{"title":"Elisabeth Galvin","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"real-kenneth-grahame-book-elisabeth-galvin-9781526748805","title":"The Real Kenneth Grahame","description":"He wrote one of the most quintessentially English books, yet Kenneth Grahame (1859 -1932) was a Scot. He was four years old when his mother died and his father became an alcoholic, so Kenneth grew up with his grandmother who lived on the banks of the beloved River Thames. Forced to abandon his dreams of studying at Oxford, he was accepted as a clerk at the Bank of England where he became one of the youngest men to be made company secretary. He narrowly escaped death in 1903 when he was mistaken for the Bank's governor and shot at several times. He wrote secretly in his spare time for magazines and became a contemporary of contributors including Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw and WB Yeats. Kenneth's first book, Pagan Papers (1893) initiated his success, followed by The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898), which turned him into a celebrated author. Ironically, his most famous novel today was the least successful during his lifetime: The Wind in the Willows (1908) originated as letters to his disabled son, who was later found dead on a train line after a suspected suicide. Kenneth never recovered from the tragedy and died with a broken heart in earshot of the River Thames. His widow, Elspeth, dedicated the rest of her life to preserving her husband's name and promoting his work.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49545074278673,"sku":"GOR012401958","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49740076089617,"sku":"NGR9781526748805","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53265368285457,"sku":"GOR014844788","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1526748800.jpg?v=1751150109"},{"product_id":"extraordinary-life-of-e-nesbit-book-elisabeth-galvin-9781526714770","title":"The Extraordinary Life of E Nesbit","description":"Imagine being one of the most well-loved children's authors of all time, yet your readers don't know if you're a man or a woman. Or even your real name.  E. Nesbit is really Edith Nesbit, who wrote an extraordinary 98 novels, plays and poetry collections for children and adults between 1885 and 1923. She is credited as the first modern writer for children whose work has influenced authors from Oscar Wilde to C.S. Lewis, No l Coward to J.K. Rowling.  Even though it was published more than 100 years ago, The Railway Children remains one of the most popular children's books ever written and it has never been out of print.  But for Edith, the truth of her life is stranger than her fiction-and it's a truth she was keen to hide from the public.  Edith's father died when she was four, resulting in a peripatetic childhood across Europe. At 21 years old she was seven months' pregnant when she married a penniless libertine who became a famous journalist, Hubert Bland. Together as early socialists they were founding members of the Fabian Society, from which the Labour Party has its foundations.  A Bohemian and an eccentric, Edith became a mother of five children-two of whom she adopted in secret after her husband had an affair with a close friend (who subsequently lived with them as their housekeeper).  It was shortly after the sudden death of her beloved son that Edith wrote her first bestseller in 1899, a groundbreaker that dramatically changed the course of children's literature.  On the eve of World War I, Edith's husband died and she married a captain of the Woolwich Ferry. A cheerful cockney sparrow, Tommy Tucker proved to be Edith's unwitting romantic hero who loved and cherished her until she died in near-poverty on the Romney Marshes of Kent.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50162059116817,"sku":"GOR009773069","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50445641023761,"sku":"GOR013126258","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1526714779.jpg?v=1751373929"},{"product_id":"author-of-mary-poppins-book-elisabeth-galvin-9781399043175","title":"The Author of Mary Poppins","description":"Mary Poppins is a publishing phenomenon of eight books written across 55 years, translated into 20 languages, including Swahili. The 1964 Disney film starring Julie Andrews remains one of the most popular children’s movies of all time. Yet the author did not want it to be known whether she was ‘man, woman or kangaroo’. The elusive PL Travers was, in fact, born in outback Australia in the penultimate year of the 19th century. She became a pioneering journalist in Russia, wrote propaganda for the war effort in New York, lived on a Navajo Indian reservation and was only the second Western woman to study Zen in Kyoto. Deeply spiritual, as one of the inner sanctum of the mystic GI Gurdjieff, she wanted to communicate through Mary Poppins more than carpet bags and parrot umbrellas.  With new source material taken from interviews with PL Travers’ family and friends, this biography shares a new perspective on this extraordinary and complex author.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52101038702865,"sku":"NGR9781399043175","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781399043175.jpg?v=1757091800"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-elisabeth-galvin.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}