Carl Rollyson

A new, vivid account of the final months of the esteemed writer’s life In her last days, Sylvia Plath struggled to break out from the control of the towering figure of her husband Ted Hughes. In the antique mythology of his retinue, she had become the gorgon threatening to bring down the House...

Spanning from the 1825 birth of Faulkner’s great-grandfather to Faulkner’s death 137 years later to the day, author and biographer Carl Rollyson presents for the first time a complete portrait of Faulkner’s life untethered from any one biographical or critical narrative....

The first book to survey the broad range of Ms. Sontag's work, including full discussions of her fiction. One can ask for no better guidebook....

With the publication of Susan Sontag's diaries, the development of her career can now be evaluated in a more genetic sense, so the origins of her ideas and plans for publication are made plain....

The second and concluding volume of Carl Rollyson’s ambitious biography finds Faulkner lamenting the many threats to his creative existence....

The culmination of years of research in archives that have been largely ignored by previous biographers, The Life of William Faulkner offers a significant challenge and an essential contribution to Faulkner scholarship....

In Marilyn Monroe Day by Day: A Timeline of People, Places, and Events, Carl Rollyson provides a documentary approach to the life and legend of this singular personality....

Rollyson shrewdly probes Faulkner's dynamic and changing uses of the past. Also taking advantage of his own work as a biographer, Rollyson has updated, revised, and expanded his original book - extending his dialogue with recent Faulkner critics....

This first biography of Susan Sontag (1933-2004) is now fully revised and updated, providing an even more intimate portrayal of the influential writer’s life and career. The authors base this revision on Sontag’s newly released private correspondence....

This memoir of a professional biographer's life tells the inside story of how he became interested in his subjects and reveals the mechanics of the trade....

The Literary Legacy of Rebecca West is the first book to explore the entire corpus of her extraordinary 71-year writing career....

Biography as a literary genre is largely the product of the 18th century and of one seminal work, James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)....

Rollyson provides the bits and pieces that resulted not only in his biography of Marilyn Monroe but also in much of the work he has subsequently done....

Carl Rollyson's Biography: A User's Guide is an informative and entertaining text for those interested in biography. No aspect of the genre, from A to Z, goes uncovered....

As a father and grandfather, Brennan instilled generations of his family with an outlook on the American Dream that remains a sustaining feature of their lives today....

Most book reviewers know very little about the history or the art of biography. Indeed, if there is any art in biography, it is the rare reviewer that acknowledges it or knows how to discuss it....

Rebecca West is one of the great personalities and writers of the modern age, and one that we are just beginning to comprehend....

Rollyson proposes a number of apologias for biography, including the thought that in the right hands the literary biography is a continuation of the writer's work and life....

Too many biographers, Rollyson believes, evince no interest in the biographical tradition. They're concerned only with possession of their subjects....

He provides entertaining and informative accounts of her feud with Mary McCarthy, and her many love affairs and surprising friendships....