Cheerful Weather For The Wedding

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I finished Julia Strachey’s Cheerful Weather For The Wedding the other day – I’m reading short books in snatches while writing my dissertation, and this is one of the Persephone Books is one I’ve meaning to read for a while. Elaine at Random Jottings gave it to me many moons ago, but somehow it’s only just worked its way to the top of the pile.

Well, I’m very glad Elaine could spare it, as I loved every second! This short novel (120pp) all takes place on the wedding day of Dolly and Owen. And it’s very, very funny. There is a semi-serious romance storyline through the centre of it (should Dolly be marrying Owen? Will they actually get married?) but it is the host of secondary characters which make this novel (or perhaps novella?) so amusing. My favourites are brothers Robert and Tom – the latter spends the entire novel trying to persuade the former to change his emerald-coloured socks: “Robert, your mother would desire you to go upstairs instantly to take off those bounder’s socks, Robert, and to change into a respectable pair. Will you go, Robert?” He is distraught lest their schoolfellows – ‘men from Rugby’ – be at the wedding and witness this calamatous social faux pas. Robert’s iterated response is “Go and put your head in a bag.” I kept hoping these two would crop up, even though they essentially said the same thing every time they appeared, it was done so amusingly and accurately that I could have read pages of Tom’s serious monotone and Robert’s complete lack of care.

And then there’s dotty Nellie-from-the-village, one of the ‘help’:

“The gentleman that come to see about the hot pipes out in the lobby, said to me, ‘ have two of my own,’ he said, ‘what are both of them big strapping great boys by now. And oh… good golly! – what devils and demons they do be!’ he said. ‘Well,’ I said to him, ‘my son Teddy is exactly the very same thing over again,’ I said. ‘All the time this cigarette-smoking, they pointed boots, and all of it, why, devils and demons isn’t in it with such as they are,’ I said. No. Very decidedly not!”

The whole family, and especially servants, are very funny characters – slightly ridiculous, but not too exaggerated as to not ring true. I suppose that’s why the humour is so good – rooted in the actual. Sort of a less-hyperbolic PG Wodehouse, perhaps. Crossed with Virginia Woolf.

According to IMDB there is a film of Cheerful Weather For The Wedding due in 2010. The only information about it at the moment is that Sinead Cusack is attached – I suppose she’ll play Mrs. Thatcham. I’m not sure the novel will make a good film, actually – sometimes lines which are great written down lose everything when spoken. Still, I’ll keep an open mind until I see it, which I undoubtedly will.

If you’re wavering on Cheerful Weather For The Wedding, I encourage you to give it a go (though this comes with a warning that not everyone agrees with me: see this review by Vintage Reads) – it’s recently been released in the beautiful Persephone Classics edition (pictured) which should make it more easily available… and I might just have to get myself a copy of that one too. I think it’s entered my Top Five Persephones, and since I’ve read all or part of over thirty, that’s not bad at all.

Decades

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Well, I was going to write about The Hours by Michael Cunningham today, which my book group is reading. Tonight I went along, having re-read the novel, ready for the evening – which was to involve watching the film first, then discussing the novel… only to discover that I’d got the week wrong. So look out next Tuesday…

Instead, I’m going to have a crack at something I’ve been meaning to try for a while. A favourite book, per decade, for every decade from 1800s onwards… doesn’t that sound like a fun idea? I’ll see how far I get, and then will wait hopefully for other people to give it a go. Requires a little bit of research, but mostly should be a matter of slotting my favourite books into a timeline (my problem being that almost all my favourites are from 1920-40)… and then I should, much like my namesake on Blue Peter, have produced something fun and interesting and good. But not ‘here’s one I made earlier’. Cos I haven’t.

Here goes… do have a go. Don’t worry about leaving gaps – I have, and did on my alphabetical list too. But if I find anyone using an apostrophe in their decades, I’ll… well, I’ll wince and frown and cross you off my Christmas card list.

