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Poets and the Peacock Dinner: The Literary History of a Meal
by Lucy McDiarmidOn January 18, 1914, seven male poets gathered to eat a peacock. W. B. Yeats and Ezra Pound, the celebrities of the group, led four lesser-known poets to the Sussex manor house of the man they were honouring, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt: the poet, horse-breeder, Arabist, and anti-imperialist married to Byron's only granddaughter. In this story of the curious occasion that came to be known as the 'peacock dinner,' immortalized in the famous photograph of the poets standing in a row, Lucy McDiarmid creates a new kind of literary history derived from intimacies rather than 'isms.' The dinner evolved from three close literary friendships, those between Pound and Yeats, Yeats and Lady Gregory, and Lady Gregory and Blunt, whose romantic affair thirty years earlier was unknown to the others. Through close readings of unpublished letters, diaries, memoirs, and poems, in an argument at all times theoretically informed, McDiarmid reveals the way marriage and adultery, as well as friendship, offer ways of transmitting the professional culture of poetry. Like the women who are absent from the photograph, the poets at its edges (F.S. Flint, Richard Aldington, Sturge Moore, and Victor Plarr) are also brought into the discussion, adding interest by their very marginality. This is literary history told with considerable style and brio, often comically aware of the extraordinary alliances and rivalries of the 'seven male poets' but attuned to significant issues in coterie formation, literary homosociality, and the development of modernist poetics from late-Victorian and Georgian beginnings. Poets and the Peacock Dinner is written with critical sophistication and a wit and lightness that never compromise on the rich texture of event and personality.
Steampunk Soldiers: Uniforms & Weapons from the Age of Steam (Dark Osprey)
by Philip Smith Joseph A. McCullough Mark StaceyBetween 1887 and 1895, the British art student Miles Vandercroft travelled around the world, sketching and painting the soldiers of the countries through which he passed. In this age of dramatic technological advancement, Vandercroft was fascinated by how the rise of steam technology at the start of the American Civil War had transformed warfare and the role of the fighting man. This volume collects all of Vandercroft's surviving paintings, along with his associated commentary on the specific military units he encountered. It is a unique pictorial guide to the last great era of bright and colourful uniforms, as well as an important historical study of the variety of steam-powered weaponry and equipment that abounded in the days before the Great War of the Worlds.
Theseus and the Minotaur (Myths and Legends)
by Graeme Davis José Daniel PeñaEven before Theseus descended into the labyrinth to face the Minotaur, he was already a famous hero and a veteran of many battles. The son of a man, a woman, and the god Poseidon, he'd journey far across Ancient Greece, fighting numerous monsters including the Periphetes 'the clubber', the Crymmyon Sow, and the insane demigod, Procrustes 'the stretcher'. He also survived several assassination attempts, including one by Medea, the famous witch-wife of Jason. Despite these adventures, it was on Crete that Theseus faced his greatest challenge. Taking the place of a sacrificial tribute to the king of Crete, Theseus used his wits and charm to convince the princess Ariadne and the famous inventor Daedalus to help him defeat the dreaded Minotaur, a hideous combination of man and bull that lived in a labrythine dungeon. In this book, Graeme Davis draws upon the classic sources to retell the great myths and legends of Theseus, the founder-king of Athens, and backs this narrative with a factual examination of the myth, its variations, and its development over time. Replete with both classical and modern illustrations, this book is a concise exploration of one of the most enduring myths of Ancient Greece.
The World of Extreme Happiness (Modern Plays)
by Frances Ya-Chu CowhigWhen Sunny is born in rural China, her parents leave her in a slop bucket to die because she's a girl. She survives, and at 14 leaves for the city, where she works a low-paying factory job and attends self-help classes to improve her chances at securing a coveted office position. When Sunny's attempts to pull herself out of poverty lead to dire consequences for a fellow worker, she is forced to question the system she's spent her life trying to master – and stand up against the powers that be. Savage, tragic and desperately funny, The World of Extreme Happiness is a stirring examination of a country in the midst of rapid change, and individuals struggling to shape their own destinies.This new edition is published to coincide with the US premiere of the play at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, which then transfers to the Manhattan Theater Club, NYC.
