{"title":"Books by Richard Bradford","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780415202442","title":"John Milton","description":"Richard Bradford provides an overview of Milton's life, contexts, work and the relationship between these, and of the main critical issues surrounding his work.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56289783218549,"sku":"9780415202442","price":42.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780415202442_e4fe5439-70d1-4991-9666-e0b72014ae4f.jpg?v=1786013560"},{"product_id":"9780755600977","title":"The Man Who Wasn't There","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA ground-breaking and intensely revealing examination of the life of the 20th century's most iconic writer.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eErnest Hemingway was an involuntary chameleon, who would shift seamlessly from a self-cultivated image of hero, aesthetic radical, and existential non-conformist to a figure made up at various points of selfishness, hypocrisy, self-delusion, narcissism and arbitrary vindictiveness. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRichard Bradford shows that Hemingway’s work is by parts erratic and unique because it was tied into these unpredictable, bizarre features of his personality. Impressionism and subjectivity always play some part in the making of literary works. Some authors try to subdue them while others treat them as the essentials of creativity but they endure as a ubiquitous element of all literature. They are the writer’s private signature, their authorial fingerprint.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this new biography, which includes previously unpublished letters from the Hemingway archives, Richard Bradford reveals how Hemingway all but erased his own existence through a lifetime of invention and delusion, and provides the reader with a completely new understanding of the Hemingway oeuvre.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56294775619957,"sku":"9780755600977","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780755600977_62fde057-0969-443a-b7b9-d7ef6748db34.jpg?v=1786016504"},{"product_id":"9781448218226","title":"Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e‘My New Year’s Eve Toast: to all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle \u003c\/b\u003e–\u003cb\u003e may they never give me peace’ \u003c\/b\u003e– \u003cb\u003ePatricia Highsmith (New Year’s Eve, 1947).\u003c\/b\u003eMade famous by the great success of her psychological thrillers, \u003ci\u003eThe Talented Mr Ripley \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eStrangers on a Train\u003c\/i\u003e, Patricia Highsmith is renowned as one of the most influential and celebrated modern writers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHowever, there has never been a clear picture of the woman behind the books.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe relationship between Highsmith’s lesbianism, her fraught personality – by parts self-destructive and malicious – and her fiction, has been largely ignored by biographers in the past. As an openly homosexual writer, she wrote the seminal lesbian love story \u003ci\u003eCarol\u003c\/i\u003e for which she would be venerated, in modern times, as a radical exponent of the LGBTQ+ community. Alas, her status as an LGBTQ+ icon is undermined by her excessive cruelty towards and exploitation of her friends and many lovers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this biography, Richard Bradford brings his sharp and incisive style to one of the greatest and most controversial writers of the twentieth century. He considers Highsmith’s bestsellers in the context of her troubled personal life; her alcoholism, licentious sex life, racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and abundant self-loathing.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56300022497653,"sku":"9781448218226","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781448218226_ba739bbc-e9a0-463e-ad79-dfae3553f97b.jpg?v=1786034651"},{"product_id":"9780199658787","title":"Crime Fiction","description":"Crime fiction has been one of the most popular genres since the 19th century, but has roots in works as varied as Sophocles, Herodotus, and Shakespeare. In this Very Short Introduction Richard Bradford explores the history of the genre, by considering the various definitions of 'crime fiction' and looking at how it has developed over time. Discussing the popularity of crime fiction worldwide and its various styles; the role that gender plays within the genre; spy fiction, and legal dramas and thrillers; he explores how the crime novel was shaped by the work of British and American authors in the 18th and 19th centuries. Highlighting the works of notorious authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Raymond Chandler -- to name but a few -- he considers the role of the crime novel in modern popular culture and asks whether we can, and whether we should, consider crime fiction serious 'literature'. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311622369653,"sku":"9780199658787","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780199658787_4b4dc346-9189-4932-96e5-e3343d8212fc.jpg?v=1786012575"},{"product_id":"orwell","title":"Orwell","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA vivid portrait of the man behind the writings. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs one  of the most  enduringly popular and controversial novelists of the last century, the 70th anniversary  of George Orwell's death in 2020 offers an opportunity to assess his relevance today. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDespite the commonplace  view that  \u003ci\u003eAnimal Farm\u003c\/i\u003e was aimed  exclusively at  Stalinist  Russia, it was far more  broadly focused and the  similarities between aspects of the novel and Trump's America are obvious. Not only the parallels with the current  President,  but also by  those  who feel that  his  cult of personality is a mandate  for collective nastiness. \"Doublethink\" features in \u003ci\u003eNineteen Eighty Four\u003c\/i\u003e and it is the forerunner to \"Fake News.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAside from Orwell's importance as a political theorist and novelist his life in its own right is a beguiling narrative. His family was caught between upper middle-class complacency and uncertainty, and Orwell's time at Prep School and as a scholarship boy at Eton caused him to despise the class system that spawned him despite finding himself unable to fully detach himself from it. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis life thereafter mirrored the history of his country; like many from his background he devoted himself to socialism as a salve to his conscience. He died at the point when Britain's status as an Imperial and world power had waned. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn interest in him endures, principally because it is difficult to differentiate between the man who recorded the terrible events of the depression and the Spanish Civil War as an observer and the fiction writer who used literature to predict grim possibilities and diagnose horribly endemic inclinations. No other British writer of the 20th century has blended ideas, political commentary and literary art in such a manner. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor an author whose work has been regarded as the most important in terms of the turbulent years of the mid-20th century and who eroded the boundaries between literature, journalism and political commentary, there have been relatively few attempts to present a vibrant portrait of the man behind the writings. Fifteen years (closer  to eighteen when this book appears) is a long time for the absence of a life of one of one of the best-known authors of the twentieth century.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57484406292853,"sku":"9781448217687","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781448217687.jpg?v=1786266517"},{"product_id":"dublin-2","title":"Dublin","description":"Though small, Ireland has one of the richest literary cultures on the globe. Tourism is the most important factor in the economies of the North and the South, and the vast majority of visitors are attracted to Ireland by three things: landscapes\/townscapes; culture; history. The literature of the island informs and is informed by all three and this book will fill an enormous gap in the market of travel guides; nothing like it is presently available. It will provide readers with a fabric of stories of how writers and their work are bound into the infrastructure of the island's cities, towns, architecture, countryside, and most significantly its often turbulent history and sense of itself. In the travel shelves of standard bookshops and their airport counterparts it will grab the attention of readers as an alternative to the general guides, given that an interest in Ireland incorporates a fascination with its cultural and literary heritage.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57507821126005,"sku":"9781788310277","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}]}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-richard-bradford.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}