24 Literature Books & Bookmen


70087 A HISTORY OF LONGMANS AND THEIR


BOOKS 1724-1990: Longevity in Publishing by Asa Briggs


Written by a leading historian, both of the Victorian age and of communications, this


comprehensive study of publishing deals with the history of the oldest


commercial publisher in the United Kingdom, founded by Thomas Longman in London in 1724. Here is the inside story of the people who ran the firm, the principles they held to and their success as entrepreneurs. The story is told within the context not only of the book trade but also of national and international social, economic, intellectual and cultural history. Throughout its tenure as a publisher of important works, the firm has always been renowned for its educational publishing. Its lists have covered religion, law, medicine, science and sport and it has been a major publisher of dictionaries and reference books. From the start, its owners chose titles likely to have a long life. These included Roget’s Thesaurus, Gray’s Anatomy and Macaulay’s History of England. Early 19th century authors included Wordsworth, Southey, Scott and Tom Moore and, by the middle of the century, Longmans stood out as a publishing Leviathan whose late Victorian authors encompassed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson and H. Rider Haggard. More recently, Longmans has become increasingly international, with branches and subsidiary companies all over the world. A great history of a great publisher. A huge 587 pages lavishly illustrated in colour and b/w, with a list of abbreviations, note on sources, Longman Imprints, The Longman Family, Time Span 1724-1990 and Life Span: An Autobiographical Note. £70.33 NOW £22.50


70414 THE HOUSE OF HARPER: The Making of a Modern Publisher


by Eugene Exman In 1817, four young brothers opened a printing shop in downtown Manhattan. Two centuries later, their small enterprise has grown into one of the world’s largest and most successful publishing houses, now


known as HarperCollins. The Harper brothers and their sons and successors created a grand cultural institution that has become a cornerstone of literary heritage. Eugene Exman’s classic history, originally published in 1967, is the fascinating account of the birth and growth of a magnificent literary empire. Lavishly detailed, and filled with portraits of dynamic publishers and editors, with remarkable anecdotes about the legendary artists and authors whose works they championed and brought to the reading general public. Writers such as Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Winslow Homer, Henry James, Edna St Vincent Millay, Thomas Wolfe and Aldous Huxley are all featured here, yet this prestigious list is far from exhausted. More than the enthralling saga of a successful business venture, it is a story intertwined with the very shaping of American literature and culture. Exman has painstakingly archived copies of handwritten letters, which are also displayed here, vividly evoking the life and times of this modern publishing marvel. 326 pages, elegantly designed softback, including nostalgic black and white images. £15.99 NOW £6


70717 THE PARIS REVIEW


INTERVIEWS VOLUME TWO edited by Philip Gourevitch ‘The Paris Review’ interviews have always provided the best look into the minds and work ethics of great writers. When read together they constitute the closest thing to an intimate dinner with each writer in your own home. The best questions get the best answers and here is the very best way to steal a look into the minds


of the best writers and interviewers in the world. Graham Greene, James Thurber, William Faulkner, Gabriel García Márquez, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Robert Lowell, James Baldwin, Stephen King, Philip Larkin and Toni Morrison are among the writers of finely-crafted literature whose vivid self portraits are represented in this colossal literary event. A treasure of wisdom from the world’s literary masters, this volume only available at a bargain price. 512pp in heavyweight softback. £12.99 NOW £3.50


70467 FAULKS ON FICTION


by Sebastian Faulks The publication of Robinson Crusoe in 1719 marked the arrival of a revolutionary literary form - the novel. British writers were prominent in shaping the new type of storytelling, one which reflected the experiences of ordinary people, with characters in whom readers could not only find an escape, but a deeper understanding of their own lives. Yet the novel was


more than purely a reflection of British life. As Sebastian Faulks explains in this engaging literary and social history, it also helped to expound what it is to be British. By focussing not on writers, but on the people they gave us, Faulks not only celebrates the recently neglected act of novelistic creation but shows us how the most enduring fictional characters have helped to map the British psyche over the centuries. Chapters are divided into four categories covering lovers from Mr Darcy to the lascivious Lady Chatterley, heroes such as Sherlock Holmes and Tom Jones, villains from Fagin to Barbara Covett, alongside the snobbery of Emma Woodhouse and the austere Jeeves. A compelling and personal take on the story of how the dazzling creations of novelists helped shape the world we live in. Softback, 376pp. £12.99 NOW £4.50


