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Raymond Williams

Taking inspiration from classic authors from Jane Austen to Thomas Hardy, Williams shines a light on our society’s changing views of the rural and industrial landscapes in which we work and live. 
 
Our collective notion of the city and country is irresistibly powerful. The city as the seat of enlightenment, sophistication, power and greed is in profound contrast with an innocent, peaceful, backward countryside. Examining literature since the sixteenth century, Williams traces the development of our conceptions of these two traditional poles of life. His groundbreaking study casts the country and city as central symbols for the social and economic changes associated with capitalist development. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY TRISTRAM HUNT

The Country and the City

W. Somerset Maugham

From 1892, when he was eighteen, until 1949, when this book was first published, Somerset Maugham kept a notebook. It is without doubt one of his most important works. Part autobiographical, part confessional, packed with observations, confidences, experiments and jottings it is a rich and exhilarating admission into this great writer's workshop

A Writer's Notebook

John Lennon

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SIR PAUL MCCARTNEY 
 
First published in 1964 and 1965, In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works are a brilliantly inventive and offbeat collection of John Lennon's stories, drawings and poems.

In His Own Write & A Spaniard in the Works

Virginia Woolf

'He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others'. 
So Virginia Woolf described the 'common reader' for whom she wrote her second series of essays. Here she turns her brilliant eye on novels and poetry from John Donne to Christina Rossetti and Mary Wollstonecraft as well as many others. This is an informal, informative and witty celebration of our literary and social heritage by a writer of genius.

The Common Reader: Volume 2

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MARINA WARNER AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY MERVYN PEAKE 
 
Coleridge's celebrated poem was written at the suggestion of William Wordsworth in the early days of their friendship, and published for the first time in 1798. It is the story of a nightmare voyage to the South Pole told by the sole survivor, the bright-eyed ancient mariner whose wanton killing of an albatross, a bird of good omen, brought misfortune on the ship and all its crew. 
 
The poem is brilliantly illustrated by Mervyn Peake. His powerful, arresting images perfectly express the qualities of the text, its gothic atmosphere and supernatural terrors, ultimately softened by pity and the hope of redemption.

The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

Margaret Forster

This biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, written with reference to Browning correspondence only recently available, argues that the poet was a strong and determined woman largely responsible for her own incarceration in Wimpole Street. The author traces her life from her early childhood and adolescence and explores her marriage. She draws a picture of early Victorian family life and aims to show that Elizabeth was a considerable and dedicated poet, self-willed, witty and courageous. Forster has also edited the companion volume "Selected Poems" of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and is author of several other biographies.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Arthur Koestler

The first volume of the remarkable autobiography of Arthur Koestler, author of Darkness at Noon. 
 
In 1931, Arthur Koestler joined the Communist Party, an event he felt to be second only in importance to his birth in shaping his destiny. Before that point, he lived a tumultuous and varied existence. He was a member of the duelling fraternity at the University of Vienna; a collective farm worker in Galilee; a tramp and street vendor in Haifa; the editor of a weekly paper in Cairo; the foreign correspondent of the biggest continental newspaper chain in Paris and the Middle East; a science editor in Berlin; and a member of the North Pole expedition of the Graf Zeppelin. 
 
Written with enormous zest, joie de vivre and frankness, Arrow in the Blue is a fascinating self-portrait of a remarkable young man at the heart of the events that shaped the twentieth century. 
 
The second volume of Arthur Koestler's autobiography is The Invisible Writing.

Arrow in the Blue

William Styron

This is a story of depression a condition that reduced William Styron from a person enjoying life and success as an acclaimed writer, to a man engulfed and menaced by mental anguish. With profound insight and remarkable candor, Styron tracks the progress of his madness, from the smothering misery and exhaustion, to the agony of composing his own suicide note and his eventual, hard-won recovery. Illuminating an illness that affects millions but which remains widely misunderstood, this book is about the darkness of depression, but it is also ultimately about survival and redemption.

Darkness Visible

John Betjeman

From 1930 until shortly before his death he shared with countless readers, listeners and viewers his remarkably catholic passions for books, people and places. 
 
