{"title":"Paula Byrne","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the captivating biographies and historical explorations of Paula Byrne. Uncover the hidden lives of iconic figures with her insightful and engaging prose. Start your literary journey now.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"genius-of-jane-austen-book-paula-byrne-9780008225650","title":"The Genius of Jane Austen","description":"A radical look at Jane Austen                        As you’ve never seen her – as a lover of farce, comic theatre and juvenilia. The Genius of Jane Austen 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. 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In one of the most famous portraits in the world, a pretty girl walks through the grounds of Kenwood House, a vision of aristocratic refinement. But the eye is drawn to the beautiful woman on her right. Pointing at her own cheek, she playfully acknowledges her remarkable position in eighteenth-century society. For Dido Belle was the illegitimate, mixed-race daughter of a Royal Navy captain and a slave woman, adopted by the Earl of Mansfield. As Lord Chief Justice of England he would preside over the notorious Zong case – the drowning of 142 slaves by an unscrupulous shipping company. His ruling provided the legal underpinning to the abolition of slavery in Britain.             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Byrne uses a highly innovative technique whereby each chapter begins from an object that conjures up a key moment or theme in Austen’s life and work—a silhouette, a vellum notebook, a topaz cross, a laptop writing box, a royalty cheque, a bathing machine, and many more.             The woman who emerges in this biography is far tougher, more socially and politically aware, and altogether more modern than the conventional picture of ‘dear Aunt Jane’ would allow. 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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.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49510975176977,"sku":"GOR011488481","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49645424181521,"sku":"GOR011476637","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49739296080145,"sku":"NGR9780008322205","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49958569181457,"sku":"CIN0008322201G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50032184754449,"sku":"CIN0008322201VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50726378111249,"sku":"GOR011350616","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51287366566161,"sku":"GOR014217413","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":52902069436689,"sku":"CIN0008322201LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0008322201.jpg?v=1751225603"},{"product_id":"perdita-book-paula-byrne-9780007164592","title":"Perdita","description":"Sex, fame and scandal in the theatrical, literary and social circles of late 18th-century England.             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Evelyn Waugh was already famous when ‘Brideshead Revisited’ was published in 1945. Written at the height of the war, the novel was, he admitted, of no ‘immediate propaganda value’. Instead, it was the story of a household, a family and a journey of religious faith – an elegy, in many ways, for a vanishing world and a testimony to a family he had fallen in love with a decade earlier.             The Lygons of Madresfield were every bit as glamorous, eccentric and compelling as their counterparts in ‘Brideshead Revisited’. In this engrossing biography, Paula Byrne takes an innovative approach to her subject, setting out to capture Waugh through those friendships that mattered most to him. Far from the snobbish misanthropist of popular caricature, she uncovers a man as loving and complex as the family that inspired him – a family deeply traumatised when their father was revealed as a homosexual and forced to flee the country.             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In this engrossing biography, bestselling author Paula Byrne takes an innovative approach to her subject, setting out to capture Waugh through the friendships and loves that mattered most to him. She uncovers a man who, far from the snobbish misanthropist of popular caricature, was as loving and complex as the family that inspired him. This brilliantly original biography unlocks for the first time the extent to which Waugh’s great novel encoded and transformed his own experiences. 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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.             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This authoritative and engaging book presents a fascinating portrait of a woman who was variously darling of the London stage, a poet whose work was admired by Coleridge and a mistress to the most powerful men in England, and yet whose fortunes were nevertheless precarious, always on the brink of being squandered through recklessness, excess and passion.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49592984797457,"sku":"GOR001687768","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51113401090321,"sku":"GOR005586852","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51133037216017,"sku":"GOR011115698","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0007164602.jpg?v=1751355455"},{"product_id":"genius-of-jane-austen-book-paula-byrne-9780008225667","title":"The Genius of Jane Austen","description":"A radical look at Jane Austen                        As you’ve never seen her – as a lover of farce, comic theatre and juvenilia. 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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, Blonde Venus 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.             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Sympathetic and compelling, Kick shines a spotlight on this feisty and unique Kennedy long relegated to the shadows of her legendary family's history.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49982740136209,"sku":"CIN0062296280VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50343095107857,"sku":"CIN0062296280G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50999040868625,"sku":"NIN9780062296283","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0062296280.jpg?v=1751036228"},{"product_id":"jane-austen-and-the-theatre-book-paula-byrne-9781852853860","title":"Jane Austen and the Theatre","description":"Jane Austen enjoyed and was greatly interested in the theatre. 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