Writers Between the Covers: The Scandalous Romantic Lives of Legendary Literary Casanovas, Coquettes, and Cads

I admit it. I love gossip. Was it Alice Roosevelt Longworth who said "If you don't have anything nice to say about someone, come sit by me?" That's my philosophy. I'm ashamed of it, but there it is. And this is absolutely delicious gossip about literary figures. Not necessarily all secrets or unknown, but great fun to read. Divided into seven sections, from "Folie a Deux" to "This Side of Paradise," Norman Mailer to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, great little stories of the love lives of some of our greater and lesser literary folk. Truly a fun read!

Writers Between the Covers explores the scandalously licentious loves and lusts of history’s literary rock stars. Split into 7 parts, the chapters are introduced by trivia, quizzes, and even an online dating profile for Emily Dickinson.

-Tenneesee Williams claimed writing was his way of coping with his emotional issues and according to Gore Vidal, Williams “could not possess his own life until he had written about it.”

Not just a book of entertaining and wicked gossip, Writers Between the Covers connects the writer’s debauchery and romances with some of their greatest works. These episodes and manias shaped the authors as people and influenced the characters, stories and themes of the classic novels we all know and love. Charlotte show more Bronte turned down a marriage proposal even though she believed she wouldn’t receive any others. She refused to enter a passionless marriage for the sake of security and used the episode as inspiration for events in Jane Eyre. The chapter on Tolstoy explains the inspiration behind “Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in their own way.”

The stories offered illumination, entertainment and historical factoids such as when Agatha Christie mysteriously disappeared after her husband asked for a divorce, airplanes were used for the first time in a missing person search, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle enlisted the help a of psychic, and other authors got in on the action by writing articles for newspapers.

Not all the chapters focused on badly behaving authors. The relationships between Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf and their partners were full of concern, care and encouragement. The passionate, enduring love between the Barrett-Brownings and the Stevensons could warm the heart of even the most curmudgeonly cynic.

This is a great book for anyone who likes their scandals hot, their love enduring and their tabloids literary.

-Kingsley Amis’s wife wrote 1 fat Englishman. I fuck anything, on his back in lipstick while he napped poolside. show less

Short, dishy little chapters, perfect for bathroom reading. From the cover and the blurb, it seemed like it was all going to be about ladies' men, but equal time is given to homosexual and bisexual writers, which I appreciated.

If you personally know an author/writer DO NOT give their significant other this book for Christmas. With the exception of one or two it seems that writers cannot be (1) married, (2) monogamous or (3) happy, they do however derive great inspiration from the muse of disastrous love affairs. Touching on iconic writers from Agatha Christie and Lord Byron through to Hemmingway and Arthur Miller not one sheet is left unturned.

This book is broken into small chapters with whimsical titles like “All War, No Peace: Leo Tolstoy” and “Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know: Lord Byron”. The short chapters are a good idea for this type of book as it is not one that you plop yourself down and read in one sitting, it’s more of a sneak a peek when show more you have just a couple of minutes to read something.

An interesting read. show less

I found this book to be an easy and quick read because I enjoyed the subject. Very entertaining and eye-opening. I'm thinking that creative geniuses aren't playing with all their marbles, and that's on a good day! I would have liked to have seen dish about current authors, but I guess it's easier when they're dead. lol. Don't have to worry about any sticky lawsuits.

I absolutely recommend this one. Fun stuff although I felt like a gossipy busybody at a cocktail party!

This book was a lot of fun, very informative and very easy to read. Some of the stories I was familiar with, but many were new to me and even with the ones I was already familiar with I learned something new about them.
I felt that each romantic pair received ample space and coverage with just enough information to flesh each story out without dragging or feeling repetitive, in fact I feel the brevity of each section works to the books advantage as you never really get a chance to feel overwhelmed or to depressed (considering the primary trend with these authors was heartbreak and adultery) and things don’t feel repetitive.

Overall a fast, engaging and fun read that shows the human frailties of some of our most famous and influential show more authors as well as a small piece of the world and times they live in. show less

"Write what you know." Isn't that what they tell would-be writers? It seems a lot of famous writers practiced what they preached. They wrote about their wives, their ex-wives and their girlfriends, all thinly disguised as romantic characters in their books. And Shannon McKenna Schmidt and Joni Reardon expose all the juicy details in Writers Between the Covers. I was familiar with the sexual escapades of a few of the authors, but there were many that surprised me, and many that will surprise you.