Category Archives: 2011

Dicken’s Women by Miriam Margolyes and Sonia Fraser

In his novels Dickens presents a series of unrivalled portraits of women, young and old. From Little Nell to Miss Havisham, these girls and women speak to us today, making us laugh and sometimes cry. The popular British actress Miriam Margolyes will be touring the world in 2012, the bicentenary of Dickens birth, with a one-woman show about Dickens’ women, and this book accompanies the show by building on the script and expanding to include many more of the female characters Dickens described and analysed so astutely in his novels. The countries to be visited are Australia, New Zealand, the USA and India.

‘Mrs Pipchin was a marvellous ill-favoured, ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping figure, with a mottled face, like bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard grey eye, that looked as if it might have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury.’

Brief Lives: Fyodor Dostoevsky by Anthony Briggs

A new short biography of the author of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, by pre-eminent Russian scholar Professor Anthony Briggs. Described by one contemporary as ‘the Shakespeare of the lunatic asylum’, Dostoevsky famously divided critics during his lifetime. His childhood and family life have been the subject of scrutiny, most famously in inspiring Freud’s essay ‘Dostoevsky and Parricide’. In later life his membership of the Petrashevsky Circle of liberal intellectuals resulted in his prosecution by the authorities: he was forced to attend a mock execution and then exiled for four years to a Siberian prison camp. In this new biography Anthony Briggs explores the effect of Dostoevsky’s turbulent life on his literary genius.

Uncle’s Dream by Fyodor Dostoevsky

When the ageing Russian Prince, Prince K., arrives in the town of Mordasov, Marya Alexandrovna Moskaleva, a doyenne of local society life, takes him under her protection, with the aim of engineering his marriage with her twenty-three year old daughter Zina. Yet with many rivals for the hands of both parties, events are not guaranteed to run smoothly.

The gossiping and rumour-mill of the country village are deftly captured in Dostoevsky’s mock-heroic tone. A rare foray into comedy by the giant of Russian literature, Uncle’s Dreamnonetheless still possesses all the hallmarks of Dostoevsky’s psychological and philosophical writing.

The Cruise of the Rolling Junk by F. Scott Fitzgerald

In an early series of journalistic pieces for an American magazine, Motor, F. Scott Fitzgerald described a journey he took with his wife Zelda from Connecticut to Alabama in a clapped out automobile which he called the ‘Rolling Junk’. It is a piece of writing whose style, in free-ranging alternation of fact and fiction, has been compared to Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat.

This book collects together the articles as one text, illustrated with the original photographs of Fitzgerald, Zelda and the ‘Junk’.

Poetic Lives: Donne by Nicholas Robins

Poet and preacher John Donne is foremost among the metaphysical poets. Born into a Catholic family, he faced considerable persecution until his conversion to the Anglican Church, into which he was ordained in 1615. His sermons are some of the best known in history, and whilst much of his work is imbued with an overriding religious theme, he also wrote love poetry, sonnets, satires and songs.

Nicholas Robins here presents an accomplished and concise biography of the life and career of Donne, charting his progress from an impoverished young writer to Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral. Woven into his story are examples of Donne’s own writing which reveal the full richness of the poet.

Brief Lives: Virginia Woolf by Elizabeth Wright

Elizabeth Wright’s new biography sheds light on the life and writing of one of the foundational authors of twentieth-century British and European fiction and explodes some of the commonly held myths.

Virginia Woolf is considered to be one of the key Modernist writers of the early twentieth century, through her experimental fiction such as Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and The Waves (1931), but she is also known as a prolific essayist, publishing hundreds of articles and reflective reviews including two notable volumes entitled The Common Reader (1925 and 1932). Her longer essays, ‘A Room of One’s Own’ (1929) and ‘Three Guineas’ (1938), stand as some of the most convincing and influential feminist tracts ever written.

 Her colourful circle of family and friends, known as The Bloomsbury Group, consisted of leading writers, thinkers, artists and performers and Elizabeth Wright scours their letters, along with Woolf’s diaries and memoir papers, to illuminate the mind of a literary genius.

On Fiction by Virginia Woolf

‘Here, then, very briefly and with inevitable simplification, an attempt is made to show the mind at work upon a shelf full of novels and to watch it as it chooses and rejects, making itself a dwelling-place in accordance with its own appetites. Of these appetites, perhaps, the simplest is the desire to believe wholly and entirely in something which is fictitious.’

