Miranda Seymour – författare

‘An absolute belter of a biography’ MARINA HYDE A Times Literary Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2022 An LA Times Best Book of the Year 2022 An intimate, revealing and profoundly moving biography of Jean Rhys, acclaimed author of Wide Sargasso Sea. An obsessive and troubled genius, Jean Rhys is one of the most compelling and unnerving writers of the twentieth century. Memories of a conflicted Caribbean childhood haunt the four fictions that Rhys wrote during her extraordinary years as an exile in 1920s Paris and later in England. Rhys’s experiences of heartbreak, poverty, notoriety, breakdowns and even imprisonment all became grist for her writing, forming an iconic ‘Rhys woman’ whose personality – vulnerable, witty, watchful and angry – was often mistaken, and still is, for a self-portrait.Many details of Rhys’s life emerge from her memoir, Smile Please and the stories she wrote throughout her long and challenging career. But it’s a shock to discover that no biographer – until now – has researched the crucial seventeen years that Rhys spent living on the remote Caribbean island of Dominica; the island which haunted Rhys’s mind and her work for the rest of her life.Luminous and penetrating, Seymour’s biography reveals a proud and fiercely independent artist, one who experienced tragedy and extreme poverty, alcohol and drug dependency, romantic and sexual turmoil – and yet was never a victim. I Used to Live Here Once enables one of our most excitingly intuitive biographers to uncover the hidden truth about a fascinatingly elusive woman. The figure who emerges for Seymour is powerful, cultured, self-mocking, self-absorbed, unpredictable and often darkly funny. Persuasive, surprising and compassionate, this unforgettable biography brings Jean Rhys to life as never before.

‘An absolute belter of a biography’ MARINA HYDE A Times Literary Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2022 An LA Times Best Book of the Year 2022 An intimate, revealing and profoundly moving biography of Jean Rhys, acclaimed author of Wide Sargasso Sea. An obsessive and troubled genius, Jean Rhys is one of the most compelling and unnerving writers of the twentieth century. Memories of a conflicted Caribbean childhood haunt the four fictions that Rhys wrote during her extraordinary years as an exile in 1920s Paris and later in England. Rhys’s experiences of heartbreak, poverty, notoriety, breakdowns and even imprisonment all became grist for her writing, forming an iconic ‘Rhys woman’ whose personality – vulnerable, witty, watchful and angry – was often mistaken, and still is, for a self-portrait.Many details of Rhys’s life emerge from her memoir, Smile Please and the stories she wrote throughout her long and challenging career. But it’s a shock to discover that no biographer – until now – has researched the crucial seventeen years that Rhys spent living on the remote Caribbean island of Dominica; the island which haunted Rhys’s mind and her work for the rest of her life.Luminous and penetrating, Seymour’s biography reveals a proud and fiercely independent artist, one who experienced tragedy and extreme poverty, alcohol and drug dependency, romantic and sexual turmoil – and yet was never a victim. I Used to Live Here Once enables one of our most excitingly intuitive biographers to uncover the hidden truth about a fascinatingly elusive woman. The figure who emerges for Seymour is powerful, cultured, self-mocking, self-absorbed, unpredictable and often darkly funny. Persuasive, surprising and compassionate, this unforgettable biography brings Jean Rhys to life as never before.

‘A kind of blissography, teeming with bon mots’ Sunday Times A celebrated modern classic that has revolutionised our understanding of the Bloomsbury group and remains the definitive biography of the group’s gloriously eccentric patron, Lady Ottoline Morrell. Met with widespread acclaim and translated into fifteen languages, this seminal book provoked a rethinking of the traditional Bloomsbury narrative and the rewriting of some major biographies.For decades, Ottoline Morrell was grossly misunderstood. The artists and writers who benefited from her generous patronage and friendship helped to create the false and vicious image of a nymphomanical aristocrat with cultural aspirations. This landmark literary biography presents Morrell in an entirely new light, rightly setting her centre-stage as the brilliant and courageous lynchpin of the Bloomsbury group. She counted T.S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence, Lytton Strachey, Siegfried Sassoon, Augustus John, Katherine Mansfield and W.B. Yeats among her closest friends and houseguests. A legendary and agonisingly protracted love-affair with Bertrand Russell never undermined this unlikely couple’s deep and understanding friendship. Ottoline’s loyalty to her own promiscuous husband survived public humiliation and private crises.Overhauling the long-held conventional view of Morrell as a victim, a creature of her class who was born to be exploited and derided by her wittier friends, Seymour repaints the world of the Bloomsberries and rescues the grand life of Ottoline Morrell from the depths of historical obscurity.

