Peter Ackroyd's The Life of Thomas More is a masterful reconstruction of the life and imagination of one of the most remarkable figures of history. Thomas More (1478-1535) was a renowned statesman; the author of a political fantasy thatgave a name to a literary genre and a worldview (Utopia); and, most famously, a Catholic martyr and saint. Born into the professional classes, Thomas More applied his formidable intellect and well-placed connections to become the most powerful man in England, second only to the king. As much a work of history as a biography, The Life of...
Peter Ackroyd's The Life of Thomas More is a masterful reconstruction of the life and imagination of one of the most remarkable figures of hist...
From the imagination of one of the most brilliant writers of our time and bestselling author of The Life of Thomas More, a novel that playfully imagines how the -modern- era might appear to a thinker seventeen centuries hence. At the turn of the 38th century, London's greatest orator, Plato, is known for his lectures on the long, tumultuous history of his now tranquil city. Plato focuses on the obscure and confusing era that began in A.D. 1500, the Age of Mouldwarp. His subjects include Sigmund Freud's comic masterpiece -Jokes and Their Relation to the Subconscious, - and Charles...
From the imagination of one of the most brilliant writers of our time and bestselling author of The Life of Thomas More, a novel that playfully...
Here are two thousand years of London s history and folklore, its chroniclers and criminals and plain citizens, its food and drink and countless pleasures. Blackfriar s and Charing Cross, Paddington and Bedlam. Westminster Abbey and St. Martin in the Fields. Cockneys and vagrants. Immigrants, peasants, and punks. The Plague, the Great Fire, the Blitz. London at all times of day and night, and in all kinds of weather. In well-chosen anecdotes, keen observations, and the words of hundreds of its citizens and visitors, Ackroyd reveals the...
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
Here are two thousand years of London s history and folklore, its chroniclers and criminals and pla...
With his characteristic enthusiasm and erudition, Peter Ackroyd follows his acclaimed London: A Biography with an inspired look into the heart and the history of the English imagination. To tell the story of its evolution, Ackroyd ranges across literature and painting, philosophy and science, architecture and music, from Anglo-Saxon times to the twentieth-century. Considering what is most English about artists as diverse as Chaucer, William Hogarth, Benjamin Britten and Viriginia Woolf, Ackroyd identifies a host of sometimes contradictory elements: pragmatism and whimsy, blood and...
With his characteristic enthusiasm and erudition, Peter Ackroyd follows his acclaimed London: A Biography with an inspired look into the heart ...
Central to the plot is John Jasper: in public he is a man of integrity and benevolence; in private he is an opium addict. And while seeming to smile on the engagement of his nephew, Edwin Drood, he is, in fact, consumed by jealousy, driven to terrify the boy's fiancee and to plot the murder of Edwin himself. As in many of Dickens's greatest novels, the gulf between appearance and reality drives the action. Set in the seemingly innocuous cathedral town of Cloisterham, the story rapidly darkens with a sense of impending evil. Charles Dickens's final, unfinished novel is in many ways...
Central to the plot is John Jasper: in public he is a man of integrity and benevolence; in private he is an opium addict. And while seeming to smil...
'London: A Pilgrimage' was conceived in 1868 by the journalist and playwright Blanchard Jerrold. Accompanied by the famous artist Gustave Dore, Jerrold prowled every corner of the heaving metropolis, sometimes with plain-clothes police for protection. 'London: A Pilgrimage' is a forgotten classic of social journalism, a frank and brutal look at the poverty striken, gin-swilling London of the nineteenth century, written in a perceptive, bold and gripping style.
180 incredible etchings by Dore escort Jerrold on his odyssey through the pulsating city, into the Lambeth gas works, seedy...
'London: A Pilgrimage' was conceived in 1868 by the journalist and playwright Blanchard Jerrold. Accompanied by the famous artist Gustave Dore, Jer...
A masterpiece -- the culmination and distillation of Peter Ackroyd's lifelong passion for the history and topography of London. Vividly anecdotal and brilliantly original. Perhaps the most important study of the city ever written, London confirms Ackroyd's status as what one critic called, "our age's greatest London imagination." Much of Peter Ackroyd's work has been concerned with the life and past of London, but this new book is his definitive account of the city. For Ackroyd's London is a living organism, with its own laws of growth and change, so London is The...
A masterpiece -- the culmination and distillation of Peter Ackroyd's lifelong passion for the history and topography of London. Vividly anecdotal and ...
Peter Ackroyd's imagination dazzles in this brilliant novel written in the voice of Victor Frankenstein himself. Mary Shelley and Shelley are characters in the novel. It was at Oxford that I first met Bysshe. We arrived at our college on the same day; confusing to a mere foreigner, it is called University College. I had seen him from my window and had been struck by his auburn locks. The long-haired poet -- "Mad Shelley" -- and the serious-minded student from Switzerland spark each other's interest in the new philosophy of science which is overturning long-cherished beliefs. Perhaps...
Peter Ackroyd's imagination dazzles in this brilliant novel written in the voice of Victor Frankenstein himself. Mary Shelley and Shelley are characte...
Dickens' final, unfinished novel has inspired generations of speculation Choirmaster John Jasper is a man of deep hypocrisy. His public reputation is flawless yet privately he leads an immoral life, frequenting squalid opium dens. Although outwardly he seems delighted with the betrothal of his nephew Edwin Drood to Rosa Bud, one of his choristers, secretly he is consumed by jealousy. But he is not alone in hoping for Edwin's demise. Among others, hot-tempered Neville Landless has also made an enemy of Drood--so when Edwin disappears, at whom should the accusing finger point?
Dickens' final, unfinished novel has inspired generations of speculation Choirmaster John Jasper is a man of deep hypocrisy. His public reputat...
As the case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce--a long and hopeless lawsuit over a disputed will--drags slowly on through the courts, it begins to wear down all those caught in its complicated web. Esther Summerson, an orphan placed in the care of the kind and gentle John Jarndyce at Bleak House, can only watch on as the people she loves are consumed by the proceedings. But when Esther's past comes looking for her, will the discovery of her true identity finally lead her to the answers she has been searching for?
As the case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce--a long and hopeless lawsuit over a disputed will--drags slowly on through the courts, it begins to wear down all...