Selected Letters


Marie de Rabutin-Chantal de Sévigné - 1725
    A significant figure in French society and literary circles, whose close friends included Madame de La Fayette and La Rochefoucauld, she reflected on both significant historical events and personal issues, and in this selection of the most significant letters, spanning almost fifty years, she is by turns humorous and melancholic, profound and superficial. Whether describing the new plays of Racine and Moliere, speculating on court scandals including the intrigues of the King's mistresses or relating her own family concerns, Madame de Sevigne provides throughout an intriguing portrait of the lost age of Le Roi Soleil.

The Paul Street Boys


Ferenc Molnár - 1907
    One with Hungarian national colours (red, white, green) is defending the square from redshirts (from Garibaldi's redshirts), who want to occupy the square.

The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barret Barrett 1845-1846 Vol I (1899)


Robert Browning - 2006
    1 of 2 After all, I need not give up the thought of doing that, too, in time; because even now, talking with whoever is worthy, I can give a reason for my faith in one and another excellence, the fresh strange music, the affluent language, the exquisite pathos and true new brave thought; but in this addressing myself to you your own self, and for the first time, my feeling rises altogether. I do, as I say, love these books with all my heart - and I love you too. Do you know I was once not very far from seeing - really seeing you? Mr. Kenyon said to me one morning 'Would you like to see Miss Barrett?' then he went to announce me, - then he returned .. you were too unwell, and now it is years ago, and I feel as at some untoward passage in my travels, as if I had been close, so close, to some world's-wonder in chapel or crypt, only a screen to push and I might have entered, but there was some slight, so it now seems, slight and just sufficient bar to admission, and the half-opened door shut, and I went home my thousands of miles, and the sight was never to be? I thank you, dear Mr. Browning, from the bottom of my heart. You meant to give me pleasure by your letter - and even if the object had not been answered, I ought still to thank you. But it is thoroughly answered. Such a letter from such a hand!

I Think I'm OK


C.S. Kenny - 2012
     After almost two years it became apparent that I had exasperated all efforts to control my behaviour and was no longer welcome at the school. This was a pattern which continued for the next few years of my life. I was moved from a children’s home in Bradford to a secure unit in York from which I managed to escape on two occasions. I was then sent to an Approved School in County Durham. As incredulous as it may seem, at the age of 14 I was expelled from the Approved School and returned to another children’s home back in my home town of Bradford. True to form I was kicked out of this home too. The above is pretty much the sum of my family and friends knowledge of my childhood, and to be fair, it’s hardly surprising that I was judged, frowned upon and quite often avoided like a crusty pair of Y fronts. I am now 53 years old and have managed, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, to obtain official records held about me from those early days. I have also managed to acquire the cojones to let all and sundry know the truth. As I have used my real name, I felt it was only right that I use the real names of other guilty parties, the ones who should have known better. If you are interested in reading a true, openly honest, occasionally sad yet often humorous memoir, please do buy my book, “I Think I’m OK.” I assure you it’s far from a ‘misery memoir.’ Oh, I guess I should point out that there are a few of them there naughty sweary words included . . . sorry about that.

Opium: The Diary of His Cure


Jean Cocteau - 1930
    It also contains reminiscences of some of Cocteau's closet friends, including Nijinsky and Marcel Proust, and provides revealing insights into the creation of such masterpieces as Orphee and Les Enfants Terribles.

These Wonderful Rumours!: A Young Schoolteacher's Wartime Diaries


May Smith - 2012
    We gain a new understanding of how the people of Britain coped with the uncertainty, the heartbreak and the black comedy of life during wartime.

Leah Remini: My Escape from Scientology


Johnny Dodd - 2016
    Ron Hubbard—begins in Brooklyn's working-class Bensonhurst neighborhood, where she was introduced to the religion by her mom. More than three decades later, Leah summoned the courage to leave the church—something few celebrities at her level of fame have ever done before and almost none have ever talked about. This People Spotlight Story explores Leah Remini and her escape from Scientology.

Down These Mean Streets


Piri Thomas - 1967
    Dark-skinned morenito had family who ignored African blood. Consolation from drugs, street fighting, and armed robbery end when Piri 22 goes to Sing Sing prison for shooting a cop. His journey continues to self-acceptance, faith, and inner confidence. 30-year anniversary edition has Intro by author.