'Vera Gedroits was a true medical heroine: outrageous, intrepid and devoted to saving lives. Miranda Seymour’s genius as a story teller brings this astonishing woman blazing back to life. I shall never forget her' LADY ANTONIA FRASER 'Miranda Seymour has written a wonderful and unputdownable book about an astonishing woman' MEL GIEDROYC Vera Gedroits was a towering, sweet-faced lesbian princess, an ardent supporter of workers’ rights who regularly performed true medical miracles of surgery. On one occasion, she even frogmarched an inquisitive Rasputin out of a ward for wounded officers. While working for César Roux at the world’s best known medical institute in Lausanne, Vera became the world’s first woman surgeon. Off the back of this, she was appointed by the doomed Tsarina to teach the women of the Romanov family how to be nurses.In 1919, Vera was sent to Kyiv, where her hospital reforms, innovative work and academic papers crowned an extraordinary career. During the troubled 1920s, in times of extreme danger, she completed a remarkable series of memoirs. The princess-surgeon’s prose, including a startling candid account of her early years as a revolutionary factory doctor, has been compared to that of Pasternak.Some years later, Vera and her widowed lover Countess Maria Nirod were seized in the middle of the night and taken away at gunpoint during the Soviet purge of scientific intellectuals. Their whereabouts for the next few months were never disclosed. Vera’s pension was cancelled. The hospital and institute were closed. Living in extreme poverty, Vera died two years later of uterine cancer. She was just 61.The princess’s name was removed from official Soviet medical records; her tremendous contribution to medicine and the radical improvements to wartime surgery she pioneered as the first female battlefield surgeon have remained unacknowledged to this day. Now, Miranda Seymour uncovers the riveting story of a daring and brilliant woman who chose to make Ukraine her homeland, someone adored by her friends and patients and whose achievements as an administrator and bold reformer invite comparisons to Florence Nightingale. ‘The extraordinary story of an extraordinary woman, whose unprecedented career as a surgeon, and also as a writer, made her a participant in every aspect of late Tsarist and early Soviet history, and at every level of Russian society … Miranda Seymour tells her story with compelling passion and the most extraordinarily wide understanding of the history and politics, the medicine and literature of the times. A remarkable book’ MICHAEL FRAYN

Princess Vera Giedroytz was a towering, sweet-faced lesbian Princess who habitually wore a man’s suit, played billiards with brilliance, and regularly performed true medical miracles of surgery, while on occasion forcibly ejecting an inquisitive Rasputin from her operating theatre by throwing him down the stairs. In 1909, already lauded as a genius, Vera had been appointed by the doomed Tsarina to teach the women of the Romanov family how to assist Vera with her operations. Previously, while working for Cesar Roux at the world’s best known medical institute in Lausanne, Vera had become the world’s first woman surgeon. Later, back in Russia in 1905, she had supervised and revolutionised frontline surgery in the Russo Japanese War (1905). She won the Red Cross’s highest honors – and saved the life of an enemy soldier, the Prince of Japan, while working in nightmarish conditions: a hospital train under fire; a clay-sealed tent in temperatures that regularly reached 22C below zero.In 1919, Vera was sent to Kiev, where her hospital reforms, innovative work and academic papers crowned an extraordinary career as the only female surgeon in the world – and the first to demonstrate the life-saving abdominal procedure that Vera had evolved while working as the sole physician in a factory near her family home outside Moscow, following her return from Lausanne. In Kiev throughout the 1920s, Vera managed to combine a professional career with an unexpected burst of literary achievement. The Princess-Surgeon’s prose, including a Chekhovian diary of her years as a factory doctor, has been compared to that of Pasternak.In 1930, after founding a Ukraine hospital for facial reconstruction and being invited to head a senior department of the Kiev Medical Institute, Vera and her widowed lover (and medical assistant) Countess Maria Nirod were seized one midnight, and taken away at gunpoint during the Soviet purge of scientific intellectuals. Their whereabouts for the next ten months was never disclosed. Vera’s pension was cancelled. The hospital and institute were closed. Living in extreme poverty, still with her lover and the Countess’s children, an uncowed Vera died in 1932 of uterine cancer – for which, fearing malicious intervention, she refused treatment. She was 61.The Princess’s name was banished from official Soviet medical records and her tremendous contribution to medicine and the revolutionising of wartime surgery remains unacknowledged to this day. Now, Miranda Seymour recovers this lost story of a brilliant, politically outspoken woman who chose to make Ukraine her homeland, someone adored by her friends and patients, and whose achievements outrank even those of Florence Nightingale.

