Literary Biography & Memoir Nominations • September 2014

[sun surfer]

Help us select what the MR Literary Club will read for September 2014!

The nominations will run for four days until 5 September. Then, a separate voting poll will begin where the month's selection will be decided.


The category for this month is:

Biography & Memoir


In order for a work to be included in the poll it needs four nominations - the original nomination plus three supporting.

Each participant has four nominations to use. You can nominate a new work for consideration or you can support (second, third or fourth) a work that has already been nominated by another person.

To nominate a work just post a message with your nomination. If you are the first to nominate a work, it's always nice to provide an abstract to the work so others may consider their level of interest.


What is literature for the purposes of this club? A superior work of lasting merit that enriches the mind. Often it is important, challenging, critically acclaimed. It may be from ancient times to today; it may be from anywhere in the world; it may be obscure or famous, short or long; it may be a story, a novel, a play, a poem, an essay or another written form. If you are unsure if a work would be considered literature, just ask!


The floor is now open!

*

Nominations closed. Final nominations:


Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang - Fully nominated

Spoiler:

In favour- Bookworm_Girl, fantasyfan, desertblues, bfisher


A New York Times Notable book. Available at Amazon and Kobo in multiple countries as well as Overdrive libraries in the US.


Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) is the most important woman in Chinese history. She ruled China for decades and brought a medieval empire into the modern age. At the age of sixteen, in a nationwide selection for royal consorts, Cixi was chosen as one of the emperor’s numerous concubines. When he died in 1861, their five-year-old son succeeded to the throne. Cixi at once launched a palace coup against the regents appointed by her husband and made herself the real ruler of China—behind the throne, literally, with a silk screen separating her from her officials who were all male.

In this groundbreaking biography, Jung Chang vividly describes how Cixi fought against monumental obstacles to change China. Under her the ancient country attained virtually all the attributes of a modern state: industries, railways, electricity, the telegraph and an army and navy with up-to-date weaponry. It was she who abolished gruesome punishments like “death by a thousand cuts” and put an end to foot-binding. She inaugurated women’s liberation and embarked on the path to introduce parliamentary elections to China. Chang comprehensively overturns the conventional view of Cixi as a diehard conservative and cruel despot.

Cixi reigned during extraordinary times and had to deal with a host of major national crises: the Taiping and Boxer rebellions, wars with France and Japan—and an invasion by eight allied powers including Britain, Germany, Russia and the United States. Jung Chang not only records the Empress Dowager’s conduct of domestic and foreign affairs, but also takes the reader into the depths of her splendid Summer Palace and the harem of Beijing’s Forbidden City, where she lived surrounded by eunuchs—one of whom she fell in love, with tragic consequences. The world Chang describes here, in fascinating detail, seems almost unbelievable in its extraordinary mixture of the very old and the very new.

Based on newly available, mostly Chinese, historical documents such as court records, official and private correspondence, diaries and eyewitness accounts, this biography will revolutionize historical thinking about a crucial period in China’s—and the world’s—history. Packed with drama, fast paced and gripping, it is both a panoramic depiction of the birth of modern China and an intimate portrait of a woman: as the concubine to a monarch, as the absolute ruler of a third of the world’s population, and as a unique stateswoman.

Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin - Fully nominated

Spoiler:

In favour- issybird, fantasyfan, bfisher, Bookpossum


From The Guardian:

Sex, drink, plague, fire, music, marital conflict, the fall of kings, corruption and courage in public life, wars, navies, public executions, incarceration in the Tower: Samuel Pepys's life is full of irresistible material, and Claire Tomalin seizes it with both hands. She shapes it with a professional dexterity that would be the envy of Pepys the great administrator himself, into a fast, vivid, accessible story.


