Introduction
You might think that writers — even famous ones — lead quiet, mousy lives. Perhaps they spend their days with only the modest tools of their trade for company, piping up now and then to plead for more money.
Allow the neighbors to disagree. After all, a typewriter does keep the neighborhood on edge when it clatters fifteen hours a day (as with Jack London), and neighbors are the first to notice when a writer (such as Langston Hughes) keeps odd hours. Neighbors have been jarred awake by temper tantrums when a writer’s shirts lack buttons (Twain). They’ve partaken of a novelist’s lavish Polynesian feasts (Stevenson) and of a poet’s fresh gingerbread lowered out the window in a basket (Dickinson). Where neighbors are concerned, writers have provoked storms of gossip (Dickens), endless curiosity (Austen), tears from small children (Alcott), and accusations of murder (Cervantes).
Some writers live simply and quietly (Singer), while some live noisily and like to carry a gun (Hurston). But the writers in this book, representing different countries, time periods, and literary forms and styles, do have things in common. About their writing, they had a persistence that led not only to success — sometimes during their lifetimes, sometimes not— but also to eccentricities, some amusing, some tragic.
And their work itself was rarely quiet. It was blamed for outbreaks of plague (Shakespeare), inspired fashion for an entire generation (Burnett), and created overnight fame (Poe). It was condemned as “dangerous” (White), not to mention “wicked” (Charlotte Brontë) and “demonic” (Emily Brontë). Sometimes it required a secret existence (Alcott); sometimes it was featured on every TV talk show from “Today” to “Tonight” (Sandburg).
All of these writers have works that are still passionately read. The writing, above all, is why we remember these poets, playwrights, and novelists today.
Here, escorted by the Muses, the guiding spirits of writers, are the lives of twenty writers, in all their comedy and tragedy. These most unquiet stories, never before collected in one volume, are offered now as a way of getting closer to the writers — and their writings.
--Kathleen Krull
Text copyright © by Kathleen Krull. Published by Harcourt, Inc. and reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.All “Lives of” artwork copyright © by Kathryn Hewitt. Published by Harcourt, Inc. and reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.
