Best of
Literature

1930

Poems of Fernando Pessoa


Fernando Pessoa - 1930
    I think I have under control the reluctance I feel in having to share Pessoa with the public he should have had all along in America: until now, only the poets, so far as I can tell, have even heard of him, and delighted and exulted in him. He is, in some ways, the poet of modernism, the only one willing to fracture himself into the parcels of action, anguish, and nostalgia which are the grounds of our actual situation." —C. K. Williams"Pessoa is one of the great originals (a fact rendered more striking by his writing as several distinct personalities) of the European poetry of the first part of this century, and has been one of the last poets of comparable stature, in the European languages, to become known in English. Edwin Honig's translations of Spanish and Portuguese poetry have been known to anyone who cares about either, since his work on Lorca in the forties, and his Selected Poems of Pessoa (1971) was a welcome step toward a long-awaited larger colection." — W. S. Merwin"Fernando Pessoa is the least known of the masters of the twentieth-century poetry. From his heteronymic passion he produced, if that is the word, two of our greatest poets, Alberto Caeiro and Álvaro de Campos, and a third, Ricardo Reis, who isn't bad. Pessoa is the exemplary poet of the self as other, of the poem as testament to unreality, proclamation of nothingness, occasion for expectancy. In Edwin Honig's and Susan Brown's superb translations, Pessoa and his "others" live with miraculous style and vitality." —Mark StrandFernando Pessoa is Portugal’s most important contemporary poet. He wrote under several identities, which he called heteronyms: Albet Caeiro, Alvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis, and Bernardo Soares. He wrote sublime poetry under his own name as well, and each of his “voices” is completely different in subject, temperament, and style. This volume brings back into print the comprehensive collection of his work published by Ecco Press in 1986.

Narcissus and Goldmund


Hermann Hesse - 1930
    First published in 1930, Hesse's novel remains a moving and pointed exploration of the conflict between the life of the spirit and the life of the flesh. It is a theme that transcends all time.

The Man Without Qualities: Volume I


Robert Musil - 1930
    A Sort of Introduction and Pseudo Reality Prevails

The Man Without Qualities


Robert Musil - 1930
    This new translation—published in two elegant volumes—is the first to present Musil's complete text, including material that remained unpublished during his lifetime.

Not Without Laughter


Langston Hughes - 1930
    Sandy’s mother, Annjee, works as a housekeeper for a rich white family, while his father traverses the country in search of work. Not Without Laughter is a moving examination of growing up in a racially divided society. A rich and important work, Hughes deftly echoes the Black American experience with this novel.

The Collected Short Stories of Saki


Saki - 1930
    Munro) stands alongside Anton Chekhov and O Henry as a master of the short story. His extraordinary stories are a mixture of humorous satire, irony and the macabre, in which the stupidities and hypocrisy of conventional society are viciously pilloried. This collection includes Sredni Vastar and The Unrest Cure. 'We all know that Prime Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other married couples they sometimes live apart'[Description from back cover]

U.S.A.: The 42nd Parallel / 1919 / The Big Money


John Dos Passos - 1930
    He interweaves the careers of his characters and the events of their time with a narrative verve and breathtaking technical skill that make U.S.A. among the most compulsively readable of modern classics.A startling range of experimental devices captures the textures and background noises of 20th-century life: "Newsreels" with blaring headlines; autobiographical "Camera Eye" sections with poetic stream-of-consciousness; "biographies" evoking emblematic historical figures like J.P. Morgan, Henry Ford, John Reed, Frank Lloyd Wright, Thorstein Veblen, and the Unknown Soldier. Holding everything together is sheer storytelling power, tracing dozens of characters from the Spanish-American War to the onset of the Depression.The U.S.A. trilogy is filled with American speech: labor radicals and advertising executives, sailors and stenographers, interior decorators and movie stars. Their crisscrossing destinies take in wars and revolutions, desperate love affairs and harrowing family crises, corrupt public triumphs and private catastrophes, in settings that include the trenches of World War I, insurgent Mexico, Hollywood studios in the silent era, Wall Street boardrooms, and the tumultuous streets of Boston just before the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.

A Rose for Emily and Other Stories


William Faulkner - 1930
    Emily is a member of a family in the antebellum Southern aristocracy; after the Civil War, the family has fallen on hard times.

Fear: A Novel of World War I


Gabriel Chevallier - 1930
    The only thing he fears is missing the action. Soon, however, the vaunted “war to end all wars” seems like a war that will never end: whether mired in the trenches or going over the top, Jean finds himself caught in the midst of an unimaginable, unceasing slaughter. After he is wounded, he returns from the front to discover a world where no one knows or wants to know any of this. Both the public and the authorities go on talking about heroes — and sending more men to their graves. But Jean refuses to keep silent. He will speak the forbidden word. He will tell them about fear.

