In The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, master anthologist John Gross brings together a delectable smorgasbord of literary tales, offering striking new insight into some of the most important writers in history. Many of the anecdotes here are funny, others are touching, outrageous, sinister, inspiring, or downright weird. They show writers from Chaucer to Bob Dylan acting both unpredictably and deeply in character. The range is wide--this is a book which finds room for Milton and Shakespeare, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, Kurt Vonnegut and P. G. Wodehouse, Chinua Achebe and Salman Rushdie, James Baldwin and Tom Wolfe. It is also a book in which you can find out which great historian's face was once mistaken for a baby's bottom, which film star experienced a haunting encounter with Virginia Woolf not long before her death, and what Agatha Christie really thought of her popular character Hercule Poirot. It is in short an unrivalled collection of literary gossip offering intimate glimpses into the lives of authors ranging from Shakespeare to Philip Roth--a book not just for lovers of literature, but for anyone with a taste for the curiosities of human nature.

"A true genius . . . Roald Dahl is my hero" David Walliams Life story of Roald Dahl, World's No.1 storyteller, creator of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr Fox, Matilda, The BFG, James and the Giant Peach and many more, brought to life by Michael Rosen - author, top children's poet and former Children's Laureate. Written especially for children, with fun pages and illustrations by Quentin Blake. So, how did Roald Dahl get into writing? Where did he get his ideas from? What ingredients in his life turned him into the kind of writer he was? Michael Rosen comes up with some of the answers to these key questions in his lively biography, specially for children, of the world's No.1 storyteller. Full of stories and funny anecdotes from Roald Dahl's school days and family life, Michael Rosen's fascinating observations creates a vivid picture of one of the most famous writers of all time.

Booker-winning novelist, playwright, essayist, poet and critic, John Berger has excelled in a variety of literary fields. This collection of essays takes a definitive look at his career. Berger's essays were ground breaking, polemic, reflective, and radically original. Spanning more than 40 years of intellectual enquiry and political engagement, these essays are viewed chronologically to provide a kind of vicarious autobiography and a history of time refracted through the prism of art.

Rev. ed. of: Child of light. 1951. Describes the life of the author of "Frankenstein" and wife of the famous poet Percy Bysshe Shelly.