Featured titles
Mathelinda Nabugodi (Author)
Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Keats – the Romantic poets are titans of English literature, taught and celebrated around the world. Their work is associated with sublime passions, violent stormscapes and a questing search for the inner self. It is rarely associated with the racial politics of the transatlantic slave economy.
But these literary icons lived through a period when individual and collective resistance by Black people in Britain and her overseas colonies was making it increasingly difficult – and increasingly costly – to ignore their demands for freedom. A time when popular support for the abolition movement exploded across the country – and was met by a vehement, reactionary campaign from the establishment. A time when white supremacist ideologies were fomented to justify the abuse and exploitation of non-white 'races'. This cultural context is not immediately obvious in the canon of Romantic poetry. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there.
The Trembling Hand turns an urgent critical gaze onto six major Romantic authors, examining how their lives and works were entangled with the racist realities of their era. Mathelinda Nabugodi pores over carefully preserved manuscripts, travels to the houses where these writers lived and died, examines the personal objects which survived them: a teacup, a baby rattle, a lock of hair. Amid this archive, she searches for traces of Black figures whose lives crossed paths with the great Romantics. And she grapples with the opposing forces of reverence and horror as her fascination with literary relics collides with feelings of sorrow and rage.
Arthur Conan Doyle (Author)
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Ed Glinert (Edited by)
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Peter Ackroyd (Introducer)
As a dense yellow fog swirls through the streets of London, a deep melancholy has descended on Sherlock Holmes, who sits in a cocaine-induced haze at 221B Baker Street. His mood is only lifted by a visit from a beautiful but distressed young woman - Mary Morstan, whose father vanished ten years before. Four years later she began to receive an exquisite gift every year: a large, lustrous pearl. Now she has had an intriguing invitation to meet her unknown benefactor and urges Holmes and Watson to accompany her. And in the ensuing investigation - which involves a wronged woman, a stolen hoard of Indian treasure, a wooden-legged ruffian, a helpful dog and a love affair - even the jaded Holmes is moved to exclaim, 'Isn't it gorgeous!'
Charles Dickens (Author)
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Michael Slater (Introducer)
'Every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding'
Dickens's story of solitary miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who is taught the true meaning of Christmas by a series of ghostly visitors, has had an enduring influence on the way we think about the season. Dickens's other Christmas writings collected here include 'The Story of the Goblins who Stole a Sexton'; 'The Haunted Man'; and shorter pieces, some drawn from the 'Christmas Stories' that Dickens wrote annually for his weekly journals. In all of them Dickens celebrates Christmas as a time of geniality, charity and remembrance.
Edited with an introduction by MICHAEL SLATER
Sudhir Hazareesingh (Author)
The ending of the slave trade and abolition of slavery by European powers during the 19th century is generally told as the work of enlightened liberals fighting against entrenched slaving interests in Africa, the Caribbean, and European capitals. Sudhir Hazareesingh here turns this narrative on its head, showing how the enslaved resisted their oppressors from the earliest years of the Atlantic slave trade in the 16th century until the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865, and how this opposition was the driving force for change.
Daring To Be Free portrays the struggle for liberation from the perspective of the enslaved, wherever possible in their own words. It shines a light on the lives of revolutionaries like Toussaint Louverture, José Antonio Aponte, Nat Turner, and the pregnant rebel Solitude; freed writers of narrative accounts like Frederick Douglass and Ottobah Cugoano; and the countless maroons, insurgents and conspirators whose acts of defiance destabilised the slave order in the colonies and galvanized the movement for abolition in France, Britain, and the United States. Hazareesingh gives particular emphasis to the powerful roles of women as campaigners, disruptors and warriors.
Drawing on written archives and oral history, as well as a rich body of secondary sources, the book traces the networks of cooperation that connected runaway settlements, covert rebellions and organized uprisings from Haiti, Jamaica, Brazil and Cuba to Mauritius and the United States. It shows us how the struggle for liberty was shaped not only by western Enlightenment ideals but by the spiritual, martial, and religious influences from the lives of the enslaved in Africa before the Middle Passage – and by the inspiring example of Haiti, the first successful anticolonial revolution and the first independent black state, which echoed down the 19th century.
Daring To Be Free reshapes our understanding of Atlantic slavery by portraying how enslaved lives were defined not by their dehumanisation at the hands of colonialists and slavers but by their own resilience, solidarity, and commitment to freedom. It also examines the afterlife of the slave trade in contemporary discussions about the legacy of slavery and possibilities for redress, reparations, and memorial in our own time.
Olaudah Equiano (Author)
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Vincent Carrett (Introducer)
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Vincent Carrett (Edited by)
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Vincent Carrett (Notes by)
An exciting and often terrifying adventure story, and a precursor to the famous nineteenth-century slave narratives, Equiano's The Interesting Narrative recounts his kidnapping in Africa aged ten, his service as a slave of an officer in the British Navy for ten years, and his life after he bought his freedom in 1766, growing to become one of the foremost figures of the anti-slavery movement in Britain.