Behan Complete Plays
by Brendan BehanThis volume contains everything Brendan Behan wrote in dramatic form in EnglishContains the three famous full-length plays: The Quare Fellow, set in an Irish prison ("In Brendan Behan's tremendous new play language is out on a spree, ribald, dauntless and spoiling for a fight ... with superb dramatic tact, the tragedy is concealed beneath layer after layer of rough comedy" Observer); The Hostage, set in a Dublin lodging-house of doubtful repute where a young English soldier is being kept prisoner, "shouts, sings, thunders and stamps with life...a masterpiece" (The Times); and Richard's Cork Leg, set in a graveyard, "a joyous celebration of life" (Guardian). The volume also contains three one-act plays, originally written for radio and all intensely autobiographical, Moving Out, A Garden Party and The Big House.
Granular Modernism
by Beci CarverGranular Modernism understands the way that some Modernist texts put themselves together as a way of pulling themselves apart. In this volume, Beci Carver offers a new way of reading Modernist novels and poems , by drawing attention to the anomalies that make them difficult to summarise or simplify. Carver proposes that rather than trying to find the shapes of narrative or argument in their writing, the 'Granular Modernists' - namely, Joseph Conrad, William Gerhardie, Evelyn Waugh, Henry Green, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, and Samuel Beckett - experiment in certain of their works in finding the shapelessness of a moment in history that increasingly confidently called itself 'modern', which was to call itself shapeless. The project of Modernism in the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, was to find a story to tell about an era full of beginnings. The project of 'Granular Modernism' was to find a way of turning the inchoateness of the modern moment into art. Granular Modernism takes from the Naturalist movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth century its attentiveness to the process of mundane experiences like eating or waiting. But where Naturalism sets out to offer a complete picture of a way of life, Granular Modernism's eating and waiting fail to amount to anything more; to paraphrase Evelyn Waugh: 'The most they can hope for is a cumulative futility.' Frank Norris once described one of Stephen Crane's narrators as: 'a locust in a grain elevator attempting to empty the silo by carrying off one grain at a time.' Norris is being dismissive. But his image of pointless, meticulous, indefinite manoeuvre potentially defines the ambition of the Granular Modernists.
The Devil's Thief: A Rouge Regency Romance
by Samantha KaneDare she give in to temptation?The daughter of a reformed jewel thief, Julianna Harte knows a thing or two about stealth. When the foundling home she provides for finds itself in dire financial straits, Julianna is forced to do the unthinkable: she slips through the window of a wealthy rake to search for a treasure she knows is there: an invaluable pearl. But when the towering and very naked occupant of the moonlit bedroom ambushes her with a bargain - a night in his bed in exchange for the pearl - Julianna doesn’t know if it’s masculine heat or sheer desperation that makes his terms so tempting...
Isn't She Lovely: A Rouge Contemporary Romance
by Lauren LayneShe needed a place to live. He needed a girlfriend. The rules were clear... until they were broken...The only thing Ethan Price and Stephanie Kendrick have in common is their screenwriting class at the NYU Film School. Ethan's family is loaded and expectations are high for his stepping into the family business one day, while Stephanie is the class outcast and from the other side of the tracks. When a project brings this unlikely pair together, Stephanie becomes the fake girlfriend who plays a part similar to that of the character in their screenplay. What Ethan didn't expect was to fall in love with her - but has he fallen for the real her? Or just the version he created...?Isn't She Lovely is a modern take on Julia Roberts' Pretty Woman and is perfect for fans of Jessica Sorenson and Tammara Webber.
Sherman Plays: Cracks; Bent; Messiah; Rose (Contemporary Dramatists)
by Martin ShermanThe first collection by a seminal contemporary gay playwrightBENT (1979): "A heroic myth ... It has the laughter which Yeats asserted lay at the heart of tragedy." (Listener) "It is ... a play of importance, power and pathos which should concern us all." (Guardian) The play follows the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany. It received a Tony nomination for Best Play and won The Dramatists' Guild Hull-Warriner Award.CRACKS (1973): a comedy set in the gay scene in California of the 70s where an assassin is on the loose.MESSIAH (1982) is a moving drama about the life of a small Jewish community in the 17th century..ROSE (1999): Rose is a survivor of the Warsaw ghettos. She arrives on the boardwalks of Atlantic City, the Arizona canyons and salsa-flavoured nights in Miami beach. The play is sharply drawn reminder of some of the events that shaped the century.
