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Wild Mary: The Life of Mary Wesley
Patrick Marnham
€ 16.99
€ 13.11
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Description for Wild Mary: The Life of Mary Wesley
Paperback. Mary Wesley published her first novel at seventy and went on to write a further nine bestsellers, including the legendary The Camomile Lawn. Many of her stories were inspired by her experiences during the Blitz, and by her marriages. The author highlights the links between Wesley's real life and her fiction. Num Pages: 304 pages, Illustrations, ports. BIC Classification: 2AB; BG; DSBH; DSK. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 199 x 131 x 21. Weight in Grams: 252.
Mary Wesley published her first novel at seventy and went on to write a further nine bestsellers, including the legendary The Camomile Lawn, in a style best described as arsenic without the old lace. Many of her stories were inspired by her experiences during the Blitz, and by her marriages: the first to an aristocrat, a brief and conventional affair, and the second to a penniless writer she adored. A remarkable book about a remarkable woman, Patrick Marnham's brilliantly researched and wonderfully impartial book disentangles truth from rumour, highlighting the links between Wesley's real life and her fiction.
Product Details
Publisher
Vintage
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2007
Condition
New
Number of Pages
336
Place of Publication
London, United Kingdom
ISBN
9780099498179
SKU
V9780099498179
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 5 to 9 working days
Ref
99-77
About Patrick Marnham
Patrick Marnham was born in Jerusalem, educated at Oxford and is a member of the English Bar. He is the author of eleven books, has been translated into seven languages and has won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Prize, the Marsh Biography Award, and was nominated for the Edgar Allen Poe Award in 1994. He started his career as a reporter on Private Eye and has contributed to many newspapers including The Times, Daily Telegraph, Observer, New York Times and Washington Post. He has been literary editor of the Spectator, was the first Paris correspondent of the Independent, and has worked as a BBC scriptwriter and broadcaster and as a special correspondent and war reporter.
Reviews for Wild Mary: The Life of Mary Wesley
Much of the fascination of Marnham's well-researched and admirably impartial book is that it reveals just how autobiographical Wesley's fiction was
Miranda Seymour
Sunday Times
[A] fast-paced riveting biography
Valerie Grove
The Times
A striking portrait not only of an amazing, if strange, woman but of an entire social class
Rachel Cooke
Evening Standard
Unpicks the complicated web of deceits and half-truths that surrounded much of her life with wit, patience and skill, providing just the sort of compelling read that Wesley did in her novel
Independent
This biography is pure pleasure, a riveting, hilarious tragicomedy of manners... Marnham has disentangled truth from rumour, clarified the many connections between Wild Mary's rackety life and Mary Wesley's fiction, and produced a generous, unsentimental and intelligent portrait of a woman's life and times
Spectator
Miranda Seymour
Sunday Times
[A] fast-paced riveting biography
Valerie Grove
The Times
A striking portrait not only of an amazing, if strange, woman but of an entire social class
Rachel Cooke
Evening Standard
Unpicks the complicated web of deceits and half-truths that surrounded much of her life with wit, patience and skill, providing just the sort of compelling read that Wesley did in her novel
Independent
This biography is pure pleasure, a riveting, hilarious tragicomedy of manners... Marnham has disentangled truth from rumour, clarified the many connections between Wild Mary's rackety life and Mary Wesley's fiction, and produced a generous, unsentimental and intelligent portrait of a woman's life and times
Spectator