From acclaimed literary biographer Claire Tomalin, this exploration delves into the early life of the influential writer H. G. Wells. Upon Wells' death in 1946, George Orwell noted that had he ceased writing in 1920, his reputation would remain high, highlighting that while Wells is celebrated for iconic science fiction works like The Time Machine and The Invisible Man, his later writing never matched his earlier successes. Tomalin vividly recounts Wells' formative years, born in 1866 to a gardener and a housekeeper, grappling with poverty and health issues. Taken out of school at 12, he faced torment but persevered, earning scholarships and pursuing science degrees. Despite failing his final exams, he began writing textbooks, engaging in politics, and contributing to newspapers. Enduring serious illness and breakdowns, Wells sought escape through literature and imagination, gaining recognition with his first novel, The Time Machine, in 1895. This groundbreaking work transformed readers' perspectives and marked the start of his remarkable success. Leading up to World War I, Wells produced an impressive array of works, addressing science, social change, and future predictions, while forging relationships with notable figures. Tomalin's portrait reveals how these early experiences shaped Wells into a significant literary figure, emphasizing the importance of his youth in understanding his legacy.
Claire Tomalin Pořadí knih (chronologicky)
Tato autorka se věnuje literární kritice a biografiím, kde prozkoumává životy a díla významných osobností. Její styl se vyznačuje hlubokým vhledem a precizním zkoumáním historických postav. Skrze své psaní odhaluje složité lidské vztahy a kulturní kontexty doby. Její práce jsou ceněny pro svou erudici a poutavý způsob vyprávění.







The Young H.G. Wells
- 272 stránek
- 10 hodin čtení
A fascinating journey into the life of H.G. Wells, from one of Britain's best biographers How did the first forty years of H. G. Wells' life shape the father of science fiction? From his impoverished childhood in a working-class English family, to his determination to educate himself at any cost, to the serious ill health that dominated his twenties and thirties, his complicated marriages, and love affair with socialism, the first forty years of H. G. Wells' extraordinary life would set him on a path to become one of the world's most influential writers. The sudden success of The Time Machine and The War of The Worlds transformed his life and catapulted him to international fame; he became the writer who most inspired Orwell and countless others, and predicted men walking on the moon seventy years before it happened. In this remarkable, empathetic biography, Claire Tomalin paints a fascinating portrait of a man like no other, driven by curiosity and desiring reform, a socialist and a futurist whose new and imaginative worlds continue to inspire today. 'The finest of biographers' Hilary Mantel 'A most intelligent and sympathetic biographer' Daily Telegraph 'One of the best biographers of her generation' Guardian
Thomas Hardy
- 528 stránek
- 19 hodin čtení
Paradox ruled Thomas Hardy's life. His birth was almost his death; he became one of the great Victorian novelists and reinvented himself as one of the twentieth-century's greatest poets; he was an unhappy husband and a desolate widower; he wrote bitter attacks on the English class system yet prized the friendship of aristocrats.
The invisible woman : the story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens
- 332 stránek
- 12 hodin čtení
he Invisible Woman by Claire Tomalin is the acclaimed story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens. It is the winner of the NCR Book Award, the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. 'This is the story of someone who - almost - wasn't there; who vanished into thin air. Her names, dates, family and experiences very nearly…
Jane Austen
- 400 stránek
- 14 hodin čtení
A title that involves us so deeply that Austen's final illness and death come almost as a personal tragedy to the reader. It presents Austen as remarkably clever; sensitive, but sentimental; tough, yet observant; guarded; and a woman with the devil of a genius in her.
Charles Dickens: A life
- 480 stránek
- 17 hodin čtení
Claire Tomalin paints an unforgettable portrait of Dickens, capturing brilliantly the complex character of this great genius
Jane Austen élete
- 597 stránek
- 21 hodin čtení
Claire Tomalin az egyik leghíresebb angol irodalmi életrajzíró. Ebben a könyvében Jane Austen külső eseményekben szegény életét veszi szemügyre. A világ egyik legkedvesebb regényírója, állandó filmfeldolgozások alanya, akinek már az életéről is készült romantikus film: Jane Austen a mai napig foglalkoztatja az olvasók fantáziáját. Claire Tomalin szórakoztatóan mutatja be a kort, a szűkebb és tágabb Austen családot és magát Jane-t. Az eseménytelen életről természetesen kiderül, hogy azért bőven voltak benne boldog és szomorú pillanatok, hiszen ezek nélkül nem is válhatott volna nagy íróvá a férjvadász kis pillangó, ahogy egy szomszédasszony rosszindulatúan nevezte.
Thomas Hardy : the time-torn man
- 512 stránek
- 18 hodin čtení
Thomas Hardy is one of the sacred figures in English writing, a great poet and a novelist with a world reputation. His life was also extraordinary: from the poverty of rural Dorset he went on to become the Grand Old Man of English life and letters, his last resting place in Westminster Abbey. This seminal biography, by our leading biographer, covers Hardy�s illegitimate birth, his rural upbringing, his escape to London in the 1860s, his marriages, his status as a bestselling novelist, and in later life, his supreme achievements as a poet.
Samuel Pepys
The Unequalled Self
Samuel Pepys achieved fame as a naval administrator, a friend and colleague of the powerful and learned, a figure of substance. But for nearly ten years he kept a private diary in which he recorded, with unparalleled openness and sensitivity to the turbulent world around him, exactly what it was like to be a young man in Restoration London.
From the author's study of the Austen family papers, this title paints a picture of the Austen clan and their neighbours, and concludes that the facts of Jane Austen's life were even more extravagant and romantic than her fiction.
Shelley and His World
- 144 stránek
- 6 hodin čtení
"Shelley and His World" was universally acclaimed on publication as an ideal introduction to the poet's life and work. This much-requested reissue is guaranteed to delight Claire Tomalin's loyal readership. 'A vivid, amusing yet heartbreaking picture of Shelley poetry, politics, travel, friendships, love-affairs, scandals, mysteries, children, visions - all gracefully combined' - "London Review of Books".
Pursuing art and adventure across Europe, Katherine Mansfield lived and wrote with the Furies on her heels; but when she died aged only thirty-four she became one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Sexually ambiguous, craving love yet quarrelsome and capricious, she glittered in the brilliant circles of D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, her beauty and recklessness inspiring admiration, jealousy, rage and devotion. Claire Tomalin�s biography brings us nearer than we have ever been to this courageous, greatly gifted, haunted and haunting writer.
Witty, courageous and unconventional, Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the most controversial figures of her day. She published "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman"; travelled to revolutionary France and lived through the Terror and the destruction of the incipient French feminist movement; produced an illegitimate daughter; and married William Godwin before dying in childbed at the age of thirty-eight. Often embattled and bitterly disappointed, she never gave up her radical ideas or her belief that courage and honesty would triumph over convention. Winner of the Whitbread First Book Prize in 1974, this haunting biography achieved wide critical acclaim. Writing in the "New Statesman", J. H. Plumb called it, 'Wide, penetrating, sympathetic. There is no better book on Mary Wollstonecraft, nor is there likely to be'.






