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Lives of the Novelists: A history of fiction in 287 Lives by John Sutherland

by
April 2012, no. 340

Lives of the Novelists: A history of fiction in 287 Lives by John Sutherland

Profile Books (Allen & Unwin), $59.99 hb, 832 pp

Lives of the Novelists: A history of fiction in 287 Lives by John Sutherland

by
April 2012, no. 340

Here are some of the interesting things you may learn if you read John Sutherland’s Lives of the Novelists:

that James Fenimore Cooper was expelled from Yale for training a donkey to sit in the professor’s chair

that Evelyn Waugh once attempted suicide but was prevented from drowning by a passing shoal of jellyfish

that Fanny Burney underwent a double mastectomy without anaesthetic and lived to write a toe-curling description of what it felt like

James Ley reviews 'The Lives of the Novelists' by John Sutherland

Lives of the Novelists: A history of fiction in 287 Lives

by John Sutherland

Profile Books (Allen & Unwin), $59.99 hb, 832 pp

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