Search results for ""renard press ltd""

House clearances, charity shops, jumble sales and skipsThe significance of everyday possessions, heightened by absenceIf objects could talk of the dead, what would they say?Taking in its sights the significance of everyday possessions',All that Remainsis a powerful and poignant collection resulting from a collaboration between disciplines of art.Featuring ten beautiful full-page paintings, interwoven with poems, it forces us to consider what we leave behind in the everyday items we have amassed.

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If you want to get back to the beginningyou must fast forward to the end. I press play, drop into the solarsystem à la Holst, somewherebeyond the asteroid belt,rocketing ever further out. The poems in There's No Pluto in this Suite take the reader to the edges of ordinary experiences, places and narratives and ask them to leap from that ordinariness into the unexpected. The collection is broken into three parts, and the reader is taken on a ride through verse concerned with the experiences of immigration, travel and transience; then on to a gathering around the hearth, telling stories about what drives humans to live: vocations, love and journeys of discovery; and finally into a mythic realm, encountering holy fools, witchy saints and places of overlap between silly and sacred. There's No Pluto in this Suite is a playful collection that blends formal and free verse, lyric and narrative, and in which the profound rubs shoulders with the messy and the patently mysterious.

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These so-called Stupid Stories for Tough Times are a tonic for our times a search for sense in the strange and baffling times we live in, shot through, as all good stories should be, with humour and observational wit, with purpose, fate and dogs. 'Brilliant deadpan dystopia' (on Down to Earth)' Mike Leigh

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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 stories explore a huge variety of sorts of love surrounding women in wildly differing settings, and features an unforgettable cast including GPs, burglars, inmates, emigrant cleaners, carers, young professionals, and many more. Navigating heavy themes, with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ experiences, including gender dysphoria and searching for a sperm donor, the stories leave the reader burning with indignation, full of empathy and wonder. ‘I couldn’t sleep that night; our conversation was like a trapped bird flying around inside my head. The next morning, I texted to say I wouldn’t be coming back. I lied about having to return to my country to nurse a sick relative. I couldn’t bear to see my story mirrored in his eyes, and to see what we never had. I knew he’d understand.’

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In 2020, for the first time in centuries, heavy red curtains swept closed on stages across the West End; all theatres were closed. Two actors, keenly feeling the loss of their theatre homes, turned to a form of art that could still thrive over the following months, and set about photographing the stage doors of the deserted city. An extraordinary collaborative project almost two years in the making, Exeunt - The Stage Door Project collects together these moving images, alongside anecdotes from some of the world's leading luminaries who have trodden the boards of the pictured theatres. A tribute to the magical nature of the stage door and the tales lurking behind it, Exeunt is a celebration of the legendary theatres of the city, the extraordinary figures behind the curtain - and the faithful audiences who have flocked back after the storm. Proceeds from sales of this book go to the Actors' Benevolent Fund, ArtsMinds and Theatre Artists Fund Featuring the words of Dame Judi Dench, Emma Rice, Ned Seago, Simon Callow, John McCrea, Diane Page, Reece Shearsmith, Anita Dobson, Macy Nyman, David Bedella, Kwong Loke, Luke Giles, Stephanie Street, Dame Harriet Walter, Rebecca Frecknall, David Jonsson, Jackie Clune, Ben Cracknell, Richard Sutton, Adeyinka Akinrinade, Le Gateau Chocolat, Paule Constable, Lucian Msamati, Adrian Scarborough, David Acton, Natalie Law, Gordon Millar, Leanne Robinson, Thomas Aldridge, Katrina Lindsay, Eben Figueiredo, Andy Taylor, Aimie Atkinson, Jack Holden, Laura Donnelly, Laurie Kynaston, Abraham Popoola, Oengus MacNamara, Louis Maskell, Valda Aviks, Garry Cooper, Mark Dugdale, Lyn Paul, James Graham, Emma Sheppard, Paul Bazely, Preston Nyman, Lauren Ward, Jessica Hung Han Yun, Natalie McQueen, Gavin Spokes, Niamh Cusack, Paterson Joseph, Anna Fleischle, Daniel Monks, Michael Sheen, Lia Williams, Ruthie Henshall, Simon Lipkin, Tom Brooke, Ian Rickson, Rufus Hound, Zoe Tapper, Patsy Ferran, Joshua McGuire, Sharon D Clarke, Mark Gatiss, Taz Skylar, Marianne Benedict, Ferdinand Kingsley, Lez Brotherston, Tamsin Withers, Hadley Fraser, Karl Queensborough, Neil Salvage, Jessie Hart, Kathy Peacock, Howard Hudson, Jonathan Andrew Hume, Andy Nyman, Andrew McDonald, Claire Roberts, Michael Jibson, Jason Pennycooke, Christopher Tendai, Laura Baldwin, Matt Henry, Robert Lindsay, Simon Evans, Fisayo Akinade, Irvine Iqbal and Zoe Wanamaker.

