Writers and other artists also prove to be popular subjects every year. In September comes the U.S. release of Shakespearean: On Life and Language in Times of Disruption by Robert McCrum and Bright Star, Green Light: The Beautiful Works and Damned Lives of John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald by Jonathan Bate.

Two more writers are featured in October, with Burning Boy: The Life and Work of Stephen Crane by Paul Auster and Oscar Wilde: A Life by Matthew Sturgis. The focus in November turns to painters, with A Life of Picasso: The Minotaur Years: 1933–1943 by John Richardson, the fourth and last volume of that biographical series, and Magritte: A Life by Alexander Danchev.

A December release drawing advance praise is Making Darkness Light: A Life of John Milton by Joe Moshenska. January sees the completion of another multivolume biography, with Gary Scharnhorst’s The Life of Mark Twain: The Final Years, 1891–1910.