Written in History: Letters That Changed the World by Simon Sebag Montefiore

$35.00 AUD

Category: Books, Writing and Language | Reading Level: 4 Non Fiction

WRITTEN IN HISTORY celebrates the great letters of world history, creative culture and personal life. Acclaimed historian Simon Sebag Montefiore selects over one hundred letters from ancient times to the twenty-first century: some are noble and inspiring, some despicable and unsettling; some are exquisi te works of literature, others brutal, coarse and frankly outrageous; many are erotic, others heartbreaking. The writers vary from Elizabeth I, Rameses the Great and Leonard Cohen to Emmeline Pankhurst, Mandela, Stalin, Michelangelo, Suleiman the Magnificent and unknown people in extraordinary circumstances - from love letters to calls for liberation, declarations of war to reflections on death. In the colourful, accessible style of a master storyteller, Montefiore shows why these letters are essential reading: how they enlighten our past, enrich the way we live now - and illuminate tomorrow. ...Show more

Typographic Specimans: A Natural History of Letterforms by A. W. Bainbridge

$19.99 AUD

Category: Books, Writing and Language

In 1831, Reverend Jackson Whitehead served as chaplain aboard the HMS Pica, which accompanied the Beagle on its second survey expedition. Whitehead was a keen collector of fauna as well as a typography enthusiast. Upon realising that the majority of both ships' crews were either committed atheists or bu dding evolutionists, Whitehead embarked on creating a whole series of natural history specimens made up out of typographical characters. ...Show more

What are We Doing Here? by Marilynne Robinson

$27.99 AUD

Category: Books, Writing and Language

New essays by the Orange and Pulitzer Prize winning author of Gilead, Home and Lila. In this collection, Marilynne Robinson, one of today's most important thinkers - admired by President Obama, and so many others - impels us to action and offers us hope.Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home, winner of the Orange Prize; and Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson's peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display. What Are We Doing Here? is a call to continue the tradition of the great thinkers and to remake political and cultural life as "deeply impressed by obligation [and as] a great theatre of heroic generosity, which, despite all, is sometimes palpable still." In our era of rampant political and cultural pessimism, we run the risk of becoming bogged down in disillusionment and of losing sight of ways out of the mire. In What Are We Doing Here?, the incomparable Marilynne Robinson offers us balm: impelling us to action, but offering us hope. ...Show more

Shakespeare's Library: Unlocking the Greatest Mystery in Literature by Stuart Kells

$34.99 AUD

Category: Books, Writing and Language

From acclaimed author and ardent bibliophile Stuart Kells comes an exploration of the quest to find the personal library of the world's greatest writer Millions of words of scholarship have been expended on the world's most famous author and his work. And yet a critical part of the puzzle, Shakespeare' s library, is a mystery. For four centuries people have searched for it: in mansions, palaces and libraries; in riverbeds, sheep pens and partridge coops; and in the corridors of the mind. Yet no trace of the bard's manuscripts, books or letters has ever been found. The search for Shakespeare's library is much more than a treasure hunt. Knowing what the Bard read informs our reading of his work, and it offers insight into the mythos of Shakespeare and the debate around authorship. The library's fate has profound implications for literature, for national and cultural identity, and for the global Shakespeare industry. It bears on fundamental principles of art, identity, history, meaning and truth. Unfolding the search like the mystery story that it is, acclaimed author Stuart Kells follows the trail of the hunters, taking us through different conceptions of the library and of the man himself. Entertaining and enlightening,Shakespeare's Library is a captivating exploration of one of literature's most enduring enigmas. ...Show more

Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know: The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce by Colm Tóibín

$29.99 AUD

Category: Books, Writing and Language | Reading Level: 3 Biography

'A father...is a necessary evil.' Stephen Dedalus in UlyssesWilliam Butler Yeats' father was an impoverished artist, an inveterate letter writer, and a man crippled by his inability to ever finish a painting.Oscar Wilde's father was a doctor, a brilliant statistician and amateur archaeologist who was ta ken to court by an obsessed lover in a strange foreshadowing of events that would later befall his son. The father of James Joyce was a garrulous, hard-drinking man with a violent temper, unable or unwilling to provide for his large family, who eventually drove his son from Ireland. In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know, Colm Tóibín presents an illuminating, intimate study of Irish culture, history and literature told through the lives and works of Ireland's most famous sons, and the complicated, influential relationships they each maintained with their fathers.'A supple, subtle thinker, alive to hunts and undertones, wary of absolute truths.' New Statesman'Tóibín writes about writers' families...with great subtlety and sometimes with splendid impudence.' Sunday Telegraph ...Show more

Literary Landscapes: Charting the Topography of Classic Literature by Modern Books

$49.99 AUD

Category: Books, Writing and Language

Some stories couldn_t happen just anywhere or any time _ often the scenery , landscape or era is as central to the tale as any character _ and just as easily recognised. Wh at adventures would Heidi have had without her mountain neighbours? W ould Jim Hawkins have experienced such an adventure had he no t lived in mid - 1700s England? Literary Landscapes brings together an eclectic collage of over 50 familiar literary worlds paired with original maps and archive material, as well as illustrations and photography. In this collection of essays the reader will follow Leopold Bl oom_s footsteps around Dublin, become immerse d in Les Mis é rable_s revolutionary Paris, feel the chill wind of Emily Brontë_s Wuthering Heights, and hear the churning paddles of Mississippi steamboats in Mark Twain_s Huckleberry Finn. The landscapes of enduring fictional characters and literary legends are vividly brought to life, evoking all the sights and sounds of the original works. For anyone wh o ever dreamt of escaping the everyday, Literary Landscapes will transport you to the greatest places in literature. ...Show more

