Literatur 25e
revealing and entertaining miscellany. 492 pages with b/w illus, notes and two unpublished Poirot stories. $25.99 NOW £10
71913 READ THIS NEXT
by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark Subtitled ‘
...And Discover Your 500 New Favourite Books’. Divided into parts we begin with Love with Camille and Madame Bovary, Memoir including food books and travel books like Norman Lewis’ Naples ’44 and Out of Africa, Family including misery lit and African American books like the brilliant Barbara Gowdy’s Falling Angels and Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, a few history books like A Short History of Byzantium by John Julius Norwich, some sci- fi, drug books, politics, humour, mental illness, murder mysteries, great novels, Hollywood books, Vietnam War books, sports books, religion and 500 other suggestions. 432pp in paperback. £9.99 NOW £3
71915 SCOTLAND’S BOOKS: The Penguin
History of Scottish Literature by Robert Crawford
Stretching from the Medieval manuscripts of St. Columba’s Iona, the earliest surviving Scottish work, to the energetic world of 21st century writing by authors such as Ali Smith and James Kelman, this outstanding account traces Scottish literature and explores the cultural, linguistic and literary heritage of the nation over 15 centuries. With its new research it ranges from specially made translations of ancient poems to previously unpublished material from the Scottish Enlightenment plus interviews with living writers. A superb single-volume guide. 831 page paperback. Illus. £15.99 NOW £6
71917 SOURLAND: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates
Pumpkin-Head, The Story of the Stabbing, Babysitter, Bitch, Amputee, The Beating, Bounty Hunter, Probate, Donor Organs, Death Certificate and Lost Daddy are among the 16 short stories, previously uncollected, that explore the power of violence, loss and grief to shake the psyche as well as the soul. With lapidary precision, Joyce Carol Oates maps the surprising contours of ‘ordinary’ life, from a desperate man who dons a jack-o’- lantern head as a prelude to a most curious sort of courtship. Some unusual grammar and experimentation. 373pp in paperback. £14.99 NOW £2.50
71926 THE RIVERED EARTH by Vikram Seth This beautifully presented book contains four libretti written by the gifted Vikram Seth to be set to music by Alec Roth, together with an account of the pleasures and pains of working with a composer. Entitled ‘Songs in Time of War’, ‘Shared Ground’, ‘The Traveller’ and ‘Seven Elements’, they take us all over the world, from Chinese and Indian poetry to the beauty and quietness of the Salisbury house where the poet George Herbert lived and died. Four pieces of calligraphy by the author. 104pp.
£14.99 NOW £3.50
72644 THE CANTERBURY TALES: GEOFFREY CHAUCER:
A Retelling by Peter Ackroyd The greatest poem in the English language presented in a prose vernacular that makes it totally accessible to readers while at the same time preserving the spirit of the original. The renowned critic, historian and biographer Peter Ackroyd with his contemporary prose emphasises the humanity of
the characters, while at the same time explicitly rendering the very rude humour of Chaucer. Chaucer’s original book concerns a motley group of pilgrims who meet in a London inn on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket in Canterbury, and agree to take part in a story-telling competition to pass the time. Ranging from comedy to tragedy, pious sermon to ribald farce, heroic adventure to passionate romance, the tales serve not only as a mirror of the Middle Ages. 436 pages, illus by Nick Bantock. $35 NOW £6
71936 SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE: Writing on Ice Cream, Obama, Churchill and My Mother by Simon Schama
Professor Simon Schama CBE is an Edward Gibbon for our times. Schama presents Churchill as subscribing to the idea of a global conflict between good and evil and finally concludes that his convictions were not false. Another political analysis is Schama’s programme article for the Almeida production of Richard II in 2002. His article on Ruskin’s hatred of Dutch painting is a superb aesthetic meditation, and Martin Scorsese, Charlotte Rampling, Isaiah Berlin all get the Schama treatment. Food is another passion, and memories of his mother’s Jewish kitchen are intensely evocative. 428 page paperback, colour illus. £10.99 NOW £4
72016 BURIED IN BOOKS: A Reader’s Anthology by Julie Rugg
A wonderful compilation of more than 350 literary extracts, quotations and bon mots concerning every aspect of bookish behaviour. If you are an obsessive reader, stroke this book lovingly as we read diaries, memoirs, plays, novels and letters from authors Pepys to R. L. Stevenson, Nick Hornby to Lucy Mangan. 224pp in paperback. £9.99 NOW £3.50
72492 THE ALOE by Katherine Mansfield Born in New Zealand in 1888 Katherine Mansfield made her name as a master of stories and short fiction. Linda Burnell dreams, listless and distant, while downstairs her mother sets the house in order. Her husband Stanley, exhaustingly energetic, is at the office, but will return with eager and admiring eyes. Her children prepare lunch on a concrete step, her sister sings love songs to an imaginary young man. This is The Aloe, which Katherine Mansfield wrote to capture the recollection of her childhood. 88 page paperback. £7.99 NOW £3
Ernest Hemingway - a writer of genius.
