Biography/Memoir from Lightholder Books

A Cadre School Life: Six Chapters by Yang Jiang. Translation by Geremie Barme with the assistance of Bennett Lee. 1984 Joint Publishing, first U.S. edition, 91 pages. Jiang was a scholar and translator, most notably of the definitive translation of Don Quixote in China, which at the time landed her in Henan to be "reformed through labor" during the Cultural… Read more about this item

A Lover's Discourse by Roland Barthes. Translated by Richard Howard. 1978 Hill and Wang, first U.S. edition, 234 pages. Barthes was a French philosopher, theorist, critic, and intellectual, who died in 1980 by laundry truck. According to the Washington Post: "In "A Lover's Discourse," he wrote that his investigation of love and desire "has been restored to its fundamental person,… Read more about this item

Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones by Carole Boyce Davies. 2008 Duke University Press, paperback edition, 311 pages. Jones was a "pioneering Afro-Caribbean radical intellectual, dedicated communist, and feminist," who was exiled to the UK in 1955 after a stint in federal prison. Here Boyce brings her biography to life. Condition: Like new. "Thus, one cannot… Read more about this item

Aphra Behn by V. Sackville-West. 1927 Gerald Howe, first edition, 92 pages. Part of the Representative Women series edited by Francis Birrell: "The series will give in biographical form a picture of female accomplishment throughout the ages." Includes a newspaper clipping of a correction that Sackville-West sent into the Times in 1961 about an article they ran on Aprha Behn.… Read more about this item

Seven Winters and Afterthoughts: Memories of a Dublin Childhood and Pieces on Writing by Elizabeth Bowen. 1962 Knopf, first thus, 273 pages. Bowen was an acclaimed Irish British novelist most known for Last September, and Death of the Heart. She was interested stifled lives, and expertly portrayed wartime London in Heat of the Day. Seven Winters details Bowen's first… Read more about this item

The Prime of Life by Simone de Beauvoir. 1962 World Publishing Company, first U.S. edition, 479 pages. The second installment of de Beauvoir's lifelong autobiography project, this volume covers her move to Paris, meeting Sartre, and developing as a writer. Condition: VG/G. Some wear to jacket, boards bowed a bit, pages clean. "To have a door I could shut was still the… Read more about this item

All Said and Done by Simone de Beauvoir. 1974 Putnam, first U.S. edition, 463 Pages. This is the last installment of de Beauvoir's autobiography, covering the last ten years of her life. Condition: VG/VG. Some fading to jacket spine, shelf wear. "My life: it is both intimately known and remote; it defines me and yet I stand outside it."

Marmalade Me by Jill Johnston. 1971 first Dutton Paperback Original, 316 pages. Johnston started as a dance critic, but over the course of fifteen years, her column for the Village Voice veered toward the experimental and poetic, a perfect artifact for the time and place. Those columns are collected here. Condition: Good+. Cover darkened, wear along spine, remainder mark, pen marks… Read more about this item