Reid All About It

A further selection of Folio Society treasures from our collection:

George Orwell – A Life in Letters and Diaries. $150.00.

2017. The Folio Society, London. First Edition. Introduction by Peter Davison. Three-quarter bound in cloth with a printed cloth front board. 506 pp. Frontispiece and 16 pp. of b/w plates, 21 integrated b/w text illustrations. Printed endpapers. Ribbon marker. Blocked slipcase. As New, in publisher’s original shrink wrap.

Eric Blair [1903-1950] - who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell - never published an autobiography. This unique collection could well stand in place of one. Compiled as it is from a vast assortment of letters, personal correspondence, over two decades of diary extracts and accompanying images. It offers a unique insight into the complex life of a celebrated literary figure.

Philip Pullman – His Dark Materials Trilogy $300.00.

2008. The Folio Society, London. First Edition. Three-volume set.

The first fully illustrated edition of Pullman’s acclaimed trilogy comprises ‘Northern Lights’, ‘The Subtle Knife’ and ‘The Amber Spyglass’. Decorated boards. Comprising 1,168 pages in total. Preface by Philip Pullman. Frontispiece and ten full-page colour illustrations in each volume by Peter Bailey. Chapter opening drawings throughout by Philip Pullman. Bound in printed and blocked cloth. Printed and blocked slipcase. Fine Condition.

Boxed Set of Three Famous “Locked Room” Mysteries. $90.00. Hardcovers. Three Volumes in Slipcase. As New in Publisher’s original shrink wrap.

John Dickson Carr [1906-1977] – The Hollow Man (1935).

An American-born writer who sojourned in England for decades. This novel features Carr’s English investigator Dr Gideon Fell, who would appear in 23 novels between 1933 to 1967. The book includes the famed “Locked Room Lecture”, in which Fell explains to the reader how various “impossible” locked room crimes can be committed.

Gaston Leroux [1868-1927] – The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1907).

The first appearance of journalist and amateur sleuth Joseph Rouletabille [French slang for “Globetrotter”], who investigates an attempted murder in which the criminal disappears from a you-know-what room. Detailed charts, floor plans and diagrams are helpfully provided by the author, allowing the reader to puzzle along. Leroux is most famed for his novel The Phantom of the Opera (1909), and we all know where that led.

Edgar Wallace

One of my favourites.

This novel introduces a quartet of gentleman vigilantes –among them a European prince – who mete out retribution to those wrongdoers whose power and influence place them above the law. British Foreign Secretary Sir Philip Ramon is determined to see his Aliens Extradition Bill made law. This would see a great Spanish social reformer, currently directing his followers from safety in England, sent back to Spain. To meet certain death at the hands of a corrupt government. Sir Philip is advised he will be committing a crime. He is advised to withdraw the legislation. He refuses. He receives one final warning in a greenish-grey letter:

“We shall have no other course to pursue but to fulfil our promise. You will die at Eight in the Evening – The Four Just Men’ Criminals and malefactors, beware! There is no escape from the sword of justice wielded by The Four Just Men”.

Ramon is killed at the predicted time while in a - you guessed it - surrounded by a police guard. Wallace offered a £500 prize to anyone who guessed the solution to the murder and was –temporarily - financially ruined when an embarrassingly large number of readers correctly did so. The Four (later Three) Just Men were to appear in several sequels. Author of 175 novels and 24 plays, Edgar Wallace died in Hollywood while working on a screenplay for the film, “King Kong”.

Until next time, Stephen

‘A hypnotic story of lost love … a remarkable new literary voice.’

REBECCA STARFORD

$25.00

This debut collection of poetry explores the threads and gaps in family and national story — both oral and archival — to connect multiple generations of migration, separation, adoption, secrecy and reunion. The poems connect seemingly distant times and places and pay homage to other poets communing with ‘archival women’, including Jeanine Leanne, Natalie Harkin, Elfie Shiosaki and M. NourbeSe Philip.

$30.00

Giramondo

$25.00

The thirty-one stories and poems in this collection explore our defiant acts, from the small, everyday moments of revolt to life-changing actions in possible futures and imagined pasts. Crackling with energy and originality, these pieces are united by a singular intent: to defy the expected, whether in form, subject or content. They reveal the best of Australian writing today.