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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. Taking its dedication from the first volume of the History – to the memory of pioneering women whose ‘earnest lives and fearless words… have been, in the preparation of these pages, a constant inspiration’ – this volume collects together four essays that give an insight into the work as a whole, and provide a rounded introduction to the history of women’s suffrage on both sides of the Atlantic.

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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. Featuring poetry by: Sora Li Anders, Lucy Beckley, Heinrich Beindorf, Martin Bennett, Nisha Bhakoo, David Bottomley, Allie Bullivant, Priyanka Kelly Burns, Laura Chouette, Rose Cook, Anna Dallaire, Ella Dane-Liebesny, Ieva Dapkevicius, Catherine Edmunds, Molly J. Evans, Voirrey Faragher, William Foster, John Gallas, Rosie Gliddon, Martha Grogan, David Hensley, Ellie Herda-Grimwood, Peter Hill, Simon Jackson, J.L. James, Jessica Johnson, Jasmine Kaur, Kathryn Louise Knight, Lizzy Lister, Karin Molde, Charlotte Murray, Ngoi Hui Chien, Jenna Pashley Smith, Elisabeth-Rae Reynolds, Heather Rodgers, C.M. Rosier, Hannah Ross, Kay Saunders, Melissa Sia, Aly Lou Smith, Sophie Sparham, Lynne Taylor, Christian Ward and Oyinmiebi Youdeowei.

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Alice hasn’t been home for a while – for seven years, in fact. But when her little sister Lo tries to take her own life, she has to return to the life she left behind. The change of scenery from London to Norfolk proves quite the culture shock, however, and Alice has to confront what she left behind all those years ago. The sisters’ relationship hasn’t evolved in Alice’s absence, and when she steps through the door she’s plunged back into the same world she escaped from. Set against Norfolk’s bleak landscapes, but masquerading as childhood nostalgia, Fridge is an all-too-familiar exploration of the broken promises of youth, and a bitter exposition of a generation left behind.

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In this short essay, Hill sets out a clear, concise argument for public access to parks, and argues for the rights we now take for granted. Our Common Land is a forgotten part of our cultural history, and demonstrates exactly why the founders of the National Trust thought it was so important to preserve ancient buildings and estates for the public.

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One of the most famous novelists in the English literary canon, the likes of Middlemarch and Silas Marner are household names, but Eliot’s essays are often overlooked. This collection brings together some of her most important essays and seeks to celebrate her non-fiction writing. In ‘Silly Novels by Lady Novelists’ Eliot states a desire – some few years before her best-known works – to turn her hand to novel-writing, and decries the trivial nature of contemporary writers, setting out a manifesto for good writing. In ‘Woman in France’ she considers the history of women’s writing, and the complications women face in order to write – something Eliot knew much about herself, adopting a male name to publish the work she did not publish anonymously. Taken together, this collection gives a rare and valuable insight into the author’s writing, and shines a light on her pioneering subtle form of feminism.

