the self-effacing spinster nor the sacrificial saint of common telling. A brilliant stylist in her own right, Dorothy was at the center of the Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century. She was her brother William Wordsworth?s inspiration, aide, and most valued reader, and a friend to Coleridge; both borrowed from her observations of the world for their own poems.William wrote of her, ?She gave me eyes, she gave me ears.?In order to remain at her brother?s side, Dorothy sacrificed both marriage and comfort, jealously guarding their close-knit domesticity?one marked by a startling freedom from social convention. In the famed Grasmere Journals, Dorothy kept a record of this idyllic life together. The tale that unfolds through her brief, electric entries reveals an intense bond between brother and sister, culminating

The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth: A Life

History

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

National Book Critics Circle Award, Biographers International Organization Plutarch Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
New York Times Book Review, Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian Best Books of 2016
Thomas De Quincey was an obsessive. He was obsessed with Wordsworth and Coleridge, whose Lyrical Ballads provided the script to his life, and by the idea of sudden death. Running away from school to pursue the two poets, De Quincey insinuated himself into their world. Basing his sensibility on Wordsworth’s and his character on Coleridge’s, he forged a triangle of unusual psychological complexity.
Aged twenty-four, De Quincey replaced Wordsworth as the tenant of Dove Cottage, the poet’s former residence in Grasmere. In this idyllic spot he followed the reports of the notorious Ratcliffe Highway murders of 1811, when two families, including a baby, were butchered in their own homes. In his opium-soaked imagination the murderer became a poet while the poet became a murderer. Embedded in On Murder as One of the Fine Arts, De Quincey’s brilliant series of essays, Frances Wilson finds the startling story of his relationships with Wordsworth and Coleridge.
Opium was the making of De Quincey, allowing him to dissolve self-conflict, eliminate self-recrimination, and divest himself of guilt. Opium also allowed him to write, and under the pseudonym “The Opium-Eater” De Quincey emerged as the strangest and most original journalist of his age. His influence has been considerable. Poe became his double; Dostoevsky went into exile with Confessions of an English Opium-Eater in his pocket; and Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, George Orwell, Alfred Hitchcock, and Vladimir Nabokov were all De Quincey devotees. 
There have been other biographies of Thomas De Quincey, but Guilty Thing is the first to be animated by the spirit of De Quincey himself. Following the growth of his obsessions from seed to full flowering and tracing the ways they intertwined, Frances Wilson finds the master key to De Quincey’s vast Piranesian mind. Unraveling a tale of hero worship and revenge, Guilty Thing brings the last of the Romantics roaring back to life and firmly establishes Wilson as one of our foremost contemporary biographers.

Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey

An electrifying, revelatory new biography of D. H. Lawrence, with a focus on his difficult middle years "Never trust the teller," wrote D. H. Lawrence, "trust the tale." Everyone who knew him told stories about Lawrence, and Lawrence told stories about everyone he knew. He also told stories about himself, again and again: a pioneer of autofiction, no writer before Lawrence had made so permeable the border between life and literature. InBurning Man: The Trials of D. H. Lawrence, acclaimed biographer Frances Wilson tells a new story about the author, focusing on his decade of superhuman writing and travel between 1915, whenThe Rainbowwas suppressed following an obscenity trial, and 1925, when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Taking after Lawrence's own literary model, Dante, and adopting the structure ofTheDivine Comedy, Burning Man is a distinctly Lawrentian book, one that pursues Lawrence around the globe and reflects his life of wild allegory. Eschewing the confines of traditional biography, it offers a triptych of lesser-known episodes drawn from lesser-known sources, including tales of Lawrence as told by his friends in letters, memoirs, and diaries. Focusing on three turning points in Lawrence's pilgrimage (his crises in Cornwall, Italy, and New Mexico) and three central adversaries--his wife, Frieda; the writer Maurice Magnus; and his patron, Mabel Dodge Luhan--Wilson uncovers a lesser-known Lawrence, both as a writer and as a man. Strikingly original, superbly researched, and always revelatory,Burning Man is a marvel of iconoclastic biography. With flair and focus, Wilson unleashes a distinct perspective on one of history's most beloved and infamous writers.

Burning Man: The Trials of D. H. Lawrence

Described by the writer and opium addict Thomas De Quincey as "the very wildest . . . person I have ever known," DorothyWordsworth was neither the self-effacing spinster nor the sacrificial saint of common telling. A brilliant stylist in her own right, Dorothy was at the center of the Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century. She was her brother William Wordsworth's inspiration, aide, and most valued reader, and a friend to Coleridge; both borrowed from her observations of the world for their own poems.William wrote of her, "She gave me eyes, she gave me ears."
In order to remain at her brother's side, Dorothy sacrificed both marriage and comfort, jealously guarding their close-knit domesticity―one marked by a startling freedom from social convention. In the famed Grasmere Journals, Dorothy kept a record of this idyllic life together. The tale that unfolds through her brief, electric entries reveals an intense bond between brother and sister, culminating in Dorothy's dramatic collapse on the day of William's wedding to their childhood friend Mary Hutchinson. Dorothy lived out the rest of her years with her brother and Mary. The woman who strode the hills in all hours and all weathers would eventually retreat into the house for the last three decades of her life.
In this succinct, arresting biography, Frances Wilson reveals Dorothy in all her complexity. From the coiled tension of Dorothy's journals, she unleashes the rich emotional life of a woman determined to live on her own terms, and honors her impact on the key figures of Romanticism.

Lady Caroline Lamb's seduction by Lord Byron's "Childe Harold" cost her both marriage and mental health; Laura Riding, claiming she was poetry incarnate, leapt from a fourth-storey building; Robert Graves, believing she was right, followed. Why do some writers compel their readers to sacrifice all on the strength of a few words? In attempting to answer this question, "Literary Seductions" examines tales of literary love affairs which went one step further - of readers who give up everything for writers and their work.

Literary seductions: Compulsive writers and diverted readers

Faber & Faber, Limited

Described by the writer and opium addict Thomas De Quincey as “the very wildest . . . person I have ever known,” DorothyWordsworth was neither the self-effacing spinster nor the sacrificial saint of common telling. A brilliant stylist in her own right, Dorothy was at the center of the Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century. She was her brother William Wordsworth’s inspiration, aide, and most valued reader, and a friend to Coleridge; both borrowed from her observations of the world for their own poems.William wrote of her, “She gave me eyes, she gave me ears.” In order to remain at her brother’s side, Dorothy sacrificed both marriage and comfort, jealously guarding their close-knit domesticity—one marked by a startling freedom from social convention. In the famed Grasmere Journals, Dorothy kept a record of this idyllic life together. The tale that unfolds through her brief, electric entries reveals an intense bond between brother and sister, culminating in Dorothy’s dramatic collapse on the day of William’s wedding to their childhood friend Mary Hutchinson. Dorothy lived out the rest of her years with her brother and Mary. The woman who strode the hills in all hours and all weathers would eventually retreat into the house for the last three decades of her life. In this succinct, arresting biography, Frances Wilson reveals Dorothy in all her complexity. From the coiled tension of Dorothy’s journals, she unleashes the rich emotional life of a woman determined to live on her own terms, and honors her impact on the key figures of Romanticism.

The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth

Faber&Faber

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

Books by Wilson, Frances

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

How to Survive the Titanic: The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay

How to Survive the Titanic: The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay

Literary Seductions: Compulsive Writers and Diverted Readers

The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth: A Life

Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey

Burning Man: The Trials of D. H. Lawrence

Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey

The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth: A Life

Literary seductions: Compulsive writers and diverted readers

The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth