Macmillan Collector's Library Spring 2019 Catalogue by Pan Macmillan

MACMILLAN COLLECTORâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S LIBRARY

Malice Aforethought Francis Iles A dark and cynically comical psychological suspense novel, with an afterword by Keating Award-winning writer Barry Forshaw. It was not until several weeks after he had decided to murder his wife that Dr Bickleigh took any active steps in the matter. So begins the classic crime novel Malice Aforethought. Dr Edmund Bickleigh and his insufferable wife Julia are hosting a tennis party where gossip rivals tennis as the most interesting sport. The seemingly genteel doctor is unable to tolerate his wife’s incessant henpecking any longer, distracted as he is by his young and attractive female guests. And as his passion for one in particular, the mysterious Madeleine Cranmere, grows, so does his resolve to murder his wife . . .

‘A fascinating insight into a troubled mind, and a gripping thriller, the novel has been twice adapted for television with Hywel Bennett and Ben Miller in the main part’ ‘1,000 novels everyone must read: Crime’, Guardian

Francis Iles’s novel is one of the earliest and finest examples of the inverted detective story – we know who committed the crime, the question is, will he get away with it? Set in stuffy 1920s England and told from the perspective of the devious Dr Bickleigh himself, Malice Aforethought is impeccably plotted and darkly comic. Designed to appeal to book lovers everywhere, the Macmillan Collector’s Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector’s Library are books to love and treasure.

‘This classic crime novel, with its focus on the mindset of a murderer, set the genre in a new direction’ Publishers Weekly ‘A pioneer of psychological suspense fiction with a seasoning of cynical wit’ Mystery Scene

Francis Iles was one of the pseudonyms for Anthony Berkeley Cox (1893–1971). He was born in Watford and served in World War I before working as a journalist for Punch and The Humorist magazines. He wrote his first novel in 1925 and enjoyed success with his many detective books and short stories. In 1930 he co-founded the famous Detection Club alongside famous crime writers such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. He wrote four novels under the pseudonym Francis Iles of which Malice Aforethought was the most famous.

24/01/2019 • £9.99 • 9781509889365 • Fiction • Hardback MCL Standard • 336pp • Rights: CL WEL non-exclusive

Love Letters of Great Men Edited by Ursula Doyle Remember the wonderfully romantic book of letters by Beethoven, Byron and Napoleon that featured in the Sex and the City film? That collection didn’t actually exist, but all of the letters referenced in the film were real; so Macmillan decided to create Love Letters of Great Men . . . From the private papers of Mark Twain and Mozart to those of Robert Browning and Nelson, Love Letters of Great Men collects together some of the most romantic letters in history.

‘The most romantic book ever’ Daily Mail ‘Pan has pioneered the art of product placement in reverse’ Observer ‘Love Letters will sell boatloads of books’ Entertainment Weekly ‘Inspired by the Sex and the City movie . . . Famous men caught with pen in hand and heart in mouth’ The Times

For some of these great men, love is a ‘delicious poison’ (William Congreve); for others, ‘a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music’ (Charles Darwin). Love can scorch like the heat of the sun (Henry VIII), or penetrate the depths of one’s heart like a cooling rain (Flaubert). Every shade of love is here, from the exquisite eloquence of Oscar Wilde and the simple devotion of Robert Browning to the wonderfully modern misery of the Roman Pliny the Younger, who loses himself in work to forget how much he misses his beloved wife, Calpurnia. Taken together, these Love Letters of Great Men show that perhaps men haven’t changed so very much over the last 2,000 years; passion, jealousy, hope and longing are all described here – as is the simple pleasure of sending a letter to, and receiving one from, the person you love most. Designed to appeal to book lovers everywhere, the Macmillan Collector’s Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector’s Library are books to love and treasure. This edition is edited and introduced by publisher Ursula Doyle.

The most heartfelt romantic letters from: Pliny the Younger, King Henry VIII, William Congreve, Richard Steele, George Farquhar, Alexander Pope, David Hume, Laurence Sterne, Denis Diderot, Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Lord Nelson, Robert Burns, Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, Napoleon Bonaparte, Daniel Webster, Ludwig van Beethoven, William Hazlitt, Lord Byron, John Keats, Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Benjamin Disraeli, Charles Darwin, Alfred de Musset, Robert Schumann, Robert Browning, Gustave Flaubert, Walter Bagehot, Mark Twain, William F. Testerman, Charles Stewart Parnell, Oscar Wilde, Pierre Curie, G. K. Chesterton, Captain Alfred Bland, Regimental Sergeant-Major James Milne and Second Lieutenant John Lindsay Rapoport. 24/01/2019 • £9.99 • 9781509895304 • Fiction • Hardback MCL Standard • 176pp • Rights: Rights: CL WEL excluding US non-exclusive

