A woman of intellect and ambition describes growing up on an Australian ranch, coping with her father's death and her mother's depression, her intellectual awakening at the university, and her path to becoming Smith College's first woman president

The first volume of distinguished New Zealand novelist Janet Frame's autobiography. She tells of her childhood as the daughter of an impoverished railway worker and a mother who aspired to publish poetry.

In her no-holds-barred family memoir, controversial scholar-critic Louise DeSalvo breaks the traditional silence around life for an Italian American girl coming of age in working-class Hoboken, New Jersey. Upon first publication, DeSalvo's memoir???which sifts through painful memories of childhood incest, a sister's suicide, a mother's psychotic depression, and a father's violent rage???enjoyed wide acclaim as an instant classic of the genre, written in "one of the most refreshing feminist voices around."-"San Francisco Chronicle" Marketing Plans: East Coast readings Extensively promoted with new anthology "Taste This: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Identity" Louise DeSalvo is professor of English at Hunter College. She has published thirteen books, including the acclaimed "Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work,"

Today, Philip Henry Gosse is remembered, if at all, as the patriarch and tyrannical religious maniac in his son Edmund's memoir, Father and Son. This is a vivid reassessment of the life of Philip Henry Gosse, the renowned Victorian naturalist, author, illustrator and Christian fundamentalist, who as both friend and antagonist of Charles Darwin, was at the very heart of the Victorian conflict between science and religion. Thwaite shows that Gosse believed that "the gratification of scientific curiosity is worse than useless if we ignore God."--Publisher.

Although he died more than forty years ago this is the first full-scale biography of Matthew Smith, one of the most original English figurative painters of the century. He was in his lifetime frequently, but mistakenly, seen as an English Fauve or as a disciple of Matisse, but in fact he evolved his own distinctive style independently from anything he had seen in English art schools or the French galleries. Smith was the son of a rich and cultured Yorkshire manufacturer, but soon felt impelled to rebel against the Victorian taste of his father and his class. He failed to impress tutors at the Slade, went to France to see what the modern movements there had to offer, and then returned to mingle in the circles round Sickert and Fry. His grim experiences in World War 1 forced him to sort out his priorities both as a man and an artist. Eventually, a passionate love affair in middle age enabled him to establish his own uniquely turbulent style and subject matter of still-lifes, landscapes and uninhibited nudes. Augustus John and Epstein were close friends as were many other literary and artistic figures in Paris, Provence and London. He was shaken by personal tragedies, but well into old age he seemed able to attract the love of cultivated and attractive younger women. There have been several retrospective exhibitions since his death in 1959, notably at the Royal Academy and twice at the Barbican. Dr Yorke's detailed biography traces the life and reputation of this unassuming man who 'spoke like an intelligent moth' , but who produced pictures of such rich colour and extrovert handling that they have no parallels in the history of English painting.

In his masterpiece of family literature, AND WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR FATHER?, Blake Morrison's mother appears as an intriguing but mostly silent figure. This is her startling and touching story - and a son's search to discover the truth about the remarkable Kerry girl who qualified as a doctor in Dublin in 1942, worked in British hospitals throughout the war, and then reinvented herself again to adapt to a quieter post-war family life. At the heart of the book there's a passionate wartime love affair, seen through the frank, funny, furious letters his parents wrote during their courtship. It evokes a surprising picture of life and love in WWII. From the obstacles the lovers faced, to their moments of hilarity and joy THINGS MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME is a revealing and poignant anatomy of family conflict, love, war, and finally marriage. Kim Morrison emerges quietly, magically from the shadows, a determined heroine for our times.

Well past their prime, the ladies who rent rooms in Amy Doll's house indulge in genteel prostitution with their elderly gentlemen friends in order to pay the rent. How will Amy keep her daughter in ignorance of the scandalous goings-on? A tale poking fun at the English passion for respectability.