1800s:1810s: Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
1820s:1830s:1840s: Agnes Grey – Anne Bronte
1850s: Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
1860s: The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
1870s: Through the Looking-Glass… – Lewis Carroll
1880s: Three Men in a Boat – Jerome K. Jerome
1890s: The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
1900s: Lovers in London – AA Milne
1910s: Literary Lapses – Stephen Leacock
1920s: Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
1930s: The Diary of a Provincial Lady – EM Delafield
1940s: Miss Hargreaves – Frank Baker
1950s: Frost at Morning – Richmal Crompton
1960s: The L-Shaped Room – Lynne Reid Banks
1970s: The Bookshop – Penelope Fitzgerald
1980s: Deceived With Kindness – Angelica Garnett
1990s: The Winter Book – Tove Jansson
2000s: Speaking of Love – Angela Young

Leftover books?

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My friend Sherry, in an online book group I’m in, pointed out this link. Possibly an idea if you have books you don’t want, good balance, and not too much self-consciousness.


In other book groupy news, there is a new Persephone Reading Group recently started up in Oxford. It’s meeting every six weeks, I think, and the next one (which will be my first) is June 4th, reading Flush by Virginia Woolf. I’m excited to meet other Oxford-based Persephone lovers – and if anybody reading this lives in or near Oxford and would be interested in meeting to drink wine and talk Persephone, for just £5 a meeting, then let me know! I don’t know if the organiser, Claudia FitzHerbert, would want me broadcasting her email address – so if you’re interested, email me on simondavidthomas@yahoo.co.uk and I’ll put you in touch.

Mixed Media

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I wrote about independent and feminist publishers a bit last term, and Pluto Press very kindly agreed to send me a copy of Simone Murray’s Mixed Media: Feminist Presses and Publishing Politics. I enquired about it not simply because the Bodleian inexplicably didn’t have it (since it’s published in the UK, they should have…) but because I thought readers of Stuck-in-a-Book might also be interested.

As the title suggests, this book is about feminist publishing, and though an academic text, it is extremely accessible and very, very interesting. Though sadly with no mention of Persephone (and the book was first published in 2004, so Persephone could have been mentioned) this is more or less the only omission I’ve noticed in the chapters I’ve read. With these sorts of texts, I always find it easiest to give chapter titles – the topics are so wide and the chapter headings so comprehensively descriptive, that my paraphrasing will be pretty pointless. So here they are:

1. ‘Books with Bite’: Virago Press and the Politics of Feminist Conversion

2. ‘Books of Integrity’: Dilemmas of Race and Authenticity in Feminist Publishing

3. Opening Pandora’s Box: The Rise of Academic Feminist Publishing

4. Collective Unconsioucs: The Demise of Radical Feminist Publishing

5. ‘This Book Could Change Your Life’: Feminist Bestsellers and the Power of Mainstream Publishing

Though I imagine Murray must be a feminist (though whether first-, second- or third- wave, I wouldn’t be able to say) Mixed Media isn’t didactic or polemical. Not that those things are inherently bad – there’s no point in writing if one can’t be a little didactic now and then – but this book is a fairly objective reading of certain publishing situations. I find the whole background to publishing houses extremely captivating, especially, it must be said, Virago. The first chapter of Mixed Media discusses the origins of Virago, and also the indications of an independent feminist press being bought by a conglomerate (Little, Brown & Co.) – but, importantly, there is an underlying affection for the books themselves, which makes Mixed Media both scholarly research and accessible reading.

Mixed Media isn’t, I should add, for the completely casual reader. It’s not every page-turner which includes Darnton’s Communication Circuit, after all. But for anybody seeking a little extra information behind the phenomenon of feminist publishing, Murray’s book is fascinating. The publisher’s online catalogue isn’t currently working, but their books can be bought from Amazon – and while the hardback is quite dear, the paperback could certainly be within some people’s budget – or encourage your library to get a copy, perhaps.

Foxed

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Someone at Oneworld Classics has been reading my dissertation notes, methinks… I mentioned them in a big everything-piled-in-together post a little while ago, and I was expecting them to send me a certain book… instead The Fox by D.H. Lawrence arrived in the post the other day. Did the good people at Oneworld know that I was writing on 1920s novels? And that one of them was David Garnett’s Lady Into Fox (more here) published in 1922, the year before Lawrence’s? Serendipity often crops up in my reading life, but rarely with such happy results that I can read something for pleasure, for reviewing, and for my dissertation all at the same time. Talk about multi-tasking.

