{"product_id":"kathleen-and-frank-the-autobiography-of-a-family-9780374180973","title":"Kathleen and Frank: The Autobiography of a Family","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKathleen and Frank\u003c\/i\u003e is a love story set in the glory days of the British Empire, the last decades before World War I \u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIt is the story of Christopher Isherwood's parents, the winsome and lively daughter of a successful wine merchant and the reticent, artistically gifted soldier-son of a country squire. They met in 1895 outside a music rehearsal in an army camp and married in 1903 after Christopher's father returned from the Boer War. Frank was killed in an assault near Ypres in 1915; Kathleen remained a widow for the rest of her life. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eTheir story is told through letters and Kathleen's diary, with connecting commentary by Isherwood. Kathleen and Frank is a family memoir, but it is also a richly detailed social history of a period of striking change-- Queen Victoria's funeral, Bl riot's flight across the English Channel, Sarah Bernhardt's \u003ci\u003eHamlet\u003c\/i\u003e, suffragettes, rising hemlines, the beginning of the Troubles in Ireland--the period that shaped Isherwood himself. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAs a young man, Isherwood fled the tragedy that engulfed his parents' lives and threatened his own; in Kathleen and Frank, he reweaves the tapestry of family and heritage and places himself in the pattern.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eChristopher Isherwood\u003c\/b\u003e (1904-1986) was born in Manchester, England, and lived in Berlin from 1929 to 1933 and immigrated to the United States in 1939. A major figure in twentieth-century fiction and the gay rights movement, he wrote more than twenty books. FSG Classics presents some of his finest work, including the novels \u003ci\u003ePrater Violet\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eA Single Man\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eA Meeting by the River\u003c\/i\u003e; the semi-autobiographical \u003ci\u003eLions and Shadows\u003c\/i\u003e; and the memoir \u003ci\u003eChristopher and His Kind\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Farrar, Straus and Giroux","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50323752812818,"sku":"9780374180973","price":25.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_725fdd4a-a1db-434c-8b35-6bea2fac5693.jpg?v=1727661116","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/kathleen-and-frank-the-autobiography-of-a-family-9780374180973","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}