Essays Books
Dedalus Ltd Dedalus Book of Medieval Literature
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£10.44
Dedalus Ltd Dedalus Book of Roman Decadence: Emperors of
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£8.99
Puncture Publications Maybe The People Would Be The Times
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£19.79
Serif Shebeen Tales: Messages from Harare
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£8.49
Poetry Society Poetry Review: 99:1: Psycho-geographies
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£9.64
Poetry Society Poetry Review: 99:4: This Time it's Personal
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£9.64
Poetry Society Poetry Review: Summer: 2013
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£10.38
The Lilliput Press Ltd The State Of Ireland
Book SynopsisArthur O'Connor was the most important conduit between French republicanism and Irish political radicalism in the late 1790s … His State of Ireland, published in 1798, created a distinctively Irish language of radical democracy out of French sources, by fusing them with the local political tradition and Scottish political economy.' So writes editor James Livesey in his introduction to this new edition of The State of Ireland, first published in pamphlet form in 1798 by Arthur O'Connor, a prominent member of the United Irishmen. O'Connor brought to the revolutionary movement of the 1790s a mind honed on the ideas of Adam Smith – ideas that might not seem revolutionary today, but that had radical implications as adapted by O'Connor and applied to the bizarre political economy of eighteenth-century Ireland. As perhaps the most steadfastly anti-sectarian member of the United Irish movement, O'Connor viewed the vexed debates over 'Protestant liberty' and Catholic Emancipation as distractions from the fundamental questions of political and economic reform; he supported emancipation as a necessary but by no means sufficient element of a free, democratic Irish society. 'What O'Connor's work reveals to us', Livesey writes, 'is the breadth of vision within the United Irishmen and the novelty of their intervention in Irish political culture … O'Connor's text deserves to find a place in the canon of classic political texts that have constructed and made possible, or even imaginable, Irish democracy.'
£23.75
The Lilliput Press Ltd Interpreting Synge: Essays from the Synge Summer
Book SynopsisJohn Millington Synge, controversial in his own time and long established as a major figure of world theatre, has nonetheless suffered relative critical neglect. Where his great contemporaries Yeats and Joyce and his outstanding successor Beckett have attracted whole industries of scholarly attention, Synge, by reason of his short life and limited output, has been relegated to the unconsidered category of minor classic. This volume of essays, arising from lectures given at the Synge Summer School by some of the most distinguished writers and scholars of Irish literature, sets about the necessary task of interpreting Synge: his relation to cultural and theatrical contexts; the significance of his plays; the distinctive quality of his language and the thematic matrices of his work. Four original poems, specially commissioned for the book, provide an imaginative counterpoint to the critical interpretation of the essays.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Nicholas Grene, on the margins: Synge and Wicklow; R.F.Foster, good behaviour: Yeats, Synge and Anglo-Irish etiquette; Frank McGuinness, John Millington Synge and the King of Norway; Angela Bourke, Keening as theatre; Tom Pualin, riders to the sea: a revisionist tragedy; Antionette Quinn, staging the Irish peasant woman: Maud Gonne v. Synge; Christopher Morash, all playboys now: the audience and the riot; Martin Hilsky, re-imagining Synge's language: the Czech experience; Declan Kiberd, the making and unmaking of myth: Synge as anthropologist; Anthony Roche, Synge: the woman and the tramp; Ann Saddlemyer, Synge's soundscape
£26.96
The Lilliput Press Ltd Refiguring Ireland: Essays in Honour of L.M.