72983 FIESTA: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway Paris in the 1920s - Pernod, parties and ex-patriot Americans, loose- living on money from home. Jake is wildly in love with Brett Ashley, aristocratic and irresistibly beautiful, but with an abandoned, sensuous nature that she cannot change. When the couple drifts to Spain to the dazzle of the fiesta and the heady atmosphere of the bull fight,
their affair is strained by new passions, new jealousies and Jake must finally learn that he will never possess the woman he loves. Visually magnificent, intense and powerful, Fiesta is the novel which established Ernest Hemingway as a writer of genius. A disquieting read, 216pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £4
72988 GREEN HILLS OF AFRICA
by Ernest Hemingway ‘I remember seeing the lion looking yellow and heavy-headed and enormous against a scrubby-looking tree in a patch of orchard bush and P.O.M. kneeling to shoot him. Then there was the short-barrelled explosion of the Mannlicher and the lion was going to the left on a run, a strange, heavy-shouldered, foot- swinging, cat run. I hit him with the
Springfield and he went down...’ Returning to his love of the African continent and its wildlife, Hemingway captures brilliantly the thrill and excitement of the hunt for big game. A classic of travel/autobiography here in 200 page paperback with line art. £6.99 NOW £3.50
72493 DARK FLOWER by John Galsworthy An early encounter with Joseph Conrad inspired Galsworthy to write and he went on to emerge as one of the most widely read novelists of his day. In 1932 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature and this classic, The Dark Flower, was first published in 1913. It opens in 1880 with its hero Mark Lennan an 18 year old undergraduate studying art at Oxford unaware that his tutor’s Austrian wife Anna, twice his age, has fallen in love with him. When she suggests that Mark join them on a holiday in the Alps, the scene is set for the first of the passionate involvements that will characterise the young man’s life. 269pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50
72496 MAURICE GUEST by Henry Handel Richardson
A study of erotic obsession and the will-o-the-wisp evanescence of genius, this first novel is set in the musical world of Leipzig in the 1890s. Its heroine Louise is an Australian student at the academy, of compelling appeal. Her affair with her fellow student Maurice Guest from England ruins his life and career, and yet he has no choice - her captivation of him is such that he becomes the author of his own downfall. First published in 1908 and set at a time when Leipzig was the capital of music in Europe. Explores possessiveness, jealousy, cynical and mercenary motives. 535pp in paperback. £14.50 NOW £4.75
72497 MESSER MARCO POLO by Donn Byrne This is a short love story based on the visit of Marco Polo to the court of Kubla Khan. The story tells the profound and unscholarly tale of Marco Polo’s courtship of Golden Bells, the daughter of Kubla Khan and of his journey from Venice, ‘Bride of the East’, to the courts of Cathay. The great explorer’s odyssey is handed down to us in the brogue of the old Ulster Scotch-Irishman, Malachi of the Glens, the Irish lilt evoking the age-old and universal appeal of storytelling. First published in 1921. 85 page paperback. £5.99 NOW £2.50
72498 MR PERRIN AND MR TRAILL by Hugh Walpole
Born in New Zealand in 1884, this novel was the author’s favourite and it was first published in 1911. Many books have been written about the horror of boys’ public schools, yet comparatively few venture behind the staff room door to examine the suffering of masters as well as pupils. In Moffatt’s, on the stormy coast of Cornwall, Hugh Walpole created an institution that would drive any man to murder. Its poisonous atmosphere derives from the crafty, bullying headmaster the Reverend Moy-Thompson who pursued a relentless policy of divide and rule. Known to the boys as ‘Pomfers’, Vincent Perrin is a gaunt, shabby, middle aged schoolmaster. 206pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50
71169 THE COLLECTED WORKS OF F. SCOTT
FITZGERALD by F. Scott Fitzgerald Few American novelists of the 20th century have stayed as modern as F. Scott Fitzgerald. He gave a name to his age, ‘the Jazz Age’, but his reputation has outlived it. Gathered here are the five novels he wrote in his relatively short career, together with a number of the many short stories he wrote between 1922 and his death in 1940. This Side of Paradise catapulted him to fame, its exposé of the manners and morals of a post- war generation becoming a cause célèbre. The Beautiful and Damned, a semi-autobiographical moral parable of a doomed marriage, affirmed Fitzgerald’s status as the spokesman for the generation of the 1920s. The Great Gatsby remains for many readers the definitive American novel of the 20th century, its eponymous hero a complex fictional portrayal of a romantic imagination at the mercy of a corrupt reality. Tender is the Night is an American Vanity Fair set on the French Riviera in the 1920s. Fitzgerald was working on The Last Tycoon at his death in 1940. Deluxe binding in royal blue cloth with gold tooling and inset colour plate on front cover. 1455pp.
