True Nature

The Lives of Peter Matthiessen

Lance Richardson

$65

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Chatto & Windus
16 November 2025

Biography: literary; 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000; Travel writing

The first major biography of Peter Matthiessen, celebrated author of The Snow Leopard, founder of the Paris Review, towering figure of 20th-century American literature

'Fascinating' KATHERINE MAY, author of Wintering 'Generous and sensitive' ELIZABETH KOLBERT, author of The Sixth Extinction 'I can't imagine that a fairer, better researched, more elegant biography will come out this year' BENJAMIN MOSER, author of Sontag

Discover the many lives of Peter Matthiessen - writer, naturalist, activist, CIA agent, Zen master - in this kaleidoscopic biography of an American literary giant.

Author of The Snow Leopard, co-founder of the Paris Review and the only writer to have ever won the National Book Award for both fiction and nonfiction, Peter Matthiessen was a towering figure of twentieth-century American literary culture. He was also, briefly, an undercover agent for the fledgling CIA; an environmental activist; an advocate for Native American rights and California farmworkers; friends with the likes of Truman Capote and William Styron; and a daring explorer who visited every continent on Earth, scaling the Himalayas and floating through the Amazon on a balsawood raft.

Across these many lives, Matthiessen was always searching for what he called his 'true nature' - an enlightened state of being, without ego - and this spiritual quest ultimately led him, even as he inflicted great pain on three wives and multiple children, to the highest ranks of Zen.

Readers and critics have struggled to reconcile Matthiessen's extraordinarily varied achievements and literary output, which included everything from experimental novels to advocacy journalism. Now, for the first time, drawing on rich primary sources and hundreds of interviews, acclaimed biographer Lance Richardson pulls together the seemingly disparate threads of Matthiessen's story. With page-turning immediacy, Richardson illuminates how the writer's uncanny gifts enabled him to sense connections between ecological decline, racism and labour exploitation - to express, eloquently and presciently, that 'in a damaged human habitat, all problems merge'.

'A true masterpiece of literary biography' HEATHER CLARK, author of Red Comet 'Comprehensive, deeply researched and lucidly written' ADAM SISMAN, author of The Secret Life of John Le Carre

By: Lance Richardson
Imprint: Chatto & Windus
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 240mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 40mm
Weight: 750g
ISBN: 9781784743017
ISBN 10: 1784743011
Pages: 736
Publication Date: 16 November 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Lance Richardson's first book, House of Nutter- The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row, was a New York Times Editors' Choice and named one of the notable titles of 2018 by The Sunday Times, The Mail on Sunday, Esquire and the American Library Association. He has been awarded numerous fellowships, including a year-long residency at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, at the New York Public Library. He teaches on the MFA in Writing program at Bennington College, Vermont.

Reviews for True Nature: The Lives of Peter Matthiessen

True Nature is a magnificent achievement: an immense work of scholarship, synthesis and empathy, written throughout with verve and lucidity, which illuminates one of the most fascinating writerly lives of the past century -- ROBERT MACFARLANE A fascinating biography of a writer whose story aches to be told -- KATHERINE MAY, author of Wintering An irresistible portrait... Some of Matthiessen’s books read like an elegy to the planet, and this biography reads like an elegy to the last of the cool WASP men. It’s quite a story -- KATHERINE BUCKNELL, author of Christopher Isherwood Inside Out I can't imagine that a fairer, better researched, more elegant biography will come out this year -- BENJAMIN MOSER, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sontag Naturalist, novelist, Yeti-hunter, CIA agent—Peter Matthiessen led an exceptional life, and Lance Richardson does a wonderful job capturing it in all its complexity. True Nature is generous and sensitive, but at the same time clear-eyed about its outsized subject -- ELIZABETH KOLBERT, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction Comprehensive, deeply researched and lucidly written, this is the definitive biography of a complicated, fascinating and sometimes exasperating man -- ADAM SISMAN, author of The Secret Life of John Le Carre There is adventure, beauty, compassion, and deep insight on nearly every page. Compellingly crafted, doggedly researched, and elegantly written, True Nature is a true masterpiece of literary biography -- HEATHER CLARK, Pulitzer Prize finalist for Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath