Antipodean Perspective: Selected Writings of Bernard Smith ($29.95, PB)
Bernard Smith (1916–2011) was unquestionably one of Australia’s greatest humanist scholars and its finest art historian. His European Vision and the South Pacific, 1768–1850 (1960) was a foundational text of post-colonialism, and in Australian Painting (1962) he set out the definitive history of Australian art to that time. This book presents 26 art historians, curators, artists & critics, from Australia & overseas, who have chosen a text from Smith’s work & sought to explain its personal & broad significance. Their selections reveal Smith’s extraordinary range as a scholar, his profound grasp of this nation’s past, and the way his ideas have maintained their relevance.
Common Writing: Essays on Literary Culture and Public Debate by Stefan Collini ($38.95, PB)
Stefan Collini explores aspects of the literary & intellectual culture of Britain from the early 20th century to the present by focussing chiefly on writers, critics, historians & journalists who occupied wider public roles as cultural commentators or intellectuals, as well as on the periodicals & other genres through which they attempted to reach such audiences. Among the figures he discusses are T.S. Eliot, Graham Greene, J.B. Priestley, C.S. Lewis, Kingsley Amis, Nikolaus Pevsner, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Christopher Hitchens & Michael Ignatieff.
No Time to Spare: Thinking about What Matters by Ursula K. Le Guin ($40, HB)
On the absurdity of denying your age: ‘If I’m ninety & believe I’m forty-five, I’m headed for a very bad time trying to get out of the bathtub.’ On cultural perceptions of fantasy: ‘The direction of escape is toward freedom. So what is ‘escapism’ an accusation of?’ On breakfast: ‘Eating an egg from the shell takes not only practice, but resolution, even courage, possibly willingness to commit crime.’ In her last great frontier of life, old age, Ursula K. Le Guin explored a new literary territory: the blog. This collected best of Ursula’s blog, No Time to Spare presents perfectly crystallized dispatches on what mattered to her late in life, her concerns with the world, and her wonder at it: ‘How rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn. Billionaires, all of us.’
2nd2nd2ndHand Hand HandRows Rows Rows Further Folios
From Blackheath this month a further selection from our collection of the always beautifully produced Folio Society Editions of famed literary works. Animal Farm by George Orwell, $35 The Folio Society, London, 2002. Reprint. Octavo. Hardcover. Illustrated boards. Gilt spine titling. 104pp. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. Near Fine in like Slipcase. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, $30 The Folio Society, London, 2000. Hardcover. Octavo. Illustrated boards. Dark green Endpapers. 317pp. Colour illustrations by Jonathan Hitchen. Introduction by Peter Matthiessen. Near Fine in like Slipcase. The Jungle Book and the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, $65 The Folio Society, London, 2002. Reprint (with a new binding). Two Volumes. Octavo. Illustrated boards. The Jungle Book 192pp. Colour illustrations by Maurice and Edward Detmold. Just So Stories 189pp. B&W illustrations by the Author. Near Fine in like Slipcase. Captain Cook’s Voyages 1766-1779, $35 Selected and introduced by Glyndwr Williams. The Folio Society, London, 2003. Reprint. Octavo. Hardcover. Illustrated decorative boards. Coloured Endpaper Maps. Portrait of James Cook on Frontispiece. 552 pp. Coloured and b/w illustrations, maps. Near Fine in like Slipcase.
Voices, Places: Essays by David Mason ($36, PB)
Poet David Mason explores connections in geography & time, considering writers who travelled, who emigrated or were exiled, and who often shaped the literature of their homelands. He writes of seasoned travellers (Patrick Leigh Fermor, Bruce Chatwin, Joseph Conrad, Herodotus himself), & writers as far flung as Omar Khayyam, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, James Joyce & Les Murray—finally turning to his own native region, the American West, with Wallace Stegner, Edward Abbey, Robinson Jeffers, Belle Turnbull & Thomas McGrath. These essays are about familiarity & estrangement, the pleasure & knowledge readers can gain by engaging with writers’ lives, their travels, their trials, and the homes they make for themselves.