My Mother's House & Sido


Colette - 1930
    Vividly alive, fond of cities, music, theater, and books, Sido devoted herself to her village, Saint-Saveur; to her garden, with its inhabitants and its animals; and, especially, to her children, particularly her youngest, whom she called Minet-Chéri. Unlike Gigi and Chéri, which focus largely on sexual love and its repercussions, My Mother's House and Sido center on the compelling figure of a powerful, nurturing woman in late-nineteenth-century rural France, conveying the impact she had on her community and on her daughter -- who grew up to be a great writer.

On Being Ill


Virginia Woolf - 1930
    We cannot quote Shakespeare to describe a headache. We must, Woolf says, invent language to describe pain. And though illness enhances our perceptions, she observes that it reduces self-consciousness; it is "the great confessional." Woolf discusses the cultural taboos associated with illness and explores how illness changes the way we read. Poems clarify and astonish, Shakespeare exudes new brilliance, and so does melodramatic fiction!On Being Ill was published as an individual volume by Hogarth Press in 1930. While other Woolf essays, such as A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas, were first published by Hogarth as individual volumes and have since been widely available, On Being Ill has been overlooked. The Paris Press edition features original cover art by Woolf’s sister, the painter Vanessa Bell. Hermione Lee’s Introduction discusses this extraordinary work, and explores Woolf’s revelations about poetry, language, and illness.

Street Haunting


Virginia Woolf - 1930
    Six short stories and / or essays, extracted from The Crowded Dance of Modern Life (1993) and Selected Short Stories (1993).

Fortunes of Richard Mahony


Henry Handel Richardson - 1930
    Richard Mahony, despite finding initial contentment with his wife Mary, becomes increasingly dissatified with his ordered life. His restlessness is not understood by Mary, who has to endure the constant shattering of her security as Richard desperately attempts to free himself; his attempts finally plunge them into poverty. In the figure of Richard Mahony, Richardson captures the soul of the emigrant, ever restless, ever searching for some equilibrium, yet never really able to settle anywhere. Richard’s search, though, is also the more universal one for a meaning that will validate and give purpose to his existence.

The Outlaws


Ernst von Salomon - 1930
    Germany has just surrendered after four years of the most savage warfare in history. It is teetering on the brink of total social and economic collapse, and the German people now lie at the mercy of new, liberal politicians who despise everything Germany once stood for. The Communists are rioting in the streets, threatening to topple the new government in Weimar and bring about their own revolution. The frontline soldiers are returning from the hell of the war to find an unrecognizable land, the principles and traditions they had sacrificed so much to defend now the stuff of mockery. The narrator of The Outlaws, a 16-year-old military cadet, is too young to have served in the trenches, but feels the sting of this betrayal no less than they. Since Germany's armies have been all but disbanded, he joins the paramilitary Freikorps - groups of veterans who refuse to lay down their arms, and who have pledged to stop the Communists - and begins fighting, first in the streets of Germany's cities, and then in the Baltic states, defending Germany's eastern frontiers from Communist subversion while ignoring the calls to disengage by the meek politicians at home. After months of intense fighting abroad, the Freikorps soldiers return to settle scores with their enemies in Germany, dreaming of a nationalist counter-revolution, and, their trigger fingers still itchy, fix their sights on bringing down the hated new government once and for all... The Outlaws is a chronicle of the experiences of the men who fought in the Freikorps, but it is also an adventure and a war story about an entire generation of soldiers who loved their homeland more than peace and comfort, and who refused to accept defeat at any price. "What we wanted we did not know; but what we knew we did not want. To force a way through the prisoning wall of the world, to march over burning fields, to stamp over ruins and scattered ashes, to dash recklessly through wild forests, over blasted heaths, to push, conquer, eat our way through towards the East, to the white, hot, dark, cold land that stretched between ourselves and Asia - was that what we wanted? I do not know whether that was our desire, but that was what we did. And the search for reasons why was lost in the tumult of continuous fighting." - p. 65 Ernst von Salomon (1902-1972) was one of the writers of the German Conservative Revolution of the 1920s. Like the narrator of The Outlaws, he was a military cadet at the end of the First World War, and joined the Freikorps, participating in many of the events described in the book, including the assassination of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau, for which he was imprisoned. He went on to write many books and film scripts.