69529 STET by Diana Athill


A stet is usually an instruction written on a proof sheet, after the Latin for ‘let it stand’. For 50 years, the author influenced many volumes of modern literature. She edited for André Deutsch, working with the writers V.S. Naipaul, Jean Rhys and Brian Moore among others. Widely regarded as one of the finest editors in London, Athill herself wrote Instead of a Letter and After a Funeral. This is an honest book about the process of making books, and the people involved. 250 page paperback.


£7.99 NOW £3


69541 DOGS IN POETRY by Tempus Publishing


Treacherous Towser, The Meddling Mastiff, The Turnspit Tort, The Mad Dog, The Miser’s Only Friend, A Dog’s Tragedy, The Battlefield Staghounds, Epitaph on a Spaniel, The Drowned Spaniel, On an Irish Retriever, Kaiser Dead and On the Elegies of a Lap-Dog are some of the ancient texts grouped together under the vague heading as referring to dogs. For wordsmiths who do not mind a few shocking sonnets, limericks and odes. 96pp, woodcuts. £9.99 NOW £2.50


68651 WINTER BLESSINGS: Thoughts and Poems to Warm Your Heart


by Patricia Scanlan


The author here shares her favourite poems, childhood recollections and personal stories that have inspired her spiritual journey. From early Christmases spent with excited siblings in the cocoon of their parents’ love to learning poems by rote on the hard wooden chairs of


the classroom, here are treasured extracts from one woman’s journey towards self-understanding and self- healing. 192 pages, line drawings. £11.99 NOW £2


70052 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: Poetry selected by Ted Hughes


Very collectable pocket Faber paperback edition. Ted Hughes (1930-1998) was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984 and his response as one writer to the work of another is doubly illuminating. From his original 1991 introduction he says, ‘It has never been easy to settle Shakespeare into the succession of Poets in English. The reason for the reluctance of anthologists to break into the sacred precincts of his drama and start looting portable chunks from the holy structures would make a curious chapter in the history of England’s attitudes to its national hero. Yet when the great speeches of his plays are taken out of context they are no more difficult to understand and appropriate than poems by other great poets. ‘To-morrow and to-morrow, and to-morrow’ is spoken by Macbeth as he faces the leafy army that will put an end to his spellbound, murderous career, it actually limits the use of the passage of a reader. The speech on its own is something else, read in less than a minute, learned in less than five, still wonderful, and a pure bonus hundreds of years later. 165 page paperback.


£4.99 NOW £2.50


70061 BLISS by Peter Carey The first novel by Peter Carey. For 39 years, Harry Joy has been the quintessential good guy. But one morning he has a heart attack in his front garden, and for nine minutes he becomes a dead guy. Although he is resuscitated, Harry will never be the same. The novel is an astonishing, darkly funny story which explores how death can be a necessary prelude to life. Peter Carey went on to receive the Booker prize for ‘Oscar and Lucinda’. 354pp in paperback. £8 NOW £2.50


100768 DIAMOND AS BIG AS THE RITZ AND OTHER STORIES


by F. Scott Fitzgerald An ominous fable about the pursuit of great wealth. Readers will be transported to a fabulous fantasy land of such opulence that its very existence has to remain a jealously guarded secret. Fatal consequences lie in store for ‘bona fide’ guests and uninvited visitors alike, while the


sybaritic luxury of the place is evoked in an effortless prose style which is quintessentially F. Scott Fitzgerald. Also featured in this volume are ‘The Cut-Glass Bowl’, ‘May Day’, ‘The Rich Boy’, ‘Crazy Sunday’, ‘An Alcoholic Case’, ‘The Lees of Happiness’, ‘The Lost Decade’ and ‘Babylon Revisited’. 240pp. Paperback. ONLY £2