Selected Poems John Keats A new selection of poetry by one of the great Romantic poets, edited and introduced by Dr Andrew Hodgson. John Keats is regarded as one of the greatest poets of the Romantic movement. But when he died at the age of only twenty-five, his writing had been attacked by critics and his talent remained largely unrecognized. This new volume reflects his extraordinary creativity and versatility, drawing on the collections published during his lifetime as well as posthumously. He wrote in many different forms – from his famous Odes to ballads such as La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and the epic Hyperion. Together, they celebrate a poet who wrote with unsurpassed insight and emotion about art and beauty, love and loss, suffering and nature. Designed to appeal to book lovers everywhere, the Macmillan Collector’s Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector’s Library are books to love and treasure. ‘The imaginative impact of Keats’s life – his ‘‘orphaned’’ childhood, his letters, his poetry, his friendships, his illness, his agonizing love affair – has continued unbroken for nearly two hundred years’ New York Review of Books ‘Keats’s jazz-like improvisations, which give us, like no other writing in English, the actual rush of a man thinking, a mind hurtling forward unpredictably and sweeping us along’ Morris Dickstein, New York Times ‘He left behind him some of Britain’s bestloved poetry’ Alison Flood, Guardian ‘A truly radical poet’ Lesley McDowell, Independent

John Keats was born in London in 1795. He and his siblings were orphaned at a young age – his father died in a riding accident in 1804 and his mother died six years later. Keats then left school to train as an apothecary and a surgeon before dedicating his time to poetry. His first volume, Poems, was published in 1817 and only two more volumes, in 1818 and 1820, were published during his lifetime. In 1818 he fell in love with his neighbour Fanny Brawne but broke off their engagement due to his increasing ill health and lack of funds. In 1820 he moved to Italy where he died a year later of tuberculosis, the disease that claimed his mother and his brother Tom.

07/02/2019 • £9.99 • 9781509887170 • Fiction • Hardback MCL Standard • 272pp • Rights: CL WEL non-exclusive

Leaves of Grass Selected Poems Walt Whitman A new selection of Walt Whitman’s groundbreaking poetry edited and introduced by Professor Bridget Bennett. This new collection is taken from the final version, The Deathbed Edition, and it includes his most famous poems such as ‘Song of Myself’ and ‘I Sing the Body Electric’. Leaves of Grass is Walt Whitman’s glorious poetry collection which he revised and expanded throughout his lifetime. First published in 1855, it was ground breaking in its subject matter and in its direct, unembellished style. Whitman wrote about the United States and its people, its revolutionary spirit and about democracy. He wrote openly about the body and about desire in a way that completely broke with convention, paving the way for a new kind of poetry. Designed to appeal to book lovers everywhere, the Macmillan Collector’s Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector’s Library are books to love and treasure. ‘There is no one in this great wide world of America whom I love and honour so much’ Oscar Wilde ‘I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of Leaves of Grass. I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has ever produced’ Ralph Waldo Emerson ‘Whitman, the great poet, has meant so much to me. Whitman the one man breaking a way ahead. Whitman the one pioneer . . . Ahead of Whitman, nothing. Ahead of all poets, pioneering into the wilderness of unopened life, Whitman. Beyond him, none’ D. H. Lawrence ‘His [Whitman’s] song of himself was a song for humanity, too. And in spite of all that has happened since, it still echoes here’

Walt Whitman was born in Long Island on 31 May 1819 to Walter Whitman, a carpenter and farmer, and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman. Walt was one of eight siblings and was taken out of school at the age of eleven to start work, but he continued to read voraciously and visit museums. He worked first as a printer, then briefly as a teacher before settling on a career in journalism. He self-published the first version of Leaves of Grass, which consisted of only twelve poems, in 1855. By the time he died in 1892, and despite arousing considerable controversy, he enjoyed unprecedented international success and to this day is considered to be one of America’s greatest poets.

Independent

07/02/2019 • £9.99 • 9781509887187 • Fiction • Hardback MCL Stand • 304pp • Rights: CL WEL non-exclusive

What Katy Did Susan Coolidge / Addie Ledyard A beautiful gift edition of Susan Coolidge’s famous children’s book What Katy Did, with original illustrations by Addie Ledyard and a new introduction by award-winning children’s author Jacqueline Wilson. ‘My mother had kept her own copy of What Katy Did and I read it myself when I was about seven. It immediately became one of my favourite books’ Jacqueline Wilson

‘It opens such a vivid window into a domestic world that we have lost: full of aunts and cousins, innumerable siblings and clearly drawn moralities’ Christina Hardyment, The Times ‘A book about a long lanky tomboy with tangled hair, a crazy imagination and a whole heap of good intentions. Katy Carr wasn’t perfect – far from it – but she was perfect for me!’ Cathy Cassidy ‘This tale of a boisterous child coming into maturity reads with the same zest and insight as it would have done when it was first published over 130 years ago’ Guardian

A treasured children’s classic, Susan Coolidge’s What Katy Did is a vivid story of childhood bravery with a feisty heroine at its heart. Twelve-year-old Katy is a dreamer. She invents exciting games, faraway lands and imagines that one day she’ll be charming and graceful. But in the meantime she gets into all kinds of mischief . . . until one day a terrible accident happens and life as Katy knows it turns upside down. Can Katy’s boisterous courage keep her dreams alive? Designed to appeal to book lovers everywhere, the Macmillan Collector’s Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector’s Library are books to love and treasure.

Sarah Chauncey Woolsey was born in 1835 into a wealthy and influential family in Cleveland, Ohio. She worked as a nurse during the American Civil War before establishing a career as a successful and prolific writer of novels, short stories and poems. Her most famous book, What Katy Did, published under her pseudonym Susan Coolidge, was inspired by her own childhood growing up in a large family with younger siblings. Its publication in 1872 was followed by four sequels. She never married and lived most of her adult life in Rhode Island where she died in 1905.

07/02/2019 • £8.99 • 9781509881406 • Fiction • Hardback MCL Standard • 176pp • Rights: CL WEL non-exclus

The Wizard of Oz L. Frank Baum / W. W. Denslow Dorothy and Toto’s classic whirlwind adventure featuring the original illustrations by famous illustrator W. W. Denslow, coloured by Barbara Frith, and a new afterword by Professor Sarah Churchwell. Regarded as a modern fairy tale, L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz is one of America’s most cherished and enchanting children’s stories. Follow Dorothy, and her loyal dog Toto, as they are carried away from Kansas by a cyclone to the wonderful world of Oz. Wandering down the yellow brick road Dorothy meets her three famous companions – a Scarecrow longing for a brain, a Tin Woodman wishing for a heart, a cowardly Lion yearning for some courage – and together they travel to the illustrious Emerald City where they hope all their dreams will come true.

‘Like Robin Hood, Alice or Winnie the Pooh, Baum’s inventions . . . have become the mythological furniture of our children’s minds, and of our own and our parents’ . . . Funny and inventive’

Designed to appeal to book lovers everywhere, the Macmillan Collector’s Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector’s Library are books to love and treasure.

Marina Warner, Guardian ‘The tales of Aesop and other fabulists . . . will never pass entirely away, but a welcome place remains and will easily be found for such stories as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ New York Times ‘Baum created a truly extraordinary world, a real world . . . and filled it with amazing things’ Dinitia Smith

Lyman Frank Baum was born in 1856 in Chittenango, New York. Educated mostly at home due to ill health, he was encouraged by his wealthy father to pursue his early interests in journalism and playwriting. At a young age he started his first magazine, established his own theatre and worked for many newspapers and periodicals before turning to children’s fiction. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900, was a bestselling book and launched the hugely successful series of ‘Oz’ titles. Baum continued writing for the rest of his life and died in 1919 with over one hundred books to his name.

07/02/2019 • £10.99 • 9781509881963 • Fiction • Hardback MCL Standard • 192pp • Rights: CL WEL non-exclusive

The Diary of a Nobody George Grossmith / Weedon Grossmith A charming satire of middle-class suburbia by George and Weedon Grossmith, with original illustrations from the latter and an afterword by Paul Bailey. ‘The funniest book in the world’ Evelyn Waugh The Diary of a Nobody is a comic masterpiece which has been hugely influential since its first publication in 1892. Proud to be ensconced with his wife Carrie in the desirable London suburb of Holloway, bank clerk Charles Pooter decides to keep a diary. From the frequent visits by his dear friends Mr Cummings and Mr Gowing to the ups and downs of his feckless son Lupin, the self-regarding Mr Pooter considers, mistakenly, that all aspects of his life are worthy of note. The result is a hilarious spoof and a perfectly pitched satire on late Victorian society. ‘There’s a universality about Pooter that touches everybody . . . [he] fits into the tradition of absurd humour that the British do well, which started with Jonathan Swift and runs through Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear to Monty Python’

