Perdita: The Life of Mary Robinson

Byrne, Paula

Humor & Entertainment

Harper-perennial

Physical description; xvi, 477 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. (some col.), ports. (some col.) ; 24 cm. Subjects; Robinson, Mary 1758-1800. Actresses - Great Britain - Biography. Mistresses - Great Britain - Biography. Women poets, English - 18th century - Biography.

Perdita : The Life of Mary Robinson

London: HarperCollins

A terrifically engaging and original biography about one of England’s greatest novelists, and the glamorous, eccentric, debauched and ultimately tragic family that provided him with the most significant friendships of his life and inspired his masterpiece, ‘Brideshead Revisited’.
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.
This brilliantly original biography unlocks for the first time the extent to which Waugh’s great novel encoded and transformed his own experiences. In so doing, it illuminates the loves and obsessions that shaped his life, and brings us inevitably to a secret that dared not speak its name.

Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

HarperPress

In The Real Jane Austen, acclaimed literary biographer Paula Byrne provides the most intimate and revealing portrait yet of a beloved but complex novelist.
Just as letters and tokens in Jane Austen’s novels often signal key turning points in the narrative, Byrne explores the small things – a scrap of paper, a gold chain, an ivory miniature – that held significance in Austen’s personal and creative life.
Byrne transports us to different worlds, from the East Indies to revolutionary Paris, and to different events, from a high society scandal to a case of petty shoplifting. In this ground-breaking biography, Austen is set on a wider stage than ever before, revealing a well-traveled and politically aware writer – important aspects of her artistic development that have long been overlooked.
The Real Jane Austen is a fresh, compelling, and surprising biography of the author of some of our most enduring classic books – from Pride and Prejudice to Sense and Sensibility, Emma to Persuasion – and a vivid evocation of the world that shaped her.

Real Jane Austen

Medical Books

Allied Health Professions

Harper

Who was the real Jane Austen? Overturning the traditional portrait of the author as conventional and genteel, bestseller Paula Byrne’s landmark biography reveals the real woman behind the books.
In this paperback of the landmark biography, bestselling biographer Paula Byrne uses objects that conjure up a key moment in Austen’s life and work – a silhouette, a vellum notebook, a topaz cross, a writing box, a royalty cheque, a bathing machine, and many more – to unlock the biography of this most beloved author. The woman who emerges is far tougher, more socially and politically aware, and altogether more modern than the conventional picture of ‘dear aunt Jane’ allows. Byrne’s lively book explores the many forces that shaped Austen’s life, her long struggle to become a published author, and brings Miss Austen dazzlingly into the twenty-first century.

The Real Jane Austen

William Collins

Harper. 1 Paperback(s)

The remarkable life of the vivacious, clever – and forgotten – Kennedy sister, who charmed the English aristocracy and was almost erased from her family history.
The favourite child of Joe Kennedy and favourite sister of Jack, Kick Kennedy was spirited, vivacious and legendary for her charm. When the Kenndys sailed to Britain in 1938 she was presented as a debutante amid the pre-war social whirl of the British aristocracy. Here she met a shy, tall, handsome man called Billy, and, rebelling against family, faith, and country, soon married him. He was William Cavendish, heir to Chatsworth and the Duke of Devonshire, the most eligible bachelor in England. But their days of married bliss proved short, as war would bring tragedy and loss.
Uncovering her spectacular life in full for the first time, Paula Byrne depicts a remarkable woman who bewitched the Churchills, Astors and Mitfords, and yet was almost erased from Kennedy family history.

Kick: The True Story of Kick Kennedy, JFK’s Forgotten Sister, and the Heir to Chatsworth

Historical

Kick: The True Story of Kick Kennedy, JFK's Forgotten Sister and the Heir to Chatsworth

Genius Of Jane Austen

‘Hollywood, we’re reminded, is after all a through-the-looking glass world, and Byrne writes authoritatively about its illusions and obscene, glittering excess … Compelling’ Daily Mail\n‘Both eye-poppingly fun and thought-provoking’ The Times\nMadou is the most beautiful woman in the world. 
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. 
Previously published as Mirror, Mirror.

Blonde Venus

Parenting & Relationships

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Byrne, Paula. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Byrne, Paula