For 20 years, an outspoken New York writer and a rather more restrained London bookseller carried on an increasingly touching correspondence. In her first letter to Marks & Co., Helene Hanff encloses a wish list, but warns, "The phrase 'antiquarian booksellers' scares me somewhat, as I equate 'antique' with expensive." Twenty days later, on October 25, 1949, a correspondent identified only as FPD let Hanff know that works by Hazlitt and Robert Louis Stevenson would be coming under separate cover. When they arrive, Hanff is ecstatic--but unsure she'll ever conquer "bilingual arithmetic." By early December 1949, Hanff is suddenly worried that the six-pound ham she's sent off to augment British rations will arrive in a kosher office. But only when FPD turns out to have an actual name, Frank Doel, does the real fun begin. Two years later, Hanff is outraged that Marks & Co. has dared to send an abridged Pepys diary. "i enclose two limp singles, i will make do with this thing till you find me a real Pepys. THEN i will rip up this ersatz book, page by page, AND WRAP THINGS IN IT." Nonetheless, her postscript asks whether they want fresh or powdered eggs for Christmas. Soon they're sharing news of Frank's family and Hanff's career.

    A zesty memoir of the celebrated writer's travels to England where she meets the cherished friends from 84, Charing Cross Road.

    Unknown to most of them, however, Szymborska also worked for several decades as a columnist, reviewing a wide variety of books under the unassuming title "Nonrequired Reading."As readers of her poems would expect, the short prose pieces collected here are anything but ordinary. Reflecting the author's own eclectic tastes and interests, the pretexts for these ruminations range from books on wallpapering, cooking, gardening, and yoga, to more lofty volumes on opera and world literature. Unpretentious yet incisive, these charming pieces are on a par with Szymborska's finest lyrics, tackling the same large and small questions with a wonderful curiosity.

    A magnificent capsulation of fine printing beauty for browsing or for use by commercial artists.

    

    Shelf wear from time on shelf like you would see on a major chain. There s scuff inside the cover otherwise the book is in good condition. Immediate shipping.

    But for most readers, her values have been a phenomenon more felt than fully apprehended. In this book, Stuart M. Tave identifies and explains a number of the central concepts across Austen’s novels—examining how words like “odd,” “exertion,” and, of course, “sensibility,” hold the key to understanding the Victorian author’s language of moral values. Tracing the force and function of these words from Sense and Sensibility to Persuasion, Tave invites us to consider the peculiar and subtle ways in which word choice informs the conduct, moral standing, and self-awareness of Austen’s remarkable characters.

    She analyzes the way in which Jane Austen blends ironic criticism with moral affirmation through her complex and little-understood management of the narrative point of view. She demonstrates that the reader takes a journey of perception similar to that of the central characters in the novels, and that the correct interpretation of events is often unclear until well after the fact, despite the seeming aid of an apparently unbiased, omniscient narrator.Professor Nardin applies this general viewpoint on Jane Austen's art in her examination of the way Jane Austen uses ideas about propriety in her six novels. For Jane Austen, a person's social behavior--the code of propriety by which he lives--is the external manifestation of his internal moral character. What is the relationship between the conventionally accepted rules of propriety by which the gentry of Jane Austen's era regulated their lives and a morally valid standard of social behavior? This is an important question throughout Jane Austen's work. Those Elegant Decorums is a detailed study of the answers Jane Austen suggests in each novel.