Jasper Fforde, Time Out ‘Pooter himself is as gentle as you could wish, a wonderful character, genuinely lovable. The book is beautifully constructed’ Andrew Davies, Glasgow Herald

George Grossmith enjoyed a successful career spanning four decades as an accomplished singer, comic actor and songwriter. He was particularly renowned for his performances in a number of Gilbert and Sullivan operas. His younger brother Weedon trained as an artist and worked as a portrait painter before turning his hand to acting and playwriting. The brothers shared a gift for comedy and from 1888 to 1889 they collaborated on a series of brilliantly observed columns in Punch magazine featuring the diary of an impossibly pompous lower-middle-class bank clerk named Charles Pooter. The Diary of a Nobody went on to be published in book form in 1892 and it has been in print ever since.

07/02/2019 • £9.99 • 9781509881390 • Fiction • Hardback MCL Standard • 224ppp • Rights: CL WEL non-exclusive

The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton Edith Wharton was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature with this witty satire of New York’s upper classes. This edition is introduced by award-winning novelist Rachel Cusk. Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Age of Innocence, is both a poignant story of frustrated love and an extraordinarily vivid, delightfully satirical record of a vanished world.

‘A great city’s greatest novelist . . . Wharton’s late masterpiece stands as a fierce indictment of a society estranged from culture and in desperate need of a European sensibility’ Robert McCrum, Guardian ‘It’s a deliciously hard-edged satire of manners and customs . . . Wharton was not only ferociously witty and morally committed, she was also a great storyteller’ Vincent Canby, New York Times ‘The Age of Innocence has as much in common with that popular Oprah-ish romance-rooted literary fashion as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet does’ Patrick T. Reardon

As the scion of one of New York’s leading families, Newland Archer has been born into a life of sumptuous privilege and strict duty. A sensitive, intelligent young man, he still respects the rigid social code by which his class lives. As he contemplates his forthcoming marriage to the striking and equally well-born May Welland, he gives thanks that she is ‘one of his own kind’. But the arrival of the Countess Olenska, a free spirit who breathes clouds of European sophistication, makes him question the path on which his upbringing has set him. As his fascination with her grows, he discovers just how hard it is to escape the bonds of the society that has shaped him. Designed to appeal to book lovers everywhere, the Macmillan Collector’s Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector’s Library are books to love and treasure.

Edith Wharton was born in 1862 to a prominent and wealthy New York family. In 1885 she married Boston socialite ‘Teddy’ Wharton but the marriage was unhappy and they divorced in 1913. The couple travelled frequently to Europe and settled in France, where Wharton stayed until her death in 1937. Her first major novel was The House of Mirth (1905); many short stories, travel books, memoirs and novels followed, including Ethan Frome (1911) and The Reef (1912). She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature with The Age of Innocence (1920) and she was thrice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was also decorated for her humanitarian work during the First World War.

02/05/2019 • £9.99 • 9781509890033 • Fiction • Hardback MCL Standard • 384pp • Rights: CL WEL non-exclusive

Agnes Grey Anne Brontë Anne Brontë’s classic debut novel about life as a Victorian governess, with a new introduction by historian and biographer Juliet Barker. Drawing on her own experience, Anne Brontë exposes the isolated world of a nineteenth-century governess in her debut novel, Agnes Grey. When Agnes Grey’s family falls on hard times, she insists on being allowed to find work as a governess, but her idealistic spirit is challenged in her first position with the unruly Bloomfield children and their callous parents. She then moves on to work for the even wealthier Murray family, whose scheming daughters jeopardize the only bright spot in Agnes’s life, Edward Weston. Designed to appeal to book lovers everywhere, the Macmillan Collector’s Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector’s Library are books to love and treasure. ‘The most perfect prose narrative in English letters’ George Moore ‘Anne provided her heroine with a hero who was actually nice to women. This still feels revolutionary’ Guardian ‘A compelling Victorian take on the iniquities of the wealth gap’ Telegraph ‘For too long [Anne] has been undervalued as the third-best Brontë. But her fiction, exploring the lamentably still-current themes of addiction and domestic violence and the abuse of vulnerable women working away from home, has a vigour and bracing satirical intelligence which places her in the first rank of what is arguably the greatest ever generation of novelists in English’

Anne Brontë was born in Yorkshire in 1820. She was the youngest of six children and the sister of fellow novelists Charlotte and Emily, the authors of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights respectively. Her mother died when she was a baby and she was raised by her aunt and her father, the Reverend Patrick Brontë. Anne worked as a governess before returning home to Haworth where she and her sisters published poems under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. She published her first novel, Agnes Grey, in 1847, followed by The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in 1848. She died from tuberculosis in 1849.

