It contains reminiscences of many periods of the author's life. He associated with a number of celebrities of his times, including Jean-Martin Charcot, Louis Pasteur, Henry James, and Guy de Maupassant, all of whom figure in the book. He also associated with the very poorest of people, including Italian immigrants in Paris and plague victims in Naples, as well as rural people such as the residents of Capri, and the Nordic Lapplanders. He was an unabashed animal lover, and animals figure prominently in several stories, perhaps most notably his alcoholic pet baboon, Billy.The stories cover a wide range in terms of both how serious they are and how literal. Several discussions with animals and various supernatural beings take place, and the final chapter actually takes place after Munthe has died and includes his discussions with Saint Peter at the gates of Heaven. At no point does Munthe seem to take himself particularly seriously, but some of the things he discusses are very serious, such as his descriptions of rabies research in Paris, including euthanasia of human patients, and a suicide attempt by a man convinced he had been exposed to the disease.Several of the most prominent figures in Munthe's life are not mentioned in Story of San Michele. His wife and children do not figure in the narrative; very little of his time in England is mentioned, even though he married a British woman, his children were largely raised in England, and he himself became a British citizen during the First World War. His decades-long service as personal physician and confidante to the Queen of Sweden is mentioned only in the most oblique terms; at one point, while naming her only as "she who must be mother to a whole nation", he mentions that she regularly brings flowers for the grave of one of her dogs buried at Villa San Michele, at another point, one of his servants is out walking his dogs, and encounters the Queen, who mentions having given the dog to Munthe.Munthe published a few other reminiscences and essays during the course of his life, and some of them were incorporated into The Story of San Michele, which vastly overshadows all his other writing both in length and popularity. Notably, his accounts of working with a French ambulance corps during the First World War are not included.World wide, the book was immensely successful; by 1930, there had been twelve editions of the English version alone, and Munthe added a second preface. A third preface was written in 1936 for an illustrated edition

    Splendid translations of the poems, with the Russian on a facing page, and a fresh, colloquial version of Mayakovsky's dramatic masterpiece, The Bedbug.

    It was his third novel and it is certainly well-written and very readable. It is, too, an enjoyable romp, all about a stranded theatrical group the Dinky Doos rescued by Miss Trant and coverted into the Good Companions, and involving their adventures with such characters as Jess Oakroyd, the middle-aged joiner from Bruddersford, who breaks free from his miserable domestic existence, Susie Dean and Inigo Jollifant. It is the sort of long, colourful novel which was one of Priestley's hallmarks, and it is clear that Priestley enjoyed himself writing it. He regarded the job as not so much a task, more a kind of holiday.One of the ironies of the success of The Good Companions is that when he discussed his idea for the book with his publishers they told him that such a book would not appeal to the current reading public. However, the germ of the story was embedded deep into his mind and heart, and writing the novel became something of an obsession. He had made up his mind to write a novel that he himself could enjoy even if nobody else did...and, in the event, a great many others also loved it! (The novel arrived at a time when the country was in depression, and someone commented that The Good Companions "soared out of the gloom like a fairy tale to lift thousands of minds into a world of literary enchantment."David Hughes in "J.B. Priestley:An Informal Study of His Work", wrote: "The Good Companions is a simple book, plainly constructed and straightforwardly told. Like so much of Priestley's work, its action begins on a note of rebellion, while its impulse is the search for romance without losing sight of reality; indeed, staring into the very heart of reality for the magic. Jess Oakroyd is pitched into loneliness by the drab quarrrelling of his family. Miss Trant, suddenly relieved in early middle age of a burden that might have lasted her lifetime, turns against the trivial monotony of her genteel days in a Cotswold village. Inigo Jollifant, surrounded in the prep school where he teaches by petty rulings, is refused permission to play the piano by the headmaster's wife, gets drunk and escapes into the night. Three separate rebellions against the frustrations of life put three characters on the road for what is probably the longest picaresque novel in English since Pickwick."Priestley started to write The Good Companions in January 1928, and he delivered the manuscript to Heinemann in March 1929.At least two films have been made of The Good Companions, and it has been turned into a play on several occasions.