Coming Home gathers together a selection from over four decades of his writings about buildings, townscape and landscape, together with appreciations of writers, artists and architects, ranging from Evelyn Waugh, Pugin and T. S. Eliot to R. S. Thomas, Frederick Etchells and Jacob Epstein. 
 
Candida Lycett Green's prefaces to each section of this book provide invaluable insight into the context in which these pieces were written by one of the century's most eloquent champions of beautiful, unusual and often unloved places and buildings.

Coming Home

An anthology of prose

Italo Calvino

'This brilliant collection of essays should be a feast for his admirers, as well as for those who approach his dazzling oeuvre for the first time-Calvino is not only constantly and supremely intelligent; he is constantly and supremely faithful to his narrative imagination' Guardian

The Literature Machine

Essays

Edward W Said

‘Readers accustomed to the precision and elegance of Edward Said's analytical prowess will not be disappointed . . . Those discovering Said for the first time will be profoundly impressed’ Toni MorrisonFollowing his profoundly influential study Orientalism, Edward W. Said turned his attention to the Western world, tracing the connections between imperialism and European art, literature and music. From Jane Austen to Salman Rushdie, from Yeats to media coverage of the Gulf War, Culture and Imperialism initiates a dialogue between culture and the political and economic fabric of its time. Vast in its scope and stunning in its erudition, this collection of essays remains as urgent today as it was on first publication. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR

Culture and Imperialism

Robert Frost

A wonderful collection of Robert Frost’s writing. 
 
No poet is more emblematically American than Robert Frost. Hailed as ‘the most eminent, the most distinguished Anglo-American poet’ by T.S. Eliot, he is the only writer in history to have been awarded four Pulitzer Prizes. In iconic poems like ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’, simple images summon the rural landscape of New England, and Frost unfailingly moves the reader with his profound grasp of the human condition. 
 
This is the most comprehensive and authoritative volume of Frost's verse available, comprising all eleven volumes of his poems, meticulously edited by Edward Connery Lathem.

The Collected Poems

Wilfred Owen

'Orpheus, the pagan saint of poets, went through hell and came back singing. In twentieth-century mythology, the singer wears a steel helmet and makes his descent "down some profound dull tunnel" in the stinking mud of the Western Front. For most readers of English poetry, the face under that helmet is that of Wilfred Owen.' Professor Jon Stallworthy, from his Introduction. 
 
When Wilfred Owen was killed in the days before the Armistice in 1918, he left behind a shattering, truthful and indelible record of a soldier's experience of the First World War. His greatest war poetry has been collected, edited and introduced here by Professor Jon Stallworthy. This special edition is published to commemorate the end of the hellish war that Owen, though the hard-won truth and terrible beauty of his poetry, has taught us never to forget.

The War Poems Of Wilfred Owen

The Vagrant Mood is a brilliantly varied and colourful collection of essays. From Kant to Raymond Chandler; from the legend of Zurbaran to the art of the detective story; from Burke to Augustus Hare, Somerset Maugham brings his inimitable mastery of the incisive character sketch to the genre of literary criticism

The Vagrant Mood

Simone de Beauvoir

In 1983 de Beauvoir published Sartre's letters, maintaining that her own to him had been lost. They were found by de Beauvoir's adopted daughter, and published to a storm of controversy in France. Tracing the emotional and triangular complications of her life with Sartre, the letters reveal her not only as manipulative and dependent but Simonealso as vulnerable, passionate, jealous and committed.

Letters To Sartre

In 1947 Simone de Beauvoir took a road trip across America. 
 
She travelled from coast to coast, from New York to Hollywood, taking in New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana and Washington DC. She rode a pony through the Grand Canyon, listened to jazz in New Orleans and visited the nightclubs of Chicago. And she captured the entire experience in her journal. 
 
This captivating book is that journal and an immersive portrait of postwar America. Beauvoir was disturbed by the poverty and segregation she encountered and at the same time delighted by American energy and friendliness. 
 