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'If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.' One of the most prolific and respected playwrights of the twentieth century, Bernard Shaw's legacy shows no signs of waning, and his beautifully written plays, laced with wry wit and invective alike, have seen countless performances over the years, their finest lines paraded in literary conversation and review. Meticulously selected by Simon Mundy, the Wit and Acid series collects the sharpest lines from Shaw’s oeuvre in small neat volumes, allowing the reader to sample some of the very best barbs and one-liners the twentieth century has to offer, and this, the first volume, covers lines from the great writer’s works published before 1911.

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Alice is becoming more and more forgetful. Her daughter Mandy is always on hand to help out, but is starting to feel the strain. One day a long-forgotten photograph stirs a memory and lures Alice back to the Crown Hotel in Blackpool, where she hopes for the chance to dance in the tower ballroom one last time. But when mother and daughter reach Blackpool, nothing is quite how Alice remembers, and she finds herself getting lost in the past. One Last Waltz is a beautifully written portrayal of a family coming to terms with complications caused by Alzheimer's disease. By turns sparkling with wit and heart-wrenching in its honesty, it's filled with vital and compassionate insight into the sufferings accompanying a disease that has blighted the landscape for so many.

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'Eventually, she spoke. If you don't laugh, you'll cry, she said, as she did neither.' The fifth poetry collection from an award-winning poet, As if it Meant Something is a startlingly beautiful, wide-ranging selection that lays the tapestry of life beautifully bare. Dealing with the mundane and profound, everyday experiences sit alongside the devastating decay caused by domestic violence and terminal illness, the soaring beauty of the Irish coastline and love, art, thought.

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A café in Brussels that puts people at their ease – artists with European politicians, their assistants and tousled intellectuals with bar staff, twenty-somethings in need of a job with thirty-somethings who have one. Flagey is a comedy of manners that smiles refreshingly at Europe’s capital, relaxed and true to its context. Love and politics raise their heads and generally get smacked for the trouble. The Place Flagey is really there. So perhaps are some of those you will meet inside.

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In Stone Children Britain's love and usage of the Continent is laid bare. A couple eat their way through France and are overcome by greed; an ashes-scattering goes terribly wrong; a house is haunted by pain and abuse. Through each powerful tale we follow, mesmerised, moving through time and across continents, as the flaws and greed of humanity are exposed with extraordinary skill and wit.

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Set in the valleys of South Wales at the tail end of Thatcher's Britain, The Green Indian Problem is the story of Green, a seven year-old with intelligence beyond his years - an ordinary boy with an extraordinary problem: everyone thinks he's a girl. Green sets out to try and solve the mystery of his identity, but other issues keep cropping up - God, Father Christmas, cancer - and one day his best friend goes missing, leaving a rift in the community and even more unanswered questions. Dealing with deep themes of friendship, identity, child abuse and grief, The Green Indian Problem is, at heart, an all-too-real story of a young boy trying to find out why he's not like the other boys in his class. Longlisted for the Bridport Prize (in the Peggy Chapman-Andrews category)

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1999. Lucy is in labour. She's just been handed a document to sign and her sense of self is beginning to deteriorate. 2024. Claire is an art student. Her latest panic attack means her art course could be over. Oh, and she can't stop contemplating her own mortality. Claire and Lucy have OCD. But they don't know that yet. Misdiagnosis, mistreatment and misinformation around OCD were rife in 1999 And still are now.

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The concept of identity - be it class, gender, sexuality, national, institutional, or anything else we define ourselves by - has gone through radical change over the past half-century, and the idea of definition by binary oppositions is no longer as relevant as it once was. 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.

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Set between the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1973 and East Coast suburbia in 1968, Black Hills picks out a stark portrait of intricate familial relationships, and how dark events in the past must be addressed before they take root. Toying with heavy themes, and engaging with the notions of American identity and domestic violence, Black Hills is a thought-provoking tour of one family's past that leaves a lasting impression.

