The Everyday
Selected by the Bookshop
For the past 200 years literature has regularly sought to recharge itself through manifestations of the banal, the routine, the details of life that are only recognised when gone. Rachel Bowlby and David Trotter consider what the everyday means and does in books by writers ranging from Jane Austen to David Szalay.
From the publisher:
Before publishing the sensuous and scandalous poems of Les Fleurs du Mal, Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) had already earned respect as a forthright and witty critic of art and literature. This stimulating selection of criticism reveals him as…
From the publisher:
First published in 1877, these three stories are dominated by questions of doubt, love, loneliness and religious experience, and together form a triumphant conclusion to Flaubert's literary career. With elegant simplicity, 'A Simple Heart'…
From the publisher:
Channelling a razor-sharp satire through the everyday mishaps of the immortal comic character Mr Pooter, George and Weedon Grossmith's The Diary of a Nobody is edited with an introduction and notes by Ed Glinert in Penguin Classics.Mr…
From the publisher:
This collection of writings is famous for giving us the phrase 'Freudian slip'. It also builds up a strong social history of Vienna and the middle-class social milieu of Freud and his patients. Through a series of case histories, some no…
From the publisher:
Set against the frozen waste of a harsh New England winter, Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome is a tale of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual tensions, published with an introduction and notes by Elizabeth Ammons in Penguin Classics.Ethan…
From the publisher:
Tales of betrayal, rivalry and loss from the great chronicler of New York's Gilded Age, in an irresistible Little Clothbound Classics edition designed by Coralie Bickford-SmithIn these elegant and devastating tales of deception, desire and…
From the publisher:
'Joyce's early short stories remain undimmed in their brilliance' Sunday TimesJames Joyce's earliest major work, written when he was only twenty-five, brought his city to the world for the first time. The stories within Dubliners are rooted…
From the publisher:
'But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction - what has that got to do with a room of one's own?'A Room of One's Own grew out of a lecture that Virginia Woolf had been invited to give at Girton College, Cambridge in…
From the publisher:
This cult classic of working class life in post-war Nottingham follows the exploits of rebellious factory worker Arthur Seaton and is introduced by Richard Bradford.…
From the publisher:
The girls - Rube, Lily and Sylvie - work at McCrindle's sweet factory during the week and on Saturday they go up the Junction in their clattering stilettos, think about new frocks on H.P., drink tea in the cafe, and talk about their…
From the publisher:
'Buchi Emecheta was the foremother of black British women's writing . . . powerful fictions written from and about our lives' Bernardine Evaristo'Most dreams, as all dreamers know quite well, do have setbacks. Adah's dream was no exception,…
From the publisher:
Abandoned by a succession of relatives, orphaned sisters Ruthie and Lucille find themselves in the care of their eccentric aunt Sylvie in their rural home town in Idaho. Ruthie narrates the sisters' story as Lucille moves out into the world…
From the publisher:
Can't and Won't is the new collection from Lydia Davis, one of the greatest short story writers alive.WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2013Lydia Davis has been universally acclaimed for the wit, insight and genre-defying formal…
From the publisher:
"My name is Karim Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost..."…
From the publisher:
Paul Rainey, an ad salesman, perceives dimly through a fog of psychoactive substances his dissatisfaction with his life- professional, sexual, weekends, the lot. He only wishes there was something he could do about it. And 'something' seems…
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