The Clothing of Books by Jhumpa Lahiri

$16.99 AUD

Category: Books, Writing and Language

How do you clothe a book? In this deeply personal reflection, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri explores the art of the book jacket from the perspectives of both reader and writer. Probing the complex relationships between text and image, author and designer, and art and commerce, Lahiri delve s into the role of the uniform; explains what book jackets and design have come to mean to her; and how, sometimes, "the covers become a part of me." ...Show more

Nganga: A Dictionary of Aboriginal Terms and Phrases by Aunty Fay Muir; Sue Lawson

$16.99 AUD

Category: Books, Writing and Language

An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn

$39.99 AUD

Category: Autobiography and Biography

From the award-winning, best-selling writer: a deeply moving tale of a father and son's transformative journey in reading-and relivin -Homer's epic masterpiece. "My favourite classicist once again combines meticulous literary investigation with warm and wrenching human emotion - books like these are why I love reading." LEE CHILD When eighty-one-year-old Jay Mendelsohn decides to enrol in the undergraduate seminar on the Odyssey that his son Daniel teaches at Bard College, the two find themselves on an adventure as profoundly emotional as it is intellectual. For Jay, a retired research scientist who sees the world through a mathematician's unforgiving eyes, this return to the classroom is his `one last chance' to learn about the great literature he'd neglected in his youth - and, even more, a final opportunity to understand his son. But through the sometimes-uncomfortable months that follow, as the two men explore Homer's great work together - first in the classroom, where Jay persistently challenges his son's interpretations, and then during a surprise-filled Mediterranean journey retracing Odysseus' legendary voyages - it becomes clear that Daniel has much to learn, too: for Jay's responses to both the text and the travels gradually uncover long-buried secrets that allow the son to understand his difficult father at last. As this intricately woven memoir builds to its wrenching climax, Mendelsohn's narrative comes to echo The Odyssey itself, with its timeless themes of deception and recognition, marriage and children, the pleasures of travel and the meaning of home. Rich with literary and emotional insight, An Odyssey is a renowned author-scholar's most revelatory entwining yet of personal narrative and literary exploration. ...Show more

Ceridwen Dovey on JM Coetzee: Writers on Writers by Ceridwen Dovey

$17.99 AUD

Category: Books, Writing and Language

'I was born in the year J.M. Coetzee published his third novel, Waiting for the Barbarians. My mother read this dark, disturbing book with its multiple scenes of torture as she breastfed me at night, while my older sister slept and the house was quiet. It was 1980. The apartheid government had declared a state of emergency in the face of growing internal revolt, and my parents were thinking of leaving South Africa again.?For Ceridwen Dovey, J.M. Coetzee 'has always been there, an unseen but strongly felt presence in our small family drama?. As a child, she observed with fascination her mother?s immersion in Coetzee?s writing as she worked on what would become the first critical study of his early novels. Even now, as a writer herself, Ceridwen?s relationship with Coetzee?s books is still mediated by her mother?s readings of them- to get to him, she must first step through her mother?s formidable mind. With tenderness and insight, Dovey draws on this personal history to explore the Nobel Prize-winner?s work - how his books 'do theory? on themselves - while also tracing the intellectual heritage that has been passed from mother to daughter.In the Writers on Writers series, leading writers reflect on another Australian writer who has inspired and fascinated them. Provocative, crisp and written from a practitioner?s perspective, the series starts a fresh conversation between past and present, writer and reader. It sheds light on the craft of writing, and introduces some intriguing and talented authors and their work.Published by Black Inc. in association with the University of Melbourne and State Library Victoria. Also available in the Writers on Writers series Alice Pung on John MarsdenErik Jensen on Kate JenningsChristos Tsiolkas on Patrick WhiteNam Le on David Malouf (forthcoming) Michelle de Kretser on Shirley Hazzard (forthcoming) ...Show more

Writers and Their Cats by Alison Nastasi

$29.99 AUD

Category: Books, Writing and Language

Mark Twain, Alice Walker, Haruki Murakami, Ursula K. Le Guin--this volume celebrates 45 famous authors who have shared their homes and hearts with furry feline friends. The photographs and stories in Writers and Their Cats capture the special bond between wordsmith and mouser. From the six-toed kitties who still inhabit the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Florida to the mewling muses of mystery writer Lilian Jackson Braun, cats are clearly, in the words of Gloria Steinem, "a writer's most logical and agreeable companion." ...Show more

The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

$22.99 AUD

Category: Books, Writing and Language

Shaun Bythell owns the Bookshop, Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop. It contains 100,000 books, spread over a mile of shelving, with twisting corridors and roaring fires, and all set in a beautiful, rural town by the edge of the sea. A book-lover's paradise? Well, almost ... In these wry and hilari ous diaries, Shaun provides an inside look at the trials and tribulations of life in the book trade, from struggles with eccentric customers to wrangles with his own staff, who include the ski-suit-wearing, bin-foraging Nicky. He takes us with him on buying trips to old estates and auction houses, recommends books-both lost classics and new discoveries-introduces us to the thrill of the unexpected find, and evokes the rhythms and charms of small-town life, always with a sharp and sympathetic eye.Hilarious, wry, and charming, Shaun Bythell's stories from his second-hand bookshop in remotest Scotland are sure to delight readers of all stripes. ...Show more