British Literature – serie

A woman about to lose her job as a professor of literature and history delivers a passionate, witty, and word-mad monologue.

Dalkey Archive Press first introduced readers to this "best-kept secret" of British literature with the hardback Collected Writings of Olive Moore in 1992. Spleen, the best of the author's three novels, tells the disturbing story of a woman who goes into self-imposed exile to an island off the coast of Italy after giving birth to a deformed child. Filled with self-reproach and guilt about her son and her life (having yearned to give birth to something "new and rare, " she blames herself for her son's deformity), Ruth broods on what it means to be a woman ("nature's oven for nature's bun") and the inequalities between the sexes. Filled with the colors and beauty of the Italian countryside and in a style similar to Virginia Woolf's, Spleen challenges the assumption that women can't help but be tender and maternal, that their heads are only "ever-enlarging hearts."

In Children of Darkness and Light, Mosley takes on what for most novelists has been the most challenging of subjects: a novel directly concerned with religious belief. A middle-aged, burnt-out journalist is sent to the north of England to do a story about the possible appearance of the Blessed Virgin to a group of children, though this may be a rumor initiated by the government to cover up a nuclear disaster. Or both. Out of such conflicting possibilities, Mosley invents a sinister world where nothing is what it seems to be. And as Mosley's narrator moves through the possibilities of half-truths, lies, conspiracies, and betrayals, he himself creates a parallel crisis in his personal life wherein he and his wife are trying to destroy their marriage or save it, or - as we come to expect in Mosley novels - do both at once. And behind all this is the possibility that the narrator - half philosopher and half would-be saint - is little more than a middle-aged man trying to justify his irresponsibility and infidelity behind a shield of wit and irony.

-- Ruth and Leonard's young female boarder, S., disappears under circumstances that suggest suicide. As the couple pours over her diary, audio tapes, and movies, their obsession with the enigmatic young girl takes over their relationship. Three combines laconic dialogue with poetic impressionism in an incisive exploration of the hidden emotions and sexual undercurrents of the British middle class.

On vacation from school, Denis goes to stay at Crome, an English country house inhabitated by several of Huxley's most outlandish characters--from Mr. Barbecue-Smith, who writes 1,500 publishable words an hour by "getting in touch" with his "subconscious," to Henry Wimbush, who is obsessed with writing the definitive HISTORY OF CROME. Denis's stay proves to be a disaster amid his weak attempts to attract the girl of his dreams and the ridicule he endures regarding his plan to write a novel about love and art. Lambasting the post-Victorian standards of morality, CROME YELLOW is a witty masterpiece that, in F. Scott Fitzgerald's words, "is too irnonic to be called satire and too scornful to be called irony."

Including pieces on Gregory Bateson, William Faulkner, Philip Pullman, Sir Oswald Mosley's politics, religion and stammering, this diverse collection gathers essays written by Nicholas Mosley over the past forty years. Resembling the behaviour of slime mould - a strange organism made up of separate amoebae that temporarily form a single pillar which then bursts in order to scatter its seeds across the forest floor - the ideas found in these essays converge and disperse, crossing over into other disciplines, and creating a unique way of looking at the world, one echoed in Mosley's fictional writings.

Paradoxes of Peace continues the meditation of Mosley's Time at War, at the end of which he wrote that humans find themselves at home in war because they feel they know what they have to do, whereas in peace they have to discover this. But what should inform them--custom? need? duty? ambition? desire? Forces pull in different directions--fidelity versus adventurousness, probity versus fun. During the war, Mosley found himself having to combine fondness for his father, Oswald Mosley, with the need to speak out against his post-war politics. In times of peace, his love for his wife and children, too, seemed riddled with paradoxes. He sought answers in Christianity, but came to see organized religion as primarily a social institution. How does caring not become a trap?