Book SynopsisThis collection of essays has been specially commissioned in order to mark the quite exceptional contribution that Louis Cullen has made to historical studies in Ireland and abroad over the last forty-five years, spanning economic, social, cultural and political history. Introduction and Bibliography of L.M. Cullen David Dickson (TCD)Table of ContentsEnergy rich, energy poor: Scotland, Ireland and Iceland, T.C.Smout (University of St. Andrews);Irish and Scottish development revisited, T.M. Devine (University of Aberdeen);Did Ireland starve?, L.A. Clarkson (QUB);Economic progress in the canal age, Bruce M.S. Campbell (QUB);Tupac Amaru and Captain Right: a comparative perspective on eighteenth-century Ireland, S.J. Connolly (QUB);Transportation from Ireland to North America, 1703-1789, James Kelly (St Patrick's College);Louis Cullen: De l'histoire des communaut s marchandes irlandaises en France, celle des eaux-de-vie et de l'histoire conomique de la France au xviiie si cle, J-P. Poussou (l'universit de Paris Sorbonne);New York City's Irish merchants and trade with the enemy during the Seven Years War, Thomas M. Truxes (Trinity College, Connecticut);The social composition of the Catholic Convention, 1792-1793, C.J. Woods (Dictionary of Irish Biography project);Henrietta Battier: Poet and radical, 1751-1813, Ann C. Kavanaugh (Concordia College, Minnesota);A house divided: The Loftus family, earls and marquesses of Ely, c. 1600-c. 1900, A.P.W. Malcomson (PRONI);A bowling match at Castlemary, County Cork, Mair ad Dunlevy (National Museum of Ireland) and Cormac Gr da (UCD);Harry Boland s American Revolution, 1919-1921, David Fitzpatrick (TCD);The cost of living in Ireland, 1698-1998, Liam Kennedy (QUB);Irish trade in the nineteenth century, Peter M. Solar (Vrije Universiteit Brussel);The Irish distilling industry under the Union, Andy Bielenberg (NUI Cork);Moral hazard and quasi-central banking: Should the Munster Bank have been saved? Cormac Gr da (UCD);Ireland and the bigger picture, Kevin H. O Rourke (TCD);The modernization of rural Ireland, c. 1920-c. 1960, M.E. Daly (UCD);The roots of contemporary Irish economic development, Kieran A. Kennedy (ESRI, Dublin)
£45.00
Persephone Books Ltd Flush: A Biography
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£16.00
Bonnier Books Ltd Somewhere Beyond: A Jessie Kesson Companion
Book SynopsisThis miscellany of Jessie Kesson's writings brings together a variety of her work in different genres, all focusing on childhood and adolescence.
£7.08
Galileo Publishers The 100 Best Novels
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£12.34
Galileo Publishers Scattered Limbs: A Medical Dreambook
Book SynopsisA unique investigation into the power of myths in health and medicine, from placebos to Lao Tzu.
£15.29
Salmon Poetry Catching the Light: Views and Interviews
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£13.30
Notting Hill Editions Pilgrims of the Air: The Passing of the Passenger
Book SynopsisThis is a story of a scarcely credible abundance, of flocks of birds so vast they made the sky invisible. It is also a story, almost as difficult to credit, of a collapse into extinction so startling to the inhabitants of the New World as to provoke a mystery. In the fate of the North American passenger pigeon we can read much of the story of wild America - the astonishment that accompanied its discovery, the allure of its natural 'productions', the ruthless exploitation of its 'commodities' and the ultimate betrayal of its peculiar genius. And in the bird's fate can be read, too, the essential vulnerability of species, the unpredictable passage of life itself.Trade Review“Every page of this book is lit by a sense of wonder.” —Michael Longley “John Wilson Foster’s new book is a gem in every sense: small but perfect in the hand, elegantly written and full of evocative, deeply researched interest, both in the bird and American social history.” —Michael Viney, The Irish Times
£999.99
Penned in the Margins Mount London
Book SynopsisCo-editor Tom Chivers was born in 1983 in South London. A poet, publisher and independent arts producer, his books include How to Build a City (Salt Publishing, 2009), The Terrors (Nine Arches Press, 2009) and, as editor, City State: New London Poetry and Adventures in Form (Penned in the Margins, 2009 & 2012). In 2009 he presented a documentary for BBC Radio 4. His poem 'The Event' was animated by artist Julia Pott for Channel 4 television and has been viewed over 80,000 times online. Tom is currently writing a book of creative non-fiction entitled London Clay: Journeys into the Deep City. Co-editor Martin Kratz lives and writes in Manchester. He collaborates regularly with the composer Leo Geyer, and their piece Sedna won the 2011 Rosamund Prize. The opera The Mermaid of Zennor was described by the Times as an 'imaginative and beautifully shaped take on the Cornish legend'. 'The Dancing Bear' and 'The Bearded Lady' from the song cycle Sideshows, won the Philip Bates Prize for Composers and Songwriters. 2014 sees the premiere of three new collaborations: the complete performance of Sideshows, the opera Glasstown, and the ballet The Fox, to be performed at Sadler's Wells. Martin is currently writing a PhD on contemporary poetry and the sense of touch.
