Instant Lives

A literary humor classic—fractured biographical moments from the lives of great writers and composers.

This is a collection of mostly imagined encounters between literary figures and their real or imagined family members, friends, and bitter enemies. In Howard Moss’s satirical voice and Edward Gorey’s twenty-five deadpan illustrations, we see Jane Austen wielding artful passive aggression and Sense and Sensibility galleys, the Alcott girls sculpting fudge, the rise of Emily Dickinson’s ruthl...