Paradoxes of Peace continues the meditation of Mosley's Time at War, at the end of which he wrote that humans find themselves at home in war because they feel they know what they have to do, whereas in peace they have to discover this. But what should inform them--custom? need? duty? ambition? desire? Forces pull in different directions--fidelity versus adventurousness, probity versus fun. During the war, Mosley found himself having to combine fondness for his father, Oswald Mosley, with the need to speak out against his post-war politics. In times of peace, his love for his wife and children, too, seemed riddled with paradoxes. He sought answers in Christianity, but came to see organized religion as primarily a social institution. How does caring not become a trap?

"When you have put your trust in shadows there is nothing that is real. Have you found this?" Returning to London from a trip to the West Indies, an aspiring writer encounters a bewitching trio of friends whose magic lies in their ability to turn any situation into fantasy. Previously out of place in the world, the narrator falls in love with the young brother-sister pair of Peter and Annabelle, as well as the older, more political Marius. Reality soon encroaches upon the foursome, however, in the form of Marius's ailing wife, forcing the narrator to confront the dark emptiness and fear at the heart of his friends' joie de vivre. In this, his second novel--written in the '50s and never before published--Nicholas Mosley weighs questions of responsibility and sacrifice against those of love and earthly desire, the spirit versus the flesh.

This 900-page survey of world literature, "From Confucius' Day to Our Own" (as the subtitle reads), was the last book written by Ford Madox Ford, one of the seminal figures of the modernist period. Written for general readers rather than scholars and first published in 1938, The March of Literature is a working novelist's view of what is valuable in literature, and why. Convinced that scholars and teachers give a false sense of literature, Ford brings alive the pleasures of reading by writing about books he is passionate about. Beginning at the beginning - with ancient Egyptian and Chinese literature and the Bible - Ford works his way through classical literature, the writings of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, continuing up to the major writers of his own day like Ezra Pound, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad. With his encyclopedic reading and expertise in the techniques of writing, Ford is a reliable and entertaining guide. Ford also includes a chapter on publishers and booksellers, noting the key roles they play in literature's existence. Novelist Alexander Theroux (Darconville's Cat, An Adultery) has written an insightful introduction for this reissue, the first time this monumental book has been made available in paperback.

From the beginning this novel's tension weaves warp and woof between hilarity and hell. Two women friends travel through France, encountering backroad-European misogynist crudities and the awkward experiences of being female, over thirty, with your teeth almost literally at your closest friend's throat, and "fancying men, but not liking them very much." Throughout Rona's random acts of innocent irritation and Cassie's caustic reactions, the funny and fumbled art of their compassion supersedes self-slaughter, stretches itself thin, but refuses to puncture, throughout years of pals together both on holiday and in troubled spirit.

As one of the characters in Assassins says, "Tolstoy was right, you can't beat the Gods. It's the small things - the warp and woof - that make up the pattern. And how much influence do we have over the small? Now that's a theme for a modern writer." And Nicholas Mosley is this writer. Part political thriller and part love story, Assassins explores the "small things" that give shape and meaning to the "big events."

-- A sweeping, comprehensive epic, Hopeful Monsters tells the story of the love affair between Max, an English student of physics and biology, and Eleanor, a German Jewess and political radical. Together and apart, Max and Eleanor participate in the great political and intellectual movements which shape the twentieth century, taking them from Cambridge and Berlin to the Spanish Civil War, Russia, the Sahara, and finally to Los Alamos to witness the first nuclear test.-- Hopeful Monsters received Britain's prestigious Whitbread Award in 1990.-- Praising Mosley's ability to distill complex modes of thought, the New York Times called Hopeful Monsters a virtual encyclopedia of twentieth century thought, in fictional form.-- First U.S. edition by Dalkey Archive ('90), most recent paperback by Vintage ('93).