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As recounted by the Roman poet Ovid, a young nymph, Salmacis, one day spied Hermaphroditus bathing; consumed with passion, she entered the water and, begging the gods to allow them to stay together, the two became one - part man, part woman. An Eclectic Pagan, for Elizabeth Ovid's fables are more than fiction, and form a framework for exploring identity. Drawing on the rich mythological history associated with the tale of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, and re-examining the tale through the lens of metaphor, Salmacis: Becoming Not Quite a Woman is a stirringly relatable and powerful exploration of gender, love and identity. this is my lake salmacis, and i am the wild nymph with a hollow in her belly and nothing between her legs

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The life of fifteenth-century heroine Joan of Arc is the stuff of legend, and her cruel death (burnt at the stake aged just nineteen) led to her being declared a martyr, granting her an impressive legacy. Following her canonisation in 1920, and against a history of overly romanticised retellings of the story, Bernard Shaw put pen to paper to give a more accurate account, without resorting to demonising her persecutors; as he writes in his preface, 'there are no villains in the piece'. It was an immediate success, securing him the Nobel Prize for Literature, although critics were initially divided by this frank approach - T.S. Eliot was outraged, saying, 'instead of the saint or the strumpet of the legends... he has turned her into a great middle-class reformer.' Nonetheless - or perhaps even because of this controversy - Saint Joan is considered one of Bernard Shaw's finest and most important plays. This edition has an introduction by Simon Mundy, who has spent several years as Vice-President of PEN International's Writers for Peace Committee, and extensive explanatory notes.

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Engaged, W.S. Gilbert’s most popular stage work after the comic operas he produced in collaboration with Arthur Sullivan, is a farcical comedy that has long lived in the literary shadows – although wildly neglected today, the play influenced literary names as great as George Bernard Shaw, and directly inspired Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Centring on a rich young man’s search for a wife and his uncle and best friend’s attempts to hinder him, the play toys with conventional notions of love and sincerity. In this edition, which also contains notes and an essay by the undisputed authority on W.S. Gilbert, Andrew Crowther, Engaged deserves to step out into the spotlight once more.

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Nightmare Abbey is a novella by Thomas Love Peacock, first published in 1818, widely considered to be Peacock’s most enduringly popular work. The narrative centres on Christopher Glowry, a miserly widower, his son Scythrop and a host of dismal-sounding servants in his family pile, Nightmare Abbey. Recovering from an ill-fated love affair, Scythrop dreams up various schemes to reform and regenerate the human species, but misanthropy lurks around every corner, and everything changes when a mermaid is spotted and a strange woman appears in his chamber. Although fundamentally a Gothic novel, and rich in allusion – from Pope to Dante, Rossini to Mozart – Nightmare Abbey is, at heart, a satire, as Peacock makes clear in the preface to a later edition, in which he describes the characters – allusions to his friends – as ‘status-quo-ites’, ‘morbid visionaries’, ‘romantic enthusiasts’ and ‘lovers of good dinners’.

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Hannah Snell's story begins with tragedy. In 1744 she married James Summs, a Dutch seaman. Soon after their marriage she fell pregnant, and Summs abandoned her and the child, who died just a year later. At this juncture, Snell donned a suit, assumed her brother-in-law's identity and set off in search of her errant husband. Boarding the sloop of war the Swallow in Portsmouth, Snell set sail to capture Pondicherry. Along the way she fought in many battles, sustaining multiple injuries, some of which made it difficult to keep her sex concealed. In 1750, she returned to London and told her story, setting down in The Female Soldier one of the most captivating military legends of all time, which went on to inspire generations of men and women alike. 'One of the most exotic and mysterious legends of military history.' (The Sunday Times) 'The most famous of all female warriors.' (Dror Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self)

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First published in 1923 but failing to gain the same fame as her groundbreaking collection Monday or Tuesday, Woolf's short story In the Orchard is perhaps her most experimental, painting the same picture in three very different ways.

