Pull Devil, Pull Baker
About this ebook
Count Nicolas de Toulouse Lautrec de Savine was a hero in battle and a legendary lover in bed. A daring adventurer and a shameless swindler. A gambler ready to place the riskiest bets and a coward apt to flee his creditors in the middle of the night. Tsar of Bulgaria and a Chicago streetcar conductor. A racist, a chauvinist, and an Antisemite. Was he all of these--or none of them? This is the question Stella Benson struggled with as she tried to shape the Count's wild recollections into a coherent story. Which mattered more: the factual truth or the fictional truth? Her answer anticipates today's field of creative nonfiction ñ while telling a wild, funny, and unique tale.
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About the author
Born in Shropshire in 1892, Stella Benson published her first novel, I Pose, at the age of twenty-three. She went on to write six more novels, along with collections of poetry, short stories, and travel essays. Her fiction blends fantasy and cold-eyed realism, satire and tragedy and she remains one of the most original talents of her generation. She lived in America, Hong Kong, and Manchuria and died of pneumonia in Vietnam in 1933.
Julia Blackburn has written several non-fiction books including her memoir, The Three of Us: A Family Story, which was shortlisted for the J R Ackerly Award, and Thin Paths, which was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and the Ondaatje Prize. She has also written two novels: The Book of Colour and The Leper’s Companions, both of which were shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Her book Threads: The Delicate Life of John Craske won the East Anglian Book of the Year for 2015 and the New Angle Book Prize for 2017.
Nicola Darwood is a senior lecturer in English Literature at the University of Bedfordshire, with a particular interest in the works and lives of Elizabeth Bowen and Stella Benson.