    Alone on the barren island of Resolution in the South Pacific, he fights against the might of a German battleship. This is the first of C.S.Forester's novels about the sea.

    Lawrence. Since then it has won the admiration of writers from Henry Miller to Iris Murdoch. Wolf Solent remains wholly unrivaled in its deft and risky balance of mysticism and social comedy, ecstatic contemplation of nature and unblinking observation of human folly and desire.Forsaking London for Ramsgard, a village in Dorsetshire, Wolf Solent discovers a world of pagan splendor and medieval insularity, riddled by ancient scandals and resentments. And there this poetic young man meets two women—the sensuous beauty Gerda and the ethereal gamine Christie—who will become the sharers of his body and soul. Audacious, extravagant, and gloriously strange, Wolf Solent is a twentieth-century masterpiece.

    Here Auerbach, thought by many to be the greatest of twentieth-century scholar-critics, makes the seemingly paradoxical claim that it is in the poetry of Dante, supreme among religious poets, and above all in the stanzas of his Divine Comedy, that the secular world of the modern novel first took imaginative form. Auerbach’s study of Dante, a precursor and necessary complement to Mimesis, his magisterial overview of realism in Western literature, illuminates both the overall structure and the individual detail of Dante’s work, showing it to be an extraordinary synthesis of the sensuous and the conceptual, the particular and the universal, that redefined notions of human character and fate and opened the way into modernity.CONTENTSI. Historical Introduction; The Idea of Man in LiteratureII. Dante's Early PoetryIII. The Subject of the "Comedy"IV. The Structure of the "Comedy"V. The PresentationVI. The Survival and Transformation of Dante's Vision of RealityNotesIndex

    . .A classic and influential story, Emil and the Detectives remains an enthralling read.

    This beautifully written book, to be read alongside the likes of Sassoon, Graves, and Remarque, is a collection of her memories and impressions of that experience. Describing the men as they march into battle, engaging imaginatively with the stories of individual soldiers, and recounting procedures at the field hospital, the author offers a perspective on the war that is both powerful and intimate.

    It is a peculiarly human activity.Originally published in 1929 anonymously under the pen name Private 19022, The Middle Parts of Fortune follows ordinary soldiers as they fight to survive in the trenches of a raging war. It was revised and published again in wider circulation in 1930. The book details the brutalities of the soldier's experiences and their internal struggles, as well as the raw complexities of human interaction when comradeship and conflict collide. Most of the book's events are filtered through the main character Bourne, who is enigmatic and detached and considered to be a self-portrait of the author.Frederic Manning was an Australian poet and novelist who died in 1935. He had fought in the Battle of the Somme in 1916 during the first World War, and his war experiences allowed him to infuse his characters and their perspectives with authenticity and fragility. While the subject matter may be bleak and grim, Manning's writing is fluid and striking in its description. Beloved by T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Ernest Hemingway, who called it a noble novel, The Middle Parts of Fortune is regarded as a classic war novel.

    First they learned to fly penguins-tricky birds that almost never flew in a straight line.Then, the best of them, went on to master the coveted Hispano Spads, sleek ships that refused to go down.And those who could stand the firey pace became the men of the Lafayette Flying Corps, ready to do combat with the top German aces.Facing crackling machine-gun fire, the wings of their planes often riddled with bullets, they struck at the heart of the enemy's winged power.

    When the woman becomes involved with another man, her husband must choose between forgiving his wife or abandoning the relationship, & Europe, forever.

    Originally published in the Strand, in September 1929.