The List: A Week-by-Week Reckoning of Trump’s First Year by Amy Siskind ($35, HB)
In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s election as president, Amy Siskind, a former Wall Street executive and the founder of The New Agenda, began compiling a list of actions taken by the Trump regime that pose a threat to the US’s democratic norms. Under the headline: ‘Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember’, Siskind begins with Trump’s acceptance of white supremacists the week after the election & concludes a year to the day later, as Trump & his regime chips away at the rights & protections of marginalized communities, of women, of us all, via Twitter storms, unchecked executive action & shifting rules & standards. The List chronicles not only the scandals that made headlines but just as important, the myriad smaller but still consequential unprecedented acts that otherwise fall through cracks.
Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials by Malcolm Harris ($45, HB)
Millennials have been called lazy, entitled, narcissistic & immature, but when you push aside the stereotypes, what actually unites this generation? The short answer: They’ve been had. Millennials are the hardest working & most educated generation in American history. They have poured unprecedented amounts of time & money into preparing themselves for the 21st century workforce. Yet they are poorer, more medicated, more precariously employed, and have less of a social safety net than their parents or grandparents. Examining broad trends like runaway student debt, the rise of the intern, mass incarceration, social media & more, Malcolm Harris shows a generation conditioned from birth to treat their lives & their efforts—their very selves & futures—as human capital to be invested. But what happens when children raised as investments grow up? Why are young people paying such a high price to train themselves for a system that exploits them? How can Millennials change or transcend what’s been made of them?
A tour of history & travel from 2nd hand upstais at 49 Glebe Pt Rd Round About the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit by Joyce E. Chaplin, $16 In a lively charge through 500 years of worldwide exploration (and beyond) Joyce Chaplin circles the Earth by sail, steam or liquid fuel; by cycling, driving, flying, or going into orbit; even with the intrepid who use their own bodily power. In the face of claims by ‘Flat-earthers’, rather than falling of the edge of the world, men and women have been encircling the planet for hundreds of years and Chaplin gives a colourful account of their ambitious rings around the earth. Quest for Kim: In Search of Kipling’s Great Game by Peter Hopkirk, $15 Rudyard Kipling used the Great Game—a political and diplomatic confrontation that existed for most of the 19th century between the British Empire & Russian Empires over Afghanistan & neighbouring territories in Central & Southern Asia—as a backdrop for his novel Kim. The novel presents a detailed portrait of the people, culture, and varied religions of India. Kim is an orphan boy who is recruited into the Indian secret service, and in this book Peter Hopkirk retraces Kim’s footsteps across India in a literary detective story—a quest for Kim—and the India of the novel. 1517: Martin Luther & the Invention of the Reformation by Peter Marshall, $18 2017 was supposedly the Reformation’s quincentenary—marking Martin Luther’s posting of the 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg in 1517. This act has been a powerful & enduring symbol of religious freedom of conscience, and of righteous protest—however Peter Marshall reviews the available evidence and concludes that, very probably, the Theses-posting is a myth. He argues this fact makes the incident all the more historically significant, and explores the multiple ways in which Martin Luther, and the Reformation itself, have been remembered & used for their own purposes by subsequent generations of Protestants & others. Shadows of the Sun: The Diaries of Harry Crosby, $20 Harry Crosby (1898–1929) was an American heir, bon vivant, poet & publisher who for some epitomized the Lost Generation in American literature. He was a volunteer in the American Field Service during WWI, serving in the US Ambulance Corps— narrowly escaping with his life. Profoundly affected by his experience he abandoned all pretence of living the expected life of a privileged Bostonian. He scandalised Boston with his open affair with Mrs Richard Peabody—they removed to Europe where, within an open marriage, they embraced a decadent lifestyle. Crosby maintained a coterie of young ladies, and wrote and published poetry that dwelled on the symbolism of the sun & explored themes of death & suicide. With his wife he founded the Black Sun Press which was the first to publish works by a number of struggling authors including James Joyce, Hart Crane, D. H. Lawrence &T. S. Eliot. Crosby died in his 31st year as part of a murder–suicide or suicide pact. These diaries cover 1922 to 1929.
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