The Romantic Agony


Mario Praz - 1930
    This wide spread mood in literature had a major effect on 19th-century poets and painters, and the affinities between them and their 20th-centurycounterparts makes this account of the Romantic-Decadents an indispensible guide to the study of modern literature.

An Evening with Claire


Gaito Gazdanov - 1930
    Its author, Gaito Gazdanov, was compared to the young Nabokov, as well as to Proust and Bunin.

Great Short Stories by American Women


Candace Ward - 1930
    The earliest stories are Rebecca Harding Davis' naturalistic "Life in the Iron Mills" (published in 1861 and predating Émile Zola's Germinal by almost 25 years) and Louisa May Alcott's semiautobiographical tale "Transcendental Wild Oats" (1873). The most recent ones are Zora Neale Hurston's "Sweat," an ironic tale of contested loyalty.In between is a grand cavalcade of superbly crafted fiction by Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Kate Chopin, Willa Cather, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Djuna Barnes, Susan Glaspell and Edith Wharton. Brief biographies of each of the writers are included.

After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie


Jean Rhys - 1930
    Once beautiful, she was taken care of by men. Now, after being dropped by her latest lover, Mr. Mackenzie, Julia is running out of luck and chances. A visit to London to see her ailing mother might offer an opportunity to start over—but it also brings her face to face with her distrustful sister, Norah, who can’t help but feel that Julia has only changed for the worse in the years since they last saw one another. And it proves difficult to escape the desultory romantic entanglements of Paris when a suitor follows her to England.Nowhere is Jean Rhys’s talent for fully inhabiting the minds of her characters more apparent than in After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, her masterful second novel. Rhys lays bare the desires and contradictions of the mercurial Julia, and all those trapped in her orbit, in this haunting depiction of life after the end of a tumultuous affair.

Jeeves and the Old School Chum


P.G. Wodehouse - 1930
    Includes a number of stories taken from Very Good, Jeeves

Angel Pavement


J.B. Priestley - 1930
    Here can be found the headquarters of Twigg & Dersingham, suppliers of veneers and inlays to the furniture trade. Business is slow and the staff struggle against a tide of growing competition, rising prices and recession. Into their midst descends the mysterious and charming Mr Golspie and the promise of a brighter future. Be sure, life will never be the same again for all those concerned with the firm...the likes of Herbert Norman Smeeth, the cashier; Harold Turgis, the clerk; Lilian Matfield, the secretary-typist; and the boss, Howard Bromport Dersingham!Angel Pavement is one of the great London novels: a vivid evocation of the sprawling and crowded metropolis during the era of the painful Depression of the inter-war years. It is also a splendidly perceptive examination of what happens to a small group of office staff when the destructive force of a rapacious financial predator is unleashed among them.This is J.B. Priestley|at his best...indeed most critics agree that Angel Pavement was his finest novel, with only Bright Day a near contender! It arrived just after the huge success of The Good Companions, and, though it is darker than the delightful earlier novel, it proved just as popular...and probably more significant.Great Northern Books of Ilkley have been bringing out new editions of a number of Priestley's works, and that Angel Pavement was the choice in 2012 proved a source of pleasure to all Priestley fans...and, hopefully, the availability of the novel once again will help new readers discover the unique style and magic of J.B. Priestley.

Laments for the Living, Collected Stories


Dorothy Parker - 1930
    

The Long Rifle


Stewart Edward White - 1930
    Stewart Edward White's tale of young Andy Burnett, inheritor of Daniel Boon's own long rifle, is as powerful and moving today as it was when written in the 1930s. It is the timeless story of maturing youth, backdropped by majestic Rocky Mountains and Set in the early nineteenth century fur-trade era. "The Long Rifle" recalls a time of endlessly expanding horizons, of oneness with nature, of refreshing innocence. Enjoy!

I Am Jonathan Scrivener


Claude Houghton - 1930
    Jonathan Scrivener. Much to his surprise, he is hired at a lavish salary despite never even meeting Scrivener, and he is told to take up residence at once in the flat of his new employer, who has suddenly disappeared. Mystified by Scrivener’s strange conduct and desperate to learn something about him, it seems Wrexham will get the answers he seeks when Scrivener’s friends begin to visit the flat: Pauline Mandeville, an ethereal beauty, Francesca Bellamy, a widow who may be responsible for the death of her husband, Andrew Middleton, a disillusioned alcoholic, and Antony Rivers, a handsome playboy. But as each of them unfolds his story about Scrivener, it seems that none of them are describing the same person, though all are obsessed with finding him. Why has he hired Wrexham, and why does he seem to have thrust this unlikely group of people together? Is Scrivener engaged in an inscrutable experiment, or could he be laying some kind of trap? Popular in his time for his psychological thrillers, Claude Houghton (1889-1961) was admired by writers as diverse as P. G. Wodehouse, Henry Miller, Hugh Walpole, and Graham Greene, but has fallen into neglect in the past half-century. This new edition restores his masterpiece I Am Jonathan Scrivener (1930) to print and includes Walpole’s introduction from the 1935 edition and an essay by Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and Washington Post columnist Michael Dirda.“So remarkable in truth is this novel that I cannot understand why it is not universally known and admired.” - Hugh Walpole“I Am Jonathan Scrivener remains a tantalizing, highly diverting philosophical novel of rare elegance and wit.” - Michael Dirda

