Painter, poet, immigrant, rebel and global citizen, born in Lebanon, Kahlil Gibran emigrated to America as a young man in the 1890s, where he became a successful artist and prose poet. His book The Prophet of 1923 became a worldwide bestseller, selling 40 million copies and being translated into more than 40 languages. It is a series of 26 philosophical essays written in poetic English prose, and as a writer, Gibran encouraged a renaissance in Arab literature. As an artist he painted hundreds of canvases including portraits of artistic celebrities. Raised a Maronite Catholic, his spirituality and thought embraces elements of other traditions including Sufi mysticism and the Baha'i faith. From his childhood and spiritual roots in Mount Lebanon, to the city wilderness of urban America, from his apprenticeships in the creative circles of Boston, Beirut, Paris and New York to his art and activism for Greater Syria, Gibran crafted a religiously inclusive art that embraced a universal message, informed by Christian, Islamic and Judaic elements. Exiled between the worlds of the Middle East and the West, he defied boundaries to assert a vision of an underlying humanity and faith that all people can share. This richly illustrated biography draws on a lifetime of dedicated research to tell his compelling story and how his determination and talent broke down barriers to forge a new and fruitful life and career in a new homeland. A splendid tome of 524pp with many illustrations plus eight pages of colour plates including his beautiful oil paintings Family Scene and Ages of Women. 24.8 x 18.7cm x 5cm deep, this really is a whopping heavyweight tome complete with elegant pagemarker.

For this unusual literary study, Sir Jonathan Bate, expert on Shakespeare and much else, takes the star-crossed figures of John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald, separated by a century, and gives them a double biography in the tradition of the classical biographer Plutarch, using each one's life story to draw out illuminating similarities and differences. Both writers cherished an unconsummated passion for an unattainable woman, in Keats's case for his neighbour Fanny Brawne, for whom he wrote the celebrated sonnet "Bright star!". Poems such as "St Agnes' Eve" describe lovers who are divided by circumstance, a theme Keats shares with Scott Fitzgerald. For Fitzgerald the unattainable woman was Ginevra King, whom he met when he was 18 and a student at Princeton. In spite of expressions of intense devotion, Ginevra belonged to a different class and six months after breaking with Fitzgerald she married a wealthy businessman. In an early short story the student Horace Tarbox is seduced from his studies by the ethereal chorus girl Marcia Meadows, and Ginevra was also immortalised as the unattainable Daisy in The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald revered Keats and his novel Tender is the Night takes its title from Keats's Ode to a Nightingale, while Keats's own inspiration was Shakespearean, as can be seen in early poems such as Endymion. When Keats left school he was apprenticed to a surgeon and in spite of enjoying some success never wavered in his vocation: "I think I shall be among the English poets after my death," as he memorably wrote. When Keats nursed his brother Tom who died of TB he had a suspicion that he might follow, and his journey to Rome with Joseph Severn was made in the knowledge that he was unlikely to return. Bate's analysis of both writers' work is challenging and perceptive, the biographical detail fully integrated. 415pp, illustrations.

The author is a New Yorker, long resident in London, and best known for founding London's popular 'Poems on the Underground'. For her ground-breaking account on Schumann's life and works, drawing extensively on new material, she enlists her experience as a scholar and novelist and her lifelong love of Romanticism in poetry and music. Schumann held a passionate conviction about the art of music as 'food and drink' to his fellow musicians in their youth and that music must respond to the times and be forward-looking while building on the greatest works of the past. His music was closely interwoven with the key events of his life and the people he loved, especially his wife Clara, herself a great musician and artist. We have the enduring magic of Carnaval and Kinderszenen, the great song cycles, a wealth of chamber music, four symphonies, the Manfred Overture and many other orchestral and choral works. Begins with his life in Leipzig in the 1830s, his collapse and recovery Dresden December 1844-47 and his music directorship in Düsseldorf September 1850-53. His extraordinary artistic achievements must be set against recurrent illnesses, self-inflicted obstacles, and misjudgements as detailed in these pages. It is a ground-breaking account of the major composer whose life and works have been the subject of intense controversy ever since his early death in an insane asylum. Schumann was intensely original but worshipped the past - Bach and Beethoven, Shakespeare and Byron, Raphael and Michelangelo. He believed in political, personal and artistic freedom, but struggled with the constraints of artistic form. He turned his tumultuous life into music that speaks directly to the heart. Chernaik sheds new light on Schumann's sexual escapades, his fathering of an illegitimate child, the true facts between the courtship of his wife Clara and her monstrous father's opposition, his troubled relationships with fellow Romantic composers Mendelssohn and Chopin are freshly explored, and the full medical diary kept at Endenich Asylum, long withheld. A richly complex biography with nine illustrations including a beautiful watercolour of Clara at ages 17 and 34 and facsimiles of his musical scores. 352pp.