Scandals and Abstraction: Financial Fiction of the Long 1980s
by Leigh Claire La BergeThe Long 1980s could be summed up handily in the annals of U.S. cultural history with the enduring markers of Ronald Reagan's presidency, Oliver Stone's film Wall Street, and Dire Straits's hit single "Money for Nothing." Despite their vast differences, each serves to underscore the confidence, jingoism, and optimism that powered the U.S. economy throughout the decade. Mining a wide range of literature, film, and financial print journalism, Scandals and Abstraction chronicles how American society's increasing concern with finance found expression in a large array of cultural materials that ultimately became synonymous with postmodernism. The ever-present credit cards, monetary transactions, and ATMs in Don De Lillo's White Noise open this study as they serve as touchstones for its protagonist's sense of white masculinity and ground the novel's narrative form. Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities and Oliver Stone's Wall Street animate a subsequent chapter, as each is considered in light of the 1987 stock market crash and held up as a harbinger of a radical new realism that claimed a narrative monopoly on representing an emergent financial era. These works give way to the pornographic excess and violence of Bret Easton Ellis's epochal American Psycho, which is read alongside the popular 1980s genre of the financial autobiography. With a series of trenchant readings, La Berge argues that Ellis's novel can be best understood when examined alongside Ivan Boesky's Merger Mania, Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal, and T. Boone Pickens's Boone. A look at Jane Smiley's Good Faith and its plot surrounding the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, concludes the study, and considers how financial reportage became a template for much of our current writing about of finance. Drawing on a diverse archive of novels, films, autobiographies, and journalism, Scandals and Abstraction provides a timely study of the economy's influence on fiction, and outlines a feedback loop whereby postmodernism became more canonical, realism became more postmodern, and finance became a distinct cultural object.
The Corrupted Part One: Part One
by G.F. NewmanIn 1951 the Festival of Britain marks a new golden age of hope and prosperity for the country. Things are certainly looking up for the criminal elite who run the East End. For Jack, a draft-dodger with aspirations to be a champion boxer, there's easy money to be made for providing a bit of muscle. Meanwhile his sister Kath must keep secret the fact that she killed their father to protect her son, Brian, from the abuse she experienced as a child. Brian is so traumatised by witnessing this event that the complex union of violence and sexuality will shape his character for life. As the years go by and disillusion sets in, successive Labour and Tory governments aren't able to stop the rot. Younger, nastier criminals like the Kray twins and the Richardson brothers begin to carve out their own criminal empires and crush all resistance. Brutalised and embittered by years of failure and imprisonment, Jack decides to make a stand. The stage is set for one big war.
The Corrupted Part Two: Part Two
by G.F. NewmanIn 1951 the Festival of Britain marks a new golden age of hope and prosperity for the country. Things are certainly looking up for the criminal elite who run the East End. For Jack, a draft-dodger with aspirations to be a champion boxer, there's easy money to be made for providing a bit of muscle. Meanwhile his sister Kath must keep secret the fact that she killed their father to protect her son, Brian, from the abuse she experienced as a child. Brian is so traumatised by witnessing this event that the complex union of violence and sexuality will shape his character for life. As the years go by and disillusion sets in, successive Labour and Tory governments aren't able to stop the rot. Younger, nastier criminals like the Kray twins and the Richardson brothers begin to carve out their own criminal empires and crush all resistance. Brutalised and embittered by years of failure and imprisonment, Jack decides to make a stand. The stage is set for one big war.
The Lent Factor: Forty Companions for the Forty Days of Lent: The Mowbray Lent Book 2015
by Graham JamesHuman character is best described by telling stories about people. The Lent Factor describes forty very different people - one for each day of Lent - who have a special quality about them, and uses their stories to reflect on how faith and character are connected. A theme from each brief story is illuminated by reflection on a scene, passage or word from the Bible. The appropriateness of the use of a cross to mark out the 'X' factor within human beings becomes the more pertinent as the journey through Lent approaches Holy Week and Easter. The cast list includes Edith Cavell, Philip Toynbee (father of Polly), U.A. Fanthorpe, Dorothy Sayers, Charles Wesley, Rabbi Hugo Gryn, Julian of Norwich, Kathleen Ferrier, Eva Peron and many others from different backgrounds and diverse periods of history, some famous and some entirely unknown.
