Stories of Authors, British and American

What happens when you pull back the curtain on literary giants? You find humans - flawed, funny, strange, and surprisingly intimate. Chubb's collection of biographical sketches traces the ancient Tabard Inn (where Chaucer gathered his pilgrims) through to the lives of British and American authors who shaped literature as we know it. Here is Sir Philip Sidney, legendary for surrendering his water flask to a wounded soldier at Zutphen - a moment of character revealed through a single selfless act. Here are the eccentrics, the recluses, the brilliant talkers and the haunted loners. These are not statues in a hall of fame but living portraits, full of quirk and contradiction and the specific circumstances that forge a great writer. The book endures because it reminds us that literature comes from lives - complicated, historically situated, human lives - and that understanding an author's world deepens our understanding of their work.