Squibs cited at Amazon:

"A magnificent triumph. . . . Absolutely stunning." --"The Atlantic Monthly "Invaluable. . . . [Tomalin] not only brings [Pepys] back to vibrant life, but makes a powerful case that he's more central, more 'relevant, ' than we ever imagined." --"The New York Times Book Review ""A magisterial book [written] with an elegance and concision that few historians could match. . . . You have to love Samuel Pepys. He is us." --"San Francisco Chronicle ""Exceptional. . . . Nuanced, moving. . . . A book teeming, like the diary, with clarity, momentum and great pleasure." --"Chicago Tribune ""Exemplary. . . . The perfect bookend to [Pepys's] own rollicking self-portrait." --"The New York Times ""Fine and engrossing. . . . Tomalin possesses a particularly graceful and pleasing diction, a proper sense of measure, and a piquant willingness to express her own views." --"The Washington Post Book World ""Excellent. . . . Remarkable and sympathetic. . . . One is not likely to think of Pepys in the same way again." --"St. Louis Post-Dispatch ""A superb biography by a writer at the height of her powers." --Whitbread Award Judges' Citation

The Story of San Michele by Alex Munthe - Fully nominated

Spoiler:

In favour- sun surfer, issybird, Bookpossum, Bookworm_Girl


From Goodreads:

The Story of San Michele (a villa built on the ruins of a Roman Emperor's villa in Capri) is a series of overlapping vignettes, roughly but not entirely in chronological order. It contains reminiscences of many periods of the author's life. He associated with a number of celebrities of his times, including Jean-Martin Charcot, Louis Pasteur, Henry James, and Guy de Maupassant, all of whom figure in the book. He also associated with the very poorest of people, including Italian immigrants in Paris and plague victims in Naples, as well as rural people such as the residents of Capri, and the Nordic Lapplanders. He was an unabashed animal lover, and animals figure prominently in several stories, perhaps most notably his alcoholic pet baboon, Billy.

The stories cover a wide range in terms of both how serious they are and how literal. Several discussions with animals and various supernatural beings take place, and the final chapter actually takes place after Munthe has died and includes his discussions with Saint Peter at the gates of Heaven. At no point does Munthe seem to take himself particularly seriously, but some of the things he discusses are very serious, such as his descriptions of rabies research in Paris, including euthanasia of human patients, and a suicide attempt by a man convinced he had been exposed to the disease.

Several of the most prominent figures in Munthe's life are not mentioned in Story of San Michele. His wife and children do not figure in the narrative; very little of his time in England is mentioned, even though he married a British woman, his children were largely raised in England, and he himself became a British citizen during the First World War. His decades-long service as personal physician and confidante to the Queen of Sweden is mentioned only in the most oblique terms; at one point, while naming her only as "she who must be mother to a whole nation", he mentions that she regularly brings flowers for the grave of one of her dogs buried at Villa San Michele, at another point, one of his servants is out walking his dogs, and encounters the Queen, who mentions having given the dog to Munthe.

Munthe published a few other reminiscences and essays during the course of his life, and some of them were incorporated into The Story of San Michele, which vastly overshadows all his other writing both in length and popularity. Notably, his accounts of working with a French ambulance corps during the First World War are not included.

World wide, the book was immensely successful; by 1930, there had been twelve editions of the English version alone, and Munthe added a second preface. A third preface was written in 1936 for an illustrated edition.

The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham by Selina Hastings - Fully nominated

Spoiler:

In favour- issybird, desertblues, bfisher, sun surfer

Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy by Carlos Eire - Fully nominated

Spoiler:

In favour- Bookworm_Girl, sun surfer, ccowie


US National Book Award Winner for Nonfiction (2003). Available at Amazon and Kobo in multiple countries. Also at Overdrive in limited locations and Oyster & Scribd subscription services.


"Have mercy on me, Lord, I am Cuban." In 1962, Carlos Eire was one of 14,000 children airlifted out of Havana--exiled from his family, his country, and his own childhood by Fidel Castro's revolution. This stunning memoir is a vibrant and evocative look at Latin America from a child's unforgettable experience.

Waiting for Snow in Havana is both an exorcism and an ode to a paradise lost. For the Cuba of Carlos's youth--with its lizards and turquoise seas and sun-drenched siesta--becomes an island of condemnation once a cigar-smoking guerrilla named Fidel Castro ousts President Batista on January 1, 1959. Suddenly the music in the streets sounds like gunfire. Christmas is made illegal, political dissent leads to imprisonment, and too many of Carlos's friends are leaving Cuba for a place as far away and unthinkable as the United States. Carlos will end up there, too, and fulfill his mother's dreams by becoming a modern American man--even if his soul remains in the country he left behind.

