{"title":"Leo Damrosch","description":"\u003cp\u003eWelcome to our curated collection of works by renowned author Leo Damrosch, a distinguished figure in the world of literary biography and cultural history. Damrosch offers readers a captivating journey through the lives and times of influential personalities, with a unique ability to blend meticulous research and engaging narrative style.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAmong his celebrated works, \u003cem\u003eAdventurer\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eJonathan Swift\u003c\/em\u003e provide deep dives into the complex lives and enduring impacts of their titular figures, showcasing Damrosch's knack for bringing historical characters to life. His insightful book, \u003cem\u003eEternity's Sunrise\u003c\/em\u003e, is a fascinating exploration that delves into the visionary artistry of William Blake.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFor those intrigued by literary and artistic circles, \u003cem\u003eThe Club\u003c\/em\u003e is a captivating account of the famous 18th-century social circle that included the likes of Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, illuminating their profound influence on English society and culture.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDamrosch’s work is not only educational but also deeply engaging, offering fresh perspectives and insights into the lives of some of history's most intriguing figures. Explore this collection to discover the stories behind the storytellers, brought to life by Leo Damrosch's masterful storytelling.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"storyteller-by-leo-damrosch-9780300268621","title":"Storyteller","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFrom a critically acclaimed biographer, an engrossing narrative of Robert Louis Stevenson’s life, a story as romantic and adventurous as his fiction.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThis magnificent biography of Robert Louis Stevenson reveals much about a writer that we think we knew. . . . Dazzling.”—\u003cem\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/em\u003e (starred review)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRobert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) is famed for \u003cem\u003eTreasure Island\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eKidnapped\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eStrange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,\u003c\/em\u003e but he published many other novels and stories before his death at forty-four. Despite lifelong ill health, he had immense vitality; Mark Twain said his eyes burned with “smouldering rich fire.” Born in Edinburgh to a family of lighthouse engineers, Stevenson set many stories in Scotland but sought travel and adventure in a life as romantic as his novels. “I loved a ship,” he wrote, “as a man loves burgundy or daybreak.” The adventures were shared with his free-spirited American wife, Fanny, with whom he moved to the South Pacific.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSamoan friends named Stevenson “Storyteller.” Reading, he said, “should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves.” His own books have been translated into dozens of languages. Jorge Luis Borges called his stories “one of the forms of happiness,” and other modernist masters as various as Proust, Nabokov, and Calvino have paid tribute to his greatness as a literary artist.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eStoryteller,\u003c\/em\u003e Leo Damrosch brings to life an unforgettable personality, illuminated by many who knew Stevenson well and drawing from thousands of the writer’s letters in his many voices and moods—playful, imaginative, at times tragic.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"John Wiley and Sons Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46793586835692,"sku":"9780300268621","price":59.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/24683953482294.jpg?v=1757016072"},{"product_id":"jonathan-swift-by-leo-damrosch-9780300205411","title":"Jonathan Swift","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWinner of the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography:\u003c\/strong\u003e The life of satirist Jonathan Swift, written by a master biographer and leading scholar of eighteenth-century literature.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e“Superb. . . . Damrosch’s outstanding book has raised Swift’s provocative genius to life.” —Jeffrey Collins, \u003cem\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eJonathan Swift\u003c\/em\u003e is best remembered today as the author of \u003cem\u003eGulliver’s Travels\u003c\/em\u003e, the satiric fantasy that quickly became a classic and has remained in print for nearly three centuries. Yet Swift also wrote many other influential works, was a major political and religious figure in his time, and became a national hero, beloved for his fierce protest against English exploitation of his native Ireland. What is really known today about the enigmatic man behind these accomplishments? Can the facts of his life be separated from the fictions?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn this deeply researched biography, Leo Damrosch draws on discoveries made over the past thirty years to tell the story of Swift’s life anew. Probing holes in the existing evidence, he takes seriously some daring speculations about Swift’s parentage, love life, and various personal relationships and shows how Swift’s public version of his life—the one accepted until recently—was deliberately misleading. Swift concealed aspects of himself and his relationships, and other people in his life helped to keep his secrets.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAssembling suggestive clues, Damrosch re-narrates the events of Swift’s life while making vivid the sights, sounds, and smells of his English and Irish surroundings. Through his own words and those of a wide circle of friends, a complex Swift emerges: a restless, combative, empathetic figure, a man of biting wit and powerful mind, and a major figure in the history of world letters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46809954091244,"sku":"9780300205411","price":35.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/24051853482294.jpg?v=1757565222"},{"product_id":"eternitys-sunrise-by-leo-damrosch-9780300223644","title":"Eternity's Sunrise","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eEternity's Sunrise\u003c\/em\u003e is a richly illustrated portrait where a prize-winning biographer surveys the entire sweep of William Blake’s creative work while telling the story of his life.