AUTUMN HARVEST

We've just released another trio of wonderful books, each one providing a different but wholly worthwhile reading experience.

A State of Change proves that Polish immigration is not a new phenomenon. In this book, a young Polish woman, Katia, offers an unusual and brilliant insight into 1960's London, and finds herself involved in a love triangle. The author, Penelope Gilliatt, led a fascinating life and wrote in many genres, including film criticism. She was married to the playwright John Osborne.

Another shamefully neglected (until we came along) female author, the delightfully named Storm Jameson, was not only remarkable for her work in helping the

escape of many writers from German-occupied Europe, but wrote 45 novels. Love in Winter deals with a torrid affair between the two central characters in the inter-war years.

Lastly, we're proud to have produced our own edition of Allan Quatermain, H Rider Haggard's African romp. The title character (who also stars in King Solomon's Mines) is largely thought to be the inspiration for Indiana Jones figure in the movie quartet.

I hope you enjoy these books.

If you'd like to air your own views on any reasonable literary topic in this blog, please send me a piece and I will be happy to consider it.

David

STORM WARNING

In the first of four blogs looking at the Capuchin Classics to be unleashed in October, I wanted to say a few words about Storm Jameson, author of Love in Winter.

Jameson is precisely the kind of writer that Capuchin was established to r

ecover from undeserved neglect. She published an extraordinary 45 novels (in addition to much non-fiction work) between 1919 and 1979, joining the ranks of writers who united a consummate narrative gift for plot and characterisation with an acute and critical vision of the harm that society, politics and war can do to a nation and its people. Never losing sight of her socialist and humanitarian principles, Jameson became the first woman president of International PEN at the outbreak of World War II, and was instrumental in the escape of writers from German-occupied Europe.

As Julie Birkett points out in her illuminating and inspiring foreword to our edition, which can be downloaded from the Capuchin website, Love in Winter is, as well as a moving and closely autobiographical account of her struggles to obtain a divorce and remarry, a superb so

cial and economic anatomy of London in 1924. The city in this novel is akin to a fantastic, complex living creature, which one of the characters finds is

"growling

in her ears, like a wild beast".

Birkett also points out the importance of writing and writers in Jameson's

world view, and how she looked to them to provide visions of a

happier, safer world.

Storm Jamieson's full, fascinating life is told in Julie Birkett's recently published biography, Margaret Storm Jameson, a Life (OUP 2009).

David