Narrated with the urgency of a confession, Waiting for Snow in Havana is a eulogy for a native land and a loving testament to the collective spirit of Cubans everywhere.

Los Angeles Times: "The most accomplished literary expression of exile sensibility to have appeared to date. What is powerful and lasting about the book is Eire's evocation of childhood and his extraordinary literary ability."

The Boston Globe: "Eire is gifted with what might be called lyric precision"
-- a knack for grasping the life of a moment through its sensuous particulars....Vigorously written and alive.

The Washington Post: "Bursting with wonderful details and images and populated by characters so well described that they seem to be sitting next to you on the couch."

The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton - Fully nominated

Spoiler:

In favour- ccowie, issybird, fantasyfan, Bookworm_Girl


From Goodreads:

In 1941, a brilliant, good-looking young man decided to give up a promising literary career in New York to enter a monastery in Kentucky, from where he proceeded to become one of the most influential writers of this century. Talk about losing your life in order to find it. Thomas Merton's 1st book, The Seven Storey Mountain, describes his early doubts, his conversion to a Catholic faith of extreme certainty, & his decision to take life vows as a Trappist. Altho his conversionary piety sometimes falls into sticky-sweet abstractions, Merton's autobiographical reflections are mostly wise, humble & concrete. The best reason to read The Seven Storey Mountain, however, may be the one Merton provided in his introduction to its Japanese translation: "I seek to speak to you, in some way, as your own self. Who can tell what this may mean? I myself do not know, but if you listen, things will be said that are perhaps not written in this book. And this will be due not to me but to the One who lives & speaks in both."--Michael Joseph Gross

Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin - Fully nominated

Spoiler:

In favour- fantasyfan, desertblues, bfisher, sun surfer


Here is a review from Amazon by Elaine Simpson-Long:

"I sat down and read this book over a weekend, totally and utterly engrossed in the life of a flawed genius. His treatment of his wife is, for me, a real stain on his character and yet despite this awful behaviour, I forgive Dickens and I am trying to work out why when I have been less generous with other writers and their peccadilloes. I think it is because deep down I feel he was never happy. He always seems to be running and running, desperately hoping that true happiness would be just around the next corner but then when he turned it, nothing was there. His genius drove him to the heights of joy and the depths of despair (a friend of mine has said that she has always thought he was bi-polar which is certainly food for thought), but there seemed to be very little calm or tranquility in his life. He drove himself relentlessly until he wore himself out.

"This biography by Claire Tomalin is my personal Book of the Year. I cannot think that I will read another between now and 31 December that will make me change my mind. I was totally engrossed in it, was unable to put it down, found myself living and breathing with Dickens and his family and friends, overtaken with excitement at the reports of his readings and the audience reaction, angry with him because of his selfish behaviour, and also filled with sadness at his constant striving for the happiness that eluded him.

"If you read no other biography this year, next year or the year after, please make it this one. Quite, quite wonderful."


It is reasonably inexpensive in the Kindle edition:

Amazon UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Charles-Dick...ickens++A+Life

Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Charles-Dicken...dickens+A+Life

It is also available in the Kobo bookstore

http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebo...dickens-a-life

and on Feedbooks:

http://www.feedbooks.com/item/453487/charles-dickens

Erasmus and the Age of Reformation by Johan Huizinga - 2

Spoiler:

In favour- desertblues, ccowie


From Wikipedia:

Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus 1466 – 12 July 1536), known as Erasmus of Rotterdam, or simply Erasmus, was a Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, social critic, teacher, and theologian.

He was a classical scholar who wrote in a pure Latin style. Amongst humanists, he enjoyed the sobriquet "Prince of the Humanists"; he has been called "the crowning glory of the Christian humanists".[2] Using humanist techniques for working on texts, he prepared important new Latin and Greek editions of the New Testament. These raised questions that would be influential in the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation. He also wrote On Free Will, The Praise of Folly, Handbook of a Christian Knight, On Civility in Children, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style, Julius Exclusus, and many other works.

