• 

  A Private Life of Michael Foot , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 625min

  The late Michael Foot, once leader of the Labour party, lives on as a major figure in British political history, although he is best remembered as a fiery and eloquent standard-bearer for socialist beliefs and policies. But what of the man behind the politics? In this new biography, Carl Rollyson chronicles the intricacies and intimacies of the life Michael Foot led away from the public eye. Fashioned from transcripts of more than 200 conversations between author and subject that took place during three years Rollyson spent researching the life of Foot's wife, Jill Craigie, this book presents a portrait that contrasts starkly with Foot's public image. In the manner of Boswell, Rollyson presents us with a man who-for all his public oratory-in private often found himself lost for words. A Private Life of Michael Foot adopts a no holds barred approach to biography, leaving a political figure stripped bare, and revealing a deeply complex, introverted man for all to see. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Bob Sterry. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/083672/bk_acx0_083672_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

  • Shop: Audible
  • Price: 9.95 EUR excl. shipping
• 

  Uses of the Past in the Novels of William Faulkner , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 571min

  Originally selected by Blotner and Litz for their Faulkner series, this pathbreaking monograph contains a comprehensive and provocative discussion of Faulkner's historical vision. Drawing on the rich literature of historiography (including the writings of R. G. Collingwood and Herbert Butterfield), and on a wide-ranging body of scholarship on the historical novel (including discussions of Scott, Thackeray, and Conrad), Rollyson shrewdly probes Faulkner's dynamic and changing uses of the past. Also taking advantage of his own work as a biographer, Rollyson has updated, revised, and expanded his original book - extending his dialogue with recent Faulkner critics. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Chiquito Joaquim Crasto. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/155246/bk_acx0_155246_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

  • Shop: Audible
  • Price: 9.95 EUR excl. shipping
• 

  Rebecca West and the God That Failed: Essays , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 324min

  After completing his biography of Rebecca West in 1995, Carl Rollyson felt bereft. As his wife said, "Rebecca was such good company." He had already embarked on another biography, but Rebecca kept beckoning him. He felt there was more to say about her politics - a misunderstood part of her repertoire as a reporter and novelist. And had he done justice to her enormous sense of fun and humor? He regretted excising the portrait of her he wanted to put at the beginning of his biography. His editor kept cutting away at what he called Rollyson's doorstop of a book. And then after years of waiting, Rollyson received her FBI file. He kept running into Rebecca, so to speak, when he was working on his biographies of Martha Gellhorn and Jill Craigie. Interviews in London often turned up people who had known West as well. Thus piece by piece, Rollyson accumulated what's now another book about Rebecca West. This new collection tells the story of how his biography got written, of what it means to think like a biographer, and why West's vision remains relevant. She's one of the great personalities and writers of the modern age, and one that we are just beginning to comprehend. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: John Stamper. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/044623/bk_acx0_044623_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

  • Shop: Audible
  • Price: 9.95 EUR excl. shipping
• 

  Lives of the Novelists , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 375min

  Is there a right way to write a literary life? In this collection of columns from the New York Sun, Carl Rollyson explores the relationship between narrative and literary analysis. Should biographies be written in the style and form of novels? How do you balance the life and the work? How much literary criticism can a biography absorb into its narrative? Rollyson proposes a number of apologias for biography, including the thought that in the right hands the literary biography is a continuation of the writer's work and life. In such instances, there seems to be a symbiosis between the biographer and subject. In other cases, biographies spearhead the rediscovery of important writers. He rejects the idea that literary figures are not good subjects for biography because they are not men and women of action. That literary biography is a kind of strip mining, a pathography laying bare the subject's life to no good purpose is another canard this book demolishes. The pieces here also expose the genre's weak points: a proclivity for overstatement and excessive length, and the failure of biographers to build upon their predecessors' work (Rollyson invents a term - biographology - in order to discuss the biographical tradition). ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Thomas D. Hand. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/045558/bk_acx0_045558_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

  • Shop: Audible
  • Price: 9.95 EUR excl. shipping
• 

  Marie Curie: Honesty in Science , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 53min

  Professional biographer Carl Rollyson has pioneered a new kind of biography for children and adults alike. His narrative of Marie Curie's life is rendered in simple, precise prose. Each chapter is designed to provoke further discussion and research into the life and career of one of the century's greatest scientists and - as Rollyson shows - one of the most important figures in human history. At a time when the ethics of science and of scientists have been called into question, Rollyson's searching examination of Madame Curie's methods and morality makes this a sharply focused and challenging biography. Marie Curie emerges from this account as a woman of great integrity and self-discipline, acutely conscious of her historic role, keenly devoted to protecting her private life, and yet willing to shape her personality to the public roles demanded of her. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: John Stamper. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/031330/bk_acx0_031330_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

  • Shop: Audible
  • Price: 9.95 EUR excl. shipping
• 

  Lillian Hellman: Her Life and Legend , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 1094min

  Through diaries, letters, government files, and interviews, Carl Rollyson draws a vital and vibrant portrait of the life, the work, and the legend of Lillian Hellman: America's most controversial radical playwright. Rollyson explores the sources and backgrounds of her best-selling memoirs, the development of her politics, her successful screenwriting career, and her famous appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He provides entertaining and informative accounts of her feud with Mary McCarthy, and her many love affairs and surprising friendships. He also provides a provocative and compelling portrayal of this complex and brilliant woman, who was called everything from a "viper" and "a goddam liar" to "an empathetic genius with a highly original and penetrating mind." Near death, Hellman spoke of being blocked; this biography will show what got in her way. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Colleen Patrick. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/041977/bk_acx0_041977_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