The Fox is under seventy pages, but rather powerful. Nellie March and Jill Banford (usually known by their surnames) are in their late-twenties, and live together on a farm in Berkshire and try, with limited success, to make a profit out of poultry and a cow or two. This is DH Lawrence rather than Stella Gibbons, so the mishaps are irksome rather than something narsty in the woodshed. Worst among these problems is a fox, slyly and unabashedly diminishing their livelihood.

And then a young soldier arrives. And stays. So fixated is March upon the creature ruining their farm: ‘to March, he was the fox. Whether it was the thrusting forward of his head, or the glisten of fine whitish hairs of the ruddy cheekbones, or the bright, keen eyes, that can never be said – but the boy was to her the fox, and she could not see him otherwise.’

How foxlike (or, indeed, vulpine) is the boy? And what effects will his arrival have upon the pair? The Fox is an excellent narrative of jealousy and disruption and wrestling over self-control, as well as having some wonderful moments of imagination and clever imagery. In the hands of any other author I would describe the novella as a passionate one, but by Lawrence standards it’s postively matronly. Which has to be a good thing, to be honest. When Lawrence isn’t showing off what a tough, sexual brute he is, he can actually write very beautifully.

And why choose the Oneworld Classics edition? (Which you can do here) Other than the gorgeous cover (well, I love foxes) the edition has a very thorough chronological guide to Lawrence’s life and works, four pages of relevant photographs including some manuscript, and even a select bibliography. Highly, highly recommended.

Making Conversation

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Persephone Books very kindly sent me a copy of Making Conversation by Christine Longford to review, and I actually read it a month or two ago, but was waiting for it to be available on the website before putting down my thoughts here. And, of course, that means I’ll have to search back into the depths of my memory…

The novel follows Martha from childhood through school and into Oxford University. She is an awkward girl, and, as the Persephone website says, ‘her besetting trouble is that she talks either too much, or too little: she can never get the right balance of conversation.’ This is evident from the opening pages, where she marvels at the inexpensive price of the brooch given to Ellen, the cook-general. (“You little idiot.. Now she won’t think anything of it. People like that don’t, if you tell them the price.”) Very intelligent but equally detached, she seems to meander through school and interaction with ‘paying guests’ at home (very definitely not a hotel) – where her mother advertises as an ‘Officer’s wife’: ‘This was mostly true. The military connexion grew fainter with the years. It was some time since Major Freke had written too many cheques, and disappeared.’ Martha isn’t quite precocious, but her indifferent responses at school and habit of repeating what she doesn’t understand (“Miss Spencer pulled my hair, and said I had committed adultery”) might give that impression.

Time passes, and Martha becomes a student at Oxford University. This was the part of the novel I enjoyed most, reflecting on the ways in which things have changed. Not least, apparently, the propensity to send people down all the time, and the illicit parties at men’s colleges offer a glimpse of the past. By the time Martha gets to university, her personality seems to have completely altered – which is probably true to life, but a little off-putting in what is tantamount to a Bildungsroman. She is pretty outgoing, even vivacious; jokey, flirty and chatty.

The new introduction by Rachel Billington compares the novel to Cold Comfort Farm, at least in terms of being a classic of English humour. Well… I don’t quite agree. Making Conversation is an excellent portrait of a character not often depicted sympathetically in the early twentieth century – the female academic, the intelligent but quiet girl – but isn’t ever laugh-out-loud funny. Lots of diverting sections, and a certain amount of amusing turns of phrase (for example the quotation below) but I don’t think Longford’s priority is hyperbolic comedy, as Gibbons’ was.

‘She would renounce all the lusts of the flesh. It would save a lot of trouble, and as she wasn’t a success on the carnal side, she might as well give it up. In that case, there would be no need to marry and have a family; and she could become famous as a Homeric scholar.’



And, as always, the presentation of the book is perfect. We know what to expect from the outside, but the endpaper (yes, Col, I’m going to talk about the endpaper) is one of my favourites from Persephone yet, apparently from a 1931 dress silk.

