Gilles Deleuze, the person and philosopher, was both singular and multifaceted. Frida Beckman traces Deleuze's remarkable intellectual journey, mapping the encounters from which his life and work emerged. She considers how his life and philosophical…
Jean-Francois Lyotard is one of the most important, and complex, French thinkers of the twentieth century. Best known in the English-speaking world for his book The Postmodern Condition, the multi-faceted nature of Lyotard's work has often been obsc…
'Through the years, a man peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, tools, stars, horses and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the imag…
Igor Stravinsky lived the life of a celebrity composer in an increasingly celebrity-obsessed age. He was a true modern, a man of his time. In Paris he dined with Joyce, Picasso and Proust, and by the end of his life was being feted by both the White…
Marcel Proust (1871 - 1922) spent fourteen years creating A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), his seven-volume magnum opus. He died when only half was in print, unable to see it become one of the most important literary works of…
Walter Benjamin, critic, essayist, translator, philosopher one of the twentieth century's most influential intellectuals continues to intrigue today. His work stimulates a profusion of responses in the form of new novels, operas, films and artworks,…
'Most directors have one film for which they are known or possibly two', Francis Ford Coppola has said, 'Akira Kurosawa has eight or nine.' Through his many masterpieces such as Rashomon, Seven Samurai, High and Low, Yojimbo, Kagemusha and Ran, Kuro…
Lenin (1870-1924) was the leader of the communist Bolshevik party and founder of the Soviet Union. He was a key revolutionary thinker and a man who, at one time, lived in exile for his political views and survived several assassination attempts. The…
Arthur Schopenhauer devoted his adult life to the articulation of a philosophy for the world, a philosophy that would benefit mankind by providing a solution to the riddle of existence. Often considered a thoroughgoing pessimist, Schopenhauer in fac…
Georges Bataille was arguably the greatest influence on the post-structuralist revolution in twentieth-century thought and literature, yet few truly understand his large body of work or its impact. Stuart Kendall now translates the work and life of…
Joseph Beuys is arguably the most important and most controversial German artist of the late twentieth century, not least because his persona is interwoven with Germany's fascist past. This book illuminates two defining threads in Beuys's life and a…
In this new critical biography of Allen Ginsberg, Steve Finbow re-examines the life, poetry and politics of this crucial poet and activist, and discusses his position in American letters and culture. The book moves from the influences of childhood -…
Roland Barthes (1915-1980) is one of France's most important writers and theorists of the second half of the twentieth century. His volumes of essays have been translated into many languages. His work is hugely influential in the fields of semiotics…
In this gripping biography Paul Ibell discusses Williams as a poet as well as a playwright, at the same time revealing the crises of doomed relationships, promiscuous sex, alcohol and prescription drug abuse that gave the writer the raw material for…
The name 'Leon Trotsky' is a controversial one. For some, he was a betrayer or a totalitarian. For others, he was a revolutionary knight battling an oppressive system. However you view him, Trotsky was a one of the most important figures of twentiet…
In this new work, Andrew Gibson sets out to reverse the traditional view of Joyce and his work as the paradigm of international modernism in literature. Where criticism has usually consigned Ireland to secondary status in Joyce's work, Gibson firmly…
Featuring new details about Virginia Woolf's homes and personal life, this engaging biography offers a fresh insight into her work, focusing on how place as much as imagination fashioned her writing. Drawing on her letters, journals, diaries, autobi…
Muhammad was a religious visionary and political leader. Raised in the harsh Arabian Peninsula and orphaned while still a child, this unlikely leader and military genius received a calling to transform his society from a collection of raiding tribes…
Before he had turned 21, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) upended the house of French poetry and left it in shambles. What makes Rimbaud's poetry important, argues Seth Whidden, is part of what makes his life so compelling: rebellion, audacity, creativity…
As one of the most influential thinkers of the modern age, Karl Marx's political philosophy has resounded throughout politics and history, from the nineteenth century to the present day. In recent times however the concept of 'Marxism' has become a…
American novelist and poet Herman Melville is considered by many to be the finest author his nation has produced. Born in New York in 1819, he achieved recognition as a leader of world literature with his daring stylistic innovations, and his master…
Jean-Paul Sartre was arguably the most celebrated and written-about intellectual of the twentieth century. He was also one of the most divisive: twenty-five years after his death, his name still provokes revulsion and admiration in equal measure. Bu…
From the magical Beauty and the Beast to the surreal Orpheus films, Jean Cocteau is renowned as a leading figure in European cinema as well as a creative force collaborating with artists as diverse as Picasso, Diaghilev and Edith Piaf. Yet Cocteau's…
With their complex textures, rich harmonies and elaborate use of leitmotifs, the operas of Richard Wagner (1813 - 83) remain some of the most influential - and contentious - in the history of the genre. But while Wagner won enormous renown for what…
The life and architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) have been much-studied, yet there is a consistent division between analyses of his architecture, which exclude any discussion of his daily life, and books that tell the often sensational ta…