    The most complete edition yet published of Wittgenstein's 1929 lecture includes a never-before published first draft and makes fresh claims for its significance in Wittgenstein's oeuvre.The first available print publication of all known drafts of Wittgenstein's Lecture on EthicsIncludes a previously unrecognized first draft of the lecture and new transcriptions of all draftsTranscriptions preserve the philosopher's emendations thus showing the development of the ideas in the lectureProposes a different draft as the version read by Wittgenstein in his 1929 lectureIncludes introductory essays on the origins of the material and on its meaning, content, and importance

    "Red Harvest" is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain.The Op was in Personville, derogatory nickname aside, as the result of a letter to the Continental Detective Agency in San Francisco from Donald Willsson, publisher of the local paper, asking for an agent to visit. No other information. As soon as the OP arrives, the body count begins. It starts with his client!

    Luzhin, a distracted, withdrawn boy, takes up chess as a refuge from everyday life. As he rises to the heights of grandmaster, the game of chess gradually supplants the world of reality as he moves inexorably towards madness.

    This symposium was published in Paris ten years before Joyce's work in progress was completed and the contributors were all friends or acquaintances of the author: Samuel Beckett, Marcel Brion, Frank Budgen, Stuart Gilbert, Eugene Jolas, Victor Llona, Robert McAlmon, Thomas McGreevy, Elliot Paul, John Rodker, Robert Sage and William Carlos Williams. There are also "Letters of Protest" from G.V.L. Slingsby and Vladimir Dixon.

    V. Morton is more than a travel book: it is a sensitive interpretation of a country's people and their history. The success of his first book on England, established the popularity of something new and refreshing in this type of literature. Mr Morton's travels have gained him thousands of readers in all parts of the world. The author has frequently been requested to define the secret of writing a travel book. He always replies: 'There is no secret. You either enjoy yourself or you do not. If you do, say so; if you do not - say so ' This disarming sincerity is, perhaps, responsible for the charm and fascination of his books. The feel and smell of the countryside, also a sense of movement, find their way into these light-hearted wanderings, and, combined with humour, acute observation, sympathy and an engaging curiosity, have justly gained for them a wide and increasing popularity. Contents Include: I Go in Search of Scotland - I Explore Edinburgh - I See the Castle of Roslin - Tells how I go on Through Rain to Lochleven - In Which I Climb into the Highlands - I Describe a Mystery of Aberdeen - Describes a Sincere Scottish Breakfast - In Which I Work East to West - I Go by Sea to Sky - How I Break the Sabbath - I Sail up the Clyde into Glasgow - In Which I Encounter Men Who Melt Steel

    Some indeed are among the loveliest in any literature; and Miss Waddell has not dulled their brightness. She has come to them not merely with scholarship and literary tact, but with a soul attuned to the thought and feeling and the very idiom of another day. She has the most important of the translator's qualifications - a perfect empathy with her material.'" "Through the marvellous empathy this reviewer unerringly describes, she unlocked some of the secrets and literary achievements of the Middle Ages for the scholar and the general reader alike. The vagantes, to whom the reviewer refers, are also the subject of her earlier book, The Wandering Scholars (1927) which similarly won golden opinions. These two books and her novel Peter Abelard (1933) made her the most famous medievalist of her generation." And this was no passion fashion. Helen Waddell's books, particularly this one, have informed and inspired generations of medievalists. Mediaeval Latin Lyrics is an authoritative and delightful guide to a period of European civilization and literature, when Latin was still a vibrant means of communication throughout the western world.

    In his introduction John Ashbery calls the book "the finest work of Surrealist fiction," noting that de Chirico "invented for the occasion a new style and a new kind of novel . . . his long run-on sentences, stitched together with semi-colons, allow a cinematic freedom o f narration . . . his language, like his painting, is invisible: a transparent but dense medium containing objects that are more real than reality." Hebdomeros is accompanied by an appendix of previously untranslated or uncollected writings, including M. Dudron's Adventure, a second, fragmentary novel translated by John Ashbery.

    However, when Madeleine arrives, she comes between them in a way that permanently threatens their friendship.

    The hero is George Winterbourne. Leaving the Edwardian gloom of his embattled parents behind him, George escapes to Soho, which buzzes, on the eve of war, with talk of politics, pacifism and free love. He paints, he marries, he takes a mistress: the perfect hero of his time, whose destiny -- like all those of that lost generation -- is the bloody nightmare of the trenches.

