Steve Roud was Local Studies Librarian for the London Borough of Croydon and served as Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society for over fifteen years. He has been researching British folklore for over thirty years and is the joint author of the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, plus other books on traditional drama and folk song, and the Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland, which won the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award in 2004. His publications include London Lore (2008) and The Lore of the Playground (2010). He also compiles the Folk Song Index and the Broadside Index, two internationally acclaimed computer databases of traditional folk and popular song. He lives in Sussex.

Steve Roud

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William Maxwell

The path to adulthood is littered with broken relationships. 
 
In the suburbs of 1920s Chicago two boys form an unlikely friendship. Spud Latham is slow at school but quick to fight and a natural athlete - Lymie Peters, thin, pigeon-chested and terrible at games, is devoted to him. As they graduate from school to college, tensions start to surface. It is Lymie who first meets Sally Forbes, but it is Spud she falls in love with. This signals the end of their friendship and the rift is almost more than Lymie can bear.

The Folded Leaf

Mikhail Bulgakov

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY TERRY GILLIAM 
 
When Maxudov's bid to take his own life fails, he dramatises the novel whose failure provoked the suicide attempt. To the resentment of literary Moscow, his play is accepted by the legendary Independent Theatre and Maxudov plunges into a vortex of inflated egos. With each rehearsal more sparks fly and the chances of the play being ready to perform recede. Black Snow is the ultimate back-stage novel and a brilliant satire by the author of The Master and Margarita on his ten-year love-hate relationship with Stanislavsky, Method-acting and the Moscow Arts Theatre.

Black Snow

Stella Gibbons

Robert Poste's child is back at Cold Comfort Farm. But all is not well. Flora finds the farm transformed into a twee haven filled with Toby jugs and peasant pottery, and rooms labelled 'Quiete Retreate' and 'Greate laundrie'. It is, Flora winces, 'exactly like being locked in the Victoria and Albert Museum after closing time'. 
 
Worse, the farm is hosting a conference of the pretentious International Thinkers Group - a group made up of the 'sadistic owl' Mr Peccavi, loathsome Mr Mybug and the overpowering Mrs Ernestine Thump. 
 
And worst of all, there are no Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm. All the he-cousins have gone abroad to make their fortunes and the female cousins are having a pretty thin time of it. Once again the sensible Flora decides to take the situation in hand.

Conference at Cold Comfort Farm

Charles Dickens

'It is proof of Dickens' genius (or maybe just the unchanging nature of Britain) that you can read Hard Times as if it were all happening now' Guardian 
 
 'Facts alone are wanted in life' 
 
 The children at Mr Gradgrind's school are sternly ordered to stifle their imaginations and pay attention only to cold, hard reality. They live in a smoky, troubled industrial town so entertainment is hard to come by and resentments run deep. The effects of Gradgrind's teaching on his own children, Tom and Louisa, are particularly profound and leave them ill-equipped to deal with the unpredictable desires of the human heart. Luckily for them they have a friend in Sissy Jupe, the child of a circus clown, who retains her warm-hearted, compassionate nature despite the pressures around her.

Hard Times

Dante Alighieri

Discover this fresh, pacy, modern translation of an enduring literary classic. 
 
Halfway through life, you find yourself lost, unsure of the right path. Greed, deception and pride have led you away from the ideals and dreams you cherished in younger days. How do you go on? 
 
This is the starting point of one of the most extraordinary and important journeys in western literature, a stunningly ambitious flight of imagination and philosophy which has reverberated down the years since Dante Alighieri first wrote it down in the fourteenth century. The Divine Comedy is a vision of the afterlife, the three regions of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, through which the narrator must journey in order to better understand the workings of the universe, the love of God, and his place in the world. 
 
Poet and translator Steve Ellis translated the Inferno in 1994, and it was greeted with great acclaim. Now Ellis's translation of the entire poem is published here for the first time, and Dante's epic can be experienced afresh and in new glorious life and colour, the physicality and immediacy of Dante's verse rendered in English as never before. 
 