  • Shop: Audible
  • Price: 9.95 EUR excl. shipping
• 

  Marilyn Monroe Day by Day: A Timeline of People, Places, and Events , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 627min

  From hefty biographies and fact-based novels to photograph collections and memoirs, more books have been written about Marilyn Monroe than any other female over the past century. However, no biography - regardless how authoritative - can contain all of the facts and events of an individual’s life, and Marilyn’s is no exception. In Marilyn Monroe Day by Day: A Timeline of People, Places, and Events, Carl Rollyson provides a documentary approach to the life and legend of this singular personality. With details of her childhood, her young adult years, her ascent to super-stardom, and the hour-by-hour moments leading to her tragic early death, this volume supplements - and, in some cases, corrects - the accounts of previous biographies. In addition to restoring what is left out in other narratives about Marilyn’s life, this book also illuminates the gaps and discrepancies that still exist in our knowledge of her. Drawing on excerpts from her diaries, journals, letters, and even checks and receipts - as well as reports of others - Rollyson recreates the day-to-day world of a woman who still fascinates us more than 50 years after her death. In addition to the calendar, Rollyson also profiles important figures in Marilyn’s life and includes a brief biography of the actress, providing a context for the timeline. An annotated bibliography of books and websites highlights the most reliable sources about Marilyn. With its vivid recreation of the key events in her life, Marilyn Monroe Day by Day is the perfect book for fans who can’t get enough of this cultural icon. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Joe Formichella. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/166815/bk_acx0_166815_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

  • Shop: Audible
  • Price: 9.95 EUR excl. shipping
• 

  A Higher Form of Cannibalism?: Adventures in the Art and Politics of Biography , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 311min

  We used to canonize our heroes, Oscar Wilde wrote. "The modern method is to vulgarize them. Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable." Since Wilde's condemnation of modern biography, the genre would appear to have accelerated its descent into bad taste. As Carl Rollyson points out, writers as various as Rebecca West, Ted Hughes, and Joyce Carol Oates have deplored biographers' tendency to cut up lives and render the bloody data so as to make their subjects seem unhealthy, unwholesome, and unsound. Janet Malcolm has compared biographers to burglars; modern novels feature the biographer as grave robber and victimizer. Exactly when did biography take this turn for the worse? Inquiring into the history of the art, and examining his own practices as well as those of biographers from Samuel Johnson to Richard Ellmann, Jeffrey Meyers, and many others, Mr. Rollyson casts considerable doubt on the indictments handed down by Oates, Malcolm, and Co. By its very nature, Mr. Rollyson argues, biography is a problematic and controversial genre. That contemporary critics believe it has gone astray only reveals their ignorance of history and their hostility to the biographical enterprise itself - an animosity born of a misguided modernism and a rejection of Enlightenment values. A Higher Form of Cannibalism? explores the nexus between scholarship and biography and demonstrates how the similarities of method between Leon Edel and Kitty Kelley outweigh the differences. Viewed through the prism of biography, the scholarly and the popular may not be as clearly separated as people suppose. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Chris Abell. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/032631/bk_acx0_032631_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

  • Shop: Audible
  • Price: 9.95 EUR excl. shipping
• 

  Norman Mailer: The Last Romantic , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 878min

  Carl Rollyson was Norman Mailer's first literary biographer to draw on unpublished letters and manuscripts as well as on interviews with the writer's friends and foes. Rollyson provides a full account of Mailer's college years, especially his fear of being drafted. Here are the sources of Mailer's mental crisis in the 1950s that led to the stabbing of his second wife, Adele. Norman Mailer: The Last Romantic gets at the sources of Mailer's obsession with violence while also portraying a major literary figure in the making, from his fabulous debut war novel, The Naked and the Dead to his final bid for literary fame, The Castle in the Forest, a brooding foray into 20th century evil via an account of Adolf Hitler's early life. A final chapter rounds out a penetrating account of Mailer's final two decades of productivity which yielded books as various as a controversial biography of Picasso and a philosophical dialogue on the nature of God. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Donny Baarns. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/015836/bk_acx0_015836_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

  • Shop: Audible
  • Price: 9.95 EUR excl. shipping
• 

  Pablo Picasso: A Biography for Beginners , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 101min

  Picasso has often been called the greatest artist of this century. This biography defines his greatness: his accomplishment and versatility as a painter, sculptor, graphic artist, ceramicist, and designer. Most of the innovations in 20th century art are associated not only with his work but with the legend he built of himself as the quintessential modern artist. Rollyson, an experienced biographer who has taught Picasso in college classrooms, explores the artist's early years in Spain, the treatment of women in his art and his life, and the influence of contemporary French writers on his experimentation with a number of different styles. Picasso's greatest works of art, such as Les Demoiselles D'Avignon and Guernica become focal points of this biography, establishing the artist's central place in international culture. Rollyson concludes with an assessment of Picasso's importance and the qualities of his best work that are likely to continue to influence artists in the future. With a detailed timeline, annotated bibliography, videography, glossary, and listing of important websites, this biography is the place to start for an introduction to Picasso's life and work. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: John Stamper. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/030268/bk_acx0_030268_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

  • Shop: Audible
  • Price: 9.95 EUR excl. shipping

---

---