Paula Byrne

A revealing portrait of the beloved novelist, drawn from the most up-to-date scholarship and unexplored sources, presents a modern take on the woman and the world that shaped her.

A Life in Small Things

The Real Jane Austen

The sensational tale of the first mixed-race girl introduced to high-society England and raised as a lady... The illegitimate daughter of a captain in the Royal Navy and an enslaved African woman, Dido Belle was raised by her great-uncle, the Earl of Mansfield, one of the most powerful men of the time and a leading opponent of slavery. When the portrait he commissioned of his two wards, Dido and her white cousin, Elizabeth, was unveiled, eighteenth-century England was shocked to see a black woman and white woman depicted as equals. Inspired by the painting, Belle vividly brings to life this extraordinary woman caught between two worlds, and illuminates the great civil rights question of her age: the fight to end slavery. The feature film Belle is produced by Damian Jones (The Iron Lady, The History Boys, Welcome to Sarajevo), written by Misan Sagay, and directed by Amma Asante, and stars the extraordinary Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Dido Belle, Tom Wilkinson, Sam Reid, Miranda Richardson, Penelope Wilton, Tom Felton, Matthew Goode, and Emily Watson.

The Slave Daughter and the Lord Chief Justice

Belle

The remarkable life of the vivacious, clever - and forgotten - Kennedy sister, who charmed the English aristocracy and was almost erased from her family history. When Kathleen Kennedy sailed to England after her father had been appointed Ambassador to Great Britain in 1938, her wit, aloofness and sexual charisma at once became the source of endless fascination for the British public. 'Kick' became the star of the family and the press loved her, London magazine Queen headlining her as 'America's Most Important Debutante'. Her meeting at a summer garden party with a shy, tall, handsome man called 'Billy' who it transpired was the heir to the Duke of Devonshire and Chatsworth, the most eligible bachelor in England, became first an intrigue and soon a scandal for the Kennedys. She was Catholic and he an Anglican. But Kick had fallen in love with Billy, and with England. In 1944, they were married. In September Billy was killed in combat with the British Army. Widowed as Lady Hartington, Kathleen Kennedy remained in England after the loss of her husband until her own tragic death. In 'Kick', Paul Byrne tells the story of a woman who was more than simply the second sister of Jack, Bobby and Ted: a feisty and unique product of two countries, she was the force of personality the Kennedys rarely mentioned, a life long hidden from the legendary family history.

The True Story of JFK's Sister and the Heir to Chatsworth

Kick

A study of Mary Robinson, an eighteenth-century actress, writer, courtesan, and feminist, documents her exploits from her career on stage and her love affair with the Prince of Wales, to her writings on the issues of her era.

The Literary, Theatrical, Scandalous Life of Mary Robinson

Perdita

Picked as a Book to Look Forward to in 2021 by the Guardian, The Times and the Observer A brilliant, intimate biography of English writer Barbara Pym.

The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym

"A terrifically engaging and original biography of Evelyn Waugh and the family that provided him with the most significant friendships of his life and inspired his masterpiece, BRIDESHEAD REVISITED"--Provided by publisher.

Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead

Mad World

Blonde Venus

Jonathan Bate

In this little book is one of the oldest of all remedies for stress: the reading of poetry. Intended to help you endure some of your stressful moments and painful experiences, these poems tell us we are not alone.

Stressed, Unstressed

In this little book is one of the oldest of all remedies for stress: the reading of poetry. Intended to help you endure some of your stressful moments and painful experiences, these poems tell us we are not alone. Returned again and again over the centuries by great imaginations are love and death and memory - remembrance of childhood joy, of happy days and beautiful places, of loved ones we have lost or feeling at peace and at one with the natural world. 'Stressed Unstressed' harvests an array of poems on such themes in the hope that they will speak to you when you are processing your worries or when you simply want to fill your mind with different, more positive thoughts. Words can act as drugs, and on the bedside or in a waiting-room this little volume of poetry can help in all sorts of difficult circumstances. So here is a selection of new poems and old, enduring classics and forgotten gems. Next time you are feeling stressed or anxious, worried or sleepless, panicky or unable to cope, 'Stressed Unstressed' invites you to read a poem and join the thousands of others who have read and remembered and loved these poems - to form a very special community. This is bibliotherapy.

