Across three centuries, and much of Europe ā āHolmes writes beautifullyā¦ A masterly performance by the greatest literary biographer of his generationā The Oldie
In this kaleidoscope of stories spanning art, science and poetry, award-winning writer Richard Holmes confesses to a lifetimeās obsession with his Romantic subjects. This pursuit has taken him across three centuries, through much of Europe and into the lively company of many earlier biographers.
Central to this quest is a powerful evocation of the lives of women both scientific and literary, some well-known and others almost lost: Margaret Cavendish, Mary Somerville, Germaine de Staƫl, Mary Wollstonecraft and ZƩlide. He investigates the myths that have overshadowed the lives of some favourite Romantics: the love-stunned John Keats, the waterlogged Percy Bysshe Shelley, the chocolate-box painter Thomas Lawrence, the opium-soaked genius Coleridge, and the mad-visionary bard William Blake.
The diversity of Holmesās material is testimony to his empathy, erudition and enquiring spirit; and at times his mischievous streak. This Long Pursuit contains Richard Holmesās most personal and seductive writing yet.