In conclusion – another welcome inclusion in the Persephone canon, and with invaluable, and quietly amusing, insights into another aspect of a disappeared world.

Jane

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Yes, I know I have lots of other books to read, but I couldn’t avoid buying and devouring Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World by Claire Harman (who also wrote the Sylvia Townsend Warner book I just bought – the woman has taste.) Anybody remotely interested in Jane Austen will already have heard the premise of this book – about Austen’s evolving reputation and fame through the years, with especial focus on the peaks of the First World War and the post-Colin-Firth-in-a-lake interest. Harman starts off with a biography, focusing on the response given by Austen’s family and acquaintances to her writing, and the road to being published, involving the infamous publishers who paid her for the book which would become Northanger Abbey, advertised it for publication, and never actually released it. Tut tut. The book then documents her literary reputation after her death, and how this was created by her family – basically a portrait of a woman who cared not for fame, never let writing get in the way of domesticity, and who hadn’t a mean word to say about anyone. Which, of course, isn’t the witty, slightly sarky and very talented Jane we all know and love.

On the book goes, through the Janeites of the trenches to the 21st Century fascination with her, and even a mention of Stuck-in-a-Book favourite Lost in Austen (though she says it is an adaptation of a book Lost in Austen, which I don’t think is true… the book is a sort of choose-your-own-adventure, published in England with the title Being Elizabeth Bennett). Harman’s style isn’t particularly academic, which is nice when she throws a personal twist to certain aspects of Austen’s posthumous career – of the 1940 Pride and Prejudice film and it’s elaborate and anachronistic costumes: ‘when Darcy and Elizabeth sit together on a bench, it is not pride nor prejudice which seems to keep them apart, so much as their clothes.’

The idea of the book is great. There’s a wealth of fascinating material – where different possessions of Jane’s went, who bought them, who was responsible for Chawton being bought back or her books being reissued etc. etc. I was especially interested in her evolving reputation in the nineteenth century, and the amazingly prescient 1818 anonymous review in Blackwoods Magazine which predicted that Austen’s ‘familiar cabinet pictures’ would outstrip in interest even ‘the greatest historical pieces of our more eminent modern masters’. How right he or she was. The section on the search for a portrait of Jane Austen is also very interesting.

Yes, the idea was great… but somehow the book overall lacked *something* for me. I think it was the lengthy and pervasive strand of biography – which is all well and good if you haven’t already read a biography of Jane Austen, but I (like many of us) have read Claire Tomalin’s excellent and comprehensive biography, and I felt like Harman’s biographical details were clogging up the book. Perhaps she’d leave Austen newbies stranded without these bits, but I’d rather she’d gone whole hog on the reputation angle, and taken some bits of Austen’s life as read. And, despite a wealth of really great material, there was – how shall I put it – something a little lacklustre about the book as a whole. Can’t put my finger on it, but the style was occasionally dry and footnote-y, without being really scholarly. Again, kind of falls between two stools.

That sounds very negative, and I did very much enjoy reading Jane’s Fame. It’s just that, with such a fascinating potential, investigating why Jane Austen is idolised and ‘befriended’ in a way that no other author, not even Shakespeare, is… I’d still recommend this book to any Austen fan, or even anyone slightly interested in Austen, but I know that a better book could have been written. And now it won’t be able to be for at least a decade.

One other thing – Harman suggests that Jane Austen is the *only* author who can be identified just be their first name. I’m sure that’s not true… and was hoping you’d help me think of some others. In fact, just put their first names in the comments, that would be a good test… I offer Virginia as an example. And, in the right circles, Vita. Hmm. I’ll keep thinking…

Laureate

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So, Carol Ann Duffy has been made Poet Laureate. Doesn’t she look delighted?

Since I’ve read a total of one poem by her – yes, it’s that onion one – I can’t really comment on her credentials for the role, but it’s good that a woman has been given the title – and her poetry can’t be much worse than Andrew Motion’s. Perhaps I’m being unfair, I just remember his gem when writing an ode to Jonny Wilkinson – which apparently took three months because he couldn’t think of a rhyme for ‘Wilkinson’.