Erasmus lived against the backdrop of the growing European religious Reformation; but while he was critical of the abuses within the Church and called for reform, he kept his distance from Luther and Melanchthon and continued to recognise the authority of the pope. Erasmus emphasized a middle way, with a deep respect for traditional faith, piety and grace, and rejected Luther's emphasis on faith alone. Erasmus therefore remained a member of the Catholic Church all his life.[4] Erasmus remained committed to reforming the Church and its clerics' abuses from within. He also held to Catholic doctrines such as that of free will, which some Reformers rejected in favour of the doctrine of predestination. His middle road approach disappointed and even angered scholars in both camps.

He died suddenly in Basel in 1536 while preparing to return to Brabant, and was buried in the Basel Minster, the former cathedral of the city.[5] A bronze statue of him was erected in his city of birth in 1622, replacing an earlier work in stone.


Johan Huizinga

Born in Groningen as the son of Dirk Huizinga, a professor of physiology, and Jacoba Tonkens, who died two years after his birth, he started out as a student of Indo-Germanic languages, earning his degree in 1895. He then studied comparative linguistics, gaining a good command of Sanskrit. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the role of the jester in Indian drama in 1897.
It was not until 1902 that his interest turned towards medieval and Renaissance history. He continued teaching as an Orientalist until he became a Professor of General and Dutch History at Groningen University in 1905. In 1915, he was made Professor of General History at Leiden University, a post he held until 1942.

In 1942, he spoke critically of his country's German occupiers, comments that were consistent with his writings about Fascism in the 1930s. From then until his death in 1945, he was held in detention by the Nazis. He died in De Steeg in Gelderland, near Arnhem, just a few weeks before Nazi rule ended, and he lies buried in the graveyard of the Reformed Church at 6 Haarlemmerstraatweg in Oegstgeest.

Huizinga had an aesthetic approach to history, where art and spectacle played an important part. His most famous work is The Autumn of the Middle Ages (a.k.a. The Waning of the Middle Ages) (1919). He here reinterpreted the Late Middle Ages as a period of pessimism and decadence rather than rebirth.

Worthy of mentioning are also Erasmus (1924) and Homo Ludens (1938). In the latter book he discussed the possibility that play is the primary formative element in human culture. Huizinga also published books on American history and Dutch history in the 17th century.

Alarmed by the rise of National Socialism in Germany, Huizinga wrote several works of cultural criticism. Many similarities can be noted between his analysis and that of contemporary critics such as Ortega y Gasset and Oswald Spengler. Huizinga argued that the spirit of technical and mechanical organisation had replaced spontaneous and organic order in cultural as well as political life.

[sun surfer]

I nominate The Story of San Michele by Alex Munthe.

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

The Story of San Michele (a villa built on the ruins of a Roman Emperor's villa in Capri) is a series of overlapping vignettes, roughly but not entirely in chronological order. It contains reminiscences of many periods of the author's life. He associated with a number of celebrities of his times, including Jean-Martin Charcot, Louis Pasteur, Henry James, and Guy de Maupassant, all of whom figure in the book. He also associated with the very poorest of people, including Italian immigrants in Paris and plague victims in Naples, as well as rural people such as the residents of Capri, and the Nordic Lapplanders. He was an unabashed animal lover, and animals figure prominently in several stories, perhaps most notably his alcoholic pet baboon, Billy.

The stories cover a wide range in terms of both how serious they are and how literal. Several discussions with animals and various supernatural beings take place, and the final chapter actually takes place after Munthe has died and includes his discussions with Saint Peter at the gates of Heaven. At no point does Munthe seem to take himself particularly seriously, but some of the things he discusses are very serious, such as his descriptions of rabies research in Paris, including euthanasia of human patients, and a suicide attempt by a man convinced he had been exposed to the disease.