Intimate, warm, and compulsively readable, this is travel writing from the iconic feminist and thinker, Simone de Beauvoir. 
 
On New York: 'I walk between the steep cliffs at the bottom of a canyon where no sun penetrates: it's permeated by a salt smell. Human history is not inscribed on these carefully calibrated buildings: They are closer to prehistoric caves than to the houses of Paris or Rome.' 
 
On Los Angeles: 'I watch the Mexican dances and eat chilli con carne, which takes the roof off my mouth, I drink the tequila and I'm utterly dazed with pleasure.'

America Day by Day

Maugham's studies of the lives and masterpieces of ten great novelists are outstanding examples of literary criticism at its finest. Afforded here are some of the formulae of greatness in the genre, as well as the flaws and heresies which enfeeble it. Written by a master of fiction, Ten Novels and Their Authors is a unique and invaluable guide.

Ten Novels And Their Authors

Vita Sackville-West

'I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone. I just miss you...' 
 
At a dinner party in 1922, Virginia Woolf met the renowned author, aristocrat, and sapphist Vita Sackville-West. Virginia wrote in her diary that she didn't think much of Vita's conversation, but she did think very highly of her legs... It was to be the start of almost twenty years of flirtation, friendship, and literary collaboration. Their correspondence ended only with Virginia's suicide in 1941. 
 
Intimate and playful, these selected letters and diary entries allow us to hear the women's constantly changing feelings for each other in their own words. Eavesdrop on the affair that inspired Virginia to write Orlando, and discover an extraordinary relationship which - even a hundred years later - feels radical and relatable. 
 
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION FROM ALISON BECHDEL, AUTHOR OF FUN HOME AND CREATOR OF THE BECHDEL TEST.

Love Letters: Vita and Virginia

Graham Greene

Collected Essays contains nearly eighty essays, reviews and occasional pieces composed between novels, plays and travel books over four prolific decades. From Henry James and Somerset Maugham to Ho Chi Minh and Kim Philby, the range of subjects is eclectic and stimulating; his subjects brought vividly to life. The resulting collection is as revealing as autobiography and characteristically rich in humour, insight and doubt.

Collected Essays

John Fowles

Here, for the first time, is a riveting collection of Fowles's fugitive and intensely personal writings composed sinced 1963, ranging from essays and literary criticism to commentaries, autobiographical statements, memoirs and musings. Wormholes is a delicious sampling of the various matters that have plagued, preoccupied, or delighted Fowles throughout his life; it is a rich mine of essays as art and a `geography' of the mind of one of the twentieth century's greatest novelists.

Wormholes

Essays and Occasional Writings

Celebrate a vital work of feminism with this special edition featuring the original cover created by Virginia Woolf's sister, Vanessa Bell, and the original text first published by The Hogarth Press. 
 
Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. 
 
Witty, urbane and vital to this day, A Room of One’s Own is a persuasive argument against the intellectual subjection of women, particularly women writers. It weaves together memoir, imaginative speculation and political vision to create one of the most important works of feminism of the twentieth century. 
 
The book sprang from two lectures that Woolf delivered at the University of Cambridge in 1928. The first printing of the book the following year was as a limited edition, a joint publication between The Fountain Press of New York and the Hogarth Press. Two months later it was released to the general trade and has been an essential work ever since. 
 
The text of this edition of A Room of One’s Own is based on the original Hogarth Press edition, published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf in October 1929. The dust jacket features the original cover created by Virginia Woolf’s sister, Vanessa Bell, for the Hogarth Press. Beneath the cover ‘cinnamon’ boards printed in gilt take inspiration from the finish of the first trade edition. 
 
'Brilliant interweaving of personal experience, imaginative musing and political clarity' Kate Mosse 
 
'Achingly relevant' Natasha Walter, Guardian

A Room of One's Own

John Cheever

John Cheever's journals reveal the inner life of this remarkable writer and the contradictions that drove him. He loved his wife and their children, but was acutely lonely; he loved women, but he also loved men; he hated himself for his drinking, but for much of his life was dependent upon it; he was a great writer, but one whose acute levels of perception often crippled him as a person. His journals are candid, beautiful and often startling.

