Clare Carlisle

A Times Telegraph TLS and Prospect Book of the Year The best book I ve read on George Eliot John Carey Sunday TimesAn exceptional new biography that shows how George Eliot wrestled with the question of marriage in art and lifeWhen she was in her mid thirties Marian Evans transformed herself into George Eliot an author celebrated for her genius as soon as she published her debut novel During those years she also found her life partner George Lewes writer philosopher and married father of three After eloping to Berlin in 1854 they lived together for twenty four years Eliot asked people to call her Mrs Lewes and dedicated each novel to her Husband Though they could not legally marry she felt herself initiated into the great experience of marriage this double life which helps me to feel and think with double strength The relationship scandalized her contemporaries yet she grew immeasurably within it Living at once inside and outside marriage Eliot could experience this form of life so familiar yet also so perplexing from both sides In The Marriage Question Clare Carlisle reveals Eliot to be not only a great artist but a brilliant philosopher who probes the tensions and complexities of a shared life Through the immense ambition and da

*A Times, Telegraph, TLS and Prospect Book of the Year**Winner of the 2024 PEN/ Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography*The best book Ive read on George Eliot John Carey, Sunday TimesAn exceptional new biography that shows how George Eliot wrestled with the question of marriage, in art and lifeWhen she was in her mid-thirties, Marian Evans transformed herself into George Eliot - an author celebrated for her genius as soon as she published her debut novel. During those years she also found her life partner, George Lewes - writer, philosopher and married father of three. After eloping to Berlin in 1854 they lived together for twenty-four years: Eliot asked people to call her Mrs Lewes and dedicated each novel to her Husband. Though they could not legally marry, she felt herself initiated into the great experience of marriage - this double life, which helps me to feel and think with double strength. The relationship scandalized her contemporaries yet she grew immeasurably within it. Living at once inside and outside marriage, Eliot could experience this form of life - so familiar yet also so perplexing - from both sides.In TheMarriage Question Clare Carlisle reveals Eliot to be not only a great artist but a brilliant philosopher who probes the tensions and complexities of a shared life. Through the immense ambition and dark marriage plots of her novels we see Eliot wrestling - in art and in life - with themes of desire and sacrifice, motherhood and creativity, trust and disillusion, destiny and chance. Reading them afresh, Carlisles searching new biography explores how marriage questions grow and change, and joins Eliot in her struggle to marry thought and feeling.

A lyrical work of philosophy that draws from the work of Spinoza, George Eliot, biographers, memoirists, and more to examine how wisdom and goodness are transmitted by individual human lives.Transcendence for Beginners is an innovative book about philosophy and life writing, exploring how each practice might complement the other and so contribute to a greater understanding of human existence. Reflecting on writers and thinkers from Europe and Indiasuch as Benedict Spinoza and Sren Kierkegaard, Ramana Maharshi and Marcel ProustClare Carlisle examines how deep, genuine wisdom and goodness are transmitted by individual lives. She considers her own intertwined pursuits as a philosopher and a biographer, as well as her roles as a mother and a daughter. Animated by the spirit of inquiry and the desire to share its rewards, Transcendence for Beginners is a generous, enlivening work by one of todays most original thinkers.

Selected as a Book of the Year in The Times Literary SupplementThis lucid and riveting new biography at once rescuses Kierkegaard from the scholars and shows why he is such an intriguing and useful figureObserverSren Kierkegaard, one of the most passionate and challenging of modern philosophers, is now celebrated as the father of existentialism - yet his contemporaries described him as a philosopher of the heart. Over about a decade in the 1840s and 1850s, writings poured from his pen analysing love and suffering, courage and anxiety, religious longing and defiance, and forging a new philosophical style rooted in the inward drama of being human.As Christianity seemed to sleepwalk through a changing world, Kierkegaard dazzlingly revealed its spiritual power while exposing the poverty of official religion. His restless creativity was spurred on by his own failures: his relationship with the young woman whom he promised to marry, then left to devote himself to writing, haunted him throughout his life.Though tormented by the pressures of celebrity, he deliberately lived amidst the crowds in Copenhagen, known by everyone but, he felt, understood by no one. When he collapsed exhausted at the age of 42, he was still pursuing the question of existence: how to be a human being in this world?Clare Carlisles innovative and moving biography writes Kierkegaards remarkable life as far as possible from his own perspective, conveying what it was like to be this Socrates of Christendom - as he put it, living life forwards yet only understanding it backwards.

Transcendence for Beginners examines life writing and philosophy across certain European and Indian traditions, exploring questions of childhood and mortality, art and religion, beauty and loss. Informed by her experience as a biographer of Sren Kierkegaard and George Eliot as well as her own life, Clare Carlisle asks what one human existence can reveal, and how writing can transmit its truth. Intellectually stimulating and deeply moving, Transcendence for Beginners enacts a philosophy of the heart, told by a generous and compelling guide. This bold, enlivening work asserts Carlisles place as one of our most innovative thinkers.

La primera biografía de Kierkegaard al alcance de todos que hace justicia a la audacia, al carisma y a la importancia de este genio.«Aunque la vida pueda comprenderse mirando hacia atrás, debe vivirs

La primera biografía de Kierkegaard al alcance de todos que hace justicia a la audacia, al carisma y a la importancia de este genio. «Aunque la vida pueda comprenderse mirando hacia atrás, debe vivir