Her readings sensitive, her prose style elegant, authoritative and at times thoroughly opinionated, who better equipped than Virginia Woolf to ruminate on the art of fiction? In this selection of lesser-known essays on reading and storytelling, Woolf turns her critical gaze on treasured favourites including ‘the four great women novelists – Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot’, and unearths some less familiar talents. Her discussion of differing approaches to reading is characteristically forward-thinking, and pinpoints the joys of this favourite pastime, in all its guises.

Featured Book:

Voices of Victorian London by Henry Mayhew

Foreword by Jonathan Miller

History is written by historians, and the voices of ordinary people rarely feature. But this unique collection of interviews from the middle of the nineteenth century allows their voices to be heard.

The journalist Henry Mayhew tramped the streets of London interviewing working people; this Hesperus selection from his work London Labour and the London Poor shows how they coped with the ups and downs of health and illness while continuing with the daily trial of scratching a living and feeding their families. The people Mayhew met showed remarkable resilience and a surprising sense of humour about their lot in life. Jonathan Miller, theatre director, writer and doctor, writes an introduction giving the social background to what Mayhew called the ‘undiscovered country of the poor’.

You can read the London Historians Blog’s review here: http://londonhistorians.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/review-voices-of-victorian-london/

Also released this month:

Letters to Pauline by Stendhal

Foreword by Adam Thirwell

 Determined to take the education of his beloved younger sister Pauline in hand, Henri Beyle – better known by his famous nom de plume, ‘Stendhal’ – was obliged, on leavingGrenoble, to continue her tuition in epistolary fashion. In his letters he instructs her in what she should read (Plutarch, Molière, Shakespeare); what to study (philosophy, logic, mathematics, music); whether to get married (and to what kind of man); and generally how to enliven the tedium of a French provincial town. At thesame time he encourages her to think for herself – a process that, inevitably, reveals Stendhal at his most intimate as a brother, soldier and writer.

Written in his apparently artless, sparkling style, Stendhal’s letters to his sister mark the slow but resolute transition of a literary man into a mature and accomplished writer.

The Merchant’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer

Combining a high rhetoric style with typical Chaucerian carnality, The Merchant’s Tale is a love story with a darker side. Faced with conflicting advice from his friends, age-withered January selects a radiant young wife. His beloved – innocence embodied, to the untrained eye – wastes little time acquainting herself with his staff. Chaucer’s genius is to elevate her transgressions to the level of gender politics; as deities intervene to decide the plight of future Man and Woman, the full significance of January and May’s relationship is revealed.

A dual-language edition of Chaucer’s timeless tale of adultery and deception, presenting a brand new modern-English translation by acclaimed Chaucer scholar, Lyn Richmond.

Brief Lives: Geoffrey Chaucer by Gail Ashton

Geoffrey Chaucer was a poet, bureaucrat and diplomat, and his richly imaginative and witty works, written in vernacular English rather than courtly French or Latin, established his mother tongue as a literary language in its own right.

Although his writing is well-known, the biographical details of Chaucer’s life in fourteenth century England remain scarce. In this new biography, Gail Ashton examines the competing versions of ‘Chaucer’ that have sprung up in the centuries since his death, and speculates about the extent to which his poetic legacy has been made to fit a range of agendas, especially those surrounding England and Englishness. Her biography is a deft and tantalising study of one of the fathers of English literature.

Hesperus brings you an eclectic mix of books this month, from Japanese detective fiction to memoirs inspired by having Virginia Woolf as a boss. Has your interest been piqued?

The Devil’s Disciple by Shiro HamAo

Translated by James K. Vincent

Prosecutor Tsuchida, I am being held here as a murderer. But the truth is that I am probably not that murderer. That’s right. Probably.

Shimaura Eizo is sitting in jail awaiting trial for the murder of a beautiful young woman. Meanwhile his erstwhile lover and initiator into a sinister way of life has risen in the ranks of the legal profession and is now the prosecutor on the case. Spinning a complex web of events and influences in this chilling murder mystery, Hamao probes the notion of guilt – both psychological and legal. The Devil’s Disciple is published here alongside ‘Did He Kill Them?’, a haunting tale of a love affair turned sour.

On Reading by Marcel Proust and John Ruskin

Foreword by Eric Karpeles

By reading great authors, Proust contends, we not only learn of great ideas, but are enriched by the fruits of the world’s most inspirational minds. In particular, Proust admired Ruskin, and in translating Ruskin’s works into French, he provided copious annotations about the relationship between the writer and his readers. This book includes some of those annotations, along with a key Ruskin essay, ‘Of Kings’ Treasuries’, and some of Proust’s own writings about reading, collected in one volume for the first time.

