Imatge de l'autor

Diane Johnson (1) (1934–)

Autor/a de Le Divorce

Per altres autors anomenats Diane Johnson, vegeu la pàgina de desambiguació.

21+ obres 3,336 Membres 69 Ressenyes

Sobre l'autor

Obres de Diane Johnson

Le Divorce (1997) 1,117 exemplars
Le Mariage (2000) 446 exemplars
L'Affaire (2003) 351 exemplars
Lulu in Marrakech (2008) 259 exemplars
Persian Nights (1987) 163 exemplars
Dashiell Hammett: A Life (1983) 152 exemplars
Into a Paris Quartier (2005) 135 exemplars
The Shadow Knows (1974) — Autor — 111 exemplars
Lying Low (1978) 93 exemplars
Lorna Mott Comes Home (2021) 76 exemplars
Flyover Lives: A Memoir (1605) 67 exemplars
Health and Happiness (1990) 64 exemplars
Burning (1971) 51 exemplars
Le Divorce [2003 film] (2003) — Autor — 49 exemplars

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The Shining [1980 film] (1980) — Screenwriter — 568 exemplars
Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from the New York Times (2001) — Col·laborador — 446 exemplars
The Best American Short Stories 1993 (1993) — Col·laborador — 277 exemplars
Paris Was Ours (2011) — Col·laborador — 225 exemplars
The Best American Essays 1993 (1993) — Col·laborador — 121 exemplars
The State of the Language [1980] (1980) — Col·laborador — 82 exemplars
Literary Traveller: An Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction (1994) — Col·laborador — 54 exemplars
Simple Soirées: seasonal menus for sensational dinner parties (2005) — Pròleg, algunes edicions39 exemplars
Beach : Stories by the Sand and Sea (2000) — Col·laborador — 32 exemplars

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A chatty, unique biography of Mary Ellen Peacock Meredith. She was the wife of Victorian novelist George Meredith, daughter of Thomas Love Peacock. She left George Meredith and her loveless boring marriage, had a child with her lover, and then died. This biography tries to imagine what she might really have been like and tries to escape from the Victorian conventions that judged her.
 
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japaul22 | Hi ha 1 ressenya més | Nov 5, 2023 |
This was too slice-of-life-y for me and just seemed directionless with characters I could give or take.
 
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bookwyrmm | Hi ha 2 ressenyes més | May 5, 2023 |
Mary Ellen Peacock Needles Meredith was married to a man the Victorians considered one of the 'Great Men' of their time, the writer George Meredith. Meredith was someone Virginia Woolf in a later age considered "the most grown up of the Victorian novelists". This book is not about George though. It is about Mary Ellen, his first wife, one of those in the orbit of the famous, but not famous herself, and so destined to be a "lesser life".

Briefly, Mary Ellen was educated well by her father the writer Thomas Peacock. Married at twenty-three, two months later she was a pregnant widow. Four years later she met and married Meredith, who was seven years her junior. Thus began a life of drudgery, while George wrote. Ten years later, at thirty-seven, she had an affair with Henry Wallis and left the marriage. Pregnant once more, she found herself alone and dying of the kidney disease that would kill her at forty. She died alone and in debt, for as Johnson tells us Because of course, as every Victorian knew, if you have sinned you cannot, cannot possibly, expect to die surrounded by your family and friends. George had refused permission for their son to see his mother ever again, and relented only when it was too late.

Johnson describes George as "momentarily afflicted" by Mary Ellen's death. He wrote to a friend following a vacation when I entered the world again... I found that one had quitted it who bore my name: and this filled my mind with melancholy recollections which I rarely give way to. Thomas Peacock was devastated and never fully recovered.

What Diane Johnson has done is write a biography where there are no lesser lives. As she says, But we know a lesser life does not seem lesser to the person who leads one. She looks at as many of Mary Ellen and George's family and social circles as she can, and then fits them together in an inspired and delightful fashion, so demonstrating some of the complexity of Victorian life.

Johnson says she became interested in Mary Ellen ...resenting on her behalf the way she was always dismissed in biographies of George Meredith: the unhappy wife who had left him and, of course, died, as if death were the deserved fate for Victorian wives who broke the rules. She managed to track down the house where Mary Ellen and Henry's son had lived. The couple who had just inherited it let her go through the box room, and there she found letters from Mary Ellen to Henry. Fifty years later, this biography has certainly stood the test of time. Ironically, George Meredith himself hasn't fared as well.
… (més)
 
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SassyLassy | Hi ha 1 ressenya més | Dec 24, 2022 |
I read this book as "something light", and was surprised to find that, at least in the first half, had the depth of a literary novel. I expected that the story would continue to go along the carefully set out lines: a family conflict in which each character has a different opinion and interest, crises of conscience and goals.
Suddenly, as if the author is in a hurry to forge an ending, we tumble into sex scenes, illicit affairs, a hostage crisis, murder and all the other ingredients of a bestsellers. Did Johnson get a nudge from her editor to juice it up, or is she not able to sustain the literary level she started with? Yes, the book sold well and was of course made into a movie, because of all the sensatioanal action, but it lost its real meaning and its literary value.… (més)
 
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Marietje.Halbertsma | Hi ha 17 ressenyes més | Jan 9, 2022 |

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Estadístiques

Obres
21
També de
17
Membres
3,336
Popularitat
#7,660
Valoració
3.9
Ressenyes
69
ISBN
153
Llengües
12

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