Reprint, Autumn 1984

As part of its Neglected Books of the Twentieth Century series, Ecco Press has republished a paper edition of Ford Madox Ford’s It Was the Nightingale, a reminiscence and memoir of Paris in the twenties, with this opening sentence: “There was never a day so gay for the Arts as any twenty-four hours of the early ‘twenties in Paris” [$9.50], When General Omar N. Bradley’s autobiography, A General’s Life, was published last year, veteran New York Times military correspondent Drew Middleton called it “an unmatched panorama of forty years of American military history.” Touchstone Books is offering a paper edition of the memoirs of “the GI’s general” [$12.95]. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich has published a paper edition of Richard Layman’s Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett, a biography which the Los Angeles Times found to be “a fascinating and sympathetic portrait of a unique and colorful figure in American letters” [$7,95]. Carroll & Graf has come out with the first American edition of Diana Athill’s autobiography, Instead of a Letter, a book published to wide acclaim in England, one called “beautifully written and honest” by The Guardian [$15.95]. Another Carroll & Graf offering is Jay Martin’s Nathanael West: The Art of His Life [$8.95]. A new Oxford paperback is Whitney Balliett’s Jelly Roll, Jabbo & Fats; 19 Portraits in Jazz, by an author Alistair Cooke has called “the most literate and knowledgeable living writer on jazz” [$6.95]. Vintage Books has republished V.S. Naipaul’s The Overcrowded Barracoon, a collection of the Trinidad writer’s essays [$6.95], and Ryszard Kapuscinski’s The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat, an account of the reign and ruin of Ethiopian Haile Selassie [$5.95]. Recent Bison Books include Thomas James’ Three Years Among the Indians and Mexicans, the recollections of a frontiersman who claimed to have been the first white man ever to trade among the Comanche Indians [$5.95], and The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie, who claimed to have been the first American citizen to see the Grand Canyon [$6.95]. Fireside Books has come out with a paper edition of Chrissie: My Own Story, Chris Evert Lloyd’s autobiography written in collaboration with Neil Amdur, which the New York Post called “refreshingly outspoken” [$7.95]. Kim Chernin’s In My Mother’s House: A Daughter’s Story recounting the relationship between a leftist Russian immigrant and her daughter, is available as a Harper Colophon Book [$5.95]. Washington has issued a new edition of Robert Gittings’ The Nature of Biography, a work tracing the evolution of English biography from its roots in medieval chronicles to the present [$10 cloth, $4.95 paper].

First published in 1968, Hyatt H. Waggoner’s American Poets: From the Puritans to the Present is a comprehensive survey of the course of American poetry from Anne Bradstreet forward. Now in a revised edition Waggoner has extended his survey to include developments of the last 15 years in American poetry, including the rise to prominence of such poets as James Merrill, John Ashbery, and David Wagoner [Louisiana $30 cloth, $14.95 paper]. One of the best of our contemporary poets is James Dickey, and Wesleyan is offering a new edition of The Central Motion: Poems, 1968—1979, bringing together in one volume three books of Dickey’s poetry, The Eye-Beaters, The Zodiac, and The Strength of Fields, with an introduction by the author [$18.50 cloth, $9.95 paper], Norton has published a paper edition of Sandra M. Gilbert’s collection of poems, Emily’s Bread [$6.95]. Virginia Woolf s The Common Reader: First Series/Annotated Edition, edited and introduced by Andrew McNellie, is a recent Harvest/HBJ Book [$4.95 paper], 3000 Years of Black Poetry, an anthology edited by Alan Lomax and Raoul Abdul, a collection of poetry by black poets of all times and all nations, has been republished as a Dodd, Mead Quality Paperback [$7.95]. Another anthology of black poetry is being offered by Penguin Books, this being a third edition of The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry, edited by Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier [$6.95]. Howard Haycraft’s Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story has been reprinted in a paper edition by Carroll & Graf [$10.95]. Vintage Books has republished Elizabeth Hardwick’s Bartleby in Manhattan and Other Essays, a selection by one of the nation’s most eminent critics [$6.95]. Cornell has issued a paper edition of Feydeau, First to Last: Eight One-Act Comedies by the French humorist, translated and with an introduction by Norman R. Shapiro [$9.95]. California has republished Guy Davenport’s translation of the surviving fragments of three ancient Greek poets, Archilochus, Sappho, and Alkman [$7.95 paper]. Poet and art critic David Antin’s collection of literary improvisations, Tuning, has been published as a New Directions Paperbook [$12.50]. Recent additions to the Oxford Galaxy Book paperback series include Robert Pattison’s On Literacy: The Politics of the Word from Homer to the Age of Rock [$6.95] and Israel Shenker’s In the Footsteps of Johnson and Boswell: A Modern Day Journey Through Scotland [$7. 95].