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A listless aristocrat, Lord Jones, finds himself in London during the Blitz, attending to insurance matters. A zebra and her foal, having escaped from the London Zoo during a bombing, cross his path, and he decides to take them back to his estate in Pembrokeshire. Little loved by his fascist-sympathiser parents, something in Lord Jones softens, and he realises he is lost, just like these zebras. The arrival of the zebras sparks a new lease of life on the Pembrokeshire estate, and it is not only Lord Jones but the families his dynasty has displaced that benefit from the transformation. Full of heart and mischief, The Zebra and Lord Jones is a hopeful exploration of class, wealth and privilege, grief, colonialism, the landscape, the wars that men make, the families we find for ourselves, and why one lonely man stole a zebra in September 1940 - or perhaps why she stole him.

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Van Jennings, a sociology student, and his two friends, Terry Nicholson and Jeff Margrave, set out one day to explore an uncharted area said to be home to a colony consisting entirely of women. Their biplane suitably hidden in the surrounding forest, the men begin their search for civilisation. But it is not long before they are discovered, and they are captured and taken in by the society they set out to study. As boundaries are broken down and the web of mystery is brushed aside, the men soon begin to realise that there is much to be envied about this society, and perhaps it is they that have some reckoning to do. Dealing with the powerful themes of consent, consumerism and colonialism, Herland is a thought-provoking tale that trains a lens on our own concepts of society.

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George Orwell set out 'to make political writing into an art', and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature - his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell's essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. Fearing that England was about to be wiped from the face of the earth by the Nazi bombers flying overhead, Orwell put pen to paper and set out to make a record of English culture. England Your England, the sixth in the Orwell's Essays series, is this record, and is an important tableau of the nation's history, and demonstrates a resolute refusal to bow to the threatening forces of Fascism.

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In 1940 the Second World War continued to rage, and atrocities wreaked around the globe made international waves. Wells, a socialist and prominent political thinker as well as a first-rate novelist, set down in The Rights of Man a stirring manifesto, designed to instruct the international community on how best to safeguard human rights. The work gained traction, and was soon under discussion for becoming actual legislation. Although Wells didn't live to see it enacted, his words laid the groundwork for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which enshrined human rights in law for the first time, and was adopted by the United Nations in 1948, changing the course of history for ever and granting fundamental rights to billions.

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One of the earliest known published works written by an African author, The Interesting Narrative was a groundbreaking memoir that helped pave the way for the abolition of slavery. In it, Equiano describes his early life in Africa, his abduction and his gruelling journey across the world on a slave ship. Published in London once Equiano had secured his freedom, the runaway success of the book led to his financial independence, and he toured England, Scotland and Ireland lecturing on the horrors described in the book, and he dedicated his life to advocating for the abolition of slavery. Forgotten until the 1960s, The Interesting Narrative has again shot to fame, and is now considered the most detailed account of a slave's life, exposing the trials of the long road to freedom.

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In 1892 a furious Charlotte Perkins Gilman put pen to paper and created the avant-garde feminist work The Yellow Wallpaper as a warning – in this haunting Gothic tale, a woman is confined to a room and forbidden to do anything interesting – and she loses her mind. In 1887, following a severe nervous breakdown, Gilman had been sent to a leading neurologist, she explains in ‘Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper’, also included in this volume. He was a ‘wise man’ who ‘put me to bed and applied the rest cure… and sent me home with solemn advice to “live as domestic a life as far as possible”… and “never to touch pen, brush or pencil again” as long as I lived. I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over.’ The Yellow Wallpaper is both a haunting illustration of the treatment of mental health and a chilling Gothic tale, and this new edition makes it ready to enchant another generation of readers.

