The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution

Arts & Photography

Dutton, Denis

History & Criticism

Bloomsbury Press

Sweden is full of robbers, Germans are unclean and Spaniards are cruel. Those nasty generalizations are culled from a series of 19th century children's guides to the world by Favell Lee Mortimer. Todd Pruzan, the author of The Clumsiest People in Europe, a new book that compiles Mrs. Mortimer's works, says he couldn't believe his eyes when he first read them. "It was almost like a snapshot of Victorian prejudice made available for anyone to come find," he tells Melissa Block.Friends often ask Pruzan what his book is about. "Usually I tell them that it's a collection of very nasty Victorian children's writing about geography, written by somebody who didn't get out very much," he says. Indeed Mrs. Mortimer rarely traveled outside her native England.Here's a sampling of the cultural slurs relayed by Mrs. Mortimer: On Poland: "You may go a great way without seeing anything pretty."On Burma: "The Burmese are very deceitful and tell lies on every occasion. Indeed, they are not ashamed of their falsehoods."And on her native country: "England, what country do you love best? Your own country. I know you do. Every child loves his own country best."

The Clumsiest People in Europe, or: Mrs. Mortimer's Bad-Tempered Guide to the Victorian World

Travel

Todd Pruzan

Favell Lee Mortimer

Travel Writing

A Warmer Season

A novel astutely conveying the plight of adolescence. Book condition: Very good. Jacket bears some grubbiness/marks but is glossy, binding is strong and intact.

A warmer season

Olshan, J

STEPHEN SONDHEIM.

Biographies & Memoirs

Secrest, Meryle

Arts & Literature

Like new from our brick and mortar shop, light rubbing to covers from shelving. uncreased spine.

The Tulip

History

anna-pavord

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Unrestrained by convention, lion-hearted and free, eleanor marx (1855-98) was an exceptional woman hers was the first english translation of flauberts mme bovary she pioneered the theatre of henrik ibsen she was the first woman to lead the british dock workers and gas workers trades unions for years she worked tirelessly for her father, karl marx, as personal secretary and researcher later she edited many of his key political works and laid the foundations for his biography

Eleanor Marx: A Life

Holmes, Rachel

Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer and Patriot

Beer, Anna.

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: or the Murder at Road Hill House

Kate Summerscale

Posing as one of Robin Hood's thieves to avoid the wrath of the evil Thief Taker Lord Gisbourne, Scarlet has kept her female identity secret from all of Nottinghamshire. Only Robin and his band know the truth. As Gisbourne closes in, helping the people of Nottingham could cost Scarlet her life, but her fierce loyalty to Robin-whose quick smiles have the rare power to unsettle her-keeps Scarlet going and makes this fight worth dying for.

Scarlet

Children's Books

Gaughen, A.C.

Literature & Fiction

The remarkable story of the French Foreign Legion, its dramatic rise throughout the nineteenth century, and its most committed champion, General Hubert Lyautey.
An aura of mystery, romance, and danger surrounds the French Foreign Legion, the all-volunteer corps of the French Army, founded in 1831. Famous for its physically grueling training in harsh climates, the legion fought in French wars from Mexico to Madagascar, Southeast Asia to North Africa. To this day, despite its reputation for being assigned the riskiest missions in the roughest terrain, the mystique of the legion continues to attract men from every corner of the world. 
In At the Edge of the World, historian Jean-Vincent Blanchard follows the legion's rise to fame during the nineteenth century--focusing on its campaigns in Indochina and especially in Africa--when the corps played a central role in expanding and protecting the French Empire. As France struggled to be a power capable of rivaling the British, the figure of the legionnaire--deadly, self-sacrificing, uncompromisingly efficient--came to represent the might and morale that would secure a greater, stronger nation. 
Drawing from rare, archival memoirs and testimonies of legionnaires from the period and tracing the fascinating career of Hubert Lyautey, France's first resident-general in Morocco and a hero to many a legionnaire, At the Edge of the World chronicles the Foreign Legion at the height of its renown, when the corps and its archetypically handsome, moody, and marginalized recruits became both the symbols of a triumphant colonialism and the stuff of legend.

At the Edge of the World: The Heroic Century of the French Foreign Legion

Blanchard, Jean-Vincent

Europe

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