ONLY £12
72586 A LITERARY PARIS: Hemingway, Colette, Sedaris and Others on the Uncommon
Lure of the City of Light by Jamie Cox Robertson
All written by master storytellers, these tales reveal in turn a turbulent Paris, a stylish Paris, an industrious Paris and a Paris of romance and loneliness. Who better than Émile Zola to give readers a lesson in the sophisticated yet sordid world his characters inhabit? Who better than Victor Hugo to capture the political climate within the city, or Anna Gavalda to remind us that love is hard to find, even strolling down Saint German des Prés in the city of romance? 180 pocket-sized pages. Illus in b/w. $16.95 NOW £3
23775 ISLAND OF SHEEP by John Buchan In this, his final adventure, Buchan’s hero Richard Hannay becomes embroiled in one of the most hazardous escapades of his life. Two men are honour bound to help the tormented Valdemar Haraldsen, and a third decides to mastermind the whole affair out of sheer love of adventure and a dislike of villains. In the final event, the fate of Haraldsen and his three redoubtable defenders rests on the undaunted bravery of two children. This thriller reflects a fundamental faith in the magnanimity of human nature. 208pp. Paperback. ONLY £1.50
23783 COMPLETE FATHER BROWN by G.K. Chesterton
Father Brown, one of the most quirkily genial and lovable characters to emerge from English detective fiction, first made his appearance in The Innocence of Father Brown in 1911. That first collection of stories established G.K. Chesterton’s kindly cleric in the front rank of eccentric sleuths. This complete collection contains all the favourite Father Brown stories, showing a quiet wit and compassion that has endeared him to many, whilst solving his mysteries by a mixture of imagination and a sympathetic worldliness in a totally believable manner. The Complete compenduim is 800pp. Paperback. ONLY £2
63849 SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE by William Blake
Blake (1757-1827) was born and raised in London where he was apprenticed to the engineer James Basire and studied at the RA. He was recognised as a major writer, painter and printmaker of the Romantic era, conveying his distinctive theology through several illuminated manuscripts including The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790). This edition contains some of Blake’s best loved poems. This edition reproduces the complete collection in the original illuminated manuscript form. ‘Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright, in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?’ Colour illus, 64pp. £6.99 NOW £2.75
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70547 LE MORTE D’ARTHUR: Collector’s Library Edition by Sir Thomas Malory with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley
This magnificent and evocative edition is based on that of 1893, which was decorated and illustrated by the then notorious young artist, Aubrey Beardsley. Combined with Malory’s majestic rendition of the
Arthurian legends these drawings create an atmosphere of enchantment. All the familiar stories are here: the wonders and marvels of a sword taken out of a stone, how Merlin counselled King Arthur, how Sir Lancelot was espied in the Queen’s chamber and what happened to both of them, how Mordred was slain and Arthur was hurt to the death. But there are also thrilling tales of people in and around Arthur’s court with whom readers who have read expurgated versions of this volume may not be so familiar, not least how Sir Tristram and King Mark ‘hurted each other for the love of a knight’s wife’, how Sir Tristram lay with the lady and how her husband fought with Sir Tristram. 23 x 30cm x 4.1cm, a vast 561 pages with gold-encrusted edges and silk bookmark, illustrated in b/w with glossary and the re-printed preface of William Caxton for the first edition of 1485. £29.99 NOW £22
71022 UNIVERSAL HOME DOCTOR by Simon Armitage
Armitage’s flesh-and-blood accounts of numerous personal journeys reads like a private encyclopedia of emotion and hell. The poems range from the rainforests of South America to the deserts of Western Australia, and all are set against the ultimate and most intimate of all landscapes, the human body. Here is a short poem entitled Splinter: ‘Was it a fall in pressure or some upward force that went to the head of that spikelet of glass and drew it through flesh, caused it to show its face so many years to the day after the great crash.’ 66 page Faber paperback. £8.99 NOW £2
71910 POISONED PEN: Literary Invective
from Amis to Zola edited by Gary Dexter Ordered chronologically in five sections, here are the Classical, Augustan, Romantic, Victorian and Modern periods grouped together and their opinions of one another can be more readily studied. Here is a tiny selection from the venom for the Victorian: G. K. Chesterton on Tennyson: ‘If Dickens is Cobbett’s democracy stirring in its grave, Tennyson is the exquisitely ornamental extinguisher on the flame of the first revolutionary poets.’ Addictive. 240pp in paperback.