Classic Poems to Ease the Mind

Filled with a wealth of revealing new material and insight, the biography of the vivacious, unconventional—and nearly forgotten—young Kennedy sister who charmed American society and the English aristocracy, and would break with her family for love. Encouraged to be “winners” from a young age, Rose and Joe Kennedy’s children were the embodiment of ambitious, wholesome Americanism. Yet even within this ebullient group of overachievers, the fourth Kennedy child, the irrepressible Kathleen, stood out. Lively, charismatic, extremely clever, and blessed with graceful athleticism and a sunny disposition, the alluring socialite fondly known as Kick was a firecracker who effortlessly made friends and stole hearts. Moving across the Atlantic when her father was appointed as the ambassador to Great Britain in 1938, Kick—the “nicest Kennedy”—quickly became the family’s star. Despite making little effort to fit into British high society, she charmed everyone from the beau monde to Fleet Street with her unconventional attitude and easygoing humor. Growing increasingly independent, Kick would also shock and alienate her devout family by falling in love and marrying the scion of a virulently anti-Catholic family— William Cavendish, the heir apparent of the Duke of Devonshire and Chatsworth. But the marriage would last only a few months; Billy was killed in combat in 1944, just four years before Kick’s own unexpected death in an airplane crash at twenty-eight. Paula Byrne recounts this remarkable young woman’s life in detail as never before, from her work at the Washington Times-Herald and volunteerism for the Red Cross in wartime England; to her love of politics and astute, opinionated observations; to her decision to renounce her faith for the man she loved. Sympathetic and compelling, Kick shines a spotlight on this feisty and unique Kennedy long relegated to the shadows of her legendary family’s history.

A debut novel by a bestselling non-fiction author, this is a witty, wholly entrancing story of the pleasures, pains and obsessions of contemporary life.

Look to Your Wife

Paula Jayne Byrne

Jane Austen enjoyed and was greatly interested in the theatre. Many of her novels, with their memorable individual characters, dramatic confrontations and surprising denouements, owe part of their effect to theatrical inspiration. The dra-matic impact of her novels is demonstrat-ed by the ease with which they have been adapted for television and film. In Jane Austen and the Theatre Paula Byrne makes clear the important part the theatre played in both Jane Austen's life and work. There is no doubt about Jane Austen's own passion for the stage. She went to the theatre in London and Bath whenever she could, acted in private theatricals, and wrote a number of her early works in play form. Living in a great age of English stage comedy, she drew inspiration from Sheridan as well as Shakespeare. Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Mansfield Park are, as Paula Byrne shows, all shaped by the comic drama of the period and by Jane Austen's own understanding of men and women as actors playing parts.

Jane Austen and the Theatre

'Captures both Barbara and her writing so miraculously' JILLY COOPER Picked as a Book to Look Forward to in 2021 by the Guardian, The Times and the Observer A Radio 4 Book of the Week, April 2021 Barbara Pym became beloved as one of the wittiest novelists of the late twentieth century, revealing the inner workings of domestic life so brilliantly that her friend Philip Larkin announced her the era's own Jane Austen. But who was Barbara Pym and why was the life of this English writer - one of the greatest chroniclers of the human heart - so defined by rejection, both in her writing and in love? Pym lived through extraordinary times. She attended Oxford in the thirties when women were the minority. She spent time in Nazi Germany, falling for a man who was close to Hitler. She made a career on the Home Front as a single working girl in London's bedsit land. Through all of this, she wrote. Diaries, notes, letters, stories and more than a dozen novels - which as Byrne shows more often than not reflected the themes of Pym's own experience: worlds of spinster sisters and academics in unrequited love, of powerful intimacies that pulled together seemingly humble lives. Paula Byrne's new biography is the first to make full use of Barbara Pym's archive. Brimming with new extracts from Pym's diaries, letters and novels, this book is a joyous introduction to a woman who was herself the very best of company. Byrne brings Barbara Pym back to centre stage as one of the great English novelists: a generous, shrewdly perceptive writer and a brave woman, who only in the last years of her life was suddenly, resoundingly recognised for her genius.

This sourcebook introduces not only Jane Austen's text, but also the literary and historical contexts and the many different critical readings that it has generated, from the time of its publication to the twenty-first century.

