Alison Lurie

Vinnie Miller, a professor of children's literature, and Fred Turner, an assistant professor at the same American university, pursue their separate affairs in London during the same six-month period. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

Foreign Affairs

Two social researchers find themselves seduced by a small-town cult and the teenaged psychic priestess they have come to study

Imaginary Friends

'THE WAR BETWEEN THE TATES gently dissects the marriage between Brian Tate, a 46-year-old professor of political science, and his wife Erica. The Tates appear to have every advanatage- a stable, loving relationship, two attractive children, good friends, enough money. Then Brian begins an ill-advised affair with a female student, and the seams in the marriage come alarmingly apart. Lurie miraculously seems to understand men as well as she understands women; she has an astonishing rapport with the fragmented world of the teenager; she constructs her American academic backdrops with the craftsmanlike skill; she evinces rare wisdom, wit, and compassion; and she writes like an angel' Sunday Times

The War Between the Tates

Gathers stories by Walter de la Mare, Philip K. Dick, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Tanith Lee, Ursula Le Guin, Bernard Malamud, E. Nesbit, Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells, and Oscar Wilde

The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales

In sixteen spirited essays, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alison Lurie, who is also one of our wittiest and most astute cultural commentators, explores the world of children's literature--from Lewis Carroll to Dr. Seuss, Mark Twain to Beatrix Potter--and shows that the best-loved children's books tend to challenge rather than uphold respectable adult values.

The Subversive Power of Children's Literature

Don't Tell the Grown-Ups

The classic book about the clothes we wear and what they say about us. Even before we speak to someone in a meeting, at a party, or on the street, our clothes often express important information (or misinformation) about our occupation, origin, personality, opinions, and tastes. And we pay close attention to how others dress as well; though we may not be able to put what we observe into words, we unconsciously register the information, so that when we meet and converse we have already spoken to one another in a universal tongue. Alison Lurie, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, is our savvy guide and interpreter on this tour through the history of fashion. She provides fascinating insights into how changing sex roles, political upheavals, and class structure have influenced costume. Whether she is describing the enormous amount of clothing worn by early Victorian women or illuminating the significance of the long robes worn by aging men throughout history to connote eminence, her analysis is playful, clever, and always on target.

The Language of Clothes

Explores the darker underside of higher education, the problems of seduction and adultery, and the consequences of scandal on a small New England campus

Love and Friendship

Roman

Die Wahrheit über Lorin Jones

Poignant remembrances and sharp observations from the “most able and witty” Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Foreign Affairs (The New York Times). This engaging new collection of essays from the New York Times–bestselling novelist gathers together her reflections on the writing life; fond recollections of inspiring friends; and perceptive, playful commentary on preoccupations ranging from children’s literature to fashion and feminism. Citing her husband’s comment to her that “Nobody asked you to write a novel,” Lurie goes on to eloquently explain why there was never another choice for her. She looks back on attending Radcliffe in the 1940s—an era of wartime rations and a wall of sexism where it was understood that Harvard was only for the men. From offering a gleeful glimpse into Jonathan Miller’s production of Hamlet to memorializing mentors and intimate friends such as poet James Merrill, illustrator Edward Gorey, and New York Times Book Review coeditor Barbara Epstein, Lurie celebrates the creative artists who encouraged and inspired her. A lifelong devotee of children’s literature, she suggests saying no to Narnia, revisits the phenomenon of Harry Potter, and tells the truth about the ultimate good bad boy, Pinocchio. Returning to a favorite subject, fashion, Lurie explores the symbolic meaning of aprons, enthuses on how the zipper made dressing and undressing faster—and sexier—and tells how, feeling abandoned by Vogue at age sixty, she finally found herself freed from fashion’s restrictions on women. Always spirited no matter the subject, Lurie ultimately conveys a joie de vivre that comes from a lifetime of never abandoning her “childish impulse to play with words, to reimagine the world.”

From Autobiography to Zippers

Words and Worlds

A Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s “sparkling, smart” tale of an aging writer and his younger wife looking for new life—or a way to end it—in Key West (The New York Times). Every schoolboy in America knows the work of author Wilkie Walker, who won fame and fortune with his accessible nature books. But as he turns seventy, his renown is nearly gone. Now he sits up at night torturing himself with fears that his career was a waste, his talent is gone, and his body destroyed by cancer. His wife, Jenny, twenty-five years younger, can tell only that he is out of sorts. She has no idea her husband is on the verge of giving up on life. When Jenny suggests spending the winter in Key West, Wilkie goes along with it. After all, if you need to plan a fatal “accident,” Florida is a perfectly good place to do so. And when they touch down in the sunshine state, the Walkers find it’s not too late to live life—or end it—however they damn well please. The National Book Award–shortlisted author of Foreign Affairs Affairs, The War Between the Tates, and The Last Resort writes a “sparkling, smart . . . highly volatile” novel (The New York Times). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alison Lurie including rare images from the author’s collection.

A Novel

The Last Resort

In this “excellent” novel of “rare understanding” from a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, culture shock consumes a young Harvard couple in Los Angeles (The New York Times). When his mentor at Harvard University suddenly leaves for Washington, Paul Cattleman finds himself adrift in the wilds of academia. After losing his fellowship, he is out of work and one thesis short of a PhD. Rather than doom his career by taking what he considers to be an unsuitable job, he finds a temporary position at the Nutting Research and Development Corporation in Los Angeles, a city whose superficial charms signal an adventure. He is ready to make the best of his year out west among the beatniks and Hollywood hippies. The only thing holding him back is his wife. Katherine is a New Englander through and through, and as soon as she steps into the LA smog, she knows this transition will be a struggle. What Paul sees as fun, she considers vulgar. Bogged down by her allergies and crumbling marriage, she seeks out a shrink, who surprises and transforms her. While Los Angeles may be a cultural wasteland, this East Coast girl will find that West Coast pleasures can be quite a lot of fun. The National Book Award–shortlisted author of Foreign Affairs “writes coolly and wickedly” of freedom and self-discovery in this witty novel (The New Yorker). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alison Lurie including rare images from the author’s collection.