A NEW TRANSLATION BY STEVE ELLIS

The Divine Comedy

Christopher Isherwood

The First World War is over. Eric Vernon is on the cusp of adulthood. Tall, bony and awkward he finds himself torn between a desire to emulate his heroic father, who led a life of quiet sacrifice, and resentment toward his father's roguish friend Edward Blake, who survived the war only to throw himself into gay life in Berlin. With subtle wit and trademark irony, Isherwood's second novel evokes a society in flux.

The Memorial

Leo Tolstoy

'If you've never read it, now is the moment. This translation will show that you don't read War and Peace, you live it' The Times 
 
Tolstoy's enthralling epic depicts Russia's war with Napoleon and its effects on the lives of those caught up in the conflict. He creates some of the most vital and involving characters in literature as he follows the rise and fall of families in St Petersburg and Moscow who are linked by their personal and political relationships. His heroes are the thoughtful yet impulsive Pierre Bezukhov, his ambitious friend, Prince Andrei, and the woman who becomes indispensable to both of them, the enchanting Natasha Rostov. 
 
 'It is simply the greatest novel ever written. All human life is in it. If I were told there was time to read only a single book, this would be it' Andrew Marr 
 
 The Vintage Classics Russians Series - sumptuous editions of the greatest books to come out of Russia during the most tumultuous period in its history.

War and Peace (Vintage Classic Russians Series)

Brother and sister, Constance and Kenneth Fielding live in calm respectability, just out of reach of London and the Blitz. But when a series of uninvited guests converge upon them – from a Balkan exile to Ken’s old flame and the siblings’ own raffish father – the household struggles to preserve its precious peace. In this full house, in a quiet corner of suburbia, no one expects to find romance.

The Bachelor

Kingsley Amis

Malcolm, Peter and Charlie and their Soave-sodden wives have one main ambition left in life: to drink Wales dry. But their routine is both shaken and stirred when they are joined by professional Welshman Alun Weaver (CBE) and his wife, Rhiannon.

The Old Devils

Edgar Allan Poe

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MATTHEW PEARL 
 
Edgar Allan Poe invented detective fiction with these three mesmerising stories of a young eccentric named C. Auguste Dupin: 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', 'The Mystery of Marie Rogêt' and 'The Purloined Letter'. Dorothy L. Sayers would later describe these tales as 'almost a complete manual of detective theory and practice'. Indeed, Poe's short mysteries inspired the creation of countless literary sleuths, among them Sherlock Holmes. Today the unique Dupin stories still stand out as utterly engrossing page-turners. 
 
This edition includes the definitive text of these stories and an introduction and appendix on 'The Earliest Detectives' by Matthew Pearl.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Franz Kafka

‘No other voice has borne truer witness to the dark of our times’ George Steiner 
 
After an embarrassing sexual misadventure with a servant girl, sixteen-year-old Karl Rossman is banished to America by his parents. Expected to redeem himself in the land of opportunity, Karl’s youthful breeziness propels him into a series of bizarre escapades which threaten to ensnare him permanently. Though dredged with humour and optimism, Kafka’s first novel bears his distinctive hallmarks, as young Karl becomes mired in an ever more unreal and oppressive system. 
 
THE CLASSIC TRANSLATION BY WILLA AND EDWIN MUIR

Amerika

'If you've never read it, now is the moment. This translation will show that you don't read War and Peace, you live it' The Times 
 
Tolstoy's enthralling epic depicts Russia's war with Napoleon and its effects on the lives of those caught up in the conflict. He creates some of the most vital and involving characters in literature as he follows the rise and fall of families in St Petersburg and Moscow who are linked by their personal and political relationships. His heroes are the thoughtful yet impulsive Pierre Bezukhov, his ambitious friend, Prince Andrei, and the woman who becomes indispensable to both of them, the enchanting Natasha Rostov. 
 