'The Hidden Heroines of British Anthropology' is the sub-title of this multiple biography of five women who arrived at the University of Oxford determined to study remote communities a world away from their own. Barbara Freire-Marreco travelled to New Mexico and Arizona in 1910 and 1913. Katherine Routledge voyaged to Easter Island in 1913-16 and to French Polynesia, south of Ecuador to Mangareva 1921-23. Maria Czaplicka journeyed from Paris through Moscow and Minusinsk to Golchikha in Siberia 1914-15. Winifred Blackman travelled from London to Cairo via Venice and Corfu in 1920-39. Beatrice Blackwood took a voyage from Port Said via Columbo, Sydney and through New Caledonia to Papua New Guinea to Melanesia in 1929 and also to the Solomon Islands 1929-30 and the Mandated Territory of New Guinea 1936-38. These are the voyages as mapped in colour on the endpapers and there are 28 further illustrations in the text showing the intrepid travellers taking tea with local officials or in a family group photograph on a rare visit home, travelling in a wicker carriage through Siberia or as students on an Archaeology summer camp. In the unchartered interiors of New Guinea amid uprisings along the Nile and on remote Easter Island, they found new freedoms and bore witness to now-vanished worlds. Through their work they overturned some of the most pernicious myths that dogged their gender, and proved that women could be explorers and scientists too. Yet when they returned to England they found only loss, madness and regret waiting for them. Following the lives of her subjects through women's suffrage, two world wars and into the second half of the 20th century, Larson's masterful biography is a revelatory portrait of a pioneering quintet who went on search of nomadic reindeer-herders who had never before seen a European woman or to work in the pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona or to live in the New Guinea interior with warriors who still made their weapons from wood and stone. Their travels were sensationalised in the press. These five women were not simply adventurers, they were intellectual pioneers, professional anthropologists who set out to study human cultural diversity as part of an academic community. On her return from Siberia, Maria Czaplicka was given a lectureship at Oxford, but she lost her job when the male lecturer she had replaced came home at the end of the war. Routledge married a man who shared her intellectual interests, but when their marriage fell apart, she had no recourse when he secured a High Court order to take control of her formidable assets. Anthropology offered all five women an escape and field work a temporary relief from the strictures of English society and in new cultures an opportunity to negotiate their own identity. 337pp, illus.

A seminal historical work, demonstrating the horror of slavery and the particular problems faced by female slaves, it is an autobiographical narrative of Harriet Ann Jacobs, a runaway slave who originally wrote under the pseudonym Linda Brent. Jacobs/Brent escaped slavery in the American South to become an abolitionist, writer and activist. It is difficult to read passages like the man procreating with his female slaves just to increase his stock and the casual cruelty of slave owners and traders, emotional and physical, and the absolute denial of humanity in slaves who were often told that they were not human, their families split up, selling children away from parents and siblings and raising slave children of the owner alongside his wife's children to be slaves to their siblings. There are however small acts of kindness shown by various people and Harriet gains freedom for herself and her children and act as beacons of hope in a dark place. First published in 1861. 255 page paperback reprint.