70064 BURNING PERCH by Louis MacNeice Published in 1963, this collection turned out to be Louis MacNeice’s last published volume. On receiving that year’s Autumn Poetry Book Society Choice, MacNeice described the poems as ‘ranging from bleak observations to thumbnail nightmares’. The period detail masks a lyrical intensity and philosophical seriousness. 36 poems including October in Bloomsbury, The Pale Panther, Tree Party, Budgie and Goodbye to London among them. 48 page Faber softback collection of one of the giants of modern poetry. £8.99 NOW £3


100415 MOONSTONE by Wilkie Collins The Moonstone, a priceless Indian diamond which had been broguht to England as spoils of war, is given to Rachel Verrinder on her 18th birthday. That very night, the stone is stolen. Suspicion then falls on a hunchbacked housemaid, an Rachel’s cousin Franklin Blake, on a troupe of mysterious Indian jugglers, and on Rachel herself. The phlegmatic Sergeant Cuff is called in, and with the help of Betteredge, the Robinson Crusoe-reading loquacious steward, the mystery of the missing stone is ingeniously solved. 448pp. ONLY £2


Broadcasts, Statements and Book Reviews by Philip Larkin


‘Required Writing’ (a rag bag of fugitive scribbling as Larkin described it in a letter to a friend) was the last book to be published by Philip Larkin in his lifetime and was a collection of miscellaneous prose, 1955-1982. However a great deal of material was missing and this book attempts to make good and assemble later pieces - interviews, statements and book reviews. It carries


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Larkin’s first published review from the autumn of 1952 in Q, the literary magazine of Queen’s University Belfast. Apart from the transcripts of recorded and sometimes published interviews, here are the commissioned tributes to MacNeice and to Auden immediately after their deaths, brief notes he contributed to anthologies and perhaps, most importantly, the autobiographical essay he wrote in 1959 for the arts magazine Umbrella. The collection can be dipped into time and again and the pieces vary in length on such topics as How or Why I Write Poetry, The Living Poet, Open Your Betjemans and Recent Verse - Some Near Misses. The whole book reverberates with Larkin’s personality, genial glumness and lack of pretence. 391pp in paperback.


£12.99 NOW £4.50 69019 TENNIS WHITES AND


TEACAKES by John Betjeman This is a treasure trove of John Betjeman’s poetry, private letters and musings celebrating his England - a place of patriotic poets and seaside coves, village teashops and eccentric dons. Edited by Stephen Games, Betjeman writes on topics like childhood, school, fags and fires, Oxford, girls, friends, aristocrats and foreigners, decedents and writers,


comedy, Englishness, travel and the outdoors, fun palaces, London, Sundays, optimism, war, churches and clergy and more. 451pp in paperback. £8.99 NOW £2.50


23865 WAR AND PEACE by Leo Tolstoy Translated by Louise & Aylmer Maude. With an Introduction by Henry and Olga Claridge, University of Kent at Canterbury. War and Peace is a vast epic centred on Napoleon’s war with Russia. While it expresses Tolstoy’s view that history is an inexorable process which man cannot influence, he peoples his great novel with a cast of over five hundred characters. Three of these, the artless and delightful Natasha Rostov, the world-weary Prince Andrew Bolkonsky and the idealistic Pierre Bezukhov illustrate Tolstoy’s philosophy in this novel of unquestioned mastery. 1024pp, paperback. ONLY £4


24279 BEST SHORT STORIES KIPLING by Rudyard Kipling


Traffics and Discoveries contains three tales in which the subject matter ranges from unexplained mystery and the supernatural to an other-worldly house full of elusive but charming children. The Maltese Cat is Kipling’s well- loved story about a polo pony. Life’s Handicap reflects his experiences of India. A super selection of his most famous short stories. Paperback, 210pp. ONLY £2


