Best summer books of 2023: Literary non-fiction

The Swimmer: The Wild Life of Roger Deakin by Patrick Barkham (Hamish Hamilton)

Despite having published just one book during his lifetime — the instant classic, Waterlog — Deakin has become the unofficial patron saint of wild swimmers and his posthumous Wildwood inspired many of today’s nature writers. Barkham mines Deakin’s notebooks and interviews his family, friends and lovers to create this beautifully immersive biography.

The Marriage Question: George Eliot’s Double Life by Clare Carlisle (Allen Lane/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Carlisle’s magisterial biography explores the many facets of George Eliot’s radical life and work, examining her loving and supportive relationship with her already married partner George Henry Lewes and how she treats the theme of marriage in her novels.

Metamorphosis: A Life in Pieces by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst (Jonathan Cape)

An award-winning biographer of Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll and a professor of English literature at Oxford university, Douglas-Fairhurst has written an account of living with multiple sclerosis that is both deeply literary and painfully honest as it charts his journey into ill health.

Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia by Hadley Freeman (Fourth Estate/Simon & Schuster)

The journalist follows House of Glass with a moving and beautifully written memoir recounting her own experience of anorexia with clear-eyed honesty. Through interviews with patients and experts, Freeman surveys the wider societal pressures that underpin the illness.

All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything by Claire Harman (Chatto & Windus)

The great writer’s life was as brief and dramatic as one of her exquisitely wrought short stories — she died a century ago this year, aged just 34. Literary critic Harman paints Mansfield’s life through 10 of her stories, delving into each tale in turn and the life lived alongside it.

Shakespeare’s Book: The Intertwined Lives Behind the First Folio by Chris Laoutaris (William Collins/Pegasus Books)

To mark the 400th anniversary of the First Folio, the Shakespeare scholar examines the political and literary scene surrounding the collation and publication of the first collection of the Bard’s work. A richly detailed labour of love.

The Wife of Bath: A Biography by Marion Turner (Princeton University Press)

Turner — the acclaimed biographer of Chaucer — shifts her gaze to one of the writer’s greatest characters: Alison of Bath. This new “biography” explores the story of the medieval everywoman and examines the Wife’s long literary impact over subsequent centuries.

Summer Books 2023

All this week, FT writers and critics share their favourites. Some highlights are:

Monday: Environment by Pilita Clark
Tuesday: Economics by Martin Wolf
Wednesday: Fiction by Laura Battle
Thursday: Politics by Gideon Rachman
Friday: Critics’ picks
Saturday: History by Tony Barber

Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café