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On Reading collects together Orwell's short essays on books - 'Bookshop Memories', 'Good Bad Books', 'Nonsense Poetry', 'Books vs. Cigarettes' and 'Confessions of a Book Reviewer' - giving a rounded view of the great writer's opinions on the literature of his day, and the vessels in which it was sold.
Spectrum is a poetry anthology that seeks to amplify marginalised voices, and to celebrate the great diversity and rich variation in the identities of people from around the world and from a huge cross-section of walks of life.
'There's only control, control of ourselves and others. And you have to decide what part you play in that control.'Cast your eye over the comfortable north London home of a family of high ideals, radical politics and compassionate feelings. Julia, Paul and their two daughters, Olivia and Sophie, look to a better society, one they can effect through ORGAN:EYES, the campaigning group they fundraise for and march with, supporting various good causes.But is it all too good to be true? When the surface has been scratched and Paul's identity comes under the scrutiny of the press, a journey into the heart of the family begins. Who are these characters really? Are any of them the 'real' them at all? Every Trick in the Book is a genre-deconstructing novel that explodes the police procedural and undercover-cop story with nouveau romanish glee. Hood overturns the stone of our surveillance society to show what really lies beneath.
H.G. Wells, a prominent political thinker as well as a first-rate novelist, set down in The Rights of Man a stirring manifesto, and his words laid the groundwork for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which enshrined human rights in law for the first time, changing the course of history for ever and granting fundamental rights to billions.
Under the grey, industrial skies of Bridgepoint (Baltimore), three women toil away their lives. An astonishing work that toys with conventions from both literature and art, Three Lives stands as a monument in Modernism and experimental literature, and comes from the pen of a writer whose intelligence and compassion bleeds from every page.
Women and Love is a thought-provoking collection of seventeen tightly woven tales about the power of love, all its trials and complications, and the shattered lives it can leave in its wake.
The undisputed master of the short story, Saki's name is synonymous with brilliant writing that satirises Edwardian Society. This complete edition of his plays (the first complete edition ever published) demonstrates the great writer's prowess as a playwright.
In 2020, for the first time in centuries, theatres were closed. Two actors set about photographing the stage doors of the deserted city. These images are brought to life by anecdotes from some of the world's leading luminaries who have trodden the boards of the pictured theatres.
Narrated by a chair, In the Clouds is a light-hearted, humorous tale that tracks a hot-air balloon through the skies above Paris. Featuring the original illustrations by Georges Clairin, and in a fresh edit of the first English translation, this edition seeks to bring the tale to a new generation of readers.
New Beginnings is a poetry collection with a difference - resulting from an international competition seeking to find those whose voices were silenced in 2020, the resulting anthology forms a celebration of the end of the toxic aspects of 2020 and the pandemic, a glimmer of hope for the future and a manifesto for change.
First delivered as a speech to schoolgirls in Kent in 1926, this enchanting short essay by the towering Modernist writer Virginia Woolf celebrates the importance of the written word.
In 1881, three writers and rights activists, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage, came together to publish the first volume in their groundbreaking History of Woman Suffrage series - a series that eventually went on to fill 5700 pages and lend weight to a movement that changed the course of history for ever.
Waiting for Music is the fifth collection of poetry from the acclaimed writer Simon Mundy, and this book sets out a playlist that stems from music, visual art and dance - from Brahms' late piano works to a scene for soprano and dancers, written to be set by Roxanna Panufnik, that was inspired by a 16th century picture in the National Gallery.
In this haunting illustration of the treatment of mental health and chilling Gothic tale, a woman is confined to a room and forbidden to do anything interesting, and loses her mind. In 1887, following a nervous breakdown, Gilman had been sent to a leading neurologist, she explains in 'Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper', also included in this volume.
When Stephen Duck's The Thresher's Labour was published in 1730, it was a sensation - but Mary Collier was astounded to read Duck's dismissal of women, and she penned a stinging riposte, which reframed Duck's relation of harvest-time toil from a woman's perspective. This edition includes Duck's The Thresher's Labour and other pieces by Collier.
The Westminster Alice is a collection of humorous vignettes by Saki that forms a political pastiche of Lewis Carroll's Alice books, featuring an unforgettable cast of politicians of the day, and brought to life with illustrations by F. Carruthers Gould, 'with apologies to Sir John Tenniel' for their striking likeness to the Alice illustrations.
Stephen Leacock is an unjustly forgotten master of the short-story genre, once considered the best-known humorist in the world. Although he was a prolific writer, publishing about fifty novels, memoirs and histories in his lifetime, he was best known for his story short-collections Literary Lapses, Nonsense Novels and Frenzied Fiction.
Politics vs. Literature is, at heart, a review of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Using the book as an example of enjoying a book whose author one cannot stand, Orwell goes on to say that he considers Gulliver's Travels a work of art, leaving the reader to reconsider the books on their own shelves.
In Why I Write, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the works we remember him for. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell's mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writers' oeuvre.
In Politics and the English Language, Orwell takes aim at the language used in politics, which, he says, 'is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind'. This essay is just as relevant today, and gives the reader a vital understanding of the tactics at play in political language.
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