“Never trust the teller,” wrote D. H. Lawrence, “trust the tale.” Everyone who knew him told stories about Lawrence, and Lawrence told stories about everyone he knew. He also told stories about himself, again and again: a pioneer of autofiction, no writer before Lawrence had made so permeable the border between life and literature. In Burning Man: The Trials of D. H. Lawrence, acclaimed biographer Frances Wilson tells a new story about the author, focusing on his decade of superhuman writing and travel between 1915, when The Rainbow was suppressed following an obscenity trial, and 1925, when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis.
Eschewing the confines of traditional biography, Burning Man offers a triptych of lesser-known episodes drawn from lesser-known sources, including tales of Lawrence as told by his friends in letters, memoirs, and diaries. Focusing on three turning points in Lawrence’s pilgrimage and three central adversaries-his wife, Frieda; the writer Maurice Magnus; and his patron, Mabel Dodge Luhan-Wilson uncovers a lesser-known Lawrence, both as a writer and as a man.
Strikingly original, superbly researched, and always revelatory, Burning Man is a marvel of iconoclastic biography. With flair and focus, Wilson unleashes a distinct perspective on one of history’s most beloved and infamous writers.

A dynamic biography of one of the most mysterious members of Wordsworth’s circle and the last of the romantics

Thomas De Quincey–opium eater, celebrity journalist, and professional doppelganger–is embedded in our culture. Modeling his character on Coleridge and his sensibility on Wordsworth, De Quincey took over the latter’s cottage in Grasmere and turned it into an opium den. There, increasingly detached from the world, he nurtured his growing hatred of his former idols and his obsession with murder as one of the fine arts.

Though De Quincey may never have felt the equal of the giants of romantic literature, the writing style he pioneered–scripted and sculptured emotional memoir–would inspire generations of writers, including Dickens, Dostoevsky, and Virginia Woolf. James Joyce knew whole pages of his work by heart.

As Frances Wilson writes, “Life for De Quincey was either angels ascending on vaults of cloud or vagrants shivering on the city streets.” In this spectacular biography, Wilson’s meticulous scholarship and supple prose tells the riches-to-rags story of a figure of dazzling complexity and originality, whose life was lived on the run yet who came to influence some of the world’s greatest literature. Guilty Thing brings De Quincey and his martyred but wild soul triumphantly to life and firmly establishes Wilson as one of our foremost contemporary biographers.

On the terrifying, chaotic night of April 14, 1912, while the Titanic was sinking, Bruce J. Ismay, the ship’s owner, made a decision that would save his life – and end it. Ismay boarded a lifeboat meant for women and children, and within days became ‘The Most Talked-of Man in the World.’ Branded a coward, he became a flesh-and-blood embodiment of Joseph Conrad’s legendary eponymous character, Lord Jim. How to Survive the Titanic interweaves numerous historical accounts and sources with insights drawn from Conrad’s novels. Unlike other survivors, this pivotal figure never again spoke about the Titanic. This intriguing history offers a sympathetic yet clear eyed explanation why – important lessons all of us need to survive the tragedies and choices of our own lives.