Ways of Life: On Places, Painters and Poets

Description

Andrew Motion was appointed Poet Laureate in 1999, but alongside his work as a poet he also had a significant career as a prize-winning biographer and an illuminating critic. Ways of Life celebrates this talent with a selection of his articles about painters and poets, as well as a number of striking personal pieces. The literary essays in Ways of Life look at a wide assortment of writers, from John Clare and Ivor Gurney, to marginal figures such as Leigh Hunt and Joseph Severn, and reassess the less well-known work of celebrated writers including John Donne, Christina Rossetti and Thomas Hardy. Ways of Life is an original, acute and emotionally-charged collection of writings, from a truly important and insightful writer.

Andrew Motion was born in 1952. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1999, and is Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway College, University of London. His novella, The Invention of Dr Cake, was published in 2003) and was described as 'brilliant and almost hallucinatory vividness' (Sunday Telegraph), and 'amazingly clever' - (Irish Times).His memoir, In the Blood (2006), was described as 'the most moving and exquisitely written account of childhood loss I have ever read.' in the Independent on Sunday.