Lucy Hughes-Hallett

02/05/2019 • £9.99 • 9781509890002 • Fiction • Hardback MCL Standard • 256pp • Rights: CL WEL non-exclusive

The Mill on the Floss George Eliot George Eliot’s masterful portrayal of rural nineteenth-century society, with a new introduction by Professor Kathryn Hughes. With enchanting detail and precise plotting, George Eliot’s most autobiographical novel tells the story of a brother and sister pulled apart. Maggie Tulliver and her brother Tom enjoy a close friendship and a rural childhood on the banks of the river Floss. But the approach of adulthood brings tension to their relationship; intelligent and fiery Maggie tests the boundaries of nineteenth-century society in her search for love while Tom embraces convention and accepts his father’s desire for him to become a businessman. Increasingly self-righteous, Tom disapproves of his sister’s suitors and when he discovers that she took a fateful boat trip with Stephen Guest, her cousin’s fiancé, he turns his back on her. Maggie is ostracized by her beloved brother and her own community, and only through tragic events are the siblings reunited . . . ‘[Maggie’s] one of those great literary heroines whom bookish girls grow up wanting to be. Just like Anne of Green Gables or even Jane Eyre, Maggie captures exactly the dilemma of being the clever girl of the family’

Guardian ‘As one comes back to [Eliot’s] books after years of absence they pour out, even against our expectations, the same store of energy and heat, so that we want more than anything to idle in the warmth’ Virginia Woolf

George Eliot was born Mary Anne Evans in 1819. Her father was the land agent of Arbury Hall in Warwickshire, in the library of which Eliot embarked upon a brilliant self-education. She moved to London in 1850 and shone in its literary circles. It was, however, her novels of English rural life that brought her fame, starting with Adam Bede, published under her new pen-name in 1859. She went on to publish novels including The Mill on the Floss in 1860 and Middlemarch in 1871 as well as poetry and non-fiction. Queen Victoria was one of her most devoted readers. Eliot died in 1880.

02/05/2019 • £10.99 • 9781509890019 • Fiction • Hardback MCL Standard • 672pp • Rights: CL WEL non-exclusive

American Classics Collection

A beautiful box set containing four of the most loved American classics: The Beautiful and Damned, The House of Mirth, The Scarlet Letter and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Whether you love the glamour of upper class New York, are passionate about the history of Puritan New England or are intrigued by the hard times of late nineteenthcentury Mississippi, pivotal American literature unfolds in this collection of classic novels. Each box set includes four beautifully designed, pocketsized editions of The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, with new introductions and bespoke covers. Designed to appeal to book lovers everywhere, the Macmillan Collector’s Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector’s Library are books to love and treasure.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in Minnesota in 1896. He is considered a member of the ‘Lost Generation’ of the 1920s and his novels depict the Jazz Age. His third novel, The Great Gatsby, has sold millions of copies. Edith Wharton was born in New York in 1862. In 1921 she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature with The Age of Innocence, and she was also thrice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem in 1804 and spent his life as a writer. He disowned and burned his first novel, Fanshawe, but assured his reputation with The Scarlet Letter twenty years later. Mark Twain is the pseudonym for Samuel Langhorne Clemens. He was born in 1835 in Missouri, which provided the inspiration for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and its sequel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, often regarded as the Great American Novel. 02/05/2019 • £38.00 • 9781529004984 • Fiction • Hardback MCL Standard • Rights: CL WEL non-exclusive

Much Ado About Nothing William Shakespeare / John Gilbert A complete and illustrated edition of Shakespeare’s romantic and tragic comedy, with a new introduction by Professor Tiffany Stern. Comedy turns to tragedy as two couples fall in and out of love in Much Ado About Nothing, one of Shakespeare’s most frequently performed plays. This edition features illustrations by renowned artist Sir John Gilbert. Whilst Beatrice and Benedick both despise love, exchanging insults and banter rather than vows, for Hero and Claudio it is love at first sight. But as their marriage preparations begin, so do Don John’s dirty tricks, resulting in humiliation, rejection and disguise. Through masqued layers of deception and tight prosaic wit, Shakespeare weaves together a comedy full of tragedy and romance in which nothing is as it seems.