Several of the most prominent figures in Munthe's life are not mentioned in Story of San Michele. His wife and children do not figure in the narrative; very little of his time in England is mentioned, even though he married a British woman, his children were largely raised in England, and he himself became a British citizen during the First World War. His decades-long service as personal physician and confidante to the Queen of Sweden is mentioned only in the most oblique terms; at one point, while naming her only as "she who must be mother to a whole nation", he mentions that she regularly brings flowers for the grave of one of her dogs buried at Villa San Michele, at another point, one of his servants is out walking his dogs, and encounters the Queen, who mentions having given the dog to Munthe.

Munthe published a few other reminiscences and essays during the course of his life, and some of them were incorporated into The Story of San Michele, which vastly overshadows all his other writing both in length and popularity. Notably, his accounts of working with a French ambulance corps during the First World War are not included.

World wide, the book was immensely successful; by 1930, there had been twelve editions of the English version alone, and Munthe added a second preface. A third preface was written in 1936 for an illustrated edition.

[issybird]

Second Munthe.

I’d like to nominate Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin.

Spoiler:

From The Guardian:

Sex, drink, plague, fire, music, marital conflict, the fall of kings, corruption and courage in public life, wars, navies, public executions, incarceration in the Tower: Samuel Pepys's life is full of irresistible material, and Claire Tomalin seizes it with both hands. She shapes it with a professional dexterity that would be the envy of Pepys the great administrator himself, into a fast, vivid, accessible story.

Squibs cited at Amazon:

"A magnificent triumph. . . . Absolutely stunning." --"The Atlantic Monthly "Invaluable. . . . [Tomalin] not only brings [Pepys] back to vibrant life, but makes a powerful case that he's more central, more 'relevant, ' than we ever imagined." --"The New York Times Book Review ""A magisterial book [written] with an elegance and concision that few historians could match. . . . You have to love Samuel Pepys. He is us." --"San Francisco Chronicle ""Exceptional. . . . Nuanced, moving. . . . A book teeming, like the diary, with clarity, momentum and great pleasure." --"Chicago Tribune ""Exemplary. . . . The perfect bookend to [Pepys's] own rollicking self-portrait." --"The New York Times ""Fine and engrossing. . . . Tomalin possesses a particularly graceful and pleasing diction, a proper sense of measure, and a piquant willingness to express her own views." --"The Washington Post Book World ""Excellent. . . . Remarkable and sympathetic. . . . One is not likely to think of Pepys in the same way again." --"St. Louis Post-Dispatch ""A superb biography by a writer at the height of her powers." --Whitbread Award Judges' Citation

[fantasyfan]

I'll nominate another Biography by Claire Tomalin--though Issybird's nomination sounds fascinating!

Charles Dickens: A Life

Here is a review from Amazon by Elaine Simpson-Long:

Spoiler:

"I sat down and read this book over a weekend, totally and utterly engrossed in the life of a flawed genius. His treatment of his wife is, for me, a real stain on his character and yet despite this awful behaviour, I forgive Dickens and I am trying to work out why when I have been less generous with other writers and their peccadilloes. I think it is because deep down I feel he was never happy. He always seems to be running and running, desperately hoping that true happiness would be just around the next corner but then when he turned it, nothing was there. His genius drove him to the heights of joy and the depths of despair (a friend of mine has said that she has always thought he was bi-polar which is certainly food for thought), but there seemed to be very little calm or tranquility in his life. He drove himself relentlessly until he wore himself out.

"This biography by Claire Tomalin is my personal Book of the Year. I cannot think that I will read another between now and 31 December that will make me change my mind. I was totally engrossed in it, was unable to put it down, found myself living and breathing with Dickens and his family and friends, overtaken with excitement at the reports of his readings and the audience reaction, angry with him because of his selfish behaviour, and also filled with sadness at his constant striving for the happiness that eluded him.

"If you read no other biography this year, next year or the year after, please make it this one. Quite, quite wonderful."

It is reasonably inexpensive in the Kindle edition:

Amazon UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Charles-Dick...ickens++A+Life

Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Charles-Dicken...dickens+A+Life

It is also aailable in the Kobo bookstore

http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebo...dickens-a-life

and on Feedbooks:

http://www.feedbooks.com/item/453487/charles-dickens

[Bookworm_Girl]

I would like to nominate Empress Dowager Cixi by Jung Chang. A New York Times Notable book. Available at Amazon and Kobo in multiple countries as well as Overdrive libraries in the US.