Henry James left London in 1897 to spend the last two decades of his life in East Sussex where his neighbours included H. G. Wells, Stephen Crane, Ford Madox Ford, Joseph Conrad. In this widely admired study Miranda Seymour aims to cut through 'the mass of evasions . . . and misrepresentations' about their relationships with James. She finds that James was cruelly patronizing to protégé Wells and to Conrad; that he was annoyed by Ford, an incorrigible romancer; that he envied his rich friend Edith Wharton for her wide readership; that he snubbed Cora Taylor, Crane's lover, after she fled America when her railway-conductor husband was found guilty of murder. Seymour, a descendant of James's close friend, the novelist Howard Sturgis, records how James's critiques of fellow writers often amounted to annihilation and she chronicles his infatuations with handsome young men, including sculptor Hendrik Andersen and poet Rupert Brooke. In this erudite and insightful book that draws on letters and published works, Miranda Seymour vividly recreates the uneasy alliance of writers and personalities in the 'Rye Mafia'.

'Dear Thrumpton, how I miss you tonight,' wrote George Seymour in 1944, when he was aged twenty-one. But the object of his affection was not a young woman, but a house -- ownership of which was then a distant dream. But he did eventually acquire Thrumpton, a beautiful country house in Nottinghamshire, and it was in this idyllic home that Miranda Seymour grew up. But her upbringing was far from idyllic, as life revolved around her father's capriciousness. The House took priority, and everything -- everyone -- else was secondary. Until, that is, the day late on in his life when George Seymour took to riding powerful motorbikes around the countryside clad in black leather in the company of a young male friend. Had he taken leave of his senses? Or finally found them? And how did this sea-change affect his wife and daughter? Both biography and family memoir, IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE is a riveting and ultimately shocking portrait of desire both overt and suppressed, and the devastating consequences of misplaced love.

THE BUGATTI QUEEN is the beautifully illustrated story of an indomitable and fascinating woman, a pioneer of motorsport who revelled in danger. Born in 1900 in a tiny French village, Hélène Delangle, aka Hellé Nice, became a dancer and a stripper before catching the eye of Ettore Bugatti. Seduced by the combination of machines and speed, Hellé Nice went on to have an unprecedented career, competing in numerous Grands Prix and becoming the only woman to drive on the treacherous American speedbowls in the 1930s. She set new land-speed records before a notorious accident which almost ended her racing days. Re-creating her rollercoaster career with authority and panache from many previously unpublished sources, Miranda Seymour reveals the story of an unforgettable life and sheds new light on the extraordinary and reckless world of motor-racing between the wars.

Jean Rhys is one of the most compelling writers of the twentieth century. Memories of her Caribbean girlhood haunt the four short and piercingly brilliant novels that Rhys wrote during her extraordinary years as an exile in 1920s Paris and later in England, a body of fiction—above all, the extraordinary Wide Sargasso Sea—that has a passionate following today. And yet her own colorful life, including her early years on the Caribbean island of Dominica, remains too little explored, until now.In I Used to Live Here Once, Miranda Seymour sheds new light on the artist whose proud and fiercely solitary life profoundly informed her writing. Rhys experienced tragedy and extreme poverty, alcohol and drug dependency, romantic and sexual turmoil, all of which contributed to the “Rhys woman” of her oeuvre. Today, readers still intuitively relate to her unforgettable characters, vulnerable, watchful, and often alarmingly disaster-prone outsiders; women with a different way of moving through the world. And yet, while her works often contain autobiographical material, Rhys herself was never a victim. The figure who emerges for Seymour is cultured, self-mocking, unpredictable—and shockingly contemporary.Based on new research in the Caribbean, a wealth of never-before-seen papers, journals, letters, and photographs, and interviews with those who knew Rhys, I Used to Live Here Once is a luminous and penetrating portrait of a fascinatingly elusive artist.