The American-British historian who specialises in the medieval world of the Mediterranean and the Middle East holds MA degrees from Oxford and University College London and here tells the untold story of the trailblazing dynasty of royal women who dared to rule the Middle East. In 1187, Saladin's armies besieged the Holy City of Jerusalem. He had previously annihilated Jerusalem's army at the Battle of Hattin, and behind the city's high walls, a last-ditch defence was being led by an unlikely trio including Sibylla, Queen of Jerusalem. They could not resist Saladin, but if they were lucky they could negotiate terms that would save the lives of the city's inhabitants. Queen Sibylla was the last of a line of formidable female rulers in the Crusader States of Outremer. Yet for all the books written about the Crusades, one aspect is conspicuously absent - the stories of women. Queens and princesses tend to be presented as passive transmitters of land and royal blood but in reality women ruled, conducted diplomatic negotiations, made military decisions, forged allegiances, rebelled and undertook architectural projects. Sibylla's grandmother Queen Melisende was the first queen to seize upon real political agency in Jerusalem and rule in her own right. She outmanoeuvred both her husband and son to seize real power in her kingdom, and was a force to be reckoned with in the politics of the medieval Middle East. The lives of her Armenian mother, her three sisters and their daughters and granddaughters were no less intriguing. This is a rich and fresh history and an impressive feat of research into Crusader history. 250pp, maps and illus., chapters include Morphia and the Four Princesses, Alice, the Rebel Princess of Antioch, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Constance of Antioch and Agnes and Sibylla. 2022 publication.

'Language, Power, and Alexander Graham Bell's Quest to End Deafness' is the sub-title of this revelatory and revisionist biography of the renowned inventor of the telephone, and powerful enemy of the deaf community. 'Deaf people who couldn't speak were often referred to as monkeys, or prehuman. I didn't know that the chief person behind the campaign to keep deaf children from learning ASL (American Sign Language) was the man who most people thought of differently, pleasantly, as the inventor of the telephone. Or that the movement he led would change forever what was expected of the deaf.' When Alexander Graham Bell first unveiled his telephone to the world, it was considered miraculous, but few people know that it was inspired by another supposed miracle - his work teaching deaf people to speak. He was the son of one deaf woman and husband to another, motivated by a desire to empower deaf people by integrating them into the hearing world. But he ended up becoming their most powerful enemy, waging a war against sign language and deaf culture that still rages today. The book tells the dual stories of Bell's remarkable, world-changing invention and his dangerous ethnocide of deaf culture and language. It also charts the rise of deaf activism and tells the triumphant tale of a community reclaiming a once-forbidden language. In 1863 at the age of 16, Bell first started work on his speaking machine, with a mechanical body like an organ with keys to depress different portions and exhale full words. His father Alexander Melville Bell was an elocutionist who was designing a universal phonetic alphabet, one that would be able to document any sound in any language. Melville called his alphabet Visible Speech, because it acted as an instructional guide on how to shape the mouth into different sounds. Each symbol was part of a code of where to put the tongue in the mouth, how to breath, how open the lips should be. Well researched, it is a timely reminder of the flawed humanity that lies behind so much of our technological innovation. 402pp.

A two-generation saga of the Manners family, Resolution shares the history of John Masters, Marquis of Granby, who famously led a cavalry charge during the Seven Years' War and his two sons - Charles, who was involved in Whig politics and reconciling with American rebels during their War for Independence, and Robert, who embarked on a naval career and became the post-captain of the Resolution as he commanded a major line-of-battle ship in the largest British fleet ever to operate so far from home waters up to that date. Admire the achievements of the brothers, from Charles balancing the debates of the influence of British 'king and Parliament' in America, but also the seeming increase in 'Royal authority' in Britain at the expense of British people's own 'life, liberty and property', to Robert's improvement of the armed, 74-gun Resolution under his command which he wrote about, claiming it 'to be the fastest sailer of any line battle ship or frigate in the West Indies.' Discover how John Masters, Marquis of Granby, became a hero after the Seven Years War because he was, unusually for the time, generous and concerned for his men, giving him the titles of 'mob's hero' and 'father of the army' and inspiring works such as 'The British Hero', which was written by Richard Rolt and set to music by William Boyce. Learn how Granby was passionate about fox hunting at Belvoir Castle and breeding racehorses at the family sitting Chevely Park in Cambridgeshire, and find out how he struggled in the political sphere as he would 'tremble like a woman' whenever he was about to public speak - despite holding an elected seat in the House of Commons. The lives of the two brothers are eloquently interwoven, whether writing about Charles' hesitation at ending the war with American rebels so promptly as it would blight his younger brother's chances at a rapid promotion, discussing how Charles' inheritance of land and title meant he could help young Robert accrue funds to live ashore in London and allow the brothers to grow closer, or reflecting on Charles' decision to stay at Cheveley Park to canvass on behalf of Robert's electoral prospects while he was at sea after 1780. Vivid images range from landscapes of an English man-of-war entering Portsmouth Harbour by Dominic Serres, 'A view of Belvoir Castle from the South West with Belvoir Hunt in Full Cry' by Thomas Badeslade in 1730, and 'The Battle of the Saintes', 12 April 1782 by Lieutenant William Elliott RN, to portraits including John Manners in the uniform of the Royal Horse Guards (the blues) by Sir Joshua Reynolds, a pastel commissioned by Granby of Charles aged eighteen by Hugh Douglas Hamilton in 1771, and Robert aged fourteen in midshipman's uniform by Hamilton completed in 1772 when Robert decided to join the Royal Navy. Family tree and glossary, maps, black and white and colour images, pagemarker, 482pp.