The poems in Autumn Royal’s collection explore theatrical responses to life. And in particular, the staging of the emotional life. Royal’s use of the elegiac form offers no answers, only the hope of tearing open conventional understandings of loss and insecurity, as it invokes a tradition of women poets and thinkers. Intense, dramatic, theatrical — an important new poetry collection which draws its strength from its confrontation with grief and mourning.

Jimmy Little: A Yorta Yorta Man

The screen goddess is a formidable figure, renowned for her power, complexity and so often beauty. From Joan Crawford and Bette Davis to Laverne Cox and Michelle Yeoh, these women disrupted and redefined the female ideal by pushing boundaries, fighting gender stereotypes and transcending tired tropes. This lively book examines cinema history through a feminist lens, charting the evolution of women’s on-screen representation and challenging dominant narratives and misconceptions.

In this exciting follow-up to his acclaimed collection, The Lost Arabs, award-winning poet Omar Sakr delves deep into his loves and losses to create a riveting literary experience. Asking questions of timeliness and timelessness, Non-Essential Work is a restless and relentless volume that showcases a poet unquestionably in his prime.

Heather Mitchell

Hardie Grant

$45.00

HC

At just 16 years of age, Jimmy Little travelled to Sydney to make his radio debut on Australia’s Amateur Hour. The eldest of seven children and born on the Cummeragunja Reserve on the Murray River, Jimmy’s entry into the entertainment industry came at a time when First Nations people were not counted in the census. Weaving together stories both known and unknown to the public, this book will take you on a remarkable journey through a life of music, love and advocacy.

$35.00

Heather Mitchell is an esteemed Australian stage and screen actor, and yet behind the scenes her real life has taken many remarkable twists and turns. Training an unflinching spotlight on her most formative memories, Heather illuminates the heartbreaking secrets, sexual encounters, family dramas and creative pursuits that have shaped her life as a woman, an actor and a mother. Powerful, immersive, and extremely candid.

Stephen Hough is indisputably one of the world’s leading pianists, winning global acclaim and numerous awards.This memoir recounts his unconventional coming-of-age story, from his beginnings in an unmusical home in Cheshire to the main stage of Carnegie Hall in New York aged 21. We meet his supportive, if eccentric parents - his artistically frustrated father, his houseworkhating mother. We read of the teachers who encouraged and inspired, and others who hit him on the head screaming, “you’ll do nothing with your life”. This is Stephen’s story.

ACC

Vermeer’s intensely quiet and enigmatic paintings invite the viewer into a private world, often prompting more questions than answers. Who is being portrayed? Are his subjects real or imagined? Bringing together diverse strands of the Dutch master’s professional and private worlds, this is the first major authoritative study of Vermeer’s life and work for many years, throwing light on all thirty-seven of his paintings.

A startling, vibrant, radical new form of desert art arrived in Papunya Tula in 1971, anchored and inherited in ceremony; stimulated by the twentieth century and painting onto canvas. This lavishly illustrated book draws on social history, visual anthropology, as well as formal art analysis to identify how the key innovations that informed contemporary desert art were realised. This book leads the reader to a deeper understanding of a critical juncture, as four artists claimed a pivotal space in the history of Australian art.

p. 27

Collage is an artistic language comprising found images, fragmentary forms, and unexpected juxtapositions. While it first gained status as high art in the early twentieth century, the past decade has seen a fresh explosion of artists using this dynamic and experimental approach to image making. Organised in an A-Z sequence by artist, the book features both well-known collagists and a plethora of lesser-known names deserving of greater attention.

Do Ho Suh is known for his large-scale sculptures and architectural installations, which consider notions of belonging, identity and home. Since the 1990s, the artist has created evocative and poignant works that situate the home at the centre of our shared physical and psychological experience. This publication surveys the artist’s practice with reproductions of iconic sculptural works and drawings.

$130.00

HC

Iran, the former Persia, lies at an interface between West-East and North-South. Several early trade routes crossed the country, connecting Asia, Africa and Europe, and the cultural wealth and scenic beauty of this region has attracted travellers for over 2,000 years. This rich past makes Iran one of the most culturally interesting countries of Asia. The book allows one to experience the great diversity and fascination of Iranian architecture and is a visual treat for the reader.