‘Shakespeare’s voice rings down the ages, and, as with innumerable other human matters, we would do well to listen to it’

Independent ‘When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder that such trivial people should muse and thunder in such lovely language’ D. H. Lawrence ‘The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good’ Robert Graves

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, in 1564. The date of his birth is unknown but is celebrated on 23 April, which happens to be St George’s Day, and the day in 1616 on which Shakespeare died. Aged eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. They had three children. Around 1585 William joined an acting troupe on tour in Stratford from London, and thereafter spent much of his life in the capital. By 1595 he had written five of his history plays, six comedies and his first tragedy, Romeo and Juliet. In all, he wrote thirty-seven plays and much poetry, and earned enormous fame in his own lifetime in prelude to his immortality.

13/06/2019 • £7.99 • 9781509889778 • Fiction • Hardback MCL Standard • 192pp • Rights: CL WEL non-exclusive

Far From the Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy / Helen Allingham Thomas Hardy’s classic novel of rivalry and misplaced love with a new introduction by academic and poet, Professor Mark Ford. The novel that brought Thomas Hardy fame and the first to be set in a richly imagined, rural Wessex. With original illustrations by Helen Allingham. Gabriel Oak is only one of three suitors for the hand of the beautiful and spirited Bathsheba Everdene. He must compete with the dashing young soldier Sergeant Troy and respectable, middle-aged Farmer Boldwood. And while their fates depend upon the choice Bathsheba makes, she discovers the terrible consequences of an inconstant heart. Far From the Madding Crowd was the first of Hardy’s novels to give the name of Wessex to the landscape of south-west England and is set against the backdrop of the unchanging natural cycle of the year. The story both upholds and questions rural values with a startlingly modern sensibility. ‘Far From the Madding Crowd is the first of Thomas Hardy’s great novels, and the first to sound the tragic note for which his fiction is best remembered’

Margaret Drabble ‘I have always loved this author whose writing so romantically and evocatively captures the essence of that part of England’ The Australian ‘The imagined Wessex . . . appealed to a nostalgic appetite for vanishing pastoral traditions among the urbanized population of Victorian Britain’ Dinah Birch, Guardian ‘Hardy’s natural modesty and reticence were such that he stood at the back of the crowd until he was noticed and escorted to a place of honour’ Guardian

Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset in 1840, the eldest of four children. At the age of sixteen he became an apprentice architect but continued to develop his classical education by studying between the hours of four and eight each morning. With encouragement from Horace Moule of Queens’ College Cambridge, he began to write fiction. His first published novel was Desperate Remedies in 1871. Thus began a series of increasingly dark novels, all set within the rural landscape of his native Dorset. Such was the success of these early works, which included A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873) and Far From the Madding Crowd (1874), that he gave up his work as an architect to concentrate on his writing. However, he had difficulty publishing Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1889) and was forced to make changes in order for it to be judged suitable for family readers. This, coupled with the stormy reaction to the negative tone of Jude the Obscure (1895), prompted Hardy to abandon writing novels altogether and he concentrated on poetry for the rest of his life. He died in January 1928.

13/06/2019 • £9.99 • 9781509890026 • Fiction • Hardback MCL Standard • 544pp • Rights: CL WEL non-exclusive

The Tempest William Shakespeare / John Gilbert A complete and illustrated edition of Shakespeare’s late comedy with a new introduction by actor, writer and director Simon Callow. A magical escapist fantasy centred around the disruption of social order, The Tempest is one of Shakespeare’s most poetic and political comedies. This edition features illustrations by renowned artist Sir John Gilbert. As tumultuous waves roar over an uninhabited Mediterranean island, Prospero has been banished from Italy, Ferdinand and Miranda become entwined in a love knot, Sebastian and Antonia plot a murder, a drunken butler wants the throne and Ariel and Caliban have lost power over their home. Shakespeare lyrically transforms the stage into a shipwreck and leaves his characters to fight for control of the island.

‘Shakespeare’s voice rings down the ages, and, as with innumerable other human matters, we would do well to listen to it’

Independent ‘A magical tale of finding love and getting drunk on a tropical island’ Time Out ‘When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder that such trivial people should muse and thunder in such lovely language’ D. H. Lawrence ‘The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good’ Robert Graves

13/06/2019 • £7.99 • 9781509889761 • Fiction • Hardback MCL Standard • 160pp • Rights: CL WEL non-exclusive