A Song For Jonny O Jonny the power of your boot
And the accurate heart-stopping route
Of your goal as it ghosts
Through Australian posts
Is a triumph we gladly salute. O Martin the height of your leap
And the gritty possession you keep
Of the slippery ball
In the ruck and the maul
Is enough to make patriots weep. O Jason the speed of your feet
And their side-stepping hop- scotching beat
As you touch down and score
While the terraces roar
Is the thing that makes chariots sweet. O forwards and backs you have all
Shown us wonderful ways to walk tall
And together with Clive
You will help us survive
Our losses with other-shaped balls.
Not immortal prose, is it?
I do wonder how much need there is for a Poet Laureate, but I’m the last to suggest eradicating any literary aspect of modern culture and society, since there is so little out there. And it also made me wonder how many previous Laureates I could name. Why not have a go yourself, as they say – I managed 4. Including Motion and Duffy. Give it a try, and check the answers here. I hadn’t heard of nine of them, and didn’t realise that 5 poets had turned down the position… a poisoned chalice, perhaps?

Getting to know you…

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I think a few different people have done this quiz over the past few weeks, but I spotted it on Simon S’s blog, and it looks like fun.

1) What author do you own the most books by?
That would be AA Milne, I think, or perhaps Agatha Christie pips him to the post. I’ve spent so long trying to find Milne’s books, whereas you stumble across Christies whenever you go into a charity shop, so it feels like I have more by Milne.

2) What book do you own the most copies of?
Hmm… probably Diary of a Provincial Lady by EM Delafield, of which I have four copies. I have three copies of Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker, which will become four when the Bloomsbury edition comes out.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Yes, quite a lot.

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
Wouldn’t be a secret if I told you, would it?

5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)?
Alway I re-read all the time as a child, it’s only the last few years that I’ve started re-reading again. Once more I think Diary of a Provincial Lady has been read the most. And I’ve never heard of Goodnight Moon.

6) What was your favourite book when you were ten years old?
Gosh. I didn’t list them in the way I do now. Ten years old… at that age I loved Goosebumps and Point Horror, actually, so it would have been something awful like The Girlfriend, which I’d be far too scared to read now.

7) What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?
Looking at the books I’ve read in 2009 so far, there’s actually only one that I’ve really not liked – Blasted by Sarah Kane. Vile, graphic, disgusting, violent and horrible.

8) What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?
Excluding books I’ve re-read in 2009 – and there have been a lot this year – I think it’s The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim.

9) If you could force everyone you know to read one book, what would it be?
I don’t really like the idea of forcing everyone to read a book… but I would encourage everyone to read the Bible (or at least some of it) and Pride and Prejudice.

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
Goodness, I know so little about living authors… I literally can’t think of anybody I think is worthy of it. All the authors I revere are dead.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Is it boring when I answer every question with Miss Hargreaves? I just see Maggie Smith in the title role, so vividly. Other than that, I think We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson would make an amazing film. Apparently it’s been almost filmed many times.

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
Whilst I love Diary of a Provincial Lady, I don’t think it would work at all as a film. And I don’t want my cookbook to be made into a film.

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
What a strange question! I can’t remember any, but I’m sure I’ve dreamed about meeting Jane Austen.

14) What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?
High School Musical: The Book of the Film, I think. I’ve never been tempted to try those awful celebrity autobiographies or cheap romances. I’m middlebrow through and through.

15) What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?
That would be Ulysses I think, which was a real slog. There are quite a few books which aren’t technically ‘difficult’ but I’ve found too dull to get through quickly.

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?
Is there such a thing as an obscure Shakespeare play?
I’ve not seen any obscure ones… All’s Well That Ends Well? One I want to see when I can is Cymbeline, which doesn’t seem to be produced much.

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
I’ve read two short books by ‘the Russians’ and one by ‘the French’, so I feel completely unqualified to answer…

18) Roth or Updike?
I’ve not read a word of either.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
I’ve not even heard of these people! Wow, I feel badly read.

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Ah, this is more like it. Definitely Shakespeare. I admire Chaucer, was a little bored by Milton, but love so much of Shakespeare – though the comedies and ‘problem plays’ more than the tragedies.

