Biographies

About the Biographies collection

Biographies are found in the Biographies-General Magazine lounge on the 1st floor of the Central Library, between the Children's Zone and Fiction and Literature Zone.

The Biographies collection contains a select assortment of recent titles on popular, topical and historical people. Books on New Zealanders are shelved separately at the end of the main sequence.

What's new in Biographies this month:

Farwell to the East End by Jennifer Worth

This final book in Jennifer Worth's memories of her time as a midwife in London's East end brings her story full circle.

As always there are heartbreaking stories such as the family devastated by tuberculosis and a ship's woman who 'serviced' the entire crew, as well as plenty of humour and warmth such as the tale of Megan'mave, two women who shared the same husband! Other stories cover backstreet abortions, the changing life of the docklands, infanticide, as well as the lives of the inhabitants of Nonnatus House. We discover what happens with the gauche debutant Chummy and her equally gauche policeman; will Sister Monica Joan continue her life of crime?; will Sister Evangelina ever crack a smile? And what of Jennifer herself? The book not only details the final years of the tenements that but also of Jennifer's journey as she moves on from the close community of nuns, and her life takes a new path.

(Nieslen BookData Online)

More biographies

Biographies can also be found in the Non-Fiction and Fiction and Literature Living Rooms on the 1st floor, in the New Zealand and Pacific Islands Zone on the 2nd floor, and in Sound and Vision Zone on the ground floor.