The Umbrella House is the smallest residential home by Japanese architect and mathematician Kazuo Shinohara (19252006). Experts from Japan and Europe supervised the dismantling of the house in Tokyo and its reassembly in Weil am Rhein. The book traces the long journey of the Umbrella House in lavish illustrations including impressions from 1960s Japan, architectural designs and plans, and photographs that document its dismantling and reassembly or show the house in its new location.

Riccardo Falcinelli delves deep into the history of colour to show how it has shaped the modern gaze. With over four hundred illustrations throughout and with examples ranging widely across art and culture - from Flaubert’s novels to The Simpsons, Falcinelli traces the evolution of our long relationship with colour, and how first the industrial revolution, and then the dawn of the internet age, changed it forever. It is the story of why we now see the world the way we do.

Michael Peppiatt’s lively, engaging writing takes us into the company of many notable art-world personalities, such as the Catalan painter Antoni Tàpies, whom he visits in his studio, and moments of disillusion, such as his meeting with the self-mythologizing artist Balthus. Remarkably varied in their scope and lucidly written for a general reader, these selected essays not only provide us with perceptive commentary and acute critical judgment, they also give a unique personal insight into some of the greatest creative minds of the modern era.

Pantera $35.00

In an age of pandemic and economic precarity, how can we learn to embrace uncertainty in our workplaces, schools and businesses? And how can better understanding uncertainty help us to build resilience, foster social justice and deal with the big issues? Michelle Lazarus shows us how uncertainty tolerance can help through this smart, practical book with an affirming message: we may not be able to predict the future, but we can learn to navigate it.

Edited by Jamie Ruers & Stefan Marianski

Drawn from a major Freud Museum London conference, Freud/Lynch goes against the dubious cliché of finding Freudian solutions to Lynchian mysteries. Rather than presuming to fill in what Lynch leaves open by positing some forbidden psychosexual reality lurking behind his trademark red curtains, this book instead maintains a fidelity to the mysteries of his wonderful and strange filmic worlds, finding in them productive spaces where thought and imagination can be set to work.

Nicole Madigan

Journalist Nicole Madigan was stalked for over three years. The relentless and debilitating experience wreaked havoc in her personal and professional life, leaving her trapped in a constant state of fear and anxiety. Nicole uses her own story as an entry point to examine the psychology behind stalking behaviours and their impact on victim-survivors. In this timely and compelling enquiry, Madigan explores the blurred lines between romantic interest and obsession, admiration and fixation.

Almost every day it seems that our world becomes more fractured, more digital, and more chaotic. Sheila Liming has the answer- we need to hang out more. Starting with the assumption that play is to children as hanging out is to adults, Liming makes a brilliant case for the necessity of unstructured social time as a key element of our cultural vitality. She shows us how just getting together can be a potent act of resistance all on its own.

In this journey of self-experimentation, Rubin explores the mysteries and joys of embracing the senses as a path to a happier, more mindful life. Drawing on cutting-edge science, philosophy, literature and her own efforts to practice what she learns, she investigates the power of tuning in. This is a story of discovery filled with profound insights and practical suggestions about how to heighten our senses and use our powers of perception to live fuller, richer lives.

Two times World Champion, four times Commonwealth Champion - in the sport of athletics, Jana Pittman shares her life with you: the good, the bad and the ugly. Her life lessons are inspirational, not because of her achievements - stellar though they are - but because of her willingness to share with readers how to stare down your own doubts and fears and believe in yourself and your dreams. This book is for anyone who has ever felt that they are not enough.

Guardian Books

$33.00

Emotions can be a pain. If only we were more rational, life would be a lot easier, wouldn’t it? Dean Burnett certainly used to think so. And then, in April 2020, his father died of Covid-19. Suddenly, Dean was confronted with a host of powerful, unfamiliar and often unwelcome emotions. And so, he decided to put his feelings under the microscopefor science. He shares his journey of discovery into where our emotions come from, what purpose they serve, and why they make us feel the way they do.

When columnist and commentator Kerri Sackville decided to stop filling every idle moment with distraction and learn to be comfortable alone, her quality of life soared. In this book, Sackville analyses society’s attitude towards solitude, identifies the roadblocks in the way to unplugging, contemplates aloneness vs loneliness, and looks at the difference between true connection and mere connectivity. Finally, she provides practical advice on how to become comfortable in your own company, in order to enjoy and even cherish time alone.

America in the World: A History of U.S. Diplomacy & Foreign Polic (HC) by Robert