A Boy at the Hogarth Press by Richard Kennedy

Introduction by John Randle

I know I was expected to say something brilliant for the benefit of the group that had collected round us. The truth was that I had only really read Orlando, Mrs Dalloway and The Common Reader… I said I didn’t think she created character as well as a writer like Turgenev. I could see this didn’t go down at all well and felt rather like Peter denying Christ.

In 1926, following a rather unsuccessful education at Marlborough College, sixteen year old Richard Kennedy was put firmly under the wing of Leonard Woolf as his new protege at the Woolfs’ printing press. Some forty years later, and by then a professional illustrator, he wrote his recollections of his time with Virginia and Leonard Woolf in candid and often hilarious detail. He tells of the success that Virginia enjoyed, of their chaotic office with its collapsing shelves and of his own often hapless attmpts to keep pace with the literary giants around him.

Our July titles are available from the end of July. So if your interest has been piqued – and I assume it has! – look out for our July books online or at your local bookshop.

Hot on the heels of our May titles, I give you… our June titles! They’re going to be published on the 24th of June, but are all available for pre-order from bookshops and online retailers.

Rossum’s Universal Robots by Karel Capek

“A joy to read… a wonderfully surprising teller of some fairly astonishing and unforgettable tales.’ – ARTHUR MILLER on Rossum’s Universal Robots  

 Karel Capek was one of the most influential Czech writers of the twentieth century and is widely credited as the inventor of the word ‘robot’. His play is a classic of the dystopian genre, playing on themes of humanity, obedience and artificial intelligence.

Determined to liberate the mass-produced but highly intelligent robots forged in the machinery of Rossum’s island factory, Helena Glory arrives in a blaze of righteousness. Soon perplexed by the robots’ seeming humanity but absolute lack of sentience, she abandons her strident campaigning and falls in love with Domin, the factory’s general manager. Yet even as their life on the island appears to become more comfortable, the tide is turning against the humans.

Scientific Lives by John Aubrey

“Much against his mother’s consent, [Sir Kenelm Digby] married that celebrated beauty and courtesan, Mrs. Venetia Stanley, … He would say that a handsome lusty man who was discreet might make a virtuous wife out of a brothel-house. This lady carried herself blamelessly, yet (they say) he was jealous of her. She died suddenly, and hard-hearted women would censure him severely.” – JOHN AUBREY, Scientific Lives

This new selection from Brief Lives, John Aubrey’s enormous work of seventeenth-century biography, brings together his writings on contemporary scientists, explorers and men of innovation, including astronomer Edmund Halley, celebrated mapmaker Wenceslaus Hollar and the explorer and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh. Quirky, amusing and informative, Aubrey’s writing is the epitome of an exciting and inventive age.

The Forest Woman by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee

 “The publication of The Forest Woman took the Kolkata literary world by storm, and confirmed Bankim Chandra’s reputation as one of the pioneers of the Indian novel.” – RADHA CHAKRAVARTY, translator

A rich tale of tantric ritual and court intrigue, set in eastern India during the seventeenth century, The Forest Woman shows Calcutta’s most famous novelist at his incisive and alluring best.

Abandoned by his fellow travellers on a tiger-ridden shore in eastern Bengal, the narrator stumbles acros Kapalkundala, a strange, beautiful woman. But she has been enslaved by a priest – who plans to sacrifice them both in an esoteric rite. The only way for Kapalkundala and the narrator to escape is by marrying each other and travelling on to town in disguise……

There is excitement here at Hesperus HQ about our May titles. To celebrate the 150th anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore’s  birth, we are publishing not just one, but two, of his books. Boyhood Days is an account of the Nobel laureate’s childhood in India and is published with a foreword by Amartya Sen, another Nobel prize-winner.  Farewell Song is one of Tagore’s few comic works, and the Hesperus edition is the only one available in English.

“The atmosphere, the stories, the fears and the excitements, and Tagore’s early reflections and analyses have come through vividly and powerfully in this English version. There is much to enjoy and learn from in this little book.” – Amartya Sen on Boyhood Days

Some unknown divinity, lacking patience, had brought the two of them face to face on a solitary mountain road, and fused their hearts together. The lightning-flash of this sudden revelation would haunt them often at night, etching itself against the darkness. – from Farewell Song

Continuing our ‘Brief Lives’ series of informative and readable biographies of writers, we have Brief Lives: Sigmund Freud. It sheds light on the life and times of the man behind some of the twentieth century’s most controversial theories. An ideal companion to this account of Freud’s life is On Cocaine – a selection of Freud’s letters, papers and dream analysis about the drug he saw as a miracle cure for depression and addiction.

“My impression has been that the use of cocaine over a long time can bring about lasting improvement.” – Sigmund Freud

Info on our June titles will be available soon – watch this space……