Many Dimensions


Charles Williams - 1930
    "If I hadn't always found you a very reliable fellow-and if it wasn't for Lord Arglay-I met him once on a Commission and he seemed a very level-headed sort of man. But this.... No, I won't. The whole thing's too ridiculous.... But what the devil can it be they've got hold of? Tell me all about it again."

The Deepening Stream


Dorothy Canfield Fisher - 1930
    American novelist and juvenile writer, Canfield begins The Deepening Stream: When people talked about things they could remember Matey always wondered which kind of remembering they meant-the kind that was just a sort of knowing how something in the past had happened or the other kind when suddenly everything seemed to be happening all over again. Why did time fade out some memories so that they didn't seem any more real than a story in a book? And why were others, whether you liked it or not, a living part of you at any moment when they come into your head? These were among the many questions for which Matey never found an answer. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

Imperial Palace


Arnold Bennett - 1930
    "I wish I'd known this morning. I shouldn't have been so nervous for you. Mr. Cousin or Mr. Orcham might have told me, I think." The head-housekeeper's respect for her subordinate had increased as much as the intimacy. After all there was a glamour about managing a large country mansion for a celebrity that even the Imperial Palace could not offer. Silence fell for a moment.

In Defence Of Sensuality


John Cowper Powys - 1930
    

Job


Joseph Roth - 1930
    He loses his family, falls terribly ill, and is badly abused. He needs a miracle.

Great Myths of the World


Padraic Colum - 1930
    G. Paregian. A treasury of tales from ancient myth and legend, this collection was assembled and recounted by a well-known and much-loved storyteller. All of the legendary heroic and tragic figures of the ancient world appear here, in myths derived from Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Hebrew, Hellenic, Latin, Celtic, Nordic, Mesoamerican, and other traditions. Larger-than-life figures populate these stories — Isis and Osiris, Gilgamesh, Hercules and Pandora, Loki, and Quetzalcoatl. Once regarded as sacred lore, their adventures, misfortunes, and rewards form integral and active elements of the cultures from which they arose, and they continue to resonate with a deep human significance.Poet, playwright, and a key figure in the Irish Literary Renaissance, Padraic Colum was a prolific writer. Best known for his adaptations of Celtic tales, and particularly those for younger readers, he also addressed himself to a wider audience. A perfect book to inspire passion for ancient mythology, this volume can be enjoyed by readers of all ages.

Rogue Herries


Hugh Walpole - 1930
    The tale of Francis Herries, the "rogue" of the title. A violent and impetuous man, a faithless husband and a capricious father, the Borrowdale valley (his home for 40 years) and his unrequited love for gypsy Mirabell Starr are the two forces which drive him.

Salome the Wandering Jewess: My First Two Thousand Years of Love


George Sylvester Viereck - 1930
    Also, to keep him a young man instead of a doddering gray-beard. It is like reading a series of entrancing short stories with the added interest of logical sequence. Your erudition is amazing, and it is presented in a manner that lures one on and on, as well as inducing the pleasant belief that one is learning something really worth while." -- Gertrude Atherton

Pro Publio Quinctio. Pro Sexto Roscio Amerino. Pro Quinto Roscio comoedo. De lege agraria I., II., III


Marcus Tullius Cicero - 1930
    In his political speeches especially and in his correspondence we see the excitement, tension and intrigue of politics and the part he played in the turmoil of the time. Of about 106 speeches, delivered before the Roman people or the Senate if they were political, before jurors if judicial, 58 survive (a few of them incompletely). In the fourteenth century Petrarch and other Italian humanists discovered manuscripts containing more than 900 letters of which more than 800 were written by Cicero and nearly 100 by others to him. These afford a revelation of the man all the more striking because most were not written for publication. Six rhetorical works survive and another in fragments. Philosophical works include seven extant major compositions and a number of others; and some lost. There is also poetry, some original, some as translations from the Greek.The Loeb Classical Library edition of Cicero is in twenty-nine volumes.