£7.99 NOW £2.50
71899 CUPID AND PSYCHE by Apuleius translated by E. J. Kenney A beautiful princess has a husband she can never see. He visits her only in the dead of night. When curiosity overcomes her, she discovers who he really is, only to be cruelly abandoned. Now Psyche must begin an impossible task, to find her husband, even descending to the depths of Hell in her search. But she has earned the wrath of Venus by rivalling her in beauty, and the vengeful goddess will stop at nothing to destroy her. 92pp in paperback. £4.99 NOW £2.50
71206 COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE New Illustrated Edition Introduced by Dr Warren Boutcher An exquisitely produced 9½” x 12" quality hardback with colourful, smallish type but best of all pre-Raphaelite, rich glowing colourful illustrations, Shakespeare brought to life the history and mythology of the world with 38 plays, over 150 exquisite sonnets, and a number of fine long poems. By 1594, he played an active part in The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, with leading actors of the day William Kempe and Richard Burbage. The troupe became a royal and popular favourite, establishing a tradition of theatrical entertainment and which brought him part ownership of the group plus The Globe theatre, allowing him to retire in some comfort to Stratford in 1611, five years before his death. In 1623 the most authoritative collection of his plays, The First Folio was gathered together by two of his companions from The King’s Men, John Heminges and Henry Condell. This new illustrated edition is based on their collection and many subsequent skilled editors. Over 100 beautiful paintings, woodcuts and engravings. 464pp. £30 NOW £12.50
71338 UNDER THE SUN: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin edited by Elizabeth Chatwin and Nicholas Shakespeare
Bruce Chatwin was a cult writer of beautiful prose with an encyclopedic experience of people and places. Abandoning an art-historical career at Sotheby’s he switched to travel writing and set off for Afghanistan with Peter Levi, sending an advance taster of the book he was to write in a fascinating eight-page letter to his publisher Tom Maschler. He died from AIDS at the age of 48. In Patagonia was followed by The Viceroy of Ouidah, On the Black Hill and The Songlines. Salman Rushdie and Werner Herzog were close friends, and other literary figures who appear in this correspondence are James Lees-Milne, Gerald Brenan, Susan Sontag and many others. 554pp, photos. £25 NOW £5
71508 SELECTED LETTERS OF ALDOUS
HUXLEY edited by James Sexton Aldous Huxley wrote about 10,000 epistles. His distinguished correspondents include T. S. Eliot, Bertrand Russell, D. H. Lawrence and his patroness, Lady Ottoline Morrell. The first letter in this comprehensive collection dates from 1901. The last was written less than two months before his death. He joined the movement later known as the Peace Pledge Union and he also underwent a kind of religious conversion and, later, began to practise Buddhist and Hindu methods of meditation, hypnosis and yoga. It is not generally known that the author of Brave New World and Eyeless in Gaza waged a courageous battle with almost total blindness, and was unfit for service in WW I. 497 pages. £35 NOW £6
71909 PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS by Rudyard Kipling
Kipling’s first collection of short stories including the stories Lispeth, Beyond the Pale and In the Pride of His Youth. They tell of soldiers, wise children, exiles, forbidden romances and divided identities and were originally published for a newspaper in Lahore when Kipling was a journalist. They explore the barriers between races, classes and sexes and convey all the tensions and contradictions of colonial life. 292pp in paperback. £8.99 NOW £3
MISCELLANY Quality stationery and gift ideas
73078 BLACK LEATHER PHOTO KEYCHAIN
Approximately 3" square, stitched black leather pouch with a press stud, open out the photo wallet and insert two photographs inside the oval frame and secure to your bag or belt clip with either the key ring or the spring slip. Would make a lovely gift and is a very good quality item Bibliophile has imported from the USA where it is a top seller by mail order, the maker is Wellspring. ONLY £3.50
73080 E-LUMINATOR TOUCH:
e-Reader Book Light by M-Edge A neat and nifty little gadget designed for use with Amazon Kindle 3 and 4, the Nook and the Kobo electronic book reading devices. These have M- edge jackets onto which this super bright LED touch light will slot. Requires one AAA 1.5V battery. Graphite, flexible steel neck, low,
medium and high light intensities. Sleep timer, bulb will never need replacing. Also functions as a paper clip attachment for magazines and books. £14.99 NOW £6
72688 SQUARE RHODIUM PLATED SWAROVSKI CRYSTAL EARRINGS
by Art de France Made with genuine Swarovski crystals and
with small cleaning cloth and in presentation box, the earrings are rhodium plated and anti-allergenic, for pierced ears and with a safety spring clip instead of a butterfly which makes them more comfortable to wear. The design is rather Art Deco in its style - a rectangle ¾” x ½”, the largest crystal in the centre, and dozens of smaller medium sized crystals making up a shimmering oval and diamond effect design making them look very expensive and classically stylish. Use the cleaning cloth to buff them up and keep them sparkling. Matches the Dress Ring, code 72689. ONLY £10
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