£12.34
Gibson Square Spoilt Rotten
£25.40
Vagabond Voices The Lost Art of Losing
Book SynopsisGregory Norminton transforms the aphorism into something more accessible and personal. Ultimately he uses aphorisms to question everything - including the aphorism itself: 'Incessantly we ask the meaning of life to protect us from hearing the perfectly obvious answer.' In The Lost Art of Losing, the author analyses the process and the hubris of literary invention, and is brutal in revealing its limitations: 'No revelation sparkles brighter than the one scribbled down from sleep, nor looks duller when revisited by the light of day. What we dream is the image of meaning. The object eludes.' These aphorisms explore the complex relationship between the self and wider society: 'To fear the ill-opinion of others is grossly to overestimate the space we take up in their imagination.' Norminton understands that an aphorism relies on the elegance of its thought: 'Some birds beat the air as if it were a foe meaning to drag them down. Others seem only to flap their wings in order to keep us from getting suspicious.'Trade ReviewNorminton's aphorisms are witty, some provocative, some self-revelatory and touching to read. A companionable little volume that brings fresh life to a venerable form." - Andrew Miller author of Pure, winner of the 2012 Costa Prize Chesterton said that novels are written for the sake of ve or six words. Gregory Norminton has dispensed with the dross and given us nothing but the real thing: a whole library of " ve or six words" in their magni cent, illuminating, witty and moving essence. - Alberto Manguel Norminton describes himself as a 'novelist and seated person'. From that sedentary position, he also writes really good aphorisms... His dark insights into the human condition glitter around the edges of these aphorisms, but he clearly feels that few dismal truths are so bleak that they don't also deserve a laugh. - James Geary, author of The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism
£7.72
Vagabond Voices Essays on Life by Thomas Mitchell, Farmer
Book SynopsisThomas Mitchell's essays on how to live well were completed in 1913, and reflect a clear mind and a good education, but also confidence about the world and society that were about to be shattered. No doubt some thoughts he expressed would have been impossible to reaffirm five years later. As we commemorate the centenary of terrible and unprecedented conflict, his intelligent voice from the past gives us an insight into how people thought before it and what was lost. This does not mean that Mitchell's ideas are not also an individual's, but it is now the combination of freshness and distance in this previously unpublished prose that makes it so compelling. His style also says much about the education system in Scotland and rural Aberdeenshire in particular, and his background was very similar to that of Lewis Grassic Gibbon. Though they undoubtedly had different politics, they would both have agreed on the importance of society.Table of Contents1. The Art of Living 2. The Secret of Success 3. The Value of Work 4. Thrift 5. Education and Its Value 6. Friendship
£10.93
Association for Scottish Literary Studies Literary Tourism, the Trossachs and Walter Scott
Book SynopsisIn 1810 a literary phenomenon swept through Britain, Europe and beyond: the publication of Sir Walter Scott''s epic poem The Lady of the Lake, set in the wild romantic landscape around Loch Katrine and the Trossachs. The world''s first international blockbusting bestseller, in terms of sheer publishing sensation nothing like it was seen until the Harry Potter books. Exploring the potent appeal that links books, places, authors and readers, this collection of eleven essays examines tourism in the Trossachs both before and after 1810, and surveys the indigenous Gaelic culture of the area. It also considers how Sir Walter''s writings responded to the landscape, history and literature of the region, and traces his impact on the tourists, authors and artists who thronged in his wake.
£18.95
CB Editions Own Sweet Time: A Diagnosis and Notes
Book SynopsisWhere does the body end and the mind begin? Two texts run parallel: on one side the verbatim transcript of a cancer diagnosis, and on the other side fragments of the writer's past and present, catching on the future.
£8.99
Sylph Editions Flight
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£13.30
Sylph Editions Paths Converge Infinite Strange Shapes
£14.40
Sylph Editions Jig
£14.40
Uniformbooks The Regional Book
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£10.98
Shoestring Press The Taste in My Mind: Essays
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£12.00
Shoestring Press How to Proceed: Essays
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£10.42
Luath Press Ltd Richard Demarco & Joseph Beuys: A Unique