21) Austen or Eliot?
There wouldn’t be many names to stand up to our Janey, so she is an easy winner of this category!

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
This questionnaire is providing quite a few… The more I read, the more I feel poorly read. To take a smattering, Great Expectations, Middlemarch, anything by Proust or Tolstoy or Hemingway or… so many.

23) What is your favourite novel?
Miss Hargreaves, Diary of a Provincial Lady and Pride and Prejudice continually fight it out.

24) Play?
Much Ado About Nothing or AA Milne’s Mr. Pim Passes By

25) Poem?
‘The Listeners’ by Walter de la Mare

26) Essay?
Something by AA Milne. Or Ginny’s A Room of One’s Own, if that counts as an essay.

27) Short story?
‘The Garden Party’ by Katherine Mansfield

28) Work of nonfiction?
AA Milne’s autobiography, It’s Too Late Now.

29) Who is your favourite writer?
Mr. Milne to the fore once more. I think. Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf are coming up on the inside track.

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Louis de Berniere, though I’ve only read one of his books, so perhaps the others aren’t so awful. Lionel Shriver also dreadful.

31) What is your desert island book?
The Bible, though that’s usually a given, isn’t it? I could read Diary of a Provincial Lady over and over again and never tire of it.

32) And… what are you reading right now?
At the moment I’m reading Jane’s Fame by Clare Harman, The Other Elizabeth Taylor by Nicola Beauman, The Paris Review Interviews vol.1. That’s it, actually. Only three and they’re all non-fiction.

I won’t tag anyone, but it’s a fun quiz and I recommend you have a go! Let me know in the comments if you have done so.

A Shot in the Dark

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The other day I mentioned, amongst my goods from Liverpool, A Shot in the Dark by Saki. This is a beautiful Hesperus edition, which initially I bought just because my collected Saki is unwieldly, and I wanted to have some in a pocket edition. (I should add that it’s actually Mum and Dad’s collected Saki, which I’ve ‘borrowed’… call it short-circuiting my inheritance) But then I discovered, upon reading the introduction, that A Shot in the Dark is a collection of works discovered after the Complete Ed. was published – i.e. they’re not in there.

A few are familiar. ‘The Miracle Merchant’ is essentially Clovis story ‘The Hen’ dramatised; an earlier published version of ‘Tobermory’ is included; ‘A Sacrifice to Necessity’ is very, very similar to ‘The Stake’. But A Shot in the Dark isn’t just for Saki completists – some stories have lain undiscovered. ‘Dogged’, which was published in St. Paul’s magazine in February 1899, is thought to be the very first story Saki had published – and has never been anthologised or collected before. And, what’s more, it’s probably the best one in this collection. To be quite so witty and brilliant from the off is a little astonishing, not to say irritating to us lesser mortals.

‘Dogged’ is about a mild-mannered man being cajouled into buying a dog at a church bazaar: ‘A rakish-looking fox terrier, stamped with the hallmark of naked and unashamed depravity, and wearing the yawningly alert air of one who has found the world is vain and likes it all the better for it’. The dog manages to take over his life, and the story is representative of Saki’s merciless style and exaggerated incident.

I’ve already eulogised about how wonderful Saki is – see this post – but I never got around to writing about Beasts and Superbeasts, which I read last year. I can’t imagine why it didn’t make my Top 15 of 2008 – I must have been feeling serious when I composed that list, as it is the funniest book I’ve read in a long time. His tales dabble in the absurd, the commonplace, the mystical, the down-to-earth – but always with a great understanding of humanity (especially children) and a fondness for hyperbole which I love. If PG Wodehouse had written short stories, and had a very slightly crueller sense of humour, these would be the result.

If you’ve never tried Saki, do so immediately. Even if you don’t like short stories usually, I can’t imagine anyone disliking these – if you’re the sort of person who keeps a book in the loo (and I am) then Saki could work a treat. If you think you’ve got a Complete Saki, then you’re missing this selection – which comes with an interesting Introduction by Adam Newell and Foreword by Jeremy Dyson. Rectify the omission as soon as possible.