Loser's Corner
by Antonin Varenne2008. George 'The Wall' Crozat has racked up thirty-eight victories (twenty-three of them by knock-out), eight defeats, and an empty bank account. Finally ready to hang up the gloves and focus on his career as a police officer, his chief concern is how to fund his prostitution habit. When a shady bouncer offers him a photograph, an address and a chance to finally turn a profit with his fists, the temptation is irresistible. Before long the money is flowing, but Crozat has unknowingly become a pawn in a very dangerous game. Powerful forces are using his brutality to keep their own secrets, and Crozat teeters on the precipice of an abyss that stretches fifty years into the past, to the darkest chapter of France's colonial history. Switching effortlessly between past and present, and drawing on his own father's experience of the Algerian War, Antonin Varenne's darkly personal thriller shines a light on corruption, torture, conspiracy and revenge.
No Pirates Nowadays: A Short Story
by Patrick O’BrianA classic tale of nautical adventure from the author of the acclaimed Aubrey/Maturin series, now published in eBook for the very first time to commemorate the Patrick O’Brian centenary.
Noughts and Crosses: A Short Story
by Patrick O’BrianA classic tale of nautical adventure from the author of the acclaimed Aubrey/Maturin series, now published in eBook for the very first time to commemorate the Patrick O’Brian centenary.
Playing in the White: Black Writers, White Subjects (Oxford Studies in American Literary History)
by Stephanie LiThe postwar period witnessed an outpouring of white life novels--that is, texts by African American writers focused almost exclusively on white characters. Almost every major mid-twentieth century black writer, including Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ann Petry and James Baldwin, published one of these anomalous texts. Controversial since their publication in the 1940s and 50s, these novels have since fallen into obscurity given the challenges they pose to traditional conceptions of the African American literary canon. Playing in the White: Black Writers, White Subjects aims to bring these neglected novels back into conversations about the nature of African American literature and the unique expectations imposed upon black texts. In a series of nuanced readings, Li demonstrates how postwar black novelists were at the forefront of what is now commonly understood as whiteness studies. Novels like Hurston's Seraph on the Suwanee and Wright's Savage Holiday, once read as abdications of the political imperative of African American literature, are revisited with an awareness of how whiteness signifies in multivalent ways that critique America's abiding racial hierarchies. These novels explore how this particular racial construction is freighted with social power and narrative meaning. Whiteness repeatedly figures in these texts as a set of expectations that are nearly impossible to fulfill. By describing characters who continually fail at whiteness, white life novels ask readers to reassess what race means for all Americans. Along with its close analysis of key white life novels, Playing in the White: Black Writers, White Subjects also provides important historical context to understand how these texts represented the hopes and anxieties of a newly integrated nation.
The Something
by Rebecca CobbWhen a little boy's ball disappears down a mysterious hole in the garden, he can't stop thinking about what could be down there - a little mouse's house? The lair of a hungry troll? Or maybe even a dragon's den. Whatever it may be, he's determined to find out!The Something is a glorious, imaginative adventure from Rebecca Cobb, the award-winning creator of Aunt Amelia and Lunchtime, and the illustrator of The Paper Dolls, written by Julia Donaldson.
Tom Clancy's Full Force and Effect: INSPIRATION FOR THE THRILLING AMAZON PRIME SERIES JACK RYAN (Jack Ryan #3)
by Mark GreaneyINSPIRATION FOR THE THRILLING AMAZON PRIME SERIES JACK RYAN . . . When a rogue state tries to go nuclear, only two men can stop it . . .Jack Ryan Jr is in Ho Chi Minh City tailing an ex-CIA operative with valuable documents when a hit leaves Jack with a corpse, no documents and only a bloodily scribbled note as a clue to what just happened.It sends him on the trail of a shadowy security firm with links to North Korea, newly resurgent under its young, power-hungry dictator. For the rogue state has found a way to finally make its nuclear ambitions a reality - no matter the cost to the world.This is something President Jack Ryan will not permit - but North Korea and its backers have plans for US leader which will silence him for good.On the ground and on the global stage, Jack Ryans Jr and Sr race against time to halt a madman from acquiring the world's deadliest weapon . . .The newest JACK RYAN thriller from Tom Clancy, following on from Command Authority, sees the return of the best loved series character from the world's favourite international thriller writer.
