{"title":"Diane Middlebrook","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"her-husband-book-diane-middlebrook-9780142004876","title":"Her Husband","description":"Ted Hughes married Sylvia Plath in 1956, at the outset of their brilliant careers. Plath's suicide six and a half years later, for which many held Hughes accountable, changed his life, his closest relationships, his standing in the literary world, and the style and substance of his verse. In this stunning new biography of their marriage, Diane Middlebrook presents a portrait of Hughes as a man, as a poet, and as a husband who was haunted--and nourished--his entire life by the aftermath of his first marriage. Drawing on a trove of papers, Middlebrook presents Hughes as a complicated, conflicted figure: sexually magnetic, fiercely ambitious, immensely caring, and shrewd in business. She argues that Plath's suicide, though it devastated Hughes and made him vulnerable to the savage attacks of Plath's growing readership, ultimately gave him his true subject: how marriages fail and how men fail in marriage. Writing with the penetrating insight and lucid sympathy that has informed all of her bestselling biographies, Middlebrook rises to the multiple challenges presented by this highly fraught, deeply controversial subject. Her Husband is a triumph of the biographer's art and craft.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49522969968913,"sku":"GOR010785226","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49596587704593,"sku":"GOR002096397","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50057647849745,"sku":"CIN0142004871G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50501257789713,"sku":"CIN0142004871VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50999451189521,"sku":"NIN9780142004876","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":52394834657553,"sku":"CIN0142004871A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0142004871.jpg?v=1750876354"},{"product_id":"young-ovid-book-diane-middlebrook-9781619023314","title":"Young Ovid","description":"After writing two extremely well received biographies-the first about Anne Sexton and the second about poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath-world-renowned scholar Diane Middlebrook's final project was a study of Ovid's work. Though he has been dead for over two thousand years and had left no personal records-not even the name of his mother-his poetry endures. Middlebrook was convinced that her intimate knowledge of Ovid's poetry and the approach she used in \u003ci\u003eHer Husband\u003c\/i\u003e (winner of the Prix Du Meilleur Livre Estranger), combined with a deep immersion into the Rome of Ovid's time, would enable her to write what could, without bragging, be called an Ovidian biography.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e However, severe health issues interfered with Middlebrook's work, and she was ultimately unable to complete this ambitious project before her death in 2007. She left behind an extraordinary look at the conditions and customs to which Ovid was exposed as a young Roman, as well as an acute interpretation of his family and personal life, gleaned from close readings of his poetry and letters from exile. Exhaustively researched and carefully constructed, Middelbrook's portrayal of Ovid is certain to be studied by scholars and read by historians for year to come.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49537743061265,"sku":"GOR009525435","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50395056898321,"sku":"CIN1619023318A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50395060961553,"sku":"CIN1619023318G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52107298767121,"sku":"CIN1619023318VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1619023318.jpg?v=1751427618"},{"product_id":"her-husband-book-diane-middlebrook-9780670031870","title":"Her Husband","description":"Ted Hughes married Sylvia Plath in 1956, at the outset of their brilliant careers. Plath's suicide six and a half years later, for which many held Hughes accountable, changed his life, his closest relationships, his standing in the literary world, and the style and substance of his verse. In this stunning new biography of their marriage, Diane Middlebrook presents a portrait of Hughes as a man, as a poet, and as a husband who was haunted--and nourished--his entire life by the aftermath of his first marriage. Drawing on a trove of papers, Middlebrook presents Hughes as a complicated, conflicted figure: sexually magnetic, fiercely ambitious, immensely caring, and shrewd in business. She argues that Plath's suicide, though it devastated Hughes and made him vulnerable to the savage attacks of Plath's growing readership, ultimately gave him his true subject: how marriages fail and how men fail in marriage. Writing with the penetrating insight and lucid sympathy that has informed all of her bestselling biographies, Middlebrook rises to the multiple challenges presented by this highly fraught, deeply controversial subject. Her Husband is a triumph of the biographer's art and craft.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49566708826385,"sku":"GOR005609711","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49654884466961,"sku":"GOR004308384","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50355628998929,"sku":"CIN0670031879G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50357841789201,"sku":"CIN0670031879A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52725917221137,"sku":"GOR003812404","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0670031879.jpg?v=1751230946"},{"product_id":"anne-sexton-book-diane-middlebrook-9780679741824","title":"Anne Sexton","description":"Anne Sexton began writing poetry at the age of twenty-nine to keep from killing herself. She held on to language for dear life and somehow -- in spite of alcoholism and the mental illness that ultimately led her to suicide -- managed to create a body of work that won a Pulitzer Prize and that still sings to thousands of readers. This exemplary biography, which was nominated for the National Book Award, provoked controversy for its revelations of infidelity and incest and its use of tapes from Sexton's psychiatric sessions. It reconciles the many Anne Sextons: the 1950s housewife; the abused child who became an abusive mother; the seductress; the suicide who carried kill-me pills in her handbag the way other women carry lipstick; and the poet who transmuted confession into lasting art.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49665048314129,"sku":"GOR003472810","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49669772116241,"sku":"GOR005054446","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49850931839249,"sku":"CIN0679741828G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50283820548369,"sku":"CIN0679741828A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50928967287057,"sku":"CIN0679741828VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51005582016785,"sku":"NIN9780679741824","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53220623319313,"sku":"GOR003000894","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0679741828.jpg?v=1751295526"},{"product_id":"suits-me-the-double-life-of-billy-tipton-book-diane-middlebrook-9780395957899","title":"Suits ME: the Double Life of Billy Tipton","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe jazz pianist Billy Tipton was born in Oklahoma City as Dorothy Tipton, but almost nobody knew the truth until the day he died, in Spokane in 1989. Over a fifty-year performing career, Billy Tipton fooled nearly everyone, including Duke Ellington and Norma Teagarden, five successive \"wives\" with whom Billy lived as a man, and three children who he \"fathered.\" As Billy Tipton herself said, \"Some people might think I'm a freak or a hermaphrodite. I'm not. I'm a normal person. This has been my choice.\" This jazz-era biography evokes the rich popular-music history of the Great Depression and reads like a detective story.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50328101880081,"sku":"CIN0395957893VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50352456171793,"sku":"CIN0395957893G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50835417858321,"sku":"GOR002535859","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51002128400657,"sku":"NIN9780395957899","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53493789458705,"sku":"GOR011849032","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0395957893.jpg?v=1751437276"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-diane-middlebrook.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}