The Interesting Narrative is a spirited autobiography, a tale of spiritual quest and fulfillment and a sophisticated treatise on religion, politics and economics.
Sathnam Sanghera (Author)
In Britain, imperialism is everywhere - though we often choose not to see it. From the way we travel and the foundation of the NHS to the nature of our racism and wealth, it is central to the way we think and conduct politics. In his bestselling book, Sathnam Sanghera demonstrates how so much of modern Britain - including the exceptionalism that inspired Brexit and our response to the COVID-19 crisis - is rooted in our imperial past.
Empire is foundational to modern Britain yet is barely taught in schools or mentioned in museums. At a time of great division, when we are arguing about what it means to be British, Empireland is a groundbreaking revelation - a much-needed and illuminating portrait of modern British society with the power and potential to change minds.
Sam Selvon (Author)
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Nasta Susheila (Introducer)
At Waterloo Station, hopeful new arrivals from the West Indies step off the boat train, ready to start afresh in 1950s London. There, homesick Moses Aloetta, who has already lived in the city for years, meets Henry 'Sir Galahad' Oliver and shows him the ropes. In this strange, cold and foggy city where the natives can be less than friendly at the sight of a black face, has Galahad met his Waterloo? But the irrepressible newcomer cannot be cast down. He and all the other lonely new Londoners - from shiftless Cap to Tolroy, whose family has descended on him from Jamaica - must try to create a new life for themselves. As pessimistic 'old veteran' Moses watches their attempts, they gradually learn to survive and come to love the heady excitements of London.
Bernardine Evaristo (Author)
Grace is a Victorian orphan dreaming of the mysterious African father she will never meet.
Winsome is a young Windrush bride, recently arrived from Barbados.
Amma is the fierce queen of her 1980s squatters' palace.
Morgan, who used to be Megan, is blowing up on social media, the newest activist-influencer on the block.
Twelve very different people, mostly black and female, more than a hundred years of change, and one sweeping, vibrant, glorious portrait of contemporary Britain. Bernardine Evaristo presents a gloriously new kind of history for this old country: ever-dynamic, ever-expanding and utterly irresistible.
Chinua Achebe (Author)
Okonkwo is the greatest warrior alive, famous throughout West Africa. But when he accidentally kills a clansman, things begin to fall apart. Then Okonkwo returns from exile to find missionaries and colonial governors have arrived in the village. With his world thrown radically off-balance he can only hurtle towards tragedy. Chinua Achebe's stark novel reshaped both African and world literature. This arresting parable of a proud but powerless man witnessing the ruin of his people begins Achebe's landmark trilogy of works chronicling the fate of one African community, continued in Arrow of God and No Longer at Ease.
Charles Dickens (Author)
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Charlotte Mitchell (Edited by)
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David Trotter (Introducer)
A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor - these form a series of events that change the orphaned Pip's life forever, and he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman. Dickens's haunting late novel depicts Pip's education and development through adversity as he discovers thetrue nature of his 'great expectations'.
Nella Larsen (Author)
Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith.
Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil.
Clare Kendry, elegant, fair-skinned and ambitious, is married to a white man who is unaware of her African-American heritage. When she reunites with childhood friend Irene, who has not hidden her origins, both women are forced to confront the secret fears they have buried within themselves. A taut exploration of race and gender, Passing is one of the Harlem Renaissance's greatest works.
'A tragic story rooted in inescapable facts of American life' The New York Times
Rabindranath Tagore (Author)
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Anita Desai (Introducer)
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William Radice (Edited by)
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Surendranath Tagore (Translator)
Set on a Bengali noble's estate in 1908, this is both a love story and a novel of political awakening. The central character, Bimala, is torn between the duties owed to her husband, Nikhil, and the demands made on her by the radical leader, Sandip. Her attempts to resolve the irreconciliable pressures of the home and world reflect the conflict in India itself, and the tragic outcome foreshadows the unrest that accompanied Partition in 1947.
Tania James (Author)
'Loot held me spellbound from the first page...an expertly-plotted, deeply affecting novel ' Maggie O’Farrell
Young toy maker and dreamer Abbas is whisked away to Tipu Sultan's glorious palace in Mysore and ordered to create a musical tiger to delight Tipu's sons.
When he is apprenticed to eccentric clockmaker Monsieur Du Leze, Abbas finds an unexpected friend who encourages his skill and hunger for learning. Through Du Leze, he also meets the unforgettable Jehanne, who has questions and ambitions of her own.
But when British soldiers attack and loot Mysore, Abbas's world is turned upside down and his prized tiger is shipped off to a country estate in England. In order to carve out his place in the world, he must follow.
A hero's quest, a love story, an exuberant heist novel that traces the bloody legacy of colonialism across the world, Loot is a dazzling, wildly inventive and irresistible feat of storytelling.
'A thrilling, absorbing and immersive tale of artistry, adventure and romance' Claire Fuller
'A cinematic novel of empire, colonialism and romance...Loot asks who gets written out of history and why' Guardian
'Immersive and beautifully written...a clever and absorbing novel about empire and belonging’ Sunday Times
