Written Lives (Spanish: Vidas Escritas) is a collection of biographical sketches of famous literary figures, written by Spanish author Javier MarÃas and originally published in 2000. Margaret Jull Costa's English translation was published by New Directions in 2006.
Authors featured include:
- Djuna Barnes
- Joseph Conrad
- Arthur Conan Doyle
- Isak Dinesen
- Marie du Deffand
- William Faulkner
- Henry James
- James Joyce
- Rudyard Kipling
- Malcolm Lowry
- Thomas Mann
- Yukio Mishima
- Vladimir Nabokov
- Rainer Maria Rilke
- Arthur Rimbaud
- Laurence Sterne
- Robert Louis Stevenson
- Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
- Ivan Turgenev
- Oscar Wilde
There is also, towards the end of the book, a section entitled 'Fugitive Women', which includes shorter sketches of Emily Brontë, Julie de Lespinasse, Violet Hunt, Vernon Lee, Adah Isaacs Menken and Lady Hester Stanhope. The final chapter, 'Perfect Artists', looks more generally at the tradition of the literary artist.
Other articles related to "written lives, written":
... Her Hebrew-language book Written Lives On Israeli Literary Autobiographies (Hayyim Ktuvim, 2011) is a scholarly response to the wave of autobiographic and biographic prose ... or semi-factual account tied in with a well designed written work ... Written Lives also contains scholarly discussions of writings that are not purely literary, such as the Baghdad Yesterday The Making of an Arab Jew (Bebagdad etmol), which is the memoirs of the ...
Famous quotes containing the words lives and/or written:
“Probably if our lives were more conformed to nature, we should not need to defend ourselves against her heats and colds, but find her our constant nurse and friend, as do plants and quadrupeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
““When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one! There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought! And when I grow up, I’ll write one—but I’m grown up now,” she added in a sorrowful tone: “At least there’s no room to grow up any more here.””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)