Hailed as a pioneering work in social history when first published, Peter Laslett’s The World We Have Lost: England Before the Industrial Age presents a vivid portrait of preindustrial English society and such structures of that society as marriage and the family. Scribner’s has now published a third edition of this work, one completely revised and updated to include the latest findings of Laslett and the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Change, of which he is a founding member [$19.95 cloth]. St. Martin’s is offering a “40th anniversary reissue” of Alexander McKee’s Caen: Anvil of Victory, a dramatic account of the struggle for a town in Normandy that raged for almost two months after D-Day and a work military historian John Keegan rates as “a minor classic of Second World War historiography” [$16.95 cloth]. A battle that occurred a decade later is recounted in Jules Roy’s The Battle of Dienbienphu, a recent Carroll & Graf paperback [$8.95]. Carroll & Graf has also come out with a paper edition of Robert E, Conot’s Justice et Nuremberg, a one-volume account of the crimes committed by Nazi leaders and of the trials in which they were brought to judgment [$10.95]. The Soviet Union is the subject of several works now out in paper editions. One is Sheila Fitzpatrick’s The Russian Revolution, 1917—1932, an Oxford Paperback [$6.95]. Another, also an Oxford Paperback, is Adam B. Ulam’s Dangerous Relations: The Soviet Union in World Politics, 1970—1982 [$7.95]. A third is Brian Freemantle’s KGB: Inside the World’s Largest Intelligence Network, an addition to Holt, Rinehart & Winston’s Owl Book series [$6.95 paper]. Finally, New England has published a revised edition of Robert V. Daniels’ two-volume A Documentary History of Communism, Volume 1 being Communism in Russia and Volume 2 Com- munism and the World [$14. 95 each]. The latest additions to Cornell’s Aspects of Greek and Roman Life paperback series are, respectively, J.A. Crook’s Law and Life of Rome, 90 B.C.-A.D. 212 [$10.95], Donald Earl’s The Moral and Political Tradition of Rome [$7.95], and W.K. Lacey’s The Family in Classical Greece [$10.95].

Raffles, once one of the best-known characters in English fiction, is both a cricket player and a dashing burglar of Mayfair houses, which he also entered as a guest. He was created by E.W. Hornung, and St. Martin’s has come out with a new edition of the complete short stories of Raffles— The Amateur Cracksman, with an introductory essay by George Orwell [$17.95 cloth]. Randolph Stow’s The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea, first published in 1965, is now considered a classic novel of Australian literature. This novel of growing up in wartime Australia has been republished by Taplinger [$14.95 cloth]. Recent additions to Dial Press’s Virago Modern Classics paper series include two works by British novelist Mary Webb, The Golden Arrow and Seven for a Secret [$7.95 each]. Kentucky has published a new edition of that longtime favorite, John Fox, Jr.’s The Trail of the Lonesome Pine [$20.00 cloth, $10.00 paper]. Among the recent Bantam Classics are Henry James’ The Bostonians [$2.95] and Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers [$3.95]. Harper Perennial Library has come out with three more volumes in E.F. Benson’s Make Way for Lucia series, each with a foreword by Nancy Mitford, the respective volumes being Mapp and Lucia, The Worshipful Lucia, and Trouble for Lucia [$3.95 each]. Although relatively unknown to American readers, Tom Sharpe is considered one of the funniest writers to appear on the British scene since Evelyn Waugh and Kingsley Amis. Now, thanks to Vintage Books, three of his novels are available to an American audience—Wilt, The Throwback, and Vintage Stuff [$3.95 each].