The Journals

Roland Barthes

‘To read through A Barthes Reader is finally to be left with the image of Barthes as one of the great public teachers of our time’ New Republic 
 
Edited by Susan Sontag, A Roland Barthes Reader offers a definitive selection of works by the French intellectual Roland Barthes, including seminal essays, such as 'Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives' as well as his more unusual works, such as 'The World of Wrestling'. 
 
'At last, with A Barthes Reader, we have a sort of Michelin guide to one of the most beguiling minds of our era. Smartly introduced by Susan Sontag, the Reader samples Barthes' achievement over three decades' Newsweek

A Roland Barthes Reader

Christy Brown

My Left Foot is Christy Brown's inspirational story of his early life, his battle against the restraints of cerebral palsy and his determination to learn to read, write, and paint, all with the aid of his left foot. 
 
This autobiography, published in 1954 when he was twenty-two, recounts his early life in Dublin &ndash; the poverty of his childhood, the support of his mother and his hope for a better life. Above all it describes his struggle to learn to read, write, paint and finally type, all with the toe of his left foot. Warm, honest and inspiring, this is a unique and captivating story of disability told by an extraordinary man. 
 
'Riveting, funny and inspiring' Irish Times 
 
'His book, over and above the extraordinary achievement it reveals, is a testament to one man&rsquo;s courage, a hope for others' Kirkus Reviews

My Left Foot

Franz Kafka

Kafka's letters to Felice Bauer were written between 1912 and 1917, during which time they were twice engaged to be married. This complex relationship, which coincided with a period of great productivity for Kafka, gave him both hope and strength, but gradually disllusionment and the onset of illness drove them apart. These letters remain as a monument to the inner life of a creative artist.

Letters to Felice

Discover Virginia Woolf’s informative and erudite critical essays on some of the key novelists and dramatists of the canon – from the ancient Greeks to Jane Austen and beyond. 
 
Virginia Woolf read, and wrote, as an outsider, denied the educational privileges of her male contemporaries. She was perhaps better able, then, to address a 'common reader' in this wide-ranging collection of essays. With all the imagination and gaiety that are the stamp of her genius, she turns from medieval England to tsarist Russia, and subjects Elizabethan playwrights, Victorian novelists and modern essayists to her wise, acute and entertaining scrutiny. 
 
Essays on Jane Austen, George Eliot, Nancy Mitford, Joseph Conrad, Michel de Montaigne, Daniel Defoe and many others.

The Common Reader: Volume 1

Anthony Burgess

Among Shakespeare's many biographers none brings to his subject more passion and feeling for the creative act than Anthony Burgess. He breathes life into Shakespeare the man and invigorates his times. His portrait of the age builds upon an almost personal tenderness for Shakespeare and his contemporaries (especially Ben Jonson), and on a profound sense of literary and theatrical history. Anthony Burgess's well-known delight in language infuses his own writing about Shakespeare's works. And in the verve of his biography he conveys the energy of the Elizabethan age.

Shakespeare

Eclectic and illuminating, these essays are the last that Maugham published. Ranging from an appreciation of Goethe's novels, to an encounter with an Indian holy man, with a considered analysis of the form at which Maugham himself excelled - the short story - they present the enduring views and opinions of this eminent writer.

Points of View

Homer

Penelope has been waiting for her husband Odysseus to return from Troy for many years. Little does she know that his path back to her has been blocked by astonishing and terrifying trials. Will he overcome the hideous monsters, beautiful witches and treacherous seas that confront him? This rich and beautiful adventure story is one of the most influential works of literature in the world.

The Odyssey

Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

William Yeats

W.B. Yeats' life spanned the end of the nineteeth and the beginning of the twentieth century, and his poetry reflects all the turmoil, fervour, traditions and revolutions of that period. From the quiet beauty of 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' to the apocalyptic resonance of 'The Second Coming', this collection shows the impact of a great poet whose startling relevance to our own times grows more and more evident.

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