Wilson, Frances – The Bell Bookshop

Electric Spark

Emma — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

‘Absolutely mesmerising. I was possessed by this book in the same way that I suspect its author was possessed by Spark. It still hasn’t put me down’ SPECTATOR
‘Unputdownable’ FINANCIAL TIMES
‘Joyously, brilliantly intelligent. In Wilson, Spark has met her true match’ ANNE ENRIGHT

From one of our leading biographers and critics comes an exhilarating, landmark new look at Muriel Spark.

The word most commonly used to describe Muriel Spark is ‘puzzling’. Spark was a puzzle, and so too are her books. She dealt in word games, tricks, and ciphers; her life was composed of weird accidents, strange coincidences and spooky events. Evelyn Waugh thought she was a saint, Bernard Levin said she was a witch, and she described herself as ‘Muriel the Marvel with her X-ray eyes’. Following the clues, riddles, and instructions Spark planted for posterity in her biographies, fiction, autobiography and archives, Frances Wilson aims to crack her code.

Electric Spark explores not the celebrated Dame Muriel but the apprentice mage discovering her powers. We return to her early years when everything was piled on: divorce, madness, murder, espionage, poverty, skulduggery, blackmail, love affairs, revenge, and a major religious conversion. If this sounds like a novel by Muriel Spark it is because the experiences of the 1940s and 1950s became, alchemically reduced, the material of her art.

*A 2025 HIGHLIGHT FOR: Telegraph, Financial Times, Guardian, Observer and Scotsman*
‘A brilliant, wonderfully shrewd biography’ WILLIAM BOYD
‘Pitch-perfect, electrifying. Reconfirms Wilson’s pre-eminence as Maestra of British biography’ RACHEL HOLMES

Burning Man

Emma — Thu, 26 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

**LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2021****SHORTLISTED FOR THE DUFF COOPER PRIZE 2021** **SHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE****FINALIST FOR THE 2022 PLUTARCH AWARD**D. H. Lawrence is no longer censored, but he is still on trial – and we are still unsure what the verdict should be.Delving into the memoirs of those who both loved and hated him most, Burning Man follows Lawrence from the peninsular underworld of Cornwall in 1915 to post-war Italy to the mountains of New Mexico, and traces the author’s footsteps through the pages of his lesser known work. Wilson presents a complex, courageous and often comic fugitive, careering around a world in the grip of apocalypse, in search of utopia; and, in bringing the true Lawrence into sharp focus, shows how he speaks to us now more than ever.‘A work of art in its own right’ OBSERVER‘Utterly enthralling’ GEOFF DYER‘Brilliantly unconventional’ RICHARD HOLMES‘A red-hot, propulsive book’ THE TIMES

Burning Man

Emma — Thu, 27 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE‘Frances Wilson writes books that blow your hair back. She makes Lawrence live and breathe, annoy and captivate you ? she conjures the past with such clarity and wit and flair that it feels utterly present’ Katherine Rundell ‘A brilliantly unconventional biography, passionately researched and written with a wild, playful energy’ Richard HolmesD H Lawrence is no longer censored, but he is still on trial – and we are still unsure what the verdict should be, or even how to describe him. History has remembered him, and not always flatteringly, as a nostalgic modernist, a sexually liberator, a misogynist, a critic of genius, and a sceptic who told us not to look in his novels for ‘the old stable ego’, yet pioneered the genre we now celebrate as auto-fiction. But where is the real Lawrence in all of this, and how – one hundred years after the publication of Women in Love – can we hear his voice above the noise? Delving into the memoirs of those who both loved and hated him most, Burning Man follows Lawrence from the peninsular underworld of Cornwall in 1915 to post-war Italy to the mountains of New Mexico, and traces the author’s footsteps through the pages of his lesser known work. Wilson’s triptych of biographical tales present a complex, courageous and often comic fugitive, careering around a world in the grip of apocalypse, in search of utopia; and, in bringing the true Lawrence into sharp focus, shows how he speaks to us now more than ever.‘No biography of Lawrence that I have read comes close to Burning Man‘ Ferdinand Mount, author of Kiss Myself Goodbye‘The most original voice in life-writing today’ Lucasta Miller, author of Keats

The ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth

Emma — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The prize-winning biography of Wordsworth’s beloved sister, champion, muse who was at the heart of the Romantic movement in Britain – reissued to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Dorothy’s birth.

‘Genius … Its own kind of heaven.’ New York Times

‘A most beautiful, deep, and humble study of incredibly complex people.’ Oliver Sacks

Dorothy Wordsworth is an enigma. William’s beloved sister was his muse, champion, and most valued reader. She is mythologised as a self-effacing spinster and saintly amanuensis, yet Thomas De Quincey described her as ‘all fire and ardour’.

Dorothy sacrificed a traditional life to share in her brother’s world of words. In her Grasmere Journals, she vividly recorded their intimate life together in the Lake District, marked by a startling freedom from social convention. The tale that unfolds in her brief, electric entries reveals an intense bond between siblings, culminating in Dorothy’s collapse on William’s wedding day – after which the woman who once strode the hills in all weathers retreated inside the house for the last three decades of her life.

In her magisterial biography, Frances Wilson uses the compressed emotion of Dorothy’s journals to evoke the rich interior world of a woman determined to live on her own terms – one who deserves her own place in the history of the Romantic movement.

‘Intelligent and intriguing … A portrait of a peculiar, passionate, yet meticulous woman which is hauntingly strange.’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Passion is the keynote of Wilson’s fine biography … Brims with the personality of [an] extraordinary woman … Thrilling.’ Sunday Times

‘This beautiful, wise biography draws Dorothy from her hiding places. She emerges as a passionate figure.’ Daily Telegraph

‘Gripping … Bold, witty, scholarly and speculative.’ Margaret Drabble