Spoiler:

Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) is the most important woman in Chinese history. She ruled China for decades and brought a medieval empire into the modern age. At the age of sixteen, in a nationwide selection for royal consorts, Cixi was chosen as one of the emperor’s numerous concubines. When he died in 1861, their five-year-old son succeeded to the throne. Cixi at once launched a palace coup against the regents appointed by her husband and made herself the real ruler of China—behind the throne, literally, with a silk screen separating her from her officials who were all male.

In this groundbreaking biography, Jung Chang vividly describes how Cixi fought against monumental obstacles to change China. Under her the ancient country attained virtually all the attributes of a modern state: industries, railways, electricity, the telegraph and an army and navy with up-to-date weaponry. It was she who abolished gruesome punishments like “death by a thousand cuts” and put an end to foot-binding. She inaugurated women’s liberation and embarked on the path to introduce parliamentary elections to China. Chang comprehensively overturns the conventional view of Cixi as a diehard conservative and cruel despot.

Cixi reigned during extraordinary times and had to deal with a host of major national crises: the Taiping and Boxer rebellions, wars with France and Japan—and an invasion by eight allied powers including Britain, Germany, Russia and the United States. Jung Chang not only records the Empress Dowager’s conduct of domestic and foreign affairs, but also takes the reader into the depths of her splendid Summer Palace and the harem of Beijing’s Forbidden City, where she lived surrounded by eunuchs—one of whom she fell in love, with tragic consequences. The world Chang describes here, in fascinating detail, seems almost unbelievable in its extraordinary mixture of the very old and the very new.

Based on newly available, mostly Chinese, historical documents such as court records, official and private correspondence, diaries and eyewitness accounts, this biography will revolutionize historical thinking about a crucial period in China’s—and the world’s—history. Packed with drama, fast paced and gripping, it is both a panoramic depiction of the birth of modern China and an intimate portrait of a woman: as the concubine to a monarch, as the absolute ruler of a third of the world’s population, and as a unique stateswoman.

[fantasyfan]

I second: Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self

and

Empress Dowager Cixi

[desertblues]

I second Empress Dowager Cixi by Jung Chang

[bfisher]

I third Samuel Pepys and fourth Empress Dowager Cixi

[Bookpossum]

I third San Michele and fourth Tomalin's Pepys.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I also nominate Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy by Carlos Eire. US National Book Award Winner for Nonfiction (2003). Available at Amazon and Kobo in multiple countries. Also at Overdrive in limited locations and Oyster & Scribd subscription services.

Spoiler:

"Have mercy on me, Lord, I am Cuban." In 1962, Carlos Eire was one of 14,000 children airlifted out of Havana--exiled from his family, his country, and his own childhood by Fidel Castro's revolution. This stunning memoir is a vibrant and evocative look at Latin America from a child's unforgettable experience.

Waiting for Snow in Havana is both an exorcism and an ode to a paradise lost. For the Cuba of Carlos's youth--with its lizards and turquoise seas and sun-drenched siesta--becomes an island of condemnation once a cigar-smoking guerrilla named Fidel Castro ousts President Batista on January 1, 1959. Suddenly the music in the streets sounds like gunfire. Christmas is made illegal, political dissent leads to imprisonment, and too many of Carlos's friends are leaving Cuba for a place as far away and unthinkable as the United States. Carlos will end up there, too, and fulfill his mother's dreams by becoming a modern American man--even if his soul remains in the country he left behind.

Narrated with the urgency of a confession, Waiting for Snow in Havana is a eulogy for a native land and a loving testament to the collective spirit of Cubans everywhere.

Los Angeles Times: "The most accomplished literary expression of exile sensibility to have appeared to date. What is powerful and lasting about the book is Eire's evocation of childhood and his extraordinary literary ability."

The Boston Globe: "Eire is gifted with what might be called lyric precision"
-- a knack for grasping the life of a moment through its sensuous particulars....Vigorously written and alive.

