G. Wodehouse’s immortal butler, Jeeves. Born at the dusk of the Victorian era, Bert Pinnegar, an awkward orphan child with one leg a tad longer than the other, rises from inauspicious schoolboy days spent picking wildflowers and dodging angry farmers to become the legendary head gardener “Old Herbaceous,” the most esteemed flower-show judge in the county and a famed horticultural wizard capable of producing dazzling April strawberries from the greenhouse and the exact morning glories his Lady spies on the French Riviera, “so blue, so blue it positively hurts.” Sprinkled with nuggets of gardening wisdom, Old Herbaceous is a witty comic portrait of the most archetypal—and crotchety—head gardener ever to plant a row of bulbs at a British country house.This Modern Library edition is published with a new Introduction byPenelope Hobhouse, a renowned garden designer and lecturer and the author of numerous gardening books.

    S. Eliot remarked, "what letters ought to be; the fine things come in unexpectedly, neither introduced nor shown out, but between trifle and trifle." This new edition, which features four rediscovered letters, three of which are being published here for the first time, affords readers the pleasure of the poet's "trifles" as well as the surprise of his most famous ideas emerging unpredictably.Unlike other editions, this selection includes letters to Keats and among his friends, lending greater perspective to an epistolary portrait of the poet. It also offers a revealing look at his "posthumous existence," the period of Keats's illness in Italy, painstakingly recorded in a series of moving letters by Keats's deathbed companion, Joseph Severn. Other letters by Dr. James Clark, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Richard Woodhouse--omitted from other selections of Keats's letters--offer valuable additional testimony concerning Keats the man.Edited for greater readability, with annotations reduced and punctuation and spelling judiciously modernized, this selection recreates the spontaneity with which these letters were originally written.

    Each collection has a specially commissioned introduction.

    Fifty-something sisters Harriet and Belinda Bede live a comfortable, settled existence. Belinda, the quieter of the pair, has for years been secretly in love with the town's pompous (and married) archdeacon, whose odd sermons leave members of his flock in muddled confusion. Harriet, meanwhile, a bubbly extrovert, fends off proposal after proposal of marriage. The arrival of Mr. Mold and Bishop Grote disturb the peace of the village and leave the sisters wondering if they'll ever return to the order of their daily routines. Some Tame Gazelle, first published in Britain nearly 50 years ago, was the first of Pym's nine novels.

    Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson, presents the greatest of the Romantics in all the fullness and ardor of their vision, including William Blake, Robert Burns, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Edgar Allan Poe. What emerges is a panoramic view of a generation of artists struggling to remake the world in their own image—and miraculously succeeding.

    Two lovers are united by their hatred of cricket. Bingo Little, editor of Wee Tots and husband of romantic novelist Rosie M. Banks, finds new solutions to his financial problems. Lord Emsworth becomes an encyclopedia salesman for a day. Rodney Spelvin, bad poet turned enthusiastic golfer, shows signs of reverting to type. And Ukridge for once emerges triumphant from the struggle with his fearsome Aunt Julia.

    But months in the Mediterranean sunshine, in the care of the tender gardener, made little Nicholas blossom into an exuberant vitality. Then his father's possessiveness asserted itself...his love became repulsive. He grew cold with the desire to control those around him....From one of the greatest storytellers of this century comes an unforgettable saga of Americans abroad...of the decay of love between husband and wife, the struggle between father and son, the terrible poser of a diplomat bent on destroying those he loved.

    

    With a sense of fun, a hint of nostalgia, razor-sharp satire, and pitch-perfect parody, Beerbohm tugs at the affected nature of the whole literary scene—lamentable authors, wily agents, and preposterous weekend salons.Seven Men (1919; enlarged edition as Seven Men, and Two Others, 1950)

    We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

    But he was born just too late to see action in the first world war, and it was a long wait until the second. Would he ever have his chance to be a hero?