23774 GREENMANTLE by John Buchan


Greenmantle continues the thrilling adventures of Richard Hannay. His mission; to neutralise and destroy a cunning and potentially devastating plot to foment Holy War in the Islamic Near East, which could ignite a powder keg and shake the balance of world power and the course of war. Hannay is assisted by intrepid companions: the sauve,


dashing, exotic and devastatingly romantic Sandy and the South African Boer Scout - Peter Pienaar. 240pp. Paperback. ONLY £2


58184 COMPLETE STORIES OF SHERLOCK


HOLMES by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle From 1891, beginning with ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’, Strand Magazine began serialising Arthur Conan Doyle’s matchless tales of detection, featuring the incomparable sleuth. The stories are illustrated by the remarkable Sydney Paget. Very attractive bound volume of 1408 pages with tipped in front cover illus. and gold tooling and hundreds of original illus from the Strand Magazine. The stories contained in this volume are A Study in Scarlett, The Sign of the Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Valley of Fear, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, His Last Bow and The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes. ONLY £12


69026 THE BAD SISTER: An


Emma Tennant Omnibus by Emma Tennant The Bad Sister and The Two Women of London retell two Scottish masterpieces of the macabre - James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner and Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, resetting their claustrophobic and terrifying examinations of duality in the contemporary environment of London through


female protagonists. 388pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £1.25


65535 PRISONER OF ZENDA and RUPERT OF HENTZAU by Anthony Hope


In The Prisoner of Zenda, Rudolf Rassendyll’s close resemblance to the King of Ruritania leads him into intrigue, romance and perilous escapades. Enmeshed in a plot by the villainous Duke of Strelsau to depose the King, Rudolf finds that both his life and his honour are imperilled. The sequel, Rupert of Hentzau, tells how Rupert (‘who feared neither man nor devil’) seeks to ruin his former love Flavia’s reputation and wreak vengeance on Rudolf. Events accelerate to a dramatically violent climax. 363 page paperback. ONLY £2


Paperback. 70063 FURTHER REQUIREMENTS: Interviews,


68026 THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James Penguin Classic with an introduction by Harry Levin which discusses the novel’s depiction and significance of Paris to the American mind. Concerned that her son Chad may have become involved with a woman of dubious reputation, the formidable Mrs Newsome sends her ‘ambassador’, Strether, from Massachusetts to Paris to extricate him. Strether’s mission however is gradually undermined as he falls under the spell of the city and finds Chad refined rather than corrupted by its influence and that of his charming companion, the Comtesse de Vionnet. 526pp. £8.99 NOW £1


e-mail: orders@bibliophilebooks.com 64452 KING SOLOMON’S MINES and ALLAN


QUATERMAIN by H. Rider Haggard King Solomon’s Mines tells of the search by Sir Henry Curtis, Captain John Good and the narrator, Allan Quatermain, for Sir Henry’s younger brother George. He has been lost in the interior of Africa for two years in the quest for King Solomon’s Mines, the legendary source of the biblical King’s enormous riches. The three companions encounter fearful hardships, fierce warriors, mortal danger and the sinister and deadly witch Gagool. Quatermain, with touches of humour and great excitement, tells the tale of their struggle through unmapped Africa in pursuit of unimaginable wealth. Paperback, 496pp. ONLY £2


58982 CASSELL’S HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE by Peter Conrad


One for every bookcase, here is the complete history of 1200 years of literature in the British Isles ending as it began with Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney. Peter Conrad’s approach is fresh and original, his method not encyclopaedic but rather a personal interpretation of the continuity of literary forms and the way in which major figures transform tradition. Literature is seen marrying the past with the present and generating the future. His book covers relationships between writers across the centuries and the recurrence of their images. At the same time he analyses that the idiosyncrasies of form and spirit which separate this vast body of writing from the classical prescriptions about literature. Covers Chaucerian epic and romance, Arcady and Faeryland, the history of the sonnet, Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, Pope, Wordsworth, Coleridge, romantic death, imagination and fiction, Dickens and the breeding of monsters, the last romantics and renewing the novel. A work vast in scope, 772pp in large softback. £16.99 NOW £1.25


