Author of the Month: Rosemary Tonks
Selected by the Bookshop
Our Author of the Month for November is the poet and novelist Rosemary Tonks.
Tonks was a well-known and colourful figure on the London literary scene in the 1960s, publishing two collections of poetry and six novels, writing for the Observer, the Times, the New York Review of Books, New Statesman and Encounter as well as presenting poetry programmes for the BBC, but following a series of personal, medical and spiritual crises she withdrew from literary life entirely: as Brian Patten put it, she ‘evaporated into air like the Cheshire cat’.
It was only after her death in 2014 that Neil Astley of Bloodaxe brought her work back into public view, publishing her two poetry collections along with selected prose as Bedouin of the London Evening, and Vintage have now followed suit with new editions of four of her novels. The rediscovery has been a welcome revelation: as Stewart Lee writes in his introduction to The Bloater (‘A superb slice of sixties strangeness’), ‘Everyone could do with a bit of Tonks in their lives.’ If you're after a place to start in her work, try the utterly joyful Businessmen as Lovers.
From the publisher:
The "disappearance" of the poet Rosemary Tonks in the 1970s was one of the literary world's most tantalising mysteries - the subject of a BBC feature in 2009 called The Poet Who Vanished.After publishing two extraordinary poetry collections…
From the publisher:
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY STEWART LEE'Should The Bloater be republished? Oh God, absolutely, it's fantastic' Stewart LeeMin works at the BBC as an audio engineer, where she is struggling to replicate the sound of a heartbeat. At home,…
From the publisher:
Fun, witty and sun-soaked – literary cartwheels and seaside capers from the astoundingly brilliant mid-century writer who destroyed her own books.Great friends, Mimi and Caroline, are off on holiday to a beautiful Italian island.…
From the publisher:
Gut-wrenching, ingenious, absolutely hilarious, this is the rediscovered story of woman's desperate quest for freedom.'I'm thirty, and I'm stuck'Arabella is on an increasingly desperate quest for freedom from her overbearing father and her…
From the publisher:
Brilliantly funny and brutal, this is the story of one woman’s escape from the clutches of polite society, by the incredible mid-century writer who destroyed her own books.Sophie’s mother knows exactly how to needle her.…
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