Wilkie Collins - Couverture souple

Ackroyd, Peter

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0099287471 ISBN 13 : 9780099287476

Editeur : Vintage, 2013

Synopsis

Short and oddly built, with a head too big for his body, extremely short-sighted, unable to stay still, dressed in colourful clothes, Wilkie Collins looked distinctly strange. But he was none the less a charmer, befriended by the great, loved by children, irresistibly attractive to women - and avidly read by generations of readers. Peter Ackroyd follows his hero, 'the sweetest-tempered of all the Victorian novelists', from his childhood as the son of a well-known artist to his struggling beginnings as a writer, his years of fame and his life-long friendship with the other great London chronicler, Charles Dickens. As well as his enduring masterpieces, "The Moonstone" - often called the first true detective novel - and the sensational "The Woman in White", he produced an intriguing array of lesser-known works. Told with Ackroyd's inimitable verve, this is a ravishingly entertaining life of a great storyteller, full of surprises, rich in humour and sympathetic understanding.

A propos du livre

Biographie de l'auteur :

Peter Ackroyd is an award-winning historian, biographer, novelist, poet and broadcaster. He is the author of the acclaimed non-fiction bestsellers London: The Biography, Thames: Sacred River and London Under; biographies of figures including Charles Dickens, William Blake, Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock; and a multi-volume history of England. He has won the Whitbread Biography Award, the Royal Society of Literature's William Heinemann Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award and the South Bank Prize for Literature. He holds a CBE for services to literature.

Revue de presse :

"Four stars, (A) perfect little biography" (Craig Brown Mail on Sunday)

"With deft strokes, Peter Ackroyd’s biography portrays his character and sets him in context, weaving critical appraisals seamlessly into the story of his life. The bravura of this biography lies in its brilliantly judged brevity." (Iain Finlayson The Times)

"Unfailingly perceptive" (Andrew Taylor Independent)

"This biography is compulsive reading" (The Economist)

"Insightful" (Judith Flanders Sunday Telegraph)

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Vintage
• Date d'édition: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0099287471
• ISBN 13: 9780099287476
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 224