&lsquo;It is simply the greatest novel ever written. All human life is in it. If I were told there was time to read only a single book, this would be it&rsquo; Andrew Marr 
 
TRANSLATED BY RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY

War and Peace

Harold Sonny Ladoo

'A masterpiece of hurt' New York Times 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MONIQUE ROFFEY 
 
In the Caribbean, at the beginning of the last century, a poor rice-growing family struggle to exist. Four siblings pass their days in the ricefield, as does Ma. But Pa is an angry man ready to vent. It is the August rainy season and above their heads the black sky crackles with lightning. 
 
On the day that Pa nearly drowns Ma in a tub of washing water, the children and their mother escape into the cane fields to wait out Pa's rage. But eight-year-old Rama, catches a chill in the rain and falls ill. What follows is a tale of the inheritance of loss. It contains a heart-stopping intensity that places it as one of the greatest Caribbean novels ever written. 
 
'It is a novel unconcerned with anything but truth-telling' Dionne Brand 
 
'To anyone who knows Caribbean literature his novel is infamous, and Ladoo is seen as one of the region's great literary stars' Independent 
 
'Ladoo drags you through this terrific hurricane, and you can never forget it' Amanda Smyth, author of Fortune

No Pain Like This Body

The forgotten classic masterpiece of Trinidadian literature

Iris Murdoch

Bruno, dying, obsessed with spiders and preoccupied with death and reconciliation, lies at the center of an intricate spider's web of relationships and passions: Bruno's estranged and grieving son Miles; Danby, Bruno's widowed son-in-law, consoling himself with the Adelaide the maid, one of Murdoch's finest comic creations; creepy Nigel the nurse and his besotted twin Will, fighter of duels. The flooding Thames brings about the climax, and all are left changed by love and forgiveness before the old man's death.

Bruno's Dream

Jake Richardson, an Oxford don nearing sixty with a lifetime's lechery behind him, is in pursuit of his lost libido and heads off to the consulting room of a miniature sex therapist. Not one to disobey a doctor's orders, he runs the full humiliating gamut of sex labs and trendy 'workshops', where more than souls are bared. He decks himself with cunning gadgetry, dreams up a weekly fantasy, pets diligently with his overweight wife and browses listlessly through porn magazines behind locked doors. Is sex really worth it? As liberationists abuse him, a campus hostess bores him into bed - and even his own wife starts acting oddly - Jake seriously begins to wonder.

Jake's Thing

Rosemary Tonks

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY STEWART LEE 
 
'Should The Bloater be republished? Oh God, absolutely, it's fantastic' Stewart Lee 
 
Min works at the BBC as an audio engineer, where she is struggling to replicate the sound of a heartbeat. At home, other matters of the heart are making a mockery of life as Min knows it. 
 
Min has found herself the object of her lodger's affection. An internationally renowned opera singer she's nicknamed 'The Bloater', Min is disgusted and attracted to him in equal measure. But with a husband so invisible that she accidentally turns the lights off on him even when he's still in the room, Min can't quite bring herself to silence The Bloater's overtures. 
 
 Vain, materialistic, yet surprisingly tender, The Bloater is a sparklingly ironic comedy of manners for all flirtatious gossips who love to hate and hate to love. 
 
PRAISE FOR THE BLOATER 
 
'A wonderfully unromantic romantic comedy' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Uncommonly good' Guardian 
 
 'It is the perfect aperitif, makes you feel warm and careless and much, much happier' The Times

The Bloater

The brilliantly original rediscovered classic comedy of manners

Just when Stanley Duke thinks it safe to sink into middle age, his son goes insane.  As if that wasn't terrible enough, Stanley finds himself beset on all sides by women - neurotic, cantankerous, half-baked or just plain capricious.  As one by one they gnaw away at his composure, Stanley wonders whether insanity is not something with which all women are intimately acquainted.