Two’s Company: A Short Story
by Patrick O’BrianA classic tale of nautical adventure from the author of the acclaimed Aubrey/Maturin series, now published in eBook for the very first time to commemorate the Patrick O’Brian centenary.
Davina Dupree Predicts a Plot: Second in the Egmont School Series
by S.K. SheridanSecond in the Egmont School Series: Davina Dupree is excited to be back in her luxury boarding school after the half term holidays, especially as famous Hollywood director Alfie Calpone will soon be arriving to direct the school play. But when jewellery goes missing from First Years' dorms, bullies Cleo and Clarice attempt to pin the blame on Davina's new friend Lottie. The clock starts ticking as Davina attempts to unearth the real culprit before the curtain goes up on opening night... If you enjoy reading Malory Towers by Enid Blyton, you'll love this book. Davina is a modern day Darrell Rivers and her school, Egmont Exclusive School for Girls, is the ultimate, modern day boarding school, full of thrilling adventure, mouth watering food and bags of mysterious goings on... A perfect read for children who enjoy school fiction, adventure, mystery or humorous stories
The Day I Met Myself: Collected Poems
by Peter GammondSelected poems of author and musician Peter Gammond
The Top Secret Diary of Davina Dupree (The Egmont School Series #1)
by S.K. SheridanFirst in the Egmont School series: Davina Dupree's just arrived in a luxury boarding school against her wishes, but that's the least of her problems. Could it be that the two art teachers there are hiding a shady secret? And why won't the school bullies Clarice and Cleo leave her alone? Davina turns detective... If you enjoy reading Malory Towers by Enid Blyton, you'll love this book. Davina is a modern day Darrell Rivers and her school, Egmont Exclusive School for Girls, is the ultimate, modern day boarding school, full of thrilling adventure, mouth watering food and bags of mysterious goings on... A perfect read for children who enjoy school fiction, adventure, mystery or humorous stories'
Diverting Authorities: Experimental Glossing Practices in Manuscript and Print
by Jane GriffithsDiverting Authorities examines the glossing of a variety of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century texts by authors including Lydgate, Douglas, Chaloner, Baldwin, Bullein, Harington, and Nashe. It is concerned particularly with the use of glosses as a means for authors to reflect on the process of shaping a text, and with the emergence of the gloss as a self-consciously literary form. One of the main questions it addresses is to what extent the advent of print affects glossing practices. To this end, it traces the transmission of a number of glossed texts in both manuscript and print, but also examines glossing that is integral to texts written with print production in mind. With the latter, it focuses particularly on a little-remarked but surprisingly common category of gloss: glossing that is ostentatiously playful, diverting rather than directing its readers. Setting this in the context of emerging print conventions and concerns about the stability of print, Jane Griffiths argues that—-like self-glossing in manuscript—-such diverting glosses shape as well as reflect contemporary ideas of authorship and authority, and are thus genuinely experimental. The book reads across medieval-renaissance and manuscript-print boundaries in order to trace the emergence of the gloss as a genre and the way in which theories of authorship are affected by the material processes of writing and transmission.
Four minutes twelve seconds (Modern Plays)
by James FritzHe says they all do it. These kids, you know, they've got their phones. Film everything. Can't say I blame them. I would at that age.Seventeen-year-old Jack is the apple of his mother's eye. His parents, Di and David, have devoted their lives to giving him every opportunity they never had. As a result, Jack is smart, outgoing, and well on his way to achieving the grades to study Law at Durham University.But a startling incident outside the school gates threatens to ruin everything they've striven for: an incident that suggests a deep hatred of their son. As events begin to accelerate, Di and David start to doubt Jack's closest friends, Jack himself, and ultimately themselves – who can they trust?In a world where smartphones are ubiquitous, James Fritz's deeply provocative and topical drama throws a light on the sorts of insidious opportunities new technology offers – where nothing dies online, except reputation.Four Minutes Twelve Seconds was runner-up for the Verity Bargate Award in 2013. It received its world premiere at Hampstead Theatre in the Downstairs space on 2 October 2014.