The Memory Chalet


Tony Judt - 2010
    Each essay charts some experience or remembrance of the past through the sieve of Tony Judt s prodigious mind. His youthful love of a particular London bus route evolves into a reflection on public civility and interwar urban planning. Memories of the 1968 student riots of Paris meander through the divergent sex politics of Europe, before concluding that his generation was a revolutionary generation, but missed the revolution. A series of road trips across America lead not just to an appreciation of American history, but to an eventual acquisition of citizenship. Foods and trains and long-lost smells all compete for Judt s attention; but for us, he has forged his reflections into an elegant arc of analysis. All as simply and beautifully arranged as a Swiss chalet—a reassuring refuge deep in the mountains of memory.

Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life


Robert M. Utley - 1989
    Utley does what countless books, movies, television shows, musical compositions, and paintings have failed to do: he successfully strips off the veneer of legendry to expose the reality of Billy the Kid. Using previously untapped sources, he presents an engrossing story—the most complete and accurate ever—of a youthful hoodlum and sometime killer who found his calling in New Mexico’s bloody power struggle known as the Lincoln County War. In unmasking the legend Utley also tells us much about our heritage of frontier vigilantism and violence.

Journal of Katherine Mansfield


Katherine Mansfield - 1927
    Katherine Beauchamp was born in New Zealand and at the age of 13 was sent to England to school at Queen's College. It was here she truly began her writing career. It is difficult to compile a critical evaluation of Katherine Mansfield's work. Her work seems to be of a finer and purer kind than that of her contemporaries. It is more spontaneous, more vivid, more delicate and more beautiful. Katherine Mansfield responded more completely to life than any other writer and the effect of that more complete response is in her work. This is a collection of her journals with illustrations.

Back Story


David Mitchell - 2012
    Despite what David Miliband might think

My Confession: Recollections of a Rogue


Samuel E. Chamberlain - 1850
    Perhaps the best written account of a soldier's adventures and misadventures in the Mexican War and its aftermath, this unexpurgated edition is now available for the first time, complete with over 150 of Chamberlain's wonderful textual illustrations reproduced in full color. If you enjoyed the Chamberlain paintings assembled in Sam Chamberlain's Mexican War:The San Jacinto Museum of History Paintings, you will be fascinated by the tale in My Confession that goes with it and beyond it into Chamberlain's adventures with the scalp-hunting Glanton Gang (the story that Cormac McCarthy used as the basis for his celebrated novel Blood Meridian).My Confession is the story of Samuel Chamberlain, a Boston boy who hoped to be a theological student but could not control his amorous and pugilistic inclinations and so left for the West. According to his "Confession," he seduced countless women in the U.S. and Mexico, never missed a fandango, fought gallantly against Mexican guerrillas, and rode with the First Dragoons into the Battle of Buena Vista. His remarkable story is pure melodrama, but Goetzmann has proven by his painstaking research that much of it is true.The editor's annotations are a valuable contribution to an account that virtually every historian of the Mexican War has used.

My Dearest, Dearest Albert: Queen Victoria's Life Through Her Letters and Journals


Karen Dolby - 2018
    The posed portrait photos were stiff, formal affairs, partly because subjects needed to stay still for the exposure and partly because in Victorian England life was a serious business.In reality, the character of Alexandrina Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and latterly in her long reign, Empress of India, is rather different. In private, at least, Victoria had a reputation for being fun-loving and entertaining. Victoria kept a daily journal from the age of thirteen, which by the time of her death ran to 122 volumes. She writes openly and in great detail, revealing herself to be emotional and honest about her own feelings and experiences, as well as her opinions of other people. She praises Albert and pours out her love and desire for her husband, her adored lover, friend and companion.This book shows the redoubtable Victoria at her most human, whether enthusing over her hobbies and interests, delighting in her children and grandchildren, commenting on the ten different Prime Ministers who served during her reign, or sharing her love for her dearest, dearest Albert.

Daybook: The Journal of an Artist


Anne Truitt - 1982
    Her range of sensitivity—moral, intellectual, sensual, emotional, and spiritual— is remarkably broad. She recalls her childhood on the eastern shore of Maryland, her career change from psychology to art, and her path to a sculptural practice that would “set color free in three dimensions.” She reflects on the generous advice of other artists, watches her own daughters’ journey into motherhood, meditates on criticism and solitude, and struggles to find the way to express her vision. Resonant and true, encouraging and revelatory, Anne Truitt guides herself—and her readers—through a life in which domestic activities and the needs of children and friends are constantly juxtaposed against the world of color and abstract geometry to which she is drawn in her art. Beautifully written and a rare window on the workings of a creative mind, Daybook showcases an extraordinary artist whose insights generously and succinctly illuminate the artistic process.