{"product_id":"a-sultry-month-scenes-of-london-literary-life-in-1846-9780571372294","title":"A Sultry Month: Scenes of London Literary Life in 1846","description":"\u003cb\u003eWine and dine with Victorian London's literati in a heatwave in one of the first ever group biographies, introduced by Francesca Wade (author of \u003ci\u003eSquare Haunting\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThough she loved the heat she could do nothing but lie on the sofa and drink lemonade and read Monte Cristo ...\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJune 1846. As London swelters - sunstroke strikes, meat rots, ice is coveted - a glamorous coterie of writers and artists indulge in decadent parties. With her ringletted 'face of an Egyptian cat goddess', Elizabeth Barrett is courted by her secret fiancé, the poet Robert Browning, who plots their elopement to Italy; Keats roams the Heath; Wordsworth visits the zoo; Dickens is intrigued by Tom Thumb; the Carlyles suffer a marital crisis. But when the visionary painter Benjamin Robert Haydon commits suicide, their lives begin to spiral around the tragedy ... \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne of the first group biographies, inspired by the \"Pop Artists\", Althea Hayter's glorious \u003ci\u003eA Sultry Month\u003c\/i\u003e was a groundbreaking feat of creative non-fiction in 1965 - and as radical today. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"An experiment in the art of biography that has [been] never bettered.\" -- \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eGuardian\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A form which was so new as to lack a name ... A masterpiece.\" -- \u003cb\u003eAnthony Burgess\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eHayter, Alethea:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \u003cb\u003eAlethea Hayter\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Cairo in 1911, where her father was a legal advisor to the Egyptian government. He died when she was 12 and they returned to England in reduced circumstances. She won a scholarship to study History at Oxford in 1929 and then worked as a journalist, as well as in Postal Censorship during the war. She was then posted to Greece, Paris, and Belgium with the British Council. Her first book, \u003ci\u003eMrs Browning\u003c\/i\u003e, won the Royal Society of Literature Award in 1962, and was followed by \u003ci\u003eA Sultry Month\u003c\/i\u003e (1965), \u003ci\u003eOpium and the Romantic Imagination\u003c\/i\u003e (1968), \u003ci\u003eHoratio's Version\u003c\/i\u003e (1972), \u003ci\u003eA Voyage in Vain\u003c\/i\u003e (1973), and \u003ci\u003eThe Wreck of the Abergavenny\u003c\/i\u003e (2002). She was on the board of the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells theatres, and the Society of Authors' management committee, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1962. She was appointed OBE in 1970 and died in 2006, aged 94.","brand":"Faber \u0026 Faber","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50450294735122,"sku":"9780571372294","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_7093a053-7267-4947-9b00-992f431b6ccb.jpg?v=1729753373","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/a-sultry-month-scenes-of-london-literary-life-in-1846-9780571372294","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}