Reminiscent in theme and style to his Whitbread Award-winning?"Hopeful Monsters," Nicholas Mosley's?"The Hesperides Tree"?tells of a young man frustrated by the inability of his two chosen courses of study--biology and literature--to adequately define the world. Baffled by several life-shaping coincidences that seem to be part of life itself, he embarks on a physical and intellectual journey in search of a girl he fell in love with years earlier. This journey leads him to a deserted island off the coast of Ireland and, perhaps, to the mythical Garden of the Hesperides, home of the Tree of Life.

Set amid the current tension and violence of the Middle East, Whitbread Award-winning Nicholas Mosley's new novel features over a half-dozen characters searching for a way to quell the selfdestructive impulses of society. As the novel develops, the actions and aspirations of these characters--which include a Muslim student working on the most deadly of biological weapons, a young Israeli girl trapped in a temple's ruins, and an eccentric ex-guru who has mysteriously disappeared--create a textual and philosophical pattern illustrating the role chance and coincidence play in our world. In the vein of Hopeful Monsters and The Hesperides Tree, Mosley mixes science, philosophy and contemporary politics around the question of how individual actions can influence the world.

In acclaimed author Eva Figes' inventive reshaping of the pop psychological thriller, her fifth novel opens as Nelly Dean, a middle-aged woman suffering from amnesia, checks into a small-town hotel with a suitcase full of cash and no idea where it - or she - came from. Distrustful of everyone from the waiter who serves her lunch to a store clerk who claims to know her from grade school, Nelly fears she is part of a conspiracy, although she is strangely indifferent to the clues that might explain her puzzling circumstances. Part dark comedy, part mystery novel, Nelly's Version offers an unsettling journey into the mind of a witty, intelligent woman stuck in a pastless present.

A Scathing Satire On Psychology, Identity Theory And Class Prejudice; Cards of Identity is a scathing satire of psychology, identity theory, and class prejudice. The plot centers on an annual meeting of the Identity Club, a group of psychologists who come together to present "case histories" promoting their chosen theory of identity. These case studies (three of which are presented in the novel) are not scientific treatises, but fictional representations of characters in line with the author's biases. In fact, members of the Club aren't allowed to interact with actual patients when creating their stories. Surrounding this meeting is the equally bizarre story of the local townspeople, who are brainwashed and transformed into servants for the convention, and who end the book with a show-stopping Shakespearian play.

Including pieces on Gregory Bateson, William Faulkner, Philip Pullman, Sir Oswald Mosley's politics, religion and stammering, this diverse collection gathers essays written by Nicholas Mosley over the past forty years. Resembling the behaviour of slime mould - a strange organism made up of separate amoebae that temporarily form a single pillar which then bursts in order to scatter its seeds across the forest floor - the ideas found in these essays converge and disperse, crossing over into other disciplines, and creating a unique way of looking at the world, one echoed in Mosley's fictional writings.

Hobson's Island (so called because Mr. Hobson bought it, or did Mr. Hobson buy it because it was so called?) enjoyed decades of isolation in the Atlantic Ocean. For years, the caretakers lived there peacefully, with only a cow for company and an empty house to care for. But all is suddenly disrupted when a wave of unusual visitors arrive: a deposed African king fleeing a revolution, a Hobson descendant claiming ownership, government agents eyeing the nation-less real estate, and scientists looking to test a dangerous new invention. In typical Themerson fashion, the comic is wound up with the serious and let go to devastating effect. A clever and apt parodying of Cold War power plays and twisted science, Hobson's Island is a strangely touching, sympathetic, and emotional account of the families and individuals brought together and broken up by Hobson's Island.

The uproarious first novel from cult songwriter Momus, hailed by Mojo as the most underrated man in pop!

"Man + Doctor" is Nicholas Wadley's wordless story of encounters with doctors, from the patient's attempts to avoid the scalpel, to, once surgery becomes inevitable, watching himself learn to cope with days and weeks spent in hospital beds.

"Man + Doctor" is Nicholas Wadley's wordless story of encounters with doctors, from the patient's attempts to avoid the scalpel, to, once surgery becomes inevitable, watching himself learn to cope with days and weeks spent in hospital beds.