69607 LIVERPOOL ACCENTS: Seven Poets and a


City by Peter Robinson A rare opportunity for seven poets all with a biographical link to the city of Liverpool, of different ages and affiliations, to introduce their poetry. The poets are Elaine Feinstin, Adrian Henri, Grevel Lindop, Jamie McKendrick, Deryn Reese-Jones, Peter Robinson and Matt Simpson. Visitors from Dickens to Hopkins described


Liverpool’s architectural magnificence and human miseries. 189pp in paperback. £9.95 NOW £2


65528 COMPLETE MAPP & LUCIA: Volume One by E. F. Benson


In Lucia in London, the prudish, manically ambitious Lucia launches herself into the louche world of London society. A perfect comic vehicle for Benson’s free-wheeling satire of salon societ, and of the dominant fads and movements of the 1920s, including vegetarianism, yoga, palmistry, Freudianism, séances, Post-Impressionist art and Christian Science. Includes Queen Lucia, Miss Mapp and Lucia in London. 632 page paperback. ONLY £2


65655 THE COMPLETE CANTERBURY TALES by Geoffrey Chaucer translation by Frank Ernest Hill


The Kelmscott Chaucer, produced in 1896 by William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, is one of the most beautiful books in the world, and Kelmscott engravings illustrate this edition of the Canterbury Tales in a modern English verse translation that stays close to the original text. The famous opening words introduce a cast of 29 motley pilgrims who agree to tell stories on their journey to Canterbury. The Knight opens with the romantic story of Palamon and Arcite in direct contrast to the earthy Miller, who tells one of the most famous bawdy stories of all time, where an old carpenter’s young wife is courted by two young men with painful and hilarious results. Illus by Edward Burne Jones and William Morris. 383pp.


£16.99 NOW £9.50


67242 CANDIDE OR OPTIMISM by Voltaire, introduced by Anne Rooney After being caught kissing the Baron’s daughter Cunégonde, gullible ingénue Candide is evicted from the castle where he lives to find himself wandering a world awash with disease, injustice and slaughter. Can he reconcile what he sees and experiences with the optimistic philosophy of his mentor Pangloss, that they live in ‘the best of all possible worlds’. 128pp with satin bookmark.


£6.99 NOW £2.50


69600 A GALLERY TO PLAY TO: The Story of the Mersey


Poets by Phil Bowen A warm, gossipy read which gives an unpretentious account of three good poets, by a poet writing about poets. In the summer of 1967, Penguin Books devoted one tenth of the highly prestigious Penguin Modern Poets series to three unknown and relatively unpublished young writers from Liverpool. The


book featured Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten and would have its own generic title, The Mersey Sound. Within three months it had sold out and the rest, as they say, is history. This book is an intimate account of the lives and careers of the poets themselves and also a critical survey of an unashamed celebration. Packed with memories for locals and writers interested in the era. 198pp in paperback with photos. 198pp in paperback. £12.95 NOW £3


68844 RAGGED TROUSERED


PHILANTHROPISTS by Robert Tressell The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a classic representation of the impoverished and politically powerless underclass of British society in Edwardian England, ruthlessly exploited by the institutionalized corruption of their employers and the civic and religious authorities. Epic in scale, the novel charts the ruinous effects of the laissez-faire mercantilist ethics on the men, women, and children of the working classes, and through its emblematic characters, argues for a socialist politicsas the only hope for a civilized and humane life for all. It is a timeless work whose political message is as relevant today as it was in Tressell’s time. For this it has long


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