A Life of My Own, Claire Tomalin
A Life of My Own, Claire Tomalin
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A Life of My Own
A Memoir

Author: Claire Tomalin

Narrator: Penelope Wilton

Unabridged: 9 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/28/2018


Synopsis

Esteemed biographer and legendary literary editor Claire Tomalin's stunning memoir of a life in literature

In A Life of My Own, the renowned biographer of Charles Dickens, Samuel Pepys, and Thomas Hardy, and former literary editor for the Sunday Times reflects on a remarkable life surrounded by writers and books. From discovering books as a form of escapism during her parents' difficult divorce, to pursuing poetry at Cambridge, where she meets and marries Nicholas Tomalin, the ambitious and striving journalist, Tomalin always steered herself towards a passionate involvement with art. She relives the glittering London literary scene of the 1960s, during which Tomalin endured her husband's constant philandering and numerous affairs, and revisits the satisfaction of being commissioned to write her first book, a biography of the early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. In biography, she found her vocation. However, when Nick is killed in 1973 while reporting in Israel, the mother of four put aside her writing to assume the position of literary editor of the New Statesman. Her career soared when she later moved to the Sunday Times, and she tells with dazzling candor of this time in her life spent working alongside the literary lights of 1970s London. But, the pain of her young daughter's suicide and the challenges of caring for her disabled son as a single mother test Claire's strength and persistence. It is not until later in life that she is able to return to what gave her such purpose decades ago, writing biographies, and finds enduring love with her now-husband, playwright Michael Frayn.

Marked by honesty, humility, and grace, rendered in the most elegant of prose, A Life of My Own is a portrait of a life, replete with joy and heartbreak. With quiet insight and unsparing clarity, Tomalin writes autobiography at its most luminous, delivering an astonishing and emotionally taut masterpiece.

About Claire Tomalin

Claire Tomalin is the author of eight highly acclaimed biographies, including Thomas Hardy and Samuel Pepys: The Unequaled Self, which won the 2002 Whitbread Book of the Year Award. She has previously won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography, the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Hawthornden Prize, the NCR Book Award for Non-Fiction, and the Whitbread Biography Award. Educated at Cambridge University, she served as literary editor of the New Statesman and the Sunday Times (London). Tomalin lives in London and is married to the playwright Michael Frayn.


Reviews

Goodreads review by *TUDOR^QUEEN* on August 21, 2018

Thank you to Penguin Publishing Group who provided an advance reader copy via Edelweiss. My love of biographies that take place in England led me to this autobiography by author Claire Tomalin. I knew nothing of her existence previously, but was frankly lured in by her cover photo and the title of th......more

Goodreads review by Penny on February 01, 2018

I've read many of Tomalin's excellent biographies. I've also heard her speak about one of her books (Charles Dickens) at a Lake District Literary Festival. I could happily have listened to her for hours. I did wonder about how you would go about writing your own life if you've been used to what must......more

Goodreads review by Beth on November 27, 2017

I bought a copy of this book as soon as it came out, but I only read it after seeing Tomalin at the Cambridge Literary Festival this past weekend (November 25). Some of the anecdotes and funny lines in the biography were touched on in her hour-long interview, but I was surprised to discover that the......more

Goodreads review by Jo on September 12, 2018

I think Tomalin is the first biographer I started reading because she wrote it rather than because I was interested in the subject. This is a fascinating book because she is in many ways an ordinary person, not the kind of person biographies are written about, and yet her ordinary life is (like all......more

Goodreads review by Khush on February 21, 2018

I like this autobiography because it is as much about Tomalin's life as it is about books and writers. Any writer worth his name, both contemporary and historic, are mentioned– from John Donne to Philip Roth. There are countless names of journalists, London writers that appear in the book. Since she......more