Acclaimed for his study of the Victorians, A. N. Wilson has written a page-turning biography of Charles Dickens, with whom he feels an affinity because they both had an intensely unhappy childhood. The story of Dickens being sent to work in a boot-blacking factory at the age of 12 is well known, but its horrors have not been exaggerated and child cruelty resurfaces again and again in his books. Dickens represented his marriage to Catherine Hogarth as incompatible from the start, though she bore him ten children. When his play The Frozen Deep, co-written with Willkie Collins, attracted audiences of 3000 including Queen Victoria, he decided to tour it with professional actresses instead of his sisters. This is how he met his young mistress Nelly Ternan, whom he established at a house in the suburbs and who probably bore him several children. Wilson investigates their relationship in detail, doing some sleuthing to speculate on the fates of their children and reconstructing an account of Dickens's seizure that led to his death, which Wilson suggests may have happened at Nelly's house. The contents of Dickens's pockets when he was brought home in a cab were £15 less than he had set out with, and Wilson speculates that he had made his weekly visit to pay Nelly the housekeeping money. Ironically, Nelly subsequently lied about her age to marry a clergymen many years her junior. Dickens's novels are sometime regarded as sentimental, and when he gave readings, audiences described the human sympathy that radiated from him. Yet if we contrast that with his acts of domestic cruelty and his writings in support of slavery, he was playing an elaborate role. Wilson has elucidated some of the mysteries in a fascinating subject, invoking the modern theory of the "false self" to explain his behaviour. 358pp. Remainder mark.

Immortalised as the dashing Patrice de Sauveterre in Nancy Mitford's novel The Pursuit of Love, Gaston Palewski was Nancy's lover in the war years when her marriage was disintegrating. Nancy's husband, the good-looking Honourable Peter Rodd ("Prod"), was universally regarded as unbelievably boring, a view Nancy shared. This lively and readable double biography recounts the intertwined lives of Nancy and Gaston. The six Mitford sisters are the stuff of legend and in her teenage years Nancy shared the Fascist sympathies of her sisters Diana and Unity, but at some point Nancy saw the light and during the war was requested by a friend at the War Office to infiltrate the Free French Officers' Club. De Gaulle had set up the Free French headquarters in London at 4 Carlton Gardens, and Gaston was de Gaulle's right hand man, escaping to England from Tangiers at the start of the French occupation. While De Gaulle would dine at the Ritz, the Connaught or the Savoy, Gaston preferred the Dorchester or the Travellers' club, though he wearied of London life and briefly returned to command the Free French forces in North Africa. Nancy met Gaston in 1942, both of them habitues of London's upper class bomb shelter, "the Dorch". He was everything a classic French lover should be, sensitive, someone who actually liked women, a good lover. After the war Nancy went to live in Paris, where she wrote prolifically, while her romance with Gaston gradually subsided into friendship. The affair provided Nancy with many memorable scenes in her novels, for instance the corridor-creeping at country house parties, and Nancy also drew on the experiences of her friends Diana Cooper and Diana Mosley, neither of whose marriages were monogamous. A fascinating portrait of an era. 290pp. Remainder mark, US import.