A Sourcebook

Jane Austen's Emma

"She was the most beautiful woman in the world. Discovered in a Berlin cabaret in the roaring twenties, she is brought to the glamour of Los Angeles. She becomes a superstar of the silver screen and Hollywood's darling, but nothing perfect lasts forever. The cost of beauty is always high, for those who have it and those who live in its shadow. The weight falls on her daughter to untangle the complicated truths of being ordinary beside an extraordinary mother, a woman who has bent and broken and skewed her perception of reality, a woman adored by the world, but from whom her daughter longs to escape. Evocative and deeply moving, Mirror, Mirror is based on Marlene Dietrich's glittering life, a dramatic novel set in Hollywood's golden age, that tells the story of mothers and daughters and of time's war against beauty - and the unbearable pain of a woman when beauty is the only game in town."--Publisher.

Shadow Child

‘Hollywood, we’re reminded, is after all a through-the-looking glass world, and Byrne writes authoritatively about its illusions and obscene, glittering excess ... Compelling’ Daily Mail ‘Both eye-poppingly fun and thought-provoking’ The Times Madou is the most beautiful woman in the world.

A radical look at Jane Austen as you've never seen her - as a lover of farce, comic theatre and juvenilia. Jane's World celebrates Britain's favourite novelist 200 years after her death and explores why her books make such awesome movies, time after time. Jane Austen loved the theatre. She learned much of her art from a long tradition of English comic drama and took joyous participation in amateur theatricals. Her juvenilia, then Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice,Mansfield Park and Emma were shaped by the arts of theatrical comedy. Her admiration for drama's dialogue, characterisation, plotting, exits and entrances is why she has been dramatised so successfully on screen in the last twenty years - and these versions are at the centre of her continuing fame, culminating in her celebration on �10 note. Austen expert and author of The Real Jane Austen, Paula Byrne looks at stage adaptations of Austen's novels (including one called Miss Elizabeth Bennet by A. A. Milne) to modern classics, including the BBC Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, Emma Thompson's Sense and Sensibility, and the phenomenally brilliant and successful Clueless, Jane's World presents an Austen not of prim manners and genteel calm, but filled with wild comedy and outrageous behaviour.

Her Love of Theatre and why She is a Hit in Hollywood

The Genius of Jane Austen

Esse volume nos fornece o retrato mais íntimo e revelador disponível sobre a romancista Jane Austen (1775-1817). Em cada capítulo, a renomada biógrafa britânica Paula Byrne explora objetos de alguma forma ligados à vida e à obra da escritora para trazer à luz os fatos de sua vida. O que emerge dessas páginas é uma personalidade muito mais complexa e instigante do que a de uma solteirona afeita ao bordado: uma criança prodígio, uma mulher que viajou mais do que se costuma acreditar, alguém com consciência política e social, uma mente à frente de seu tempo que preferiu – diferentemente de suas personagens – não experimentar o casamento, mas escolheu uma existência dedicada à literatura.

A verdadeira Jane Austen: Uma biografia íntima

Perfect for fans of Jane Austen, this updated edition of Paula Byrne's debut book includes new material that explores the history of Austen stage adaptations, why her books work so well on screen, and what that reveals about one of the world's most beloved authors. Originally published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2003 as Jane Austen and the Theatre, Paula Byrne's first book was never made widely available in the US and is out of print today. An exploration of Austen's passion for the stage—she acted in amateur productions, frequently attended the theatre, and even scripted several early works in play form—it took a nuanced look at how powerfully her stories were influenced by theatrical comedy. This updated edition features an introduction and a brand new chapter that delves into the long and lucrative history of Austen adaptations. The film world's love affair with Austen spans decades, from A.A. Milne's "Elizabeth Bennet," performed over the radio in 1944 to raise morale, to this year's Love and Friendship. Austen's work has proven so abidingly popular that these movies are more easily identifiable by lead actor than by title: the Emma Thompson Sense and Sensibility, the Carey Mulligan Northanger Abbey, the Laurence Olivier Pride and Prejudice. Byrne even takes a captivating detour into a multitude of successful spin-offs, including the phenomenally brilliant Clueless. And along the way, she overturns the notion of Jane Austen as a genteel, prim country mouse, demonstrating that Jane's enduring popularity in film, TV, and theater points to a woman of wild comedy and outrageous behavior. For lovers of everything Jane Austen, as well as for a new generation discovering her for the first time, The Genius of Jane Austen demonstrates why this beloved author still resonates with readers and movie audiences today.

Paula Byrne

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