Jacques Raverat was a French painter who died of MS aged 40 in 1925. In 1911, he had married Gwen Darwin, granddaughter of the evolutionist and also an artist. They knew Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury well and when they moved to the south of France for his health, their friendship blossomed in a series of long and poignant letters. The crucial bond was that between Jacques and Virginia. Their correspondence ranged far and wide. Informed by the depressions and uncertainties, the speculation and passion of their bohemian lives, these letters display a complex affinity between three artists facing their own mortality, their weaknesses and the price of their creativity. It is a friendship whose later substance and passion was entirely expressed by letter. Virginia Woolf & the Raverats is not only a complete record of their correspondence, but includes much previously unpublished material. None of the Raverat letters, the extracts from Gwen Raverat’s other writings, her powerful sketches of her husband on his deathbed, nor Jacques’ paintings have been published before. There are facsimile reproductions of crucial letters, diary and journal entries.Attributes of the Special Limited Edition:Designed by Humphrey Stone, using Dante type;Edited by William Pryor, grandson of the Raverats;44 black and white illustrations: drawings, wood engravings, photographs and facsimile letters;Rounded and backed, marker ribbon, head & tail bands with Damascus green Colorplan endpapers;Quarterbound in cloth with Compton Marbling paper sides, title blocked in gold on spine;Cloth top and tail slipcase with Ingres laid paper wrap;Each slipcase contains a separate numbered Gwen Raverat wood engraving, Vence, La Place en été, which she made at the height of this correspondence in 1923, hand-printed by Simon Lawrence of the Fleece Press, from the original boxwood block

Virginia Woolf & The Raverats: A Different Sort of Friendship

Biographies & Memoirs

William Pryor

Arts & Literature

Clear Books

Jacques Raverat was a French painter who died of MS aged 40 in 1925. In 1911, he had married Gwen Darwin, granddaughter of the evolutionist and also an artist. They knew Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury well and when they moved to the south of France for his health, their friendship blossomed in a series of long and poignant letters. The crucial bond was that between Jacques and Virginia. Their correspondence ranged far and wide. Informed by the depressions and uncertainties, the speculation and passion of their bohemian lives, these letters display a complex affinity between three artists facing their own mortality, their weaknesses and the price of their creativity. It is a friendship whose later substance and passion was entirely expressed by letter. Virginia Woolf &amp; the Raverats is not only a complete record of their correspondence, but includes much previously unpublished material. None of the Raverat letters, the extracts from Gwen Raverat’s other writings, her powerful sketches of her husband on his deathbed, nor Jacques’ paintings have been published before. There are facsimile reproductions of crucial letters, diary and journal entries.

Virginia Woolf & the Raverats: A Different Sort of Friendship

RAVERAT, Gwen

Pryor, William

WOOLF, VIRGINIA

Raverat, Jacques

This is the autobiography of a master musician, the King of British blues saxophone. In the 60s and 70s Dick was the cornerstone of such seminal R&B bands as Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, the Graham Bond Organisation, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and Colosseum, paving the way for R&B-influenced rock groups like Fleetwood Mac, the Yardbirds, the Animals and the Rolling Stones. With his pithy humour, Dick describes the revolutionary founding years of British R&B - his anecdotes about Ginger Baker, Alexis Korner, Charlie Watts and the unforgettable Graham Bond alone are worth the price. An extraordinarily entertaining book, Dick’s unrelentingly honest account of his musical career also reflects on what it takes to be a full time musician, and grapples with the racism and drug abuse endemic in the music industry. In the back of the book is a CD featuring 25 minutes of previously unreleased tracks by Dick Heckstall-Smith, illustrating the sheer musical diversity of his work.

Blowing the Blues: Fifty Years Playing the British Blues

Grant, Pete

Heckstall-Smith, Dick

Benoit Mandelbrot discovered what is now called the M-Set in the early seventies and coined the term ‘fractal’ to describe the geometry behind it. The power and the beauty of fractals were only capable of being seen with the advent of computers, which become psychedelic windows on the infinite when using simple fractal equations. In 1992 Nigel Lesmoir-Gordon made the TV documentary, The Colors of Infinity about the Mandelbrot Set and fractals, which has since been seen right round the world. Nigel’s enthusiasm brought together a dream team of contributors for the film who all now contribute to the book tracking how fractals have developed since the film was made. Sir Arthur C Clarke presented the film and in the book gives a lucidly simple account of the mathematics of the M-Set. Benoit Mandelbrot, the Belgian mathematician explains how it began. Professor Michael Barnsley, the computer graphics researcher who developed fractal image compression technology, explains the applications of the breakthroughs. Professor Ian Stewart, author of Does God Play Dice? adds his insights into the beautifully simple equation that gives birth to fractals. Two of the most interesting applications of fractal geometry, reflected by the two new contributors to the book, are to the Internet and to the Stock Market. Dr Gary Flake, Chief Technology Officer at Overture, the leading provider of commercial search on the Internet and just taken over by Yahoo for 1.6 billion dollars, discusses the profoundly fractal nature of the Web in his article: The Self-ish Web. Robert Prechter Jr is President of Elliott Wave International, Inc. and founder of the Socionomics Institute. His latest title is Socionomics: The Science of History and Social Prediction (2003). He writes about how fractals can help us understand the oscillations of stock markets. In the back of the book is a DVD of the original documentary with soundtrack by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd PLUS a 30-minute fractal animation to the music of members of Quintessence.