The Washington Post: "Bursting with wonderful details and images and populated by characters so well described that they seem to be sitting next to you on the couch."

[desertblues]

I nominate: Erasmus and the age of Reformation by Johan Huizinga.

Spoiler:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...of_Reformation

Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus 1466 – 12 July 1536), known as Erasmus of Rotterdam, or simply Erasmus, was a Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, social critic, teacher, and theologian.

He was a classical scholar who wrote in a pure Latin style. Amongst humanists, he enjoyed the sobriquet "Prince of the Humanists"; he has been called "the crowning glory of the Christian humanists".[2] Using humanist techniques for working on texts, he prepared important new Latin and Greek editions of the New Testament. These raised questions that would be influential in the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation. He also wrote On Free Will, The Praise of Folly, Handbook of a Christian Knight, On Civility in Children, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style, Julius Exclusus, and many other works.

Erasmus lived against the backdrop of the growing European religious Reformation; but while he was critical of the abuses within the Church and called for reform, he kept his distance from Luther and Melanchthon and continued to recognise the authority of the pope. Erasmus emphasized a middle way, with a deep respect for traditional faith, piety and grace, and rejected Luther's emphasis on faith alone. Erasmus therefore remained a member of the Catholic Church all his life.[4] Erasmus remained committed to reforming the Church and its clerics' abuses from within. He also held to Catholic doctrines such as that of free will, which some Reformers rejected in favour of the doctrine of predestination. His middle road approach disappointed and even angered scholars in both camps.

He died suddenly in Basel in 1536 while preparing to return to Brabant, and was buried in the Basel Minster, the former cathedral of the city.[5] A bronze statue of him was erected in his city of birth in 1622, replacing an earlier work in stone.

Johan Huizinga
Born in Groningen as the son of Dirk Huizinga, a professor of physiology, and Jacoba Tonkens, who died two years after his birth, he started out as a student of Indo-Germanic languages, earning his degree in 1895. He then studied comparative linguistics, gaining a good command of Sanskrit. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the role of the jester in Indian drama in 1897.
It was not until 1902 that his interest turned towards medieval and Renaissance history. He continued teaching as an Orientalist until he became a Professor of General and Dutch History at Groningen University in 1905. In 1915, he was made Professor of General History at Leiden University, a post he held until 1942.
In 1942, he spoke critically of his country's German occupiers, comments that were consistent with his writings about Fascism in the 1930s. From then until his death in 1945, he was held in detention by the Nazis. He died in De Steeg in Gelderland, near Arnhem, just a few weeks before Nazi rule ended, and he lies buried in the graveyard of the Reformed Church at 6 Haarlemmerstraatweg in Oegstgeest.

Huizinga had an aesthetic approach to history, where art and spectacle played an important part. His most famous work is The Autumn of the Middle Ages (a.k.a. The Waning of the Middle Ages) (1919). He here reinterpreted the Late Middle Ages as a period of pessimism and decadence rather than rebirth.

Worthy of mentioning are also Erasmus (1924) and Homo Ludens (1938). In the latter book he discussed the possibility that play is the primary formative element in human culture. Huizinga also published books on American history and Dutch history in the 17th century.

Alarmed by the rise of National Socialism in Germany, Huizinga wrote several works of cultural criticism. Many similarities can be noted between his analysis and that of contemporary critics such as Ortega y Gasset and Oswald Spengler. Huizinga argued that the spirit of technical and mechanical organisation had replaced spontaneous and organic order in cultural as well as political life.
(both descriptions are from Wikipedia; I'll try to see where they are available later...)

[issybird]

I'm also going to nominate The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham, by Selina Hastings.

[desertblues]

I second The secret lives of Somerset Maughan and Charles Dickens

[bfisher]

I third The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham and Charles Dickens

[ccowie]

Just back from being away for a while unexpectedly. Lots to catch up on including discussion of last month's book. Perhaps I'm a little out of it, but I'd like some clarification regarding this category.
Are the nominations to be bios of literary authors or are the authors themselves considered literary writers? I ask because so far I know very little about the authors.