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWilliam Blake, overlooked in his time, remains an enigmatic figure to contemporary readers despite his near canonical status. Out of a wounding sense of alienation and dividedness, he created a profoundly original symbolic language in which words and images unite in a unique interpretation of self and society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHe was a counterculture prophet whose art still challenges us to think afresh about almost every aspect of experience—social, political, philosophical, religious, erotic, and aesthetic. Blake believed that we live in the midst of Eternity here and now, and that if we could open our consciousness to the fullness of being, it would be like experiencing a sunrise that never ends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFollowing Blake’s life from beginning to end, acclaimed biographer Leo Damrosch draws extensively on Blake’s poems, his paintings, and his etchings and engravings to offer this generously illustrated account of Blake the man and his vision of our world. The author’s goal is to inspire the reader with the passion he has for his subject, achieving the imaginative response that Blake himself sought to excite.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe book is an invitation to understanding and enjoyment, an invitation to appreciate Blake’s imaginative world and, in so doing, to open the doors of our perception.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46809954124012,"sku":"9780300223644","price":37.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/24234183482294.jpg?v=1757565233"},{"product_id":"adventurer-by-leo-damrosch-9780300271027","title":"Adventurer","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA fast-paced narrative about the world-famous libertine Giacomo Casanova, from celebrated biographer Leo Damrosch\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e“Fully succeeds in communicating that ‘vivid presentness,’ that ‘joyful eagerness’ for life, which is what keeps us reading Casanova—and reading about him.”—Gregory Dowling, \u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e“A nuanced, deftly contextualized biography of an adventurer, an opportunist, and a man of voracious appetites. . . . Another top-notch work from Damrosch.”—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe life of the iconic libertine Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) has never been told in the depth it deserves. An alluring representative of the Enlightenment’s shadowy underside, Casanova was an aspiring priest, an army officer, a fortune teller, a con man, a magus, a violinist, a mathematician, a Masonic master, an entrepreneur, a diplomat, a gambler, a spy—and the first to tell his own story. In his vivid autobiography \u003ci\u003eHistoire de Ma Vie\u003c\/i\u003e, he recorded at least a hundred and twenty love affairs, as well as dramatic sagas of duels, swindles, arrests, and escapes. He knew kings and an empress, Catherine the Great, and most of the famous writers of the time, including Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDrawing on seldom used materials, including the original French and Italian primary sources, and probing deeply into the psychology, self-conceptions, and self-deceptions of one of the world’s most famous con men and seducers, Leo Damrosch offers a gripping, mature, and devastating account of an Enlightenment man, freed from the bounds of moral convictions.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46809954156780,"sku":"9780300271027","price":40.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/24708013482294.jpg?v=1757565233"},{"product_id":"adventurer-by-leo-damrosch-9780300248289","title":"Adventurer","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA fast-paced narrative about the world-famous libertine Giacomo Casanova, from celebrated biographer Leo Damrosch\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e“The excellence of Leo Damrosch’s energetic biography is that it reveals so many other dimensions of this remarkable man: pioneering autobiographer, questioner of received ideas, traveller through high culture and low.”—Jonathan Bate, author of \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRadical Wordsworth\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eGiacomo Casanova (1725–1798) was a storied adventurer through the Enlightenment’s shadowy underside. Known as a serial seducer, he was also an aspiring priest, an army officer, a fortune teller, a con man, a magus, a violinist, a mathematician, a Masonic master, an entrepreneur, a diplomat, a gambler, a spy—and the first to tell his own story. In his vivid autobiography \u003cem\u003eHistoire de Ma Vie\u003c\/em\u003e, he recorded at least a hundred and twenty affairs, as well as dramatic sagas of duels, swindles, arrests, and escapes. He knew kings and an empress, Catherine the Great, and most of the famous writers of the time, including Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDrawing on seldom used materials, Leo Damrosch situates Casanova in the multiple subcultures he inhabited. Reading Casanova’s memoir with a critical eye and engaging extensively with his non‑autobiographical writings, he brings alive this extraordinary figure and the eighteenth‑century world that Casanova knew so intimately. Casanova aspired to a life of freedom from restraints, but, Damrosch asks, freedom at whose expense?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46809955303660,"sku":"9780300248289","price":59.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/24480633482294.jpg?v=1757565250"},{"product_id":"the-club-by-leo-damrosch-9780300251784","title":"The Club","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe story of the group of extraordinary eighteenth-century writers, artists, and thinkers who gathered weekly at a London tavern.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNamed one of the 10 Best Books of 2019 by the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e • A \u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e Best Book of 2019 • A \u003ci\u003eKirkus\u003c\/i\u003e Best Book of 2019\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Damrosch brings the Club’s redoubtable personalities—the brilliant minds, the jousting wits, the tender camaraderie—to vivid life.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e — \u003ci\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Magnificently entertaining.\" — \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk’s Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually, the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as \u003cem\u003eThe Club\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn this captivating book, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters. With the friendship of the \"odd couple\" Samuel Johnson and James Boswell at the heart of his narrative, Damrosch conjures up the precarious, exciting, and often brutal world of late eighteenth-century Britain. This is the story of an extraordinary group of people whose ideas helped to shape their age, and our own.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46809955336428,"sku":"9780300251784","price":30.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/24515583482294.jpg?v=1757565249"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.live\/collections\/leo-damrosch.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}