Living Biographies of Famous Novelists

Tight and unmarked- Deckled edges (rough cut)- dark blue- Logo on front board, 14x20 cm-Sound binding-" The writers covered in this volume lived from the early 14th century to the early 20th century and range from Boccaccio to Hardy. One could argue that in today's world the little chapters on each of these writers could be gleaned from Wikipedia and other Internet sources. But the spirit that the writers Henry and Dana Lee Thomas infuse into this book is what makes it special-Rebelais, Cervantes and Defoe had a distrust of the law and their writing was artistic but flawed in craft; they all served prison sentences and flirted with bankruptcy and madness. Swift's satirical solution to ending poverty was to have all one-year old children of the poor classes be eaten as food. Scott made a fortune in his writing and lost it all on his printing business then repaid his huge debts by writing more. Balzac was eternally broke and Flaubert died unrecognized. Hugo was successful as an author but his entire family predeceased him. Dostoevsky and Solzenitsyn fought the czar and communism respectively, a hundred years apart, and ended up in Siberian prisons (Solzenitsyn is not in this volume, I use him as a reference only). Tolstoy went from godliness to godlessness to war to anti-war to celibacy to abandoning his family in his old age. Maupassant committed suicide brought on by venereal disease. Zola went bankrupt defending a Jew's rights to a fair trial. Twain disdained the low-brow tastes of his readers, yet wrote for the money. Critics called Hardy a vile writer for daring to speak out against the Social Code of his time."Shane