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The poetry of Dylan Thomas has long been heralded as amongst the greatest of the Modern period, and along with his play, Under Milk Wood, his books are amongst the best-loved works in the literary canon. This new selection of his poetry contains all of his best-loved verse - including 'I See the Boys of Summer', 'And Death Shall Have No Dominion', 'The Hand that Signed the Paper' and, of course, 'Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night' - as well as some of his lesser-known lyrical pieces, and aims to show the great poet in a new light.

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Fifteen-year-old Ashleigh is clever and charming, and she soon becomes the neighbourhood's favourite babysitter. But she has an appetite for secrets. Fast-paced, witty and scalpel-sharp, One Woman Crime Wave examines the limits of what money can buy, and how easily the fragile web of middle-class privilege can be torn.

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The Alchemy is a robust, frank and loving guide to an often opaque industry. As well as offering tips on working in gentle increments and re-imagining what productivity and the work of writing look like, there is advice on sending out work and navigating the industry, looking after your mental health as you go. Full of practical advice, strategies, comfort and the occasional entertaining essay, The Alchemyy is about writing a book when you thought you could not. It is for all writers, but with a particular eye on those who are tired and lacking in confidence, and those who face significant challenges – perhaps you are chronically ill or care for a loved one. It is a book for beginners, but it is also for those of you who are stuck in your habits and practice – perhaps you just need a pal to guide you through the day to day with the book you wanted to write. That’s what The Alchemy is. Let’s do this together.

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Jane Austen, one of the nation's most beloved authors, whose face adorns our currency, surely needs no introduction, but while many are familiar with her groundbreaking novels, few have come across her short burlesque work The History of England. Billed a history 'from the reign of Henry IV to Charles I by a partial, prejudiced and ignorant historian', The History of England pokes fun at the overly verbose and grand histories of Austen's day. Written when she was just fifteen, this is a comic tour de force that shows Austen's wit developing into the satirical prowess she is remembered for.

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François the Waif, considered by many to be Sand's masterpiece, tells the tale of a young orphan who is placed in rural foster care. Presented in a fresh edit of the original English translation, and with helpful annotations, this edition presents the text for a new generation of readers.

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When Lia lays an egg she doesn't know what to do. At her age, it's impossible to escape the baby question. She feels her heart's not in it but the egg is impossible to ignore Fledging is a riveting tale and resounding call for a woman's right to make her own choices, whether that means embracing motherhood or living child-free.

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Simon Mundy's Selected Poems is a monumental collection that brings together work published in five collections, across five decades, including the critically acclaimed By Fax to Alice Springs and More for Helen of Troy, as well as the more recent Waiting for Music, which included many of his collaborations with composers.

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What was it that got you through the Covid-19 pandemic? For some it was long walks; others turned to home baking. For millions it was video games, a booming industry which exploded in popularity over the pandemic years. Confined to our homes and with the lines of reality becoming blurred as everyday life shifted to screens, perhaps it was no wonder that so many of us were desperate to be transported to different worlds. In Playing with Reality: Gaming in a Pandemic, journalist and presenter Alex Humphreys, a passionate gamer herself, investigates this extraordinary boom in the gaming industry. Charting its rise, Alex interviews players and developers, sharing a glimpse of what was going on behind closed doors as studios closed and games were finished from home. Playing with Reality explores exactly what it was that made gaming a lifeline for so many, and what the future holds as we look to the metaverse.

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First published in 1925, set 'one Wednesday in mid-June', Mrs Dalloway charts the lives of several characters across a day in London. While Clarissa Dalloway goes about preparing for a high-society party she is to host that evening, pondering on her childhood and marriage, nearby Septimus Warren Smith, a First World War veteran, is plagued with memories of the war and of his friend who never returned. Weaving a multitude of voices and eras into one, dressed in the most beautiful of language, Mrs Dalloway has earned its reputation as one of the most iconic novels of the twentieth century and great successes of Modernist fiction. This edition also contains ‘Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street’, the short story upon which the novel is modelled.