Book SynopsisRichard Demarco co-founded the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in 1963 and ran the vibrant Richard Demarco Gallery in Edinburgh for almost 30 years. He promotes crosscultural dialogues and was the first person to introduce Joseph Beuys in the UK. Joseph Beuys was a German sculptor and creator of action performances, political activist and teacher. This book explores the works, lectures and ‘Actions’ which resulted from the mutual hopes, inspirations and shared values of Richard Demarco and Joseph Beuys, the innovative and inspirational German postwar artist, from 1970 until Beuys’ death in 1986. Demarco, an avant-garde gallerist in Edinburgh, was an early proponent of Scotland taking its place within the European art world; Demarco recognised the visionary quality of Beuys’ work and visited him in Oberkassel in January 1970. In the hope of focusing Beuys’ attention on Scotland, he presented him with a set of postcards depicting typical Scottish scenes. Beuys responded with, ‘I see the land of Macbeth, so when shall we two meet again, in thunder, lightning or in rain?’ They reunited in thundery Edinburgh later that year and Demarco led him northwards along the ancient track he calls ‘The Road to Meikle Seggie’. This initial experience of the Scottish landscape inspired Beuys, who felt a strong connection with Celtic culture, and laid the foundation for a remarkable artistic friendship which enriched the work of both men. With photos from Demarco’s personal collection and essays spanning from 1970 to the present, this is an intimate and intellectually rigorous look at a friendship seminal to the development of art in Scotland over the last 40 years.Trade ReviewPRAISE FOR RICHARD DEMARCO: As well as being recognised internationally as an artist, Richard is equally recognised as the promoter of exhibitions and theatre events that have broken new ground in Britain and further beyond, to which the long list of his national and international awards and honours attests. His writing is as idiosyncratic and enthralling as his drawings, driven by true passion and belief, the personal account of an artist whose deeply rooted and abiding love for his native Scotland shines clearly in his words. – RICHARD NOYCETable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introductions The Legend of Beuys - Douglas HallThe Road to Muddle Segue - Martin KempBeuys, Demarco and Scotland - Robert McDowell On Richard Demarco - Sir Nicholas SerotaWith regard to the exhibition entitled Richard Demarco and Joseph Beuys: A Unique Partnership - Richard Demarco Joseph Beuys: Timeline Essays Beuys in Scotland Richard Demarco’s personal experience of the reality of Strategy: Get Arts 7,000 Oaks: Richard Demarco Interviews Joseph Beuys Ex Cathedra Performance MagazineRyszard Stanislawski on Polentransport Thoughts on the ending of 1993 – and the significance of Strategy: Get Arts The Genesis and Legacy of Strategy: Get Arts Tadeusz Kantor and Joseph Beuys Joseph Beuys as Artist-Teacher Artistic Detours: Joseph Beuys as an Anthropologist A Unique Partnership in Pictures, 1970–87 The Beuys Legacy
£25.50
Notting Hill Editions The Paradoxal Compass: Drake's Dilemma
Book SynopsisWhat motivated the 16th century explorers? The question is a vexed one the world over. To this day, a troubled folkloric status hangs about the better-known names. Many of the Tudor explorers set sail from the South West peninsula. Morpurgo, with his own deep connections to the Dorset coast, unearths the stories behind little-known key figures Stephen Borough and John Davis, and their brilliant navigational teacher, John Dee, inventor of the 'paradoxall compass'. Morpurgo dramatises an episode in Drake's circumnavigation during which the Golden Hind was stranded on a rock off Celebes, Indonesia. What altercation occurred between Drake and the ship's chaplain, Francis Fletcher, during those terrifying twenty hours? Morpurgo makes a compelling argument for what was really at the heart of that disagreement, and its present-day repercussions. He argues that the Tudor navigators and their stories may hold the key to how we should approach the current environmental crisis. This is the Age of Discovery as you've never heard it before.
£999.99
UEA Publishing Project Literary Activism: A Symposium
Book SynopsisLiterary Activism – activism that revisits and interrogates an idea of literature – emerges from a radically altered landscape for both publishing and academia, where market pressures are effecting changes – on language, on the measuring of value, on the concept of influence – we might struggle to recognise.Taking in the roles of writer, critic, translator, academic and publisher, the essays in this volume follow no single line of enquiry. Rather, they offer the beginnings of an analysis of the literary world at a certain moment of globalization, while also questioning whether a literary world exists and, if it does, where its boundaries lie.The collection moves in many directions – from Arun Kolatkar and his near-heroic refusal of both market place and reputation; to Derek Attridge, who argues for a form of affirmative criticism which positions the critic as a ‘lover of the text’; while, from Amsterdam, Dubravka Ugrešić;reflects on life in a literary ‘out of nation zone’, adrift in a territory where intellectual protest has been stripped of ideological impetus and subsumed by the voraciousness of the market.Taken together, these essays initiate a series of conversations about who reads what and why, about the practice of writing and criticism at this particular contemporary moment, and about the activities and institutions that shape an understanding of what literature is and what it can do.Literary Activism, edited by Amit Chaudhuri, features writing from Derek Attridge, Tim Parks, Dubravka Ugrešić, Laetitia Zecchini, Peter D. Macdonald, Saikat Majumdar, Jamie McKendrick, and Swapan Chakravorty, with an afterword byJon Cook.
