Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds

Bernard le Bovier, Sieur de Fontenelle

When Bernard de Fontenelle (1657-1757) published the first edition of his Entretiens sur la Pluralité des Mondes in 1686, it was an immediate success. In an age when women, even those from the richest and most distinguished families, received little or no formal education, it offered an entertaining and accessible introduction to astronomy and some of the burning topics of the day. Does the earth really go around the sun? Are there other inhabited planets out there? If so, are the inhabitants like us or quite different? Is the moon itself inhabited? Is even the sun inhabited? Are there volcanoes on the moon? How hot is mercury? How long is a Venusian day? Will flying machines one day take us to the moon?

The chapters are structured as six conversations between Fontenelle and the Marchioness of G--- during evening strolls in the Marchioness's garden, and they are enlivened by wit, charm and more than a little flirtatiousness.

While providing new notes, some illustrations and an introduction, this new Tiger of the Stripe edition is based on the 1808 edition of Elizabeth Gunning's translation, retaining the charm which was so essential for the book's success. Miss Gunning, a beautiful and talented novelist with a rather racy personal life, drew on an annotated French edition by the distinguished French astronomer, Jérôme de Lalande. This edition thus offers an interesting accretion of ideas, ranging from Fontenelle's 1686 edition and later revisions, Lalande's, sometimes rather critical, comments, Gunning's appropriately flowery translation, and our own explanations for the modern reader. It is, without doubt, a little gem.

See also the Plurality of Worlds website.

The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon

Henry Sweet

'Generations of students of English have benefited from the changes that Sweet wrought in the understanding of the historical and contemporary forms of the language.' – Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

This clear, concise and authoritative dictionary is the ideal reference for the student of Old English literature and language.

Afghan Silk

Julia Scott

It’s 1938 and the world is changing quickly. Hitler is stirring the German nation into a xenophobic frenzy. Michael, a British officer in the Gurkhas serving in the North-West Frontier, is trying to keep the bloodthirsty and ruthless Afghan tribesmen, the Pathan, under control. The horrors perpetrated by the Pathan make Michael angry and vengeful.

On leave in England, Michael finds that love and his war experiences have changed his attitudes to racial and religious intolerance. He begins to question the assumptions of British imperial power. On his return to India he seems to be heading for disaster…

Julia Scott was born in Weymouth, Dorset. She attended Winchester School for Girls and gained a degree in French from Liverpool University. Her early working career was spent as a health journalist, and later as Editor of Director magazine for the Institute of Directors.

In 1987 she married a neurologist and together they moved to Malta, and then to the United States where they lived for fifteen years before returning to England in 2005.

In 2001 Julia was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and wrote Afghan Silk while fighting the disease and looking after her six children. She died aged 49 in 2006.

Landesmania!

Philip Trevena

An intimate portrait of a delayed career, an open marriage and a life led from the heart

Jay Landesman has been described in John Clellon Holmes’s book, Nothing More to Declare, as one of the ‘representative men’ of his generation along with Ginsberg, Kerouac and G. Legman.

This is the true story of an American pioneer and Soho Gentleman Bohemian. Born in St Louis 84 years ago, he was a trend-setter for the Beat movement of the 40s and 50s, publisher and editor in New York of the provocative Neurotica magazine and writer of the only play to explore that time, The Nervous Set. Though he was ostensibly an antiques dealer by trade, he went on to become the founder and ringmaster of the Crystal Palace Bar in St Louis, where he inspired some of the best and most innovative cabaret in America.

Needing a boost of reinvention in his mid-forties, Jay brought himself and family to London to sample the Swinging Sixties, with only Peter Cook’s telephone number to set him in the scene. Jay has lived here ever since.

Tales of a Cultural Conduit

Jay Landesman

Tales of a Cultural Conduit is the third volume of Jay Landesman's memoirs, and includes an edited version of the first two volumes of Jay Landesman's reminiscences Rebel Without Applause (Bloomsbury) and Jaywalking (Weidenfeld and Nicolson).

The book also includes for the first time The Nervous Set, Landesman's unpublished novel of his exploration of life in New York in the 1950s. Gershon Legman who urged him to publish it 40 years ago, said: 'It's a perfect portrait of the period which I do not believe has ever been portrayed at all, let alone so well.'

Tales of a Cultural Conduit takes us from Landesman's life as an antique dealer in St. Louis, to New York and his magazine Neurotica: the Authentic Voice of the Beat Generation and on to the Crystal Palace Cabaret Theater in St Louis where he invited artists to break in their cabaret acts, including Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, and Lenny Bruce. 'The cocktail hour was orchestrated like an opéra bouffe – music, booze and just the right mix of jarring people... Landesman produced Waiting for Godot instead of South Pacific and thus heralded the cultural renaissance,' wrote John Clellon Holmes.