The Nowhere City

In the Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s “excellent” debut, a professor’s wife searches for liberation at the hands of a music instructor (The New York Times). Though born in New York, the men of Emmy Turner’s family have long found their spiritual home in the idyllic Convers College. Her father, brothers, and uncles entered the New England intellectual enclave as boys and came out men, ready to take on the challenges of the world. It is a pity, Emmy thinks, that women are not allowed to enroll. So when her husband, Holman, wins a place teaching at Convers, Emmy is thrilled to finally see what all the fuss is about. But by the time the first snow hits, she is bored, listless, and utterly out of love. Emmy’s search for pleasure on campus leads her to Miranda, a cocky young bohemian, and Will, a music teacher specializing in sexual composition. Emmy may not be paying tuition, but in her first Convers winter she will learn more than she ever expected. The National Book Award–shortlisted author of Foreign Affairs Affairs, The War Between the Tates, and The Last Resort writes a sharply observant and poignant debut novel. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alison Lurie including rare images from the author’s collection.

A novel of childlike wonder and adult discord during the Great Depression—by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Nowhere City. Dozing in the back seat of her father’s car, Mary Ann Hubbard is the happiest eight-year-old in the country. It’s 1935, and she and her parents are going to spend Fourth of July weekend at her headmistress’s farm in upstate New York. Joining them are the Zimmerns, whose daughter Lolly is Mary Ann’s best friend from school. While the two little girls frolic in the attic, endowing the rambling old house with wonder, creativity, and imagination, their parents are downstairs, mired in all the pleasure, pain, and occasional childishness of adulthood. As an affair threatens to tear the two families apart, Lolly and Mary Ann retreat farther into playtime. By the end of the weekend, the girls begin to realize that becoming an adult and growing up can be two very different things. The National Book Award–shortlisted author of Foreign Affairs gives a joyous glimpse into the innocence and irony of childhood during the Great Depression. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alison Lurie including rare images from the author’s collection.

Only Children

It all begins very properly. Two nice married couples and their children go on a hot sumer weekend to a country house owned by an unmarried lady named Anna. But - as Mary Ann, aged eight, says -'Anna likes kids' parties because she like kids better then grownups. ' And somehow it is not long before these grownups seem to be getting younger; at first hesitantly, then with enthusiasm abandoning the conventions of adult behavious sliding ever deeper into a world of childish games and sudden passions and violent quarrels. As the practical Mary Ann and her dreamy, sensitive best friend Lolly watch this change they are at first excited, then puzzled, finally frightened and angry. Even Anna finds it hard to return to the adult world. As for the children, they have become - each in their own way - suddenly rather older; which is, as you choose, a comedy or a tragedy.

Frederic J Whiton Professor of American Literature Alison Lurie

Bedlam breaks loose at the Tate household as a four-way conflict erupts between Brian and Erica and their two teenage children

Sleeping beauties? Not Clever Gretchen or Kate Crackernuts or Manka or any of the other young heroines in this wonderful collection of folktales. Active, witty, brave, and resourceful, these girls and young women can fight and hunt, defeat giants, answer riddles, outwit the Devil, and rescue friends and family from all sorts of dangers and evil spells. These stories and many others like them were gathered by scholars from all the countries of Europe, but are usually left out of the popular collections of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when women were supposed to be beautiful, innocent, and passive.

Clever Gretchen and Other Forgotten Folktales

An artists’ colony is a false paradise for a frustrated writer in this “witty, knowing, and perceptive” novel from a Pulitzer Prize–winning author (The New Yorker). The mansion is called Illyria, but for the writers and artists who flock there each summer, it’s a Garden of Eden where every artistic curiosity is explored. Away from family, friends, and ordinary responsibilities, the creative spirit can flower, nurtured by the company of other artistic souls. Janet Belle Smith’s husband doesn’t understand why she can’t write at home—or really, for that matter, why she must write at all—but for Janet, the reason is clear: Only in Illyria can she be herself. But as the writer mingles with her fellow artists—including a Marxist novelist, a Beat poet, and a wild-man sculptor—she begins to fear that the “real” her isn’t who she expected, and Illyria is not the peaceful kingdom it appears to be. This creative paradise is rotting from the inside out, and if Janet doesn’t move quickly, she’ll be trapped in the rubble when the walls come tumbling down. From the National Book Award–shortlisted author of Foreign Affairs, this humorous story “goes down pleasantly, like a glass of lemonade” (The New York Times). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alison Lurie including rare images from the author’s collection.

Real People

Are some of the world's most talented writers of children's books essentially children themselves? In this engaging series of essays, Pulitzer prize-winning author Alison Lurie considers this theory, exploring children's classics from many eras and relating them to the authors who wrote them, including Louisa May Alcott, creator of Little Women, and Salman Rushdie and his Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Dr Seuss and J. K. Rowling. In analysing these and many other authors, Alison Lurie shows how these gifted writers have used children's literature to transfigure sorrow, nostalgia and the struggles of their own experience.

Alison Lurie

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