Stanley And The Women

Hubert Anvil is a 10 year old boy blessed with the voice of an angel. The Church hierarchy decrees that Hubert should be turned into a castrato - an alteration that could bring Hubert fame and fortune, but would also cut him off from an adult world he is curious to discover. In a dystopian world where Martin Luther never reformed and where the Holy Office's power is absolute, where will Hubert turn if he decides to defy their wishes?

The Alteration

This is the story of the comic, relentless struggle for survival of Austin Gibson Grey, the accidental man. Austin is one of those people who thrives through the destruction of others. The others, in Austin's case, include his successful elder brother, Matthew, and the women who, one after the other, are convinced that they can 'save' him. In this role we meet Dorina, Austin's estranged wife, Mitzi, his alcoholic landlady, and a selection of other women who involve themselves in Austin's fate, with hilarious and appalling results.

An Accidental Man

Günter Grass

To compensate for his unusually large Adam's apple - source of both discomfort and distress - fourteen year old Joachim Mahlke turns himself into athlete and ace diver. Soon he is known to his peers and his nation as 'The Great Mahlke'. But to his enemies, he remains a target. He is different and doomed in a country scarred by the war. 
 
Cat and Mouse was first published in 1961, two years after Gunter Grass' controversial and applauded masterpiece, The Tin Drum. Once again Grass turns his attention on Danzig. With a subtle blend of humour and power, Cat and Mouse ostensibly relates the rise of Mahlke from clown to hero. But Mahlke's outlandish antics hide the darkness at the heart of a nation torn by Nazi violence, the war and its aftermath.

Cat and Mouse

Mervyn Peake

Equipped with love, Mr Harold Pye lands on the island of Sark, his mission to convert the islanders into a crusading force for the undiluted goodness that he feels within. The extraordinary inhabitants of the island range from the formidable Miss George in her purple busby to the wanton, raven-haired Tintagieu, 'five foot three inches of sex'. Mr Pye, however, is prone to excess and in the increasingly personalised struggle between good and evil, excess is very nearly his downfall.

Mr Pye

W. Somerset Maugham

Bertha Ley comes of age, inherits her father's money and promptly marries a handsome, calm and unimaginative man. Bertha is wildly in love with Edward and believes she can be happy playing the role of a dutiful wife in their country home. But, intelligent and sensual, she quickly becomes bored by her oppressively conventional life, and finds her love for her husband slipping away. 
 
Originally rejected by publishers, Mrs Craddock was first published only on condition that certain 'shocking' passages were removed. It was thirty years before the full text could be published.

Mrs Craddock

Bernard Malamud

A matchmaker finds love for a would-be rabbi; a shopkeeper dies because he cannot afford a doctor; a little girl steals candy; an angel visits a grieving tailor. Through Malamud's great gifts as a writer - humour and profound concern for the matter of human life - he transmutes the particular struggles of everyday sufferers into a strange poetry.

The Magic Barrel

Gladys and Annie Barnes are impoverished sisters who have seen better times. They live in a modest cottage in the backstreets of Highate with Mr Fisher, a mild but eccentric old man living secretively in the attic above them. Their quiet lives are thrown into confusion when a new landlord takes over, a dreaded and unscrupulous 'rackman'. He installs his wife in part of the cottages in the hope that there she will recover from an unspecified malady. With a mounting sense of fear, Gladys and Annie become convinced she is possessed by an evil spirit...

Starlight

Louisa May Alcott

Discover the classic tale behind the hit film and one of the most beloved, comforting, charming stories of all time. 
 
Life in the March household is full of adventures as the four very different March sisters follow their varying paths to adulthood, always maintaining the special bond between them. Sensible Meg, impetuous Jo, shy Beth and artistic Amy each have to confront different challenges as they grow up together and attempt to learn how to be both happy and good. 
 
‘Deals with life's big questions - love and death, war and peace, and ambition versus family responsibility - in a way that is inspiring and realistic. Use a hankie as a bookmark - tears are guaranteed’ Marie Claire

Little Women and Good Wives

Saved from a delinquent childhood by education, cheated out of Oxford by a tragic love tangle, Hilary Burde cherishes his obsessive guilt and ekes out a living in a dull civil service job. 
 