    The celebrated author of the Hornblower series presents the biography of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, the victor of the naval battle of Trafalgar.

    The book begins: My husband left me four years ago. Why-I don't precisely understand, and never did. Nor, I suspect, does he. Nowadays, when the catastrophe that it seemed to be and its causes are matters equally inconsequential, I am increasingly disposed to the belief that he brought himself to the point of deserting me because I made such outrageous scenes at first mention of the possibility.

    Born in 1883 into a distinguished and wealthy aristocratic family of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hermynia Zur Muhlen spent much of her childhood travelling in Europe and North Africa with her diplomat father. After five years on her German husband's estate in czarist Russia she broke with both her family and her husband and set out on a precarious career as a professional writer committed to socialism. Besides translating many leading contemporary authors, notably Upton Sinclair, into German, she herself published an impressive number of politically engaged novels, detective stories, short stories, and children's fairy tales. Because of her outspoken opposition to National Socialism, she had to flee her native Austria in 1938 and seek refuge in England, where she died, virtually penniless, in 1951. This revised and corrected translation of Zur Muhlen's memoir - with extensive notes and an essay on the author by Lionel Gossman - will appeal especially to readers interested in women's history, the Central European aristocratic world that came to an end with the First World War, and the culture and politics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."

    On its original release in 1929 (The Scholartis Press), The New Statesman observed that Bates has 'by seeing with a child's eyes, found a world of marvellous and strange beauty, and has given the smallest shades of change and emotion the magnitude and drama they have in the minds of children and poets.'In 'The Child' we meet a young girl mesmerised by the sea seen through a multi-coloured window, and, in contrast, 'The Comic Actor' sees an unsuccessful farmer who, encouraged by his devoted family, fulfils a life ambition by participating in a village play.Bates draws on his own experiences of the barber shops of his youth in 'The Barber'. Forced to visit them on Saturdays, he was made to wait until the barber had served the army of 'black-necked, poaching, shoemaking, prizefighting, often stinking men.'The title story, 'Alexander', follows a young boy as he travels with his uncle by horse cart to the garden of an eccentric old lady, where each year they pick fruit. The boy becomes enamoured with a young girl, meets a darkly cunning and cynical poacher, picks a forbidden apricot as a gift for the girl, and is consequently thrust into first reflections on pleasure, pain, and life itself in this most charming story.

    

    Lardner, American humorist and short-story writer, is known for his mordant wit, exemplified in satirical stories and sketches of American life in the early 20th century told in the language of athletes, stockbrokers, secretaries, chorus girls, etc. Contents: The Maysville Minstrel; I Can't Breathe; Haircut; Alibi Ike; Liberty Hall; Zone of Quiet; Mr. Frisbie; Hurry Kane; Champion; Contract; Dinner; Women; A Day with Conrad Green; Old Folks' Christmas; Harmony; The Love Nest; Ex Parte; The Golden Honeymoon; Now and Then; Horseshoes; There are Smiles; Anniversary; Reunion; Travelogue; Who Dealt? My Roomy; Rhythm; Some Like Them Cold; Nora; Man Not Overboard; A Caddy's Diary; Mr. and Mrs. Fix-It; A Frame-Up; Sun Cured; and The Facts. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

    Written in Soviet Moscow in the 1920s—but considered too subversive even to show to a publisher—the seven tales included here attest to Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s boundless imagination, black humor, and breathtaking irony: a man loses his way in the vast black waste of his own small room; the Eiffel Tower runs amok; a kind soul dreams of selling “everything you need for suicide”; an absentminded passenger boards the wrong train, winding up in a place where night is day, nightmares are the reality, and the backs of all facts have been broken; a man out looking for work comes across a line for logic but doesn’t join it as there’s no guarantee the logic will last; a sociable corpse misses his own funeral; an inventor gets a glimpse of the far-from-radiant communist future.