This biography is the first to pay close attention to Havel's poetry and to place his later work as a writer of plays, essays, prison letters and presidential speeches in the context of his poetic beginnings, his formative stylistic and philosophica…
Known for his experimental, modernist Epic Theatre and its 'alienation effect', Bertolt Brecht (1898 - 1956) sought to break down the division between high art and popular culture. The Threepenny Opera, his collaboration with composer Kurt Weill, wa…
Few individuals have made as much of an impact upon a single medium as has Sergei Eisenstein upon cinema. His ground-breaking movies, such as "Battleship Potemkin", "October" and "Aleksandr Nevskii" make regular appearances upon 'all-time best movie…
Along with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) is an iconic figure of the Beat generation. In this revealing study Phil Baker traces this cult writer's life - from the New York underworld of the 1940s to Mexico and the…
When Octavio Paz won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990, it was in recognition of the fact that for many years he had been the pre-eminent poet in the Spanish speaking world. His work takes the traditions of Mexican poetry as well as French and…
You are, of course, never yourself', wrote Gertrude Stein in one of her famously witty autobiographies. Since the 1920s Stein has been celebrated in many incarnations: as the embodiment of Left Bank bohemia, as a patron of modern art and writing, as…
Pablo Neruda (1904 1973) is Latin America's best known and, for many, greatest poet. He was also perhaps its most controversial. Adored by readers the world over for the sumptuous love lyrics penned during his early years in his native Chile, and re…
The life of Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) has been the subject of exhaustive scholarship, yet by contrast Beckett himself was a spare, minimalist writer who deeply distrusted the techniques of biography. In this new, concise, critical account of Becket…
One of France's most high-profile writers, Albert Camus experienced both public adulation and acrimonious rejection in a career cut short by a fatal car accident in 1960. From humble origins in a European family living in colonial Algeria, Camus est…
'I am almost exclusively a writer, and my style is all I have', wrote Vladimir Nabokov (1899 1977). Best known for his deeply controversial 1955 novel "Lolita", Nabokov is celebrated as a prolific author and poet in both Russian and English. In "Vla…
"Marcel Duchamp", by Paris-based curator and art critic Caroline Cros, is a new account of one of the most important cultural figures of modern times. Drawing on the artist's correspondence and interviews, she details Duchamp's life-long belief in c…
Acknowledged as one of the major sculptors and avant-garde artists of the twentieth century, Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) also remained one of the most elusive. His mysterious nature was not only due to his upbringing in Romania - which, at the t…
'My idea of a writer: someone interested in 'everything", declared Susan Sontag (1933 - 2004). Essayist, diarist, filmmaker, novelist and playwright, her own life seemed to match this ideal. As well as writing in an unusually broad array of genres,…
This new critical biography takes an innovative look at the life and work of the notorious American author (1891-1980). It examines Miller's intense immersion in esoteric and theosophical interests, charting the cultivation of these ideas from his b…
Alfred Jarry's creation of the monster-tyrant Ubu was a watershed in theatre history: his play Ubu Roi (whose origins lie in his mercilessly ridiculed former schoolmaster) on the Paris stage in December 1896 brought him instant notoriety. This legen…
The life of Edgar Allan Poe (1809 1849) is the quintessential writer's biography great works arising from a life of despair, poverty, alcoholism, and a mysterious solitary death. It may seem like a cliche now, but it was Poe who helped shape this id…
A musical composer who dabbled in the Dada movement, a Bohemian gymnopediste of fin-de-siecle Montmartre, and a legendary dresser known as The Velvet Gentleman for his sartorial choices, Erik Satie was nearly unprecedented in technique, style and ph…
Leonard Bernstein was one of twentieth-century music's most successful and recognizable figures. In a career spanning five decades he conducted many of the world's leading orchestras, and composed scores for landmark musicals such as Candide and Wes…
Born in Budapest in 1905, Arthur Koestler was a pivotal European writer and intellectual who inspired, provoked and intrigued in equal measure. Koestler wrote enduring works of reportage and memoir but he is most famous for his political novel Darkn…
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dali y Domenech, Marquis of Pubol, was born in Catalonia on May 11, 1904, and died on January 23, 1989. Best known as a surrealist painter, his artistic output also included film, sculpture, photography and writing. D…
Poet. Actor. Matinee idol. Playwright. Theatre theoretician. Artist. Orientalist. Surrealist. Asylum inmate. Drug addict. Electroshock patient. Antonin Artaud. This biography, exploring the life of one of the twentieth century's most enigmatic perso…
Frida Kahlo stepped into the limelight in 1929 when she married the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. She was 22; he was 43. Hailed as Rivera's exotic young wife who 'dabbles in art', she went on to produce brilliant paintings, but remained in her husb…
Few artists have exerted such an influence on modern art as Paul Cezanne. Picasso, Braque and Matisse all acknowledged a profound debt to his painting, and many historians regard him as the father of modernism. This new biography reexamines Cezanne'…
The Danish philosopher, theologian and author Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is widely considered to be one of the most important religious thinkers of the modern age. He is known as the `father of existentialism', but his work was also influential o…
With a career in literature and art spanning more than sixty years, John Berger is characterized by an independent and anti-institutional approach to creativity. Working in a range of media including novels, painting, essays and scriptwriting, Berge…