£18.00
Melville House UK The Future of War Crimes Justice
Book SynopsisAs the world grows increasingly turbulent, war crimes justice is needed more than ever. But it is failing. The International Criminal Court in the Netherlands, the world''s first permanent war crimes court, opened in 2002 but it has jailed just five war criminals to date. Meanwhile, wars continue to rage around the globe. So what has gone wrong, and can it be fixed? Journalist and war correspondent Chris Stephen takes a colourful look at the turbulent history of war crimes justice, and the pioneers who created it. He examines its shortcomings, and options for making it more effective, including the case for prosecuting the corporations and banks who fund warlords. Casting the net wider, he examines alternatives to war crimes trials, and peers into the minds of war criminals themselves. With war law advocates fighting for justice on one side, and reluctant governments unwilling to relinquish control on the other, will the world of the future be governed by rule-of-law, or might-is-right
£8.54
Vintage Publishing Like Love
Book SynopsisMaggie Nelson is the author of several books of poetry and prose, including the New York Times bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award winner The Argonauts, and most recently in the UK, Bluets. She teaches at University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles.
£18.00
Luath Press Ltd Arts and the Nation
Book SynopsisThe latent liability in energy is anarchy, but when it's working in a direction with a sense of purpose like the independence movement, and according to the priorities of the arts, and not violence, there's a lot you can do. There's a lot of self-respect to be regained. There's a lot of fun to be had. There’s a lot to be learned. A panorama of ideas about nationality and culture, Arts and the Nation arose from the conviction that Scotland can never be really democratic until it gives the arts the priority of place and attention they demand. This book is a fresh take on subjects new and old, with multifaceted ideas of nationality and culture. Those featured include: William Dunbar, Duncan Ban MacIntyre and Elizabeth Melville are read alongside international authors such as Wole Soyinka and Edward Dorn. J.D. Fergusson, Joan Eardley and John Bellany are considered with American Alice Neel and the art of the ancient Celts. Composers like John Blackwood McEwen, Cecil Coles and Helen Hopekirk are introduced, amongst discussions of education, politics, social priorities, the mass media and different genres of writing.Trade Review.
£12.34
Myriad Editions Redemption Ground: Essays and Adventures
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£9.49
Birlinn General Stories from South Uist
Book SynopsisThis is an extraordinary collection of tales from one of the very greatest Gaelic storytellers, Angus MacLellan, and translated by one of Scotland's finest Celtic Scholars, John Lorne Campbell. The stories in the book include every type of tale found on South Uist, from Fingalian heroes and ghost stories to international folktales and humorous and historical local anecdotes. These tales of ancient kings, thrilling escapes, jealous stepmothers and magic spells are fascinating not only for their narrative power, but also their links with myths and legends from Ireland, Scandinavia, France and Greece. The Hebrideaen island of South Uist was one of the last places in Western Europe where the ancient art of Storytelling was still honoured and practised, and the style of these translations is at once original and hypnotic, reflecting the oral tradition at their source.
£9.99
Eyewear Publishing Tucson Salvage
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£10.44
Shoestring Press The Hallelujah Shadow
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£10.00
Shoestring Press Based on a True Story: Real Made-Up Men
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£14.25
Shoestring Press John Gohorry: Bold Heart: Poems from Ten Books &
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£10.00
Salmon Poetry Our Killer City: isms, chisms, chasms and
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£9.50
Eyewear Publishing Christopher Smart's 'A Song To David': An
Book SynopsisBorn in Preston, England, and raised in London, Hilda Strong (1924-2017) emigrated to the USA in 1946. She was a wife and mother, elementary teacher and later college professor, active Seventh day-Adventist church member, and founder of the English War Brides' Club in Lewiston, Idaho. Hilda earned her English Literature Ph.D. in 1980 with a 4.0 GPA, having won the highest awards and honors from all colleges and universities she attended.
£15.29
Shoestring Press See You in Valhalla: A Centenary Tribute to
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£9.31
Hermits United My Early Education
£12.34
Hela Press Eiscafé Europa
£11.35
Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd Timbuktu, Timbuktu: A selection of works from the
Book Synopsis"Timbuktu, Timbuktu" contains the shortlisted stories from the Caine Prize for African Writing 2001. Bringing together writers from Mozambique, Nigeria, Somalia and Tunisia, this collection is a record of African talent. It follows the publication in 2001 of the first Caine Prize anthology, "Tenderfoots", which contained the shortlisted stories of 2000.Trade Review"To the left lay Gibraltar. Above lay the land of Andalus, drenched in the blood of defeated Arabs. Below that, red Marrakesh with its veiled Sultans and the roads to Timbuktu. He repeated to himself the name Timbuktu, Timbuktu, Timbuktu, as if he was repeating a favourite song." From The Wanderer by Hassouna Mosbahi.
£14.24
New Documents Give Up Art: Collected Writings (2005-15)
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£23.75
Cabinet Cabinet 67
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£8.93