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Exponentially increasing levels of unemployment and simmering racial tension in Moss Side, inner Manchester, exploded into mass riots on the 8th of July 1981, following the siege of a police station. In the Moss frames the events from the perspectives of Janet, a student nurse working in A&E, and Nav, a Sikh police officer on the streets. Both crave a return to normality and just want to fit in, but when violence breaks out and a teenage boy is stabbed, they are thrust together and forced to confront questions that arise about what really happened in the Moss.

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Bars Fight, a ballad telling the tale of an ambush by Native Americans on two families in 1746 in a Massachusetts meadow, is the oldest known work by an African-American author. Passed on orally until it was recorded in Josiah Gilbert Holland’s History of Western Massachusetts in 1855, the ballad is a landmark in the history of literature that should be on every book lover’s shelves.

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In 1773, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral became the first book of poetry by an African-American author to be published. At the tender age of seven, Phillis had been brought to Massachusetts as a slave and sold to the well-to-do Wheatley family. There, she threw herself into education, and soon she was devouring the classics and writing verse with whatever she had to hand – odes in chalk on the walls of the house. Once her talent became known, there was uproar, and in 1772 she was interrogated by a panel of ‘the most respectable characters in Boston’ and forced to defend the ownership of her own words, since many believed that it was an impossible that she, an African-American slave, could write poetry of such high quality. As related in the 1834 memoir by an outspoken proponent of antislavery, B.B. Thatcher, also included in this volume, the road to publication was not straight, and while it became clear that such a volume could not be published in America at the time, Phillis was recommended to a London publisher, who brought out the book – albeit with an attestation as to her authorship, as well as a ‘letter from her master’ and a short preface asking the reader’s indulgence. This edition includes the attestation, the ‘letter from her master’ and notes from the original publishers as an appendix, so that the twenty-first-century reader can discover Phillis Wheatley as she should have been read – as a poet, not property.

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The Rover, or, The Banished Cavaliers is the most popular play by the Restoration playwright (and spy) Aphra Behn, first performed in 1677. Although Behn’s work as a spy for Charles II came to a sudden end with a spell in debtor’s prison, she was a stout Royalist, and the title refers to Charles’ supporters, who were living in exile on the Continent. In the tradition of Restoration comedy, the play follows the wild exploits of a group of English gentlemen in Naples at Carnival time, although many of the tropes of the genre are subverted to an extent which sent shockwaves through the theatre world. Behn’s infamous libertine Willmore was an instant hit, and The Rover catapulted her to overnight fame, and brought her an income from the box office, making her one of the first women to earn a living by their pen.

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‘So let’s build the tension – everybody put your hands on your legs and give us a drum roll please! Stamp your feet! Here we go!’ It’s the final performance of a Cinderella panto in a moth-eaten, regional theatre, and backstage tensions between the ugly sisters are threatening to boil over on to the stage. Will the egotism, one-upmanship and sexual politics remain confined to the dressing room, or will the bitter rivalry and jealousy between the two actors steal the show? Oh No It Isn’t! is a brilliantly observed, raucous yet moving new play exploring the highs and lows of life in the theatre.

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Long before Shakespeare's name was synonymous with the stage he built a name as a poet, and Venus and Adonis was likely the first work to be published by the same quill that gave the world Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and the rest of the canon.

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A trail-blazing writer of great repute in her day, but now unjustly neglected, Baroness Emmuska Orczy’s name was synonymous with the mystery genre in the early twentieth century, particularly for her Scarlet Pimpernel books, set during the French Revolution. But perhaps the most revolutionary of her works is the lesser-known Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, a short-story collection revolving around Molly Robertson-Kirk, a fictional London detective – indeed, published in 1910, Molly was one of the first fictional female detectives, and served as a prototype for many that followed. Beautifully presented and with helpful explanatory notes, this edition celebrates Orczy’s heroine and aims to reintroduce her for a new generation of readers.

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