A Life of My Own

A Life of My Own

Summary

A Sunday Times Top 10 Bestseller

In this remarkable memoir of love, loss and literature, acclaimed biographer Claire Tomalin turns her eye to another fascinating literary life: her own. She tells of a wartime childhood, Cambridge friendships and an early marriage to a brilliant journalist. After his sudden death in a war zone, Claire is left to raise their four children alone - all while leading a trail-blazing career in literary London.

A Life of My Own is the tale of a woman overcoming obstacles both rare and routine to live not only a good but also a meaningful life.

'A dramatic and absorbing survivor's tale' Hilary Spurling, Spectator

'Unexpectedly moving. Tomalin's story filled me with a kind of awe. Every page is valiant, every paragraph full of pluck' Rachel Cooke, New Statesman

'She has been tested in ways few women are. This memoir is a triumph' Valerie Grove, Literary Review

Reviews

  • You will find it hard not to be amazed and impossible not to be moved by the indomitable spirit which drives this memoir...She comes across like the heroine of a great novel...a hugely entertaining book
    Anthony Quinn, Guardian

About the author

Claire Tomalin

Claire Tomalin was literary editor of the New Statesman then the Sunday Times before leaving to become a full-time writer. Her first book, The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, won the Whitbread First Book Award, and she has since written a number of highly acclaimed and bestselling biographies. They include Jane Austen: A Life, The Invisible Woman, a definitive account of Dickens' relationship with the actress Ellen Ternan, which won three major literary awards, and Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self was Whitbread Book of the Year in 2002. In the highly acclaimed Charles Dickens: A Life, she presents a full-scale biography of our greatest novelist. She is married to the writer Michael Frayn.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more