Title: Thomas Paine

Author: Craig Nelson

Publisher: Profile

Price: £20.00

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Tom Paine

Category: Biography

Craig Nelson's rich and vivid biography does justice to one of of the world's greatest thinkers, bringing him to life against the dramatic backdrop of the Revolutionary era and the Age of Enlightenment that he helped to shape. Nelson traces Paine's dramatic path from his years as a struggling London mechanic to his journey after fortune in the New World; from his early pamphleteering to his heroism as the voice of revolution on two continents; and from his miraculous escape from execution in Paris to his final years in America.

Title: Elizabeth Fry

Author: June Rose

Publisher: Tempus

Price: £12.99

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Elizabeth Fry

Category: Biography

Elizabeth Fry, mother of eleven children and a Quaker minister, is today seen as one of the most influential and enigmatic women in English history. Dismayed by the terrible prison conditions in the early nineteenth century, Fry drew the world's attention to the plight of incarcerated women, and became a living legend. A symbol of saintliness and virtue, 'Betsy' Fry was described in parliament as 'the genius of good'. Yet, during her lifetime this remarkable woman aroused hostility as well as admiration. Quakers found her 'worldliness' disquieting; not all of her fellow penal reformers approved of her unorthodox ways and her family felt neglected. As for Betsy herself, she was tortured throughout her life by self-doubt and anxiety and torn between the demands of her family, her religion and her own attraction to the 'high life'. June Rose's classic biography, based on Elizabeth Fry's private journals, reveals the 'saint' as she really was. She removes Fry from her pedestal and reawakens our interest in this complex, contradictory personality who defied the conventions of her age to fulfil her destiny.

Title: Elizabeth Robins: Staging a Life

Author: Angela V. John

Publisher: Tempus

Price: £12.99

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Elizabeth Robins

Category: Biography

Beautiful and talented, versatile and charismatic, Elizabeth Robins was one of the foremost actresses of her day. Yet, this enduring character was also an active and lifelong feminist, and her life as a suffragette saw her working alongside the Pankhursts in the Women's and Social and Political Union. A prolific novelist and playwright, her play "Votes for Women!" changed the nature of theatre by instigating suffrage drama. She became so well known for portraying characters from Ibsen's plays that she is credited with bringing the playwright's work to prominence. Born in America during the Civil War, Elizabeth nevertheless made her home in England, where she became acquainted with Oscar Wilde, Virginia and Leonard Woolf and Henry James. Oscar Wilde introduced her to the London stage, and before long she had become one of the most popular actresses in London with an assured entry into London's leading artistic and political circles. Encountering heartbreak and solitude (Elizabeth's husband George Park drowned himself in 1887), this remarkable actress became one of the most fascinating characters of the fin de siecle world. In this intriguing biography, Angela John examines Elizabeth's historical identity and, drawing extensively on her diaries, letters and reviews, provides a fascinating study of the social culture surrounding a woman who lived a life in the spotlight.

Title: Thomas Hodgkin

Author: Michael Wolfers

Publisher: Merlin Press

Price: £16.95

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Thomas Hodgkin

Category: Biography

Thomas Hodgkin (1910-1982) was an intriguing figure: public schoolboy, Oxford student, colonial official, Marxist, dissident and Oxford don. He left the colonial office after becoming convinced that Britain was not respecting the Palestinians. He travelled extensively in Africa and became one of the founders of the new discipline of African Studies, writing African Political Parties and Nationalism in Colonial Africa. His Vietnam: The Revolutionary Path was written in the midst of the American intervention. An unconventional scholar, he met many prominent political figures - Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara and Kwame Nkrumah among them. Wolfers records the successes and strengths as well as failures and weaknesses, candidly telling the story of Hodgkin's unusual 'marriage of three'. Drawing on an immense store of unpublished material in the Hodgkin family papers, Michael Wolfers provides the first detailed biography of Thomas Hodgkin - a remarkable human being and intellectual.

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