The Colours of Infinity: The Beauty, and Power of Fractals

Science & Math

ARTHUR C. CLARKE

Nigel Lesmoir-Gordon

Mathematics

The Odes of Solomon is a collection of devotional and mystic poems from early Christian times. Lost for many centuries, the first of the two main extant manuscripts was discovered in 1908 by Cambridge biblical scholar, Rendel Harris, lying among a pile of unsorted manuscripts in a corner of his study.These intriguing, lyrical and often beautiful odes speak of the soul's experiences as it travels the universal mystic path of the Creative Word or Logos. They also indicate that this is the path taught by Jesus.Previously published only in various scholarly editions, this is the first rendering and presentation designed for the general reader.

The Odes Of Solomon: Mystical Songs from the Time of Jesus

DAVIDSON, JOHN

Religion & Spirituality

Everyone loves a good story, and this collection of ancient parables, allegories and other tales from around the time of Jesus is inspiring as well as entertaining. Few have been previously published in a form accessible to the general reader. Two of them, which almost certainly originated with Jesus, are not found in the canonical gospels. John Davidson shows how a universal spirituality is depicted in these ancient tales. As in The Gospel of Jesus, part of his purpose is to present the ancient teachings of early Christianity, previously inaccess-ible to all but a few specialists, in a form which is both clear and enjoyable.

The Prodigal Soul: The Wisdom Of Ancient Parables (Origins Of Christianity)

Other Religions, Practices & Sacred Texts

On the face of it, the biblical Song of Songs tells the tale of a passionate and worldly love. Yet it contains not one word that speaks explicitly of God or spirituality, though the Song was accepted long ago into both the Jewish and Christian scriptural canons. In this enthralling book, John Davidson brings out the spiritual meaning of one of the most intriguing books in the Bible. Over the centuries, both Jewish and Christian mystics have agreed that the Song should be understood allegorically, not literally -- in keeping with the widespread use of metaphor, parable and story among the poets and mystics of the ancient Middle East. From the perspective of a universal spirituality, John Davidson sheds light on many of the Song’s obscure passages, uncovering the artistry of its unknown poet. The commentary is illuminated by passages from biblical texts and other spiritual literature, including the teachings of Jesus, Gnostic writings, Jewish and Christian mystics, and some of the ecstatic psalms found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Song Of Songs: The Soul And The Divine Beloved

Judaism

Love stories have an enduring appeal, and the ultimate love affair is between the soul and the Divine. Everyone who has known the heartache that goes with being in love will resonate with this wonderful collection of stories from early Christian times that tell of a love surpassing all other loves. In The Divine Romance, John Davidson shows how these ancient and intriguing tales depict a universal spirituality -- the path to divine union. This, the story of the soul’s descent and its subsequent return, is told in terms of the divine marriage. The collection includes two parables of Jesus, with interpretations suggested by Gnostic texts, and two Gnostic parables -- one from the Nag Hammadi library, the other from the Acts of Thomas. The rambunctious early Christian classic, Joseph and Aseneth, a tale that has circulated in various forms over the last 2,000 years, concludes this luminous book.

The Divine Romance: Tales Of An Unearthly Love

Politics & Social Sciences

Sociology

Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood

Gwen Raverat, the granddaughter of Charles Darwin, described Period Piece, her classic memoir of an English childhood in the late 19th century, as a drawing of the world when I was young. The observations of the small incidents in her life, recorded here both in pen portraits and line drawings, reveal an artist’s careful eye. Vividly evoking a bygone era, it is a shrewd, touching and comic portrait of her childhood, her eccentric relations and of Cambridge society and university. Since she was renowned as a book illustrator, it is not surprising that her line drawings for Period Piece are a masterpiece of controlled wit and charm all on their own.

Raverat, Gwendolen Mary Darwin

William Pryor, a great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin, was a heroin and then alcohol addict for twelve years in the sixties and seventies. He brushed death several times, but, against overwhelming odds, survived, and, in 1975, was one of the first patients at the first American-style addiction treatment centre in Europe. He grew up in Cambridge in the stifling bosom of privilege; was sent to Eton, which he loathed, and rapidly descended into full-blown addiction as he traveled through Parisian garrets, Greek tavernas and Indian ashrams - and even Trinity College Cambridge. He became part of the sixties avant garde counterculture as a dadaist beat poet in the company of members of Pink Floyd. His experiences - and subsequent transformation to non-addiction - have given him a unique insight into the world of hard drugs and addiction, and his clarity of vision as to the way forward for all those involved in the fall out of the War on Drugs will be invaluable both to the victims and to those engaged in attempting to help them. William presents a compelling argument as to why dugs should be decriminalized. He also gives a powerful analysis of the pervasive mythology of Alcoholics Anonymous and how it traps people in the idea that addiction is an illness.

The Survival of the Coolest: An Addiction Memoir

Humor & Entertainment

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