Sybille Bedford by Selina Hastings
The first biography of the universally acclaimed British writer, Sybille Bedford, by the celebrated author of books about Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh. Passionate, liberated, fiercely independent, Sybille Bedford was a writer and a journalist, the author of ten books, including a biography of Aldous Huxley, and four novels, all of which fictionalized her extraordinary life. Born in Berlin, she grew up in Baden, first with her distant, aristocratic father, and then in France with her intellectual, narcissistic, morphine-addicted mother and her lover. She was a child with a German Jewish background who survived two world wars and went on to spend her adult life in exile in France, Italy, New York, and Los Angeles, before finally settling in England. Bedford was ahead of her time in many ways, with great enthusiasm for life and all its sensual pleasures, including friendships with bold faced names in the worlds of literature and food as well as a literary network of high-powered lesbians. Aldous Huxley became a mentor, and Martha Gellhorn encouraged her to write her first novel, A Legacy; in 1989, her novel Jigsaw was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In the 1960s, she wrote for magazines and newspapers, covering nearly 100 trials, including those of Auschwitz officials accused of Nazi war crimes and Jack Ruby, on trial for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. Brenda Wineapple has called Bedford one of the finest stylists of the 20th century, bar none. In this major biography, Selina Hastings has brilliantly captured the fierce intelligence, wit, curiosity, and compassion of the woman and the writer in all the richness of her character and achievements.
SELINA HASTINGS is a writer and journalist, the author of four literary biographies. A lifelong Londoner, Selina was educated at St Paul's Girls' School and Oxford University. Her first job was at Hatchard's bookshop, after which she worked for fourteen years on the Daily Telegraph and for eight years was literary editor of Harper's & Queen. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she reviews regularly and has been a judge of the Booker, Whitbread, British Academy, Ondaatje and Duff Cooper Prizes, and of the UK Biographers' Award. Selina has written biographies of Nancy Mitford, Evelyn Waugh (winner of the Marsh Biography Prize), Rosamond Lehmann and Somerset Maugham. She has also written a number of books for children, including a complete retelling of the Bible. In 2010 she won the Spear's Award For Outstanding Achievement for a body of work ?and in 2011 the Biographers' Club Lifetime Services to Biography Award.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781101947913 |
| ISBN 10 | 1101947918 |
| Title | Sybille Bedford |
| Author | Selina Hastings |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
| Year published | 2021-02-02 |
| Number of pages | 432 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |