michael walmer gawler south (147 results)

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Sarah Sinquier, living with her father and mother, a cathedral canon and his wife, in a town bursting with churches, is champing at the bit.She has a dream: the stage. Her dramatic sense is certainly acute. Shall she simply recite, as her father suggests? Or does life hold more? Throwing off caution, and a few choice treasures into the folds of her cloak for succour, she slips out one misty night for London, City of Love.Thence follow the struggles of an ingnue to gain the notice of the denizens of the theatre, who are themselves vulnerable votaries of fame. Gossip, parties, the Caf Royal - the right connection may raise its head at any time. Finally the boards heed her call, and Sarah's caprice is made good. Surely her name is now destined to be known? But the hand of fate moves unexpectedly. . .Caprice, first published in 1917, was Ronald Firbank's third novel. His much-vaunted eccentric concision is here at a high point, as is his exotic treatment of character and breathless conversational camp. These thespian exploits which delight in suggestions of scandal and expose them with audacious wit are the perfect Firbank concern. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Mary Webb was passionately devoted to revealing nature in all of its expressions and forms. She was diagnosed with Graves' disease at the age of 20, and in times of recovery she early noticed that her love of nature sped her healing. She also, in these sensitive times of contemplation and struggle, saw the natural world more tenderly and luminously; the urgencies of life were clearer. The Spring of Joy collects together a group of exquisite essays of appreciation, written with the idea of succouring 'the weary and wounded in the battle of life.' They are an extraordinary record of a woman's empathy, not only for the beauty, colour, form, delicacy and majesty of the natural world, but also for her fellow human beings who suffer. Mary Webb was passionately devoted to revealing nature in all of its expressions and forms. She was diagnosed with Graves’ disease at the age of 20, and in times of recovery she early noticed that her love of nature sped her healing. She also, in these sensitive times of contemplation and struggle, saw the natural world more tenderly and luminously; the urgencies of life were clearer.   The Spring of Joy collects together a group of exquisite essays of appreciation, written with the idea of succouring ‘the weary and wounded in the battle of life.’ They are an extraordinary record of a woman’s empathy, not only for the beauty, colour, form, delicacy and majesty of the natural world, but also for her fellow human beings who suffer.   Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Miss O'Brookomore became evasive. "I want you to repress yourself a little for a few days. Be more discreet." "Because ----" "Professor and Mrs. Cowsend have the rooms next ours." "Buz! Let them!" "Also, the Arbanels are here on their honeymoon.You never saw such ghosts on their rambles." "Who is Mr. Arbanel?" "He's very blas." Miss Collins clasped her hands. "I'd give almost anything to be blas." Young Mabel Collins, navely wily-wise before her very tender years, daughter of a dreaded and dull Yorkshire estate, needs experience - needs to get out into the world. At her first soire, she is introduced to the renowned eccentric biographer Geraldine O'Brookomore, who is just about to start out for Greece on the trail of her latest quarry, the romantic early traveller Catherine "Kitty" Kettler. It is decided that Mabel will be the perfect companion for her trip. Ronald Firbank's wildly accentuated style, brimful of strange exclamations and bursts of hilariously intense conversation, takes us with them as they move around the famous Greek landscape, meeting along the way many English and European expatriates with equally striking preoccupations and attitudes: "I heard the flowers scream as I picked them!" Mrs. Erso-Ennis was saying as she scattered a shower of blossoms upon the floor. Their whole escapade cannot help but be eventful: Across a vivid, a perfectly pirate sea, Salamis showed shimmering in the sun. Miss Arne held out arms towards it. "It's like a happy ending!" she breathed. There will be no such happy ending for their friend, the actress Miss Arne. Salamis' sea will be a witness to.what? An accident? A murder? Mabel, though, has something else on her mind: the dashing Count Pastorelli, disapproved of heartily by Geraldine, has been pursuing her. This, Firbank's second novel, with its hints of the Sapphic and the scandalous, was first published in 1916. The Glasgow Herald's reviewer said "Mr. Ronald Firbank's fiction bears a strong resemblance to the work of the Futurists in painting." He certainly was, in the oddness of his depiction and in his stripping-down of narrative and conversation to their bizarre bare bones, a master of the avant-garde well before his time. This edition includes an extra chapter, written much later in 1925. Miss O'Brookomore became evasive. "I want you to repress yourself a little for a few days. Be more discreet." "Because —-" "Professor and Mrs. Cowsend have the rooms next ours." "Buz! Let them!" "Also, the Arbanels are here on their honeymoon.You never saw such ghosts on their rambles." "Who is Mr. Arbanel?" "He's very blasA(c)." Miss Collins clasped her hands. "I'd give almost anything to be blasA(c)." Young Mabel Collins, naAvely wily-wise before her very tender years, daughter of a dreaded and dull Yorkshire estate, needs experience - needs to get out into the world. At her first soirA(c)e, she is introduced to the renowned eccentric biographer Geraldine O'Brookomore, who is just about to start out for Greece on the trail of her latest quarry, the romantic early traveller Catherine "Kitty" Kettler. It is decided that Mabel will be the perfect companion for her trip. Ronald Firbank's wildly accentuated style, brimful of strange exclamations and bursts of hilariously intense conversation, takes us with them as they move around the famous Greek landscape, meeting along the way many English and European expatriates with equally striking preoccupations and attitudes: "I heard the flowers scream as I picked them!" Mrs. Erso-Ennis was saying as she scattered a shower of blossoms upon the floor. Their whole escapade cannot help but be eventful: Across a vivid, a perfectly pirate sea, Salamis showed shimmering in the sun. Miss Arne held out arms towards it. "It's like a happy ending!" she breathed. There will be no such happ Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Saki made his name at the beginning of the Edwardian period with bitingly witty stories and political sketches, inheriting in many ways Oscar Wilde's vacated crown. His early main character, Reginald, was very like himself - a dissector of flabby respectability with a hilariously savage tongue. The first collected volume of Reginald stories was published in 1904. As the period drew on, publishing in a broad array of journals and magazines, Saki's range widened, baring the full extent of his genius for all to see: "Reginald sat in a corner of the Princess' salon and tried to forgive the furniture, which started out with an obvious intention of being Louis Quinze, but relapsed at frequent intervals into Wilhelm II." "Mrs Crick had a long family, and was therefore licensed, in the eyes of her world, to have a short temper." "Possessed of only moderate means, he was able to live comfortably within his income, and still more comfortably within those of various tolerantly disposed associates." "Vanessa began to arrive at the conclusion that a husband who added a roving disposition to a settled income was a mixed blessing. It was one thing to go to the end of the world; it was quite another thing to make oneself at home there. Even respectability seemed to lose some of its virtue when one practised it in a tent." "There's always a chance that one of them might turn out depraved and vicious, and then you could disown him. I've heard of that being done." "But, good gracious, you've got to educate him first. You can't expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school." Finally, in 1910, this book, the best of the stories of the intervening years, was pulled together, including one last Reginald story which gave this new volume its title, as well as some of the pieces on which the height of Saki's reputation still rests: the sensual, eerie gallows-delight of Gabriel-Ernest; the joyful late-shock nervous tension of The Reticence of Lady Anne, The Bag and The Mouse; and the worldly gleeful ghostliness of The Soul of Laploshka. Also included is the notable little 'playlet' A Baker's Dozen. Saki made his name at the beginning of the Edwardian period with bitingly witty stories and political sketches, inheriting in many ways Oscar Wilde's vacated crown. His early main character, Reginald, was very like himself - a dissector of flabby respectability with a hilariously savage tongue. The first collected volume of Reginald stories was published in 1904. As the period drew on, publishing in a broad array of journals and magazines, Saki's range widened, baring the full extent of his genius for all to see: "Reginald sat in a corner of the Princess' salon and tried to forgive the furniture, which started out with an obvious intention of being Louis Quinze, but relapsed at frequent intervals into Wilhelm II." "Mrs Crick had a long family, and was therefore licensed, in the eyes of her world, to have a short temper." "Possessed of only moderate means, he was able to live comfortably within his income, and still more comfortably within those of various tolerantly disposed associates." "Vanessa began to arrive at the conclusion that a husband who added a roving disposition to a settled income was a mixed blessing. It was one thing to go to the end of the world; it was quite another thing to make oneself at home there. Even respectability seemed to lose some of its virtue when one practised it in a tent." "There's always a chance that one of them might turn out depraved and vicious, and then you could disown him. I've heard of that being done." "But, good gracious, you've got to educate him first. You can't expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school." Finally, in 1910, this book, the best of the stories of the intervening years, was pulled together, including one last Reginald story which gave this new v Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Max Beerbohm's erudite wit and playful conceits represent the pinnacle of the Aesthetic period's capacity to laugh at itself whilst celebrating itself. This book was the author's first, and was presented by him (with tongue lodged firmly in cheek) as a 'collected works', an august memorial to a brilliant career. Included are all seven of his major early essays: Dandies and Dandies on the important distinction between true Regency foppery and its cruder modern notion; A Good Prince portraying the future Edward VIII as an already demanding baby monarch; 1880 and its very recent but already intriguingly faded charms; King George the Fourth rigorously reappraising the Regent; The Pervasion of Rouge celebrating the return of artifice after far too long a naturalcy; Poor Romeo! imagining the story behind a laughing-stock of the Regency stage; and Diminuendo charting the author's own course, firstly to disillusion, and then to retirement in outmoded greatness at the age of 23!Though these essays were justly acclaimed in their time, their magnificence is such that they also demand the highest accolades in ours, replete as they are with undiminished colour and spectacle, humour and barbed excellence. MAX BEERBOHM was born in 1872. He attended Merton College in Oxford, but left without completing his degree. He was a regular contributor to magazines (where these essays originally appeared) and a caricaturist of world renown. He married Florence Kahn in 1910. They moved to Rapallo in Italy and stayed there, apart from the period of the two world wars, for the rest of their lives. Knighted in 1939, Sir Max died in 1956. Max Beerbohm's erudite wit and playful conceits represent the pinnacle of the Aesthetic period's capacity to laugh at itself whilst celebrating itself. This book was the author's first, and was presented by him (with tongue lodged firmly in cheek) as a 'collected works', an august memorial to a brilliant career. Included are all seven of his major early essays: Dandies and Dandies on the important distinction between true Regency foppery and its cruder modern notion; A Good Prince portraying the future Edward VIII as an already demanding baby monarch; 1880 and its very recent but already intriguingly faded charms; King George the Fourth rigorously reappraising the Regent; The Pervasion of Rouge celebrating the return of artifice after far too long a naturalcy; Poor Romeo! imagining the story behind a laughing-stock of the Regency stage; and Diminuendo charting the author's own course, firstly to disillusion, and then to retirement in outmoded greatness at the age of 23! Though these essays were justly acclaimed in their time, their magnificence is such that they also demand the highest accolades in ours, replete as they are with undiminished colour and spectacle, humour and barbed excellence. MAX BEERBOHM was born in 1872. He attended Merton College in Oxford, but left without completing his degree. He was a regular contributor to magazines (where these essays originally appeared) and a caricaturist of world renown. He married Florence Kahn in 1910. They moved to Rapallo in Italy and stayed there, apart from the period of the two world wars, for the rest of their lives. Knighted in 1939, Sir Max died in 1956. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. The publication of this book in 1893 marked the first time that a translation into English had occurred from modern Finnish literature. These four deeply contrasting pieces from the pen of Juhani Aho, one of the founding fathers of that new national consciousness, are remarkable in their combination of rustic settings and strange psychological subtlety. The title-piece is both harrowing and humorous. Squire Hellman is an angry fiend of a man, bellowing constantly at his wife and servants, as well as all local dignitaries, and whipping his horses in a frenzy if he gets frustrated. One day, at a taxation court, he impatiently lets loose one too many times! The bailiff and a local captain decide that it's time he paid for his social crimes, and devise a cunning way to force him to recant. The other three pieces are sketches of rural life, delineating with unusual intensity psychological situations where it is the characters' mindset which creates the drama: When Father Brought Home the Lamp about the coming of technology and the modern age; Pioneers about how heartbreakingly Finland's wilds were settled; and Loyal about young love and the resisting of temptation. Juhani Aho wrote many of these subtle and revealing shorter pieces, giving them a name and category of their own - splinters. This edition includes the original introduction by the translator, R. Nisbet Bain, which not only introduces the author, but also gives a fascinating summary of Finnish literature as it stood at the fin de sicle. The publication of this book in 1893 marked the first time that a translation into English had occurred from modern Finnish literature. These four deeply contrasting pieces from the pen of Juhani Aho, one of the founding fathers of that new national consciousness, are remarkable in their combination of rustic settings and strange psychological subtlety. The title-piece is both harrowing and humorous. Squire Hellman is an angry fiend of a man, bellowing constantly at his wife and servants, as well as all local dignitaries, and whipping his horses in a frenzy if he gets frustrated. One day, at a taxation court, he impatiently lets loose one too many times! The bailiff and a local captain decide that it's time he paid for his social crimes, and devise a cunning way to force him to recant. The other three pieces are sketches of rural life, delineating with unusual intensity psychological situations where it is the characters' mindset which creates the drama: When Father Brought Home the Lamp about the coming of technology and the modern age; Pioneers about how heartbreakingly Finland's wilds were settled; and Loyal about young love and the resisting of temptation. Juhani Aho wrote many of these subtle and revealing shorter pieces, giving them a name and category of their own - splinters. This edition includes the original introduction by the translator, R. Nisbet Bain, which not only introduces the author, but also gives a fascinating summary of Finnish literature as it stood at the fin de siAcle Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Anna Parrish and Ruby Smith have been intimate friends from childhood. Anna is blonde, coolly interrogative, more traditionally beautiful and, in subtle senses, dominant. Ruby is dark-haired, more impulsive, less classically attractive and, in small but important ways, allows Anna to lead.Now young women, they plan a rendezvous at an artists' workshop in the country in central France. In the charged world as the sixties turn into the seventies, their lives are full of sensual imagining, the desire for freedom and questing ardour for what they haven't yet discovered. Having visited some friends briefly, Ruby heads to their meeting-place, only to discover that Anna has never arrived, and that the workshops are next to useless. Acting on surmise and rumour she follows the trail that she thinks Anna will have taken, to the south and the marshy wilds of the Camargue. There she meets Caleb 'Caley' Hanson, an American poet, friend of Ruby's friends, and Anna's happenstance lover for a single night. He is also looking for Anna, trying to understand why she left so suddenly. He and Ruby find some solace together, and perhaps the beginnings of something more, enveloped in the burning heat, pungent smells and rich tastes of a southern summer.But Anna isn't there. Where has she gone? Is there something sinister underneath her absence? Or is she simply following her own lead as usual? Ruby and Caley set off north again to try to find out, and drive headlong into a totally unexpected situation that challenges them to their utmost.In this sensuous, dreamlike work, first published in 1971, Rosalind Brackenbury probes the intense and complex territory of friendship and love as it ebbs and flows in young hearts and minds responding to the call of a brave new world. The precise command of seductive poetic evocation, which has since become the singular hallmark of her writing, is already astonishingly mature in this, her second novel. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. In the early nineteenth century, Juliette Ruyter, a beautiful young Belgian, and her protector, the noble Spaniard Aleo Bustamante, have arrived in Venice just before carnival. The mystery of their union is not clear, until Bustamante mentions that the notorious Leone Leoni is in Venice with his wealthy playmates. At news of this Juliette starts with shock, and her trembling reaction brings their troubles to the fore. Bustamante finally persuades her to tell him the whole story of her progress of ruin and degradation at the hands of one of the most infamous and charming scoundrels of his time. Will telling the story finally expiate Juliette's unhealthy obsession? Can she really evade a relationship that sometimes seems to her ordained by God, sometimes cursed by the Devil? This astonishing novel tells of innocence trapped by debauchery in a dazzling round of intrigue, impersonation and emotional deception. It casts itself across Europe in an intricate web of rumour and aspersion, at the centre of which lies the key question: exactly how genuine is Leoni's vaunted passion for Juliette? Leone Leoni was first published in 1835. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. James, Gilbert (illustrator). Paperback. The great M. R. James is the undisputed master of the ghost story. So what happened when he set his sights on writing a fairy tale? Nothing less than eerily bewitching magic.In this brilliant tale which takes the form of a letter to a girl called Jane, the unnamed main character, a man much like James himself, a studious and quiet gentleman, tells of his strange experiences recently. His five senses have been behaving oddly lately - he begins to hear whispering words in the rush of a stream; stopping for a rest, he dreams of a strange plant growing between tree-roots in a wood through which the stream runs. On waking, and led along by the stream's whispering, he finds that the place and the plant are indeed real. He eats part of it, and a very peculiar thing happens - suddenly he can see under the ground! Astonished and fascinated, he walks on. To his amazement, his new deeper vision enables him to spy, buried a few inches beneath the surface, a mysterious metallic box. Intrigued, he digs it up, but it seems completely sealed. Late that night, back in his room, just when the moon shines directly onto the box, cracks appear!Inside are five jars, with odd ancient writing on them giving tantalizing hints of what their contents might be able to do.Now begins a fascinating journey into a world none of us mere mortals can usually see: a world of weird enchantment, where all is not as it seems, where fantastic beauty is commonplace, where strange beings are hidden just out of sight everywhere, and yet disturbing danger lurks around every corner.Told in James' matter-of-fact prose, this journey into the unknown stirs rich colours into a cloud of imaginative fancy, stunningly creating an alternative world, just next to ours, which is both captivating and eerie. This edition contains 7 evocative illustrations by Gilbert James, which are precursors, in their combination of fine line-work and otherworldly atmosphere, to the work of Edward Gorey. Montague Rhodes James was born in 1862 at Goodnestone in Kent. He attended King's College, Cambridge, and later became its provost, leaving to take up the provost's position at Eton College.He published many scholarly antiquarian works, but quickly became known for his ghost stories, which are now recognized as the finest in the genre; of these, four collections were published. He died at Eton in 1936. The great M. R. James is the undisputed master of the ghost story. So what happened when he set his sights on writing a fairy tale? Nothing less than eerily bewitching magic. In this brilliant tale which takes the form of a letter to a girl called Jane, the unnamed main character, a man much like James himself, a studious and quiet gentleman, tells of his strange experiences recently. His five senses have been behaving oddly lately - he begins to hear whispering words in the rush of a stream; stopping for a rest, he dreams of a strange plant growing between tree-roots in a wood through which the stream runs. On waking, and led along by the stream's whispering, he finds that the place and the plant are indeed real. He eats part of it, and a very peculiar thing happens - suddenly he can see under the ground! Astonished and fascinated, he walks on. To his amazement, his new deeper vision enables him to spy, buried a few inches beneath the surface, a mysterious metallic box. Intrigued, he digs it up, but it seems completely sealed. Late that night, back in his room, just when the moon shines directly onto the box, cracks appear! Inside are five jars, with odd ancient writing on them giving tantalizing hints of what their contents might be able to do. Now begins a fascinating journey into a world none of us mere mortals can usually see: a world of weird enchantment, where all is not as it seems, where fantastic beauty is commonplace, where strange beings are hidden just out of sig Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Lucy and Philip are a progressive young couple in a period of extraordinary change - the late 1960s. Considerations of marriage and the purchase of their first house put them in the way of tradition, but they both feel the huge gap between themselves and the older generation. However, though they have the strong egos of the young, they are not foolish enough to think that they have nothing to learn.Having finally identified what will be their romantic new home in a remote village in Norfolk, they head to Philip's parents' suburban house to celebrate his mother's birthday. Here, all of Philip's buried antagonism towards his conservative and conventional family explodes in a series of sniping arguments which cast hurt in all directions and uncover old wounds. His relationship with his unfulfilled, fussing mother is particularly strained. Lucy can only look on as, aware as she already is of his frustrations, she sees Philip in a new light. Her questioning mood is bolstered by an unexpected visit to Mrs Fletcher, their elderly next door neighbour whose husband, also named Philip, died long ago in mysterious circumstances. Lucy feels increasingly trapped by the family's nervous irritability, the atmosphere of turbulence and her own uncertainties about the future.With concentrated precision and revealing poetic touches, Rosalind Brackenbury's first novel explores the clash of modes between those whose lives seem dedicated to a new truth and those whose epoch seems to be slipping away. In scenes of delicate sensory detail, she brilliantly pinpoints time taking its inevitable toll filament by filament, all the while exposing the one constant which can be relied upon - human frailty. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Max Beerbohm presents in More a collection of twenty brilliantly amusing essays. In a wide-ranging tour through both the inspiring and the ridiculous in English fin de siecle society, Beerbohm casts a veiled critical drubbing here, and a wistful though sprightly appreciation there, thoroughly entertaining us and accurately spearing his victims. Some of his most noted work appeared in this second little volume when it was first published in 1899. In "Punch" he asks us if the magazine's terrible dullness is not our own fault; in An Infamous Brigade the question is revolved as to whether the fire engine is not an infernal machine designed to dampen our pleasure; in The Blight on the Music Halls we must critically consider the relative merits of vulgarity and refinement; in Ouida the famed enthusiastic author's wild colour and occasional infelicities are justly celebrated; in Arise, Sir - -! the decorations offered to literary time-servers are the saucy target; in A Cloud of Pinafores the cult of childlike simplicity tempts the author's tongue, and sharpens its point. With razor-edged wit and a perfect ear for irony, Max Beerbohm delivers us in More twenty further reasons to call him the finest, and funniest, essayist of his era. Max Beerbohm presents in More a collection of twenty brilliantly amusing essays. In a wide-ranging tour through both the inspiring and the ridiculous in English fin de siecle society, Beerbohm casts a veiled critical drubbing here, and a wistful though sprightly appreciation there, thoroughly entertaining us and accurately spearing his victims. Some of his most noted work appeared in this second little volume when it was first published in 1899. In "Punch" he asks us if the magazine's terrible dullness is not our own fault; in An Infamous Brigade the question is revolved as to whether the fire engine is not an infernal machine designed to dampen our pleasure; in The Blight on the Music Halls we must critically consider the relative merits of vulgarity and refinement; in Ouida the famed enthusiastic author's wild colour and occasional infelicities are justly celebrated; in Arise, Sir - -! the decorations offered to literary time-servers are the saucy target; in A Cloud of Pinafores the cult of childlike simplicity tempts the author's tongue, and sharpens its point. With razor-edged wit and a perfect ear for irony, Max Beerbohm delivers us in More twenty further reasons to call him the finest, and funniest, essayist of his era. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Ouida had one of the most powerful radical conservative voices of the late nineteenth century. Known primarily as a colourful and eccentric novelist, she embodied in her forthright essays a much more piercing energy and single-minded verve. The majority of these ten essays were first published in the early 1890s in the pages of the Pall Mall Magazine, the Fortnightly Review and the North American Review, journals of serious cultural and political debate where she rubbed shoulders with commentators of all persuasions. Ouida's decidedly original point of view added fire to their bloodstreams. All manner of subjects interested her, whether it be what she saw as the phenomenal vulgarity and dangerous venality of modern society in The Sins of Society, Conscription and O Beati Insipientes!, or the nature-hating disasters of modern outdoor design and town planning in Gardens and The Passing of Philomel, or, most searchingly, the grotesque stupidities of the modern political and cultural life of her beloved adopted Italy in four passionate cries of outrage included here. Perhaps this book's most amused and cool-headed piece, The Failure of Christianity, strips away the humbug of organised 'religion' and demolishes its time-serving with panache. In all of these pieces Ouida takes no prisoners. Utterly independent in outlook, she is more than happy to heap malediction upon the heads of peasant and royal alike, to praise unfashionable viewpoints, and to strike a blow, as she saw it, for those few enlightened souls who were in love with freedom, inspired by history, architecture and art, enthused by nature and empathetic toward animals. For Ouida, these qualities of higher sensitivity were definitive of civilisation in its true sense, and horrendously lacking in late nineteenth century Europe. One can only wonder with a shiver what she would have made of our twenty-first century life. Ouida had one of the most powerful radical conservative voices of the late nineteenth century. Known primarily as a colourful and eccentric novelist, she embodied in her forthright essays a much more piercing energy and single-minded verve. The majority of these ten essays were first published in the early 1890s in the pages of the Pall Mall Magazine, the Fortnightly Review and the North American Review, journals of serious cultural and political debate where she rubbed shoulders with commentators of all persuasions. Ouida’s decidedly original point of view added fire to their bloodstreams. All manner of subjects interested her, whether it be what she saw as the phenomenal vulgarity and dangerous venality of modern society in The Sins of Society, Conscription and O Beati Insipientes!, or the nature-hating disasters of modern outdoor design and town planning in Gardens and The Passing of Philomel, or, most searchingly, the grotesque stupidities of the modern political and cultural life of her beloved adopted Italy in four passionate cries of outrage included here. Perhaps this book’s most amused and cool-headed piece, The Failure of Christianity, strips away the humbug of organised ‘religion’ and demolishes its time-serving with panache. In all of these pieces Ouida takes no prisoners. Utterly independent in outlook, she is more than happy to heap malediction upon the heads of peasant and royal alike, to praise unfashionable viewpoints, and to strike a blow, as she saw it, for those few enlightened souls who were in love with freedom, inspired by history, architecture and art, enthused by nature and empathetic toward animals. For Ouida, these qualities of higher sensitivity were definitive of civilisation in its true sense, and horrendously lacking in late nineteenth century Europe. One can only wonder with a shiver what she would have made of our twenty-first century life. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. In this extraordinary collection of nine stories, called in the original Czech Painful Tales (Trapn povdky), one of the masters of twentieth century fiction details human situations where the heartbreak and blockedness in life predominate.In Money a brother is trapped between warring and manipulative sisters; in Helena a mismatched pair come to further grief through misunderstanding; in Three a cuckolded husband's plan of attack is outplayed by his miserable wife; in The Shirts a thieving housekeeper uses emotional blackmail to gull her employer; in The Insult two brothers at odds come to an awkward understanding through the younger's crisis in love and work; in The Tribunal a disembodied voice tells dark truths to an uncertain officer trapped in army bureaucracy; in The Bully a wealthy businessman confronts his wife's lover, bringing on an existential crisis of his own; in Two Fathers a little girl is buried while her stepfather is mocked for his heartbroken love for her; and in At the Castle a young governess is at war with her own emotions, and finds herself trapped, not only in her situation, but also within the expectations of her times.With fierce spats and grim disunion, desperate reconciliations and exhausted resignations, Capek unravels the black spots in human nature with astonishingly consistent skill, lighting on what makes for trouble with unerring accuracy and occasional delicious satire. This collection was first published in Czech in 1921, and then in English in 1930. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. They were in the dogs' cemetery. Lady Castleyard tapped a little crooked cross. "One fears," she said, "that Georgia must have poisoned them all for the sake of their epitaphs." Welcome to one of the most distinctive styles in English literature. Ronald Firbank was an acute observer; his famous way of taking down extraordinary snatches of conversation, or pithy single sayings, on slips of paper, and then including them in his novels when an opportunity arose, anticipated modern experimental cut-up techniques by half a century. His was also a rare wit: Lady Barrow lolled languidly in her mouse-eaten library, a volume of mediaeval Tortures (with plates) propped up against her knee. In fancy, her husband was well pinned down and imploring for mercy at Figure 3. How eagerly, now, he proffered her the moon! How he decked her out with the stars! How he overdressed her! Coldly she considered his case. "Release you? Certainly not! Why should I?" she murmured comfortably, transferring him to the acuter pangs of 9.In this amazing first novel, published in 1915, well-connected Mrs Shamefoot is searching for some sort of immortality, and has decided that she requires a dedicatory stained-glass window to be designed and built into a cathedral of which she approves. Engendering consternation all around at her daring, one-eyed pursuit of her aim, and casting wide her net, she finally settles on the church in Ashringford, and events conspire with her: in a storm, some scissors are left on the scaffolding around it, the lightning catches them, and a great part of the wall comes crashing down. She does not miss the opportunity. With a huge cast of astonishingly overdrawn characters, utterings and situations, Firbank comedically depicts a social world made largely of women and their talk: ladies both voluble and shy; daughters both wild and domesticated; spinsters and widows with obsessions, or the cutting tongues made to spike them; servants whose opinions are as strong as their mistresses'. These all swirl around Mrs Shamefoot, approving, disapproving, commenting on each other and her in a turmoil of zesty snippets. The results are like nothing else.Ronald Firbank was born in London in 1886, the son of a wealthy MP and landowner. He attended Trinity Hall in Cambridge but left without completing his degree. His first book, containing two stories, was published in 1905, after which he published eight full-length novels, and more stories and plays. Ill with lung disease for most of his life, he died in Rome in 1926, at the age of 40. They were in the dogs' cemetery. Lady Castleyard tapped a little crooked cross. "One fears," she said, "that Georgia must have poisoned them all for the sake of their epitaphs." Welcome to one of the most distinctive styles in English literature. Ronald Firbank was an acute observer; his famous way of taking down extraordinary snatches of conversation, or pithy single sayings, on slips of paper, and then including them in his novels when an opportunity arose, anticipated modern experimental cut-up techniques by half a century. His was also a rare wit: Lady Barrow lolled languidly in her mouse-eaten library, a volume of mediaeval Tortures (with plates) propped up against her knee. In fancy, her husband was well pinned down and imploring for mercy at Figure 3. How eagerly, now, he proffered her the moon! How he decked her out with the stars! How he overdressed her! Coldly she considered his case. "Release you? Certainly not! Why should I?" she murmured comfortably, transferring him to the acuter pangs of 9. In this amazing first novel, published in 1915, well-connected Mrs Shamefoot is searching for some sort of immortality, and has decided that she requires a dedicatory stained-glass window to be designed and built into a cathedral of which she approves. Engendering consternation all around at her daring, on Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. In 1962, Jo Catterall, a young English woman, seeking freedom, visits Israel. On the boat out she meets Gilbert, a slightly older kibbutznik who has spent some unedifying time in England, and who is returning home with yearning, a little chastened. An uneasy relationship develops between them which is marked with both of their dispositions - his drop in confidence and contrasting maturity, her youthful wish to spread her wings and celebrate her independence.The story opens at a critical point of Jo's time in Israel, and then retraces all of her intriguing journey of discovery up to that point - her time with Gilbert initially, at his kibbutz in the arid south, in sight of the Egyptian border with its UN-manned sentry-boxes. Then, with their mismatchedness having taken its toll privately, Jo's resuming of the road, slowly heading towards Jerusalem. Along the way she meets other young travellers, and young Israelis, trying to live the new unconfined lives which are the promise of the 1960s. Finally, arrived in Jerusalem, it is the lecturer and political activist Zvi, whose existence, hemmed by potential violence, helps Jo to see the true nature of the danger in contested spaces, and the compromises people feel they need to make to survive in them.Into Egypt, Rosalind Brackenbury's third novel, is a complex meditation on freedom and its illusions, and on the intricacies of relationship, which illustrates, with rich sensuality and dreamlike intensity, a young woman's path in unearthing her own mandate in life. With later chapters set in London in 1967 and back in Israel on a return trip in 1972, it traces Jo's emerging strength, as she grows into herself, suffers reversals, and finds new realisations. Textures, both in the flavour of conversations and the turns of the mind, as well as in the world's colours and the moods of the body, are an acknowledged Brackenbury specialty; here, this rich language speaks at its extraordinary full pitch. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. The Celtic Revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries produced many fascinating works. Amongst the strangest was this unique mythic novel, first published in 1928.Keth is an immortal being, sojourning for a time down in our mortal world to alleviate her boredom. She casts a shadow of consternation wherever she goes, and her beauty has the capacity to enslave men. In rural Ireland she meets Cleran, a saint known for his love of the humble people, and a giver of invaluable help and spiritual succour to them. He is overwhelmed by Keth, and leaves his good works in order to be with her. She is coldly satisfied with his adoration.In what amounts to a fabular progress, Keth and Cleran tour the countryside, meeting the people, causing disturbance and fascination wherever they go, and keeping to the lonely roads and places for periods by themselves. Cleran never seems quite able to find a sense of peace, with regret and unease colouring his world, but he feels held fast.Keth has an immortal's minimal interest in the finer questions of mortal life. Why should she let go of her lover-saint just because the people need him? Until the tension proves too much, she will not make any move.The Story of Keth reads like poetry, with emotion and looming colour foregrounded in lyrical and moody swathes. It is an experience like no other in literature, and earned Blanche Girouard huge praise. This edition includes a biographical introduction by the author's son, Dr Mark Girouard, specially written for this edition. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. In the late 1930s young Bessie Drew is working in a biscuit factory in Sydney. Her family are not well off, and it feels like arguing is their only way of communicating. Working around her father's violent obstreporousness and her mother's pinched shrewishness, she and her siblings only enter the fray if they can't avoid it, thus further developing the Drew family's specialty of constant nag.Her mother's latest lodger, Maurice Wainwright, has pretensions of grandeur. He is an uncelebrated out of work photographer and would-be inventor, ill and down on his luck. He and Bessie somehow see something in each other, and she becomes his helpmeet. When he recovers and starts work on a new photographic studio, Bessie leaves the factory, drifting into the role of his assistant. Her level-headedness and no-nonsense attitude are valuable qualities for a dreamer like Maurice, and help to keep the creditors at bay.Slowly their relationship turns from mates to more. But Bessie, despite enjoying the freedom from factory drudgery, and Maurice's colourful friends, both political and arty, finds that a different kind of bondage becomes her lot: she's ultimately just a cleaner and dogsbody. And on the personal level, Maurice's egotism and slipperiness is proving hard to take; only a kind of resigned sympathy keeps her there.When Maurice's witty and eccentric associate Esther Gullick invites them to her simple bush hut in the mountains, little does Bessie know that the new horizons that expand for her there will cast several spokes in the wheel. Her yearning for something more in life sets the cat among the pigeons! It's going to be a bumpy ride.With downrightness and wit, Kylie Tennant used her memories of a past relationship to superb effect in this generously comic, bitterly phlegmatic novel of the struggles of youth to find its place in the world. Time Enough Later was her fourth novel, published first in the US early in 1943, and later in the UK and Australia in 1945. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. "It is the second step of a very brilliant beginning.You will be foolish if you miss this book." Punch "This book shows one thing very clearly, that Miss Benson is a force to be reckoned with." Pall Mall Gazette Stella Benson's subtle, beautiful and poignant second novel built upon the phenomenal success of her first, I Pose, which sported crazy wit and bright conceits. In the spring of 1916, we meet orphaned sister and brother Jay and Kew Martin in London. Jay (real name Jane Elizabeth) has run away from her strange, claustrophobic, interfering, well-heeled family to the simplicities of the 'Brown Borough' (otherwise Hackney), to live amongst its working-class people, to a job as a bus conductor, and to discover her own wild self. Kew is on recuperative leave from the War, and manages to find Jay in her humble new abode. She begs him to preserve her newfound freedom and not reveal her whereabouts to their family. But nothing can stop their former guardians, the eccentric writer Anonyma Martin and her husband, their dry cousin Gustus, from setting out to try to find her, using clues from Jay's letters. The problem is, Jay's letters have been fabricated from her extraordinary dream-filled imagination; she's set them on a wild goose-chase! Benson subtly reveals a lot more of her personal philosophy in This is the End. She speaks in an enigmatic, haunting and deeply felt way about the power of dreams and fantasies. She also adds two other new ingredients - poignantly sad observation of life, love, and the world, and revelatory cries of pain about the savagery and horror of the War, at the very centre of whose appalling cost she was writing, right at the crucial juncture between Victorianism and Modernity. First published in 1917, This is the End has the magnificent wit and brightness of mind which established Benson's reputation for originality, and combines them with a fresh strength of emotion and poetic expression which make for one of the most unusual and moving novels set in the home front of the First World War. "It is the second step of a very brilliant beginning.You will be foolish if you miss this book." Punch "This book shows one thing very clearly, that Miss Benson is a force to be reckoned with." Pall Mall Gazette Stella Benson's subtle, beautiful and poignant second novel built upon the phenomenal success of her first, I Pose, which sported crazy wit and bright conceits. In the spring of 1916, we meet orphaned sister and brother Jay and Kew Martin in London. Jay (real name Jane Elizabeth) has run away from her strange, claustrophobic, interfering, well-heeled family to the simplicities of the 'Brown Borough' (otherwise Hackney), to live amongst its working-class people, to a job as a bus conductor, and to discover her own wild self. Kew is on recuperative leave from the War, and manages to find Jay in her humble new abode. She begs him to preserve her newfound freedom and not reveal her whereabouts to their family. But nothing can stop their former guardians, the eccentric writer Anonyma Martin and her husband, their dry cousin Gustus, from setting out to try to find her, using clues from Jay's letters. The problem is, Jay's letters have been fabricated from her extraordinary dream-filled imagination; she's set them on a wild goose-chase! Benson subtly reveals a lot more of her personal philosophy in This is the End. She speaks in an enigmatic, haunting and deeply felt way about the power of dreams and fantasies. She also adds two other new ingredients - poignantly sad observation of life, love, and the world, and revelatory cries of pain about the savagery and horror of the War, at the very centre of whose appalling cost she was writing, right at the crucial juncture between Victorianism and Modernity. First publis Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. On first publication in 1958, The Daily Telegraph's reviewer said "Hugo Charteris' Europeans are neurotic, frightened, clinging to their fragmented patterns.the sheer intensity of the whole book is terrifying." In the wilds of British West Africa, in the 1950s, as colonialism is dying, a small group of whites administer and work a diamond mine, with African help. They are typical of their era in their casual racism, their preoccupation with British modes; the atmosphere can sometimes be likened to 'a Thames country club, circa 1938.' Around the mine are places where Africans from the surrounding area and neighbouring French territory also prospect for the valuable stones. This blasted landscape is the place from which the ferment of insurrection and dissatisfaction, which will bring about the colony's coming independence, arises. Porokorro, in particular, has been a troublespot lately. MacPherson, the local Provincial Commissioner, is nearing the end of his career. Wanting to spread a raft of calm upon these troubled waters, and wanting to show, from his intimate knowledge of the local people, that relations will never truly sour, he organizes what can only loosely be called a picnic - an outing to prove that all is well. With slowly coiling tension, Charteris loads the scene with many and varying points of view: Barber, the head of the mine, whose gregarious ease hides a calculated vision of exactly where the flashpoints might be hiding; Meyer, a diamond dealer, and survivor of Buchenwald, whose outward coolness hides a troubled marriage and a scarred psyche; Isobel, his much younger and seethingly restive wife, over on a visit; Warner, an idealistic journalist, who senses a story and is prepared to risk disaster in pursuing it; and Paul MacPherson, the Provincial Commissioner's young son out from school in Britain, who chases butterflies with his net, fascinated by the glimpse his father is giving him of a lifestyle which is slowly but surely ceasing to exist. The 'picnic' to Porokorro will change them all, and one of them won't come back alive. The spare, snakelike prose of Hugo Charteris' fourth novel explores the late colonial mindset with fascinating depth and unusual candour, creating a harshly vivid portrait of people trapped in the ending of an era. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. With his career at its zenith, known universally for his three volumes of magnificently witty stories, Saki in 1912 was ready to branch out. He decided to apply his genius to a single long narrative in a novel.The Unbearable Bassington sports his famous raillery at its highest pitch: ".she came of a family whose individual members went through life, from the nursery to the grave, with as much tact and consideration as a cactus-hedge might show in going through a crowded bathing tent."".I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart."".if one hides one's talent under a bushel one must be careful to point out to everyone the exact bushel under which it is hidden."This story introduces us to another of the author's louche young men, basking in the glow of society whilst also managing to undermine it stealthily. The handsome and infuriatingly nonchalant Comus Bassington and his mother Francesca are struggling along at the edges somewhat -- an advantageous marriage would certainly help. And Comus has met an heiress who appeals, Elaine de Frey. But he has a rival, his friend Courtenay Youghal, who is an up and coming young politician of great surface charm.Francesca is relying on Comus, and there's no accounting for what she might do if he doesn't come up trumps. It will not only be embarrassing to his and his mother's pride, it will also place a terrible strain on their resources.The tracing of not only the simmering and uproarious repartee, but also the implicit tragedy in the venal expectations of high society in The Unbearable Bassington introduced a new note in Saki's repertoire. Their combined power made for a book which was instantly celebrated as one of the great novels of its decade. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. It is the early 1950s. Lionel Spote, a young London publisher, has just discovered that he has inherited a Scottish estate. He is also a rather bemused devotee of the couch - the psychiatric one. Full to the brim with misgivings and uncertainty, he arrives in the far north to discover that his newly-acquired property 'marches' alongside that of a formidable woman, April Gunter-Sykes, who is staring-eyed and direct -- bluntly peculiar. It must be said that April's elusive daughter Laura seems far more appealing. He also meets Sir Duncan Fidge, the local MP, an ebullient storm of a man, who insists immediately on regaling him with his Great Plan to boost local productivity and employment. In the meantime, the estate has to be run, locals met, visits from Lionel's mother and his authors fielded and tolerated, an eccentric Pipe Major of the area's Cadets negotiated, not to mention the estate's bizarre housekeeper. An internecine war among the locals into which Lionel is swept up, centred around Sir Duncan's Big Idea, proves a stubborn and intractable problem. Lionel can only try to concentrate on Laura, and keep playing for all he's worth.Hugo Charteris' second novel is a magnificent farce of vying intentions set in a far northern Scottish county, with a motley of disparate characters fiercely protecting their own interests in a choppy sea of suspicion and bewilderment. The author's spare, intriguing and deadpan style embellishes this complex scenario with extraordinary flashes of insight and prodigious atmosphere. V. S. Pritchett said of this novel 'What a relief to laugh, to go in for spoofing and madness. I think this is one of the funniest novels I have read since the early Evelyn Waugh.' Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. At the outer western edge of Shetland, 20 miles off the shores of the mainland, lies a more solitary isle, less nestled into the group. Foula is the furthest afield of Shetland's own islands, to the outside world a place of mystery, wildness and, depending on one's point of view, scary isolation.But these fanciful perspectives can obscure what really happens there. In the early 1980s, one of the inhabitants decided to record the passage of a year of Foula life. Sheila Gear, a zoology graduate married to one of the island's crofters, with three young children and a myriad of other responsibilities, took time out to paint the reader a picture: of extraordinarily changeable weather ranging from searing icy windstorms to idyllic blooming quiescence; of the heartbreak of the deaths of loved livestock exposed to the harshness of wintry conditions, and the playful joy and excitement of the births of new generations of creatures in the spring; of the back-breaking work to till the land and marshal its bounty, managing plenty and lack with equal aplomb; of the distinct specialness of the landscape, its peaks and cliffs soaring many hundreds of feet into the air, and its wild bird inhabitants' habits and idiosyncrasies; and of the people who live there and what makes them tick - their frustrations at the lack of governmental investment in the island's infrastructure, their amusement at the foibles of incomers, their enmeshedness within such a small community, their devotion to their island home.Gear also gives us snapshots of the island's history - its characters, its economy, its shipwrecks, and the ebb and flow of its fortunes. Replete with the spirit of the island, and crammed with detail, Foula: Island West of the Sun is a remarkable record of survival and thriving in a place which is out of the ordinary way, in every sense. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. In two brilliant collections of stories, Reginald (1904) and Reginald in Russia (1910), which spanned the Edwardian period, Saki made his name as the predominant wit of the emergent twentieth century. As the new Georgian age dawned, his star was at its height: ".Sylvia, notwithstanding her name, was accustomed to nothing much more sylvan than "leafy Kensington." She looked on the country as something excellent and wholesome in its way, which was apt to become troublesome if you encouraged it overmuch."".I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing it is that they never try to talk English."".You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed."In this volume, first published in 1911, he introduced a new titular character, albeit with a huge resemblance to both Reginald and himself. Clovis Sangrail is unsurprisable, louche in conversation, thoroughly determined to avoid the banal. In this magnificent collection, he observes the ludicrous with an unswerving eye, and undermines it with rapier-like skill, while gleefully and covertly turning all to his advantage. Saki had announced himself as the brief Edwardian flame burnt itself out; with the brilliance of this volume he made it plain that he had no intention of fading away. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Edward R. Williams is in a terrible state. Set adrift in a world gone awry, he drinks far too much. His hearing is bad, accentuating his emotional numbness; he has felt lost and wandered the world since the end of the war, reeling from the death of his beloved brother Jimmy.Pitched up in San Francisco, he has vaguely befriended an arty set. Rhoda Romero, Avery Bird, Banner Hope and Melsie Stone Ponting are all somewhat bemused by him, but they are far too busy and self-involved to find him more than a temporary hindrance, and Edward's curdled Englishness doesn't invite their sort of intimacy. At one of their parties he meets another English wanderer, Emily Frere, whose brightness, intensity and love of life fascinate him. She is assistant to the famous journalist Tam McTab and travels the world with him and his wife.As Edward's addled mind turns fascination to obsession, he learns that the McTabs and Emily have left for China. With no money and very little ability, Edward must find a way to earn a passage to China too. But will he be able to find Emily in that enormous country if he makes it there? Will his anti-social personality trip him up? Edward sets himself the task of his life, and it is no sure thing that such a poor man can succeed in such a brave quest.The Poor Man was the novel which took Stella Benson's career beyond its whimsical beginning, replacing her early wide-eyedness with a more knowing and international flavour, whilst retaining her extraordinarily original power and wit. As the post-war scene shook itself into modernity with anger, flippancy and a sense of impatience, Benson recorded the damage, and the change in mood. She created, in phenomenally vivid colours, a heartrending portrait of a wounded soul left thrashing about in a state of bewilderment, starred with moments of desperate humour, which was published to huge acclaim in 1922. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Stella Benson's debut was one of the most acclaimed of her generation: "One of the brightest, most original, and best written books that have come my way for a long time," wrote Sir Henry Lucy. "As the mature work of an experienced author it would have been a remarkable achievement: being 'the first book of a new writer' it is an astonishing performance,' hailed the reviewer from The Daily Graphic. In this incredibly original satirical novel we are introduced to the two main characters as The Gardener and The Suffragette, and so they remain throughout. Inhabiting a huge first chapter of 302 pages and then only a tiny second one of 8 pages, these two are wildly comic and disturbingly real at one and the same time. Benson's cheekiness in commenting directly to the reader on the progress of the story, the saltiness of her slightly cynical view of the world and its ways, and the strange newness of the tale she was telling meant that, on first publication in 1915, the literary world's curiosity was most certainly piqued.We begin by following The Gardener in a shambolic and romantic walking journey, as his inexperience leads him a merry dance through youth's many poses, away from his shabby boarding house in London, toward the coast. Along the way, he falls for The Suffragette, but she rejects him. The problem is, she likes him, despite herself. But is she capable of traditional love? And so we also follow her, led through not only her political convictions, but also all the less certain parts of her personality, about which she is blindingly honest. Can she fit love for The Gardener into her busy passion for women's rights? Does she really want to? She thinks probably not. And yet.Both of them are the beautifully mixed, endearingly crazy creations of Benson's unusual talent, which spins its fizzing wit on a sixpence, creating absurd comedy and wise satire out of thin air. Delivering, in its fools' progress, one of the significant debuts of its era and one of the funniest novels of the suffragette movement in one package, I Pose was hailed immediately as a classic of a new kind, establishing Stella Benson as a fresh genius of the human spirit, in all its poses.STELLA BENSON was born at Lutwyche Hall on Wenlock Edge in Shropshire in 1892. Having escaped restrictive family life, she worked in London in the suffrage movement and in social work in the poorest areas. She married Shaemas O'Gorman Anderson in 1921, and travelled the world with him to his many diplomatic posts, mainly in China. She wrote eight witty, highly individual, acclaimed novels, as well as stories, travel essays and poetry. Consumptive for most of her life, she died in Hongay in French Indochina in 1933, at the age of 41. On her death, Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary "A curious feeling: when a writer like Stella Benson dies, that one's response is diminished; Here and Now won't be lit up by her: it's life lessened." Stella Benson's debut was one of the most acclaimed of her generation: "One of the brightest, most original, and best written books that have come my way for a long time," wrote Sir Henry Lucy. "As the mature work of an experienced author it would have been a remarkable achievement: being 'the first book of a new writer' it is an astonishing performance,' hailed the reviewer from The Daily Graphic. In this incredibly original satirical novel we are introduced to the two main characters as The Gardener and The Suffragette, and so they remain throughout. Inhabiting a huge first chapter of 302 pages and then only a tiny second one of 8 pages, these two are wildly comic and disturbingly real at one and the same time. Benson's cheekiness in commenting directly to the reader on the progress of the story, the saltiness of her slightly cynical view of the world and its ways, and the strange newness of the tale she was telling meant that, on first Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. As the war drew to a close, its heavy toll weighed mightily on Stella Benson's heart. Any means of escape was viable, as long as it took her truth with it. Living Alone, the most fantastical and delightfully wayward of her first three novels, was her exhausted mind's perfect project for the times. In the dark days of 1918, Sarah Brown, who is a little tired and dispirited, and also not completely well, is minding her own business, doing what she ought in helping the poor in her rundown part of London. She is the much put-upon dogsbody of a small committee designed to assist needy cases. At the latest dull meeting with Mrs Meta Ford, Lady Arabel Higgins and the Mayor there is an extraordinary interruption as a youngish woman storms into the room and hides under the table. It eventuates that she is being chased for the capital crime of stealing a bun from a baker's shop! This crazy meeting is a critical one in Sarah's life. The young woman, whose name is never quite clear, turns out to be something quite unexpected - a witch. Sarah forms a bond with her, fascinated by this explosion of magic in a desperately hurt and drab world. As she meets the witch's outr associates and talks the kind of wildly honest sense with her that has seemed missing for so long, she finds herself on adventures involving forbidden sandwiches, soldiers who are wizards, meeting ghosts in an air raid shelter, and cloudfights with an evil German witch, all punctuated with her witch's little paper packets of magic, whose effects tend to turn dreary people into fascinating beings. This intriguing novel of great tenderness and smart wit also betrays the sense of enervated tension that was prevalent in Britain after five long years of horror. It is a plaintive cry for peace, beauty and humanity in a world made brutal. Living Alone was first published in 1919. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Gillian Lovekin is the daughter of a lonely farm up on the high moorland of Shropshire. Her widowed father, Isaiah, is wealthy, but rustic. In a cottage on the farm lives the Makepeace family: old, slow, garrulous and accident-prone Jonathan, the man-of-all-work, his wife Abigail, cheerful and practical cook and washerwoman, and Abigail's son from a previous marriage, Robert Rideout, the farm's young cowman-shepherd.Gillian and Robert have known each other since childhood, their natures mutually understood like the backs of their hands. But as she has grown older Gillian has come to realise that she is the mistress of the farm, and Robert only one of its workers. The quicksilver of her domineering and attention-loving personality clashes playfully with Robert's more easeful and serious steadiness. She has a beginning notion that he cares deeply for her, but the idea of marrying someone so much her social inferior simply can't be countenanced.When an outsider buys the only other building on their part of the moor, a lonely, decrepit pub called The Mermaid's Rest, Gillian is intrigued by him. Ralph Elmer seems worldly, sophisticated and capable, and most crucially pays her exactly the sort of attention she likes: she is showered with gifts and extravagantly noticed. Her youthful innocence on the one hand, and feelings of intense sensual curiosity on the other, combine to bring about a situation where she has no choice but to marry him, despite her growing feeling of unease about his enigmatic manipulativeness.Robert and Ralph have been navigating a halting truce, despite Robert's heartbreak at Gillian's cruel rejection of him. But when Robert hears the account of a gipsy friend whose baby daughter disappeared in mysterious circumstances many years before, something clicks inside him. His suspicions about Elmer, and his actions toward his exposure, precipitate a hidden tumult of confrontation, desperation and, ultimately, murder. In Seven for a Secret, first published in 1922, Mary Webb took up the skeins which had exemplified her talent hitherto, and twisted them yet further. It is a vibrant novel of fatedness, comedy and rural realities, dedicated to Thomas Hardy. But now this quality became soaked through with near-pagan fabular tinctures, its potent action transpiring under looming skies of otherworldly colour; a brilliant mythic tale which has the numinous feeling of a May-game gone disastrously astray. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. On the 7th of January, 1888, a young Shetlander, resident in Edinburgh, died at the age of 26. Tuberculosis, or 'consumption' as it was known, had claimed Basil Ramsay Anderson like so many others.But behind him he left an extraordinary legacy - a notebook filled with poems, of which only a few had been published. Many were in English and Scots, and these unveiled his profound talent. But there was also a set of poems in Shetland's own dialect, which proved a revelation. Rarely, if ever, had the language been used in print with such surety, strength and joy. Famed Shetland novelist and poet Jessie Saxby was asked by Anderson's family to edit his works for publication, and the result was one of the key books in the history of Shetland's literature. Broken Lights collected not only 58 of Basil Ramsay Anderson's poetical works, but also included extracts from his personal letters, tributes from family, friends and literary associates, and a glossary of Shetland terms which was among the first of its kind. It is here reprinted in its entirety. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. In the small town of Sintiempo in Arizona, in the hot summers of 1942 and 1943, young Millie Delaney is the solitary teacher at the tiny local school. There are only a few students, most of them just biding their time before they leave. The girls most likely will marry; the boys will probably be swallowed up by the town's main employer, the marble mine. Teaching in these circumstances is not very inspiring work, but Millie is used to the dullness, and anyway she's a pillar of the community - her father helped establish the marble mine which put the town on the map. But this period is different. Firstly, one of her students, Miguel, suddenly shows unexpected signs of brilliance, and a love of poetry. He and Millie develop an intense connection which brings joy and inspiration to them both. When Miguel finally finds the confidence to put pen to paper for himself in a poem, Millie is astonished by the result. At about the same time, a wanderer slips into town. Karl is incredibly tall, very blond, and at first fascinatingly elusive. He gets a job at the mine, and once they've met, Millie and he cannot avoid their attraction to each other. Millie can feel her quiet life blooming into much more. But the physical side of Karl's love proves not to have the poetic qualities she has always dreamed of. A barrier develops between them. Miguel is also deeply troubled, because his poem was not all that it seemed. He wants to talk to her about it, but Miss Delaney seems preoccupied. As the summer of 1943 moves into its full peak, the desert landscape ripples not only with ringing waves of heat, but with tension. Before the summer is out, one of the three will be dead, one gone, and the other in hiding. First published in 1960, Descend Again was Janet Burroway's first novel, heralding an extraordinary talent in prose of startling beauty. The rich southern novel of Carson McCullers and Eudora Welty had been given a new desert-state transformation, by a writer somewhat more lean and spare. It was the inauguration of a brilliant career. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Before the publication of The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame's reputation was quite different. He was known both as a writer of delicately observed essays on childhood, and as an exquisite stylist, whose essays on adult subjects were pithy and distinctive exercises in wit. Pagan Papers was the collection with which he established his name in 1893.In The Romance of the Rail he is torn between the joy of a train's night-whistle - the dreams of discovery it heralds, and the realisation of the 'crowning wrong that is wrought us of furnace and piston-rod'; in Loafing he muses over pleasures of mind and their indolent harmony, contrasting them with the 'corporeal pangs' of the thirst for activity; in The Rural Pan he bemoans the advent of dull and good suburban behaviour, relishing that there are still hidden country places where the cheery simple sinner still survives; in Of Smoking he offers a paean to the more refined (non-cigarette) delectations of tobacco; in The White Poppy he guardedly discusses opium's healing 'magic juice of oblivion'; and in Justifiable Homicide he gleefully considers the merits of bumping off irritating relatives!In these, and twelve other brilliant excursions here, where he leads us through the lures and dangers of books, the open road, the countryside, and all the varieties of sensual pleasure, Grahame's consummate style and elegant language mark him out as a master. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.