Jean Rhys is one of the most compelling writers of the twentieth century. Memories of her Caribbean girlhood haunt the four short and piercingly brilliant novels that Rhys wrote during her extraordinary years as an exile in 1920s Paris and later in England, a body of fiction—above all, the extraordinary Wide Sargasso Sea—that has a passionate following today. And yet her own colorful life, including her early years on the Caribbean island of Dominica, remains too little explored, until now.In I Used to Live Here Once, Miranda Seymour sheds new light on the artist whose proud and fiercely solitary life profoundly informed her writing. Rhys experienced tragedy and extreme poverty, alcohol and drug dependency, romantic and sexual turmoil, all of which contributed to the “Rhys woman” of her oeuvre. Today, readers still intuitively relate to her unforgettable characters, vulnerable, watchful, and often alarmingly disaster-prone outsiders; women with a different way of moving through the world. And yet, while her works often contain autobiographical material, Rhys herself was never a victim. The figure who emerges for Seymour is cultured, self-mocking, unpredictable—and shockingly contemporary.Based on new research in the Caribbean, a wealth of never-before-seen papers, journals, letters, and photographs, and interviews with those who knew Rhys, I Used to Live Here Once is a luminous and penetrating portrait of a fascinatingly elusive artist.

A Sunday Times Book of the YearShortlisted for The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize 'This magnificent, highly readable double biography...brings these two driven, complicated women vividly to life' The Financial Times'A gripping saga of a double-biography' Daily Mail'A masterful portrait' The Times'Vastly enjoyable' Literary Review'Deeply absorbing and meticulously researched' The OldieIn 1815, the clever, courted and cherished Annabella Milbanke married the notorious and brilliant Lord Byron. Just one year later, she fled, taking with her their baby daughter, the future Ada Lovelace. Byron himself escaped into exile and died as a revolutionary hero in 1824, aged 36. The one thing he had asked his wife to do was to make sure that their daughter never became a poet.Ada didn't. Brought up by a mother who became one of the most progressive reformers of Victorian England, Byron's little girl was introduced to mathematics as a means of calming her wild spirits. Educated by some of the most learned minds in England, she combined that scholarly discipline with a rebellious heart and a visionary imagination.As a child invalid, Ada dreamed of building a steam-driven flying horse. As an exuberant and boldly unconventional young woman, she amplified her explanations of Charles Babbage's unbuilt calculating engine to predict, as nobody would do for another century, the dawn today of our modern computer age. When Ada died - like her father, she was only 36 - great things seemed still to lie ahead for her as a passionate astronomer. Even while mired in debt from gambling and crippled by cancer, she was frenetically employing Faraday's experiments with light refraction to explore the analysis of distant stars.Drawing on fascinating new material, Seymour reveals the ways in which Byron, long after his death, continued to shape the lives and reputations both of his wife and his daughter. During her life, Lady Byron was praised as a paragon of virtue; within ten years of her death, she was vilified as a disgrace to her sex. Well over a hundred years later, Annabella Milbanke is still perceived as a prudish wife and cruelly controlling mother. But her hidden devotion to Byron and her tender ambitions for his mercurial, brilliant daughter reveal a deeply complex but unsuspectedly sympathetic personality.Miranda Seymour has written a masterful portrait of two remarkable women, revealing how two turbulent lives were often governed and always haunted by the dangerously enchanting, quicksilver spirit of that extraordinary father whom Ada never knew.

‘The most dazzling biography of a female writer to have come my way for a decade…' – Financial Times‘To be savoured for its vivid and sympathetic recreation of the tragic life and brilliant times of the gifted Mary Shelley’ – Times Literary Supplement‘Brilliant and enthralling' – Independent On Sunday'Wonderfully vivid' – SpectatorThe definitive and richly woven biography of Mary Shelley, in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein  The creator of the world’s most famous outsider became one herself . . . There is no more dramatic scene in literary history than the stormy night by Lake Geneva when Byron, Claire Clairmont, Polidori and the Shelleys met to talk of horror and the unexplained. From that emerged Frankenstein, a monster who has haunted imaginations for two hundred years.  Miranda Seymour illustrates the rich and unexplored life of Mary Shelley. Everything from her childhood to her tempestuous relationship with Percy Shelley; Seymour brings to life the brilliant mind that created Frankenstein through unexplored and intriguing sources.   The Mary Shelley we meet here is a woman we can engage with and understand. Her world, so rich in its settings and its cast of characters, seems drawn from a novel. She, at its centre, is flawed, brave, generous, and impetuous, a woman whose dark and brilliant imagination gave us a myth which seems ever more potent in our own era.