When the man whom he has harmed and betrayed reappears as head of his department, Hilary hopes for forgiveness, even for redemption and a new life, but finds himself haunted by a ghostly repetition.

A Word Child

John Bowen

In summer, and particularly when the wind blows south-west across the lawn, the sceptic tank gives out a strong stench… ‘Oh, it is a body,’ the girls say. ‘We have a body in there. No one you know. It decomposes, of course, but so slowly one quite despairs.’ 
 
In their lovely, quiet Cotswolds village, Janet and Susan are known to the villagers simply as ‘the girls’. Partners in love and work, co-proprietors of a picturesque shop, they lead an enviable, enviably settled life. 
 
But when a moment of small, surprising passion intrudes into the equilibrium of their world, the girls’ lives take a deeply unsettling turn. First comes motherhood. Then comes murder. 
 
Part-macabre comedy, part-crime thriller, part-cosy romance, John Bowen’s The Girls is a novel like none other. Told with warmth, affection and fun, yet laced with darkness and unease, 'the girls' will ensure you never look on Middle England quite so quaintly again. 
 
‘Absolutely wicked’ Armistead Maupin 
 
‘Startlingly offbeat’ Gore Vidal 
 
‘[For] people who like Myra Breckinridge as well as Miss Marple; fans of Beryl Bainbridge, Russell Greenan and Patricia Highsmith; those who feel Barbara Pym-ish on some days and Stephen King-ish on others . . . The Girls charms us as only certain tales ‘of village life’ can’ Washington Post

The Girls

Thomas Savage

Discover Thomas Savage's dark poetic tale of a small town in early 20th century America that inspired the Golden Globe winning film. 
 
Phil and George are brothers and joint owners of the biggest ranch in their Montana valley. 
 
Phil is the bright one, George the plodder. Phil is tall and angular; George is stocky and silent. Phil is a brilliant chess player, a voracious reader, an eloquent storyteller; George learns slowly, and devotes himself to the business. They sleep in the room they shared as boys, and so it has been for forty years. 
 
When George unexpectedly marries a young widow and brings her to live at the ranch, Phil begins a relentless campaign to destroy his brother's new wife. But he reckons without an unlikely protector. 
 
From its visceral first paragraph to its devastating twist of an ending, The Power of the Dog will hold you in its grip. 
 
WITH AN AFTERWORD BY ANNIE PROULX 
 
'With its echoes of East of Eden and Brokeback Mountain, this satisfyingly complex story deserves another shot at rounding up public admiration' Guardian

The Power of the Dog

**NOW THE WINNER OF THE 2022 BEST DIRECTOR OSCAR AND TWO 2022 BAFTA AWARDS**

Kenneth Grahame

A beautiful deluxe gift edition of a beloved classic, the story of Rat, Badger and Toad, with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon. 
 
The day that Mole abandons his spring-cleaning and sets out to enjoy the sunshine is the start of many adventures. Not only does he discover the river and the joys of messing around in boats, but he also makes lifelong friends with Rat, Badger and the eccentric and incorrigible Toad. 
 
This hardback is part of VINTAGE COLLECTOR’S CLASSICS, a series of luxurious books especially crafted for collectors and fans of beautiful special editions. Sumptuous design meets the highest quality production. Discover timeless classics beautifully bound for every bookshelf.

The Wind in the Willows

Virginia Woolf

WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY ANGELICA GARNETT AND JO SHAPCOTT 
 
In Night and Day, Virginia Woolf portrays her elder sister Vanessa in the person of Katharine Hilbery - the gifted daughter of a distinguished literary family, trapped in an environment which will not allow her to express herself. 
 
Looking at questions raised by love and marriage, Night and Day paints an unforgettable picture of the London intelligensia before the First World War, with psychological insight, compassion and humour.

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