Bøger udgivet af Michael Walmer

Selected by Evelyn Waugh in the Sunday Times as the best first novel of 1953, and phenomenally praised by critics on its first publication, Hugo Charteris' A Share of the World is one of the great lost novels. This is the first republication in a concerted programme of bringing all of Charteris' works back into print. This harrowing story of a man lost in his times, bewildered and anguished by both war and love, is a masterful portrayal of the human psyche at odds with itself. John Grant has a short war. In a matter of three or four days his career as an officer in active service is over, after a disastrous sortie in the Italian campaign in which one of his men is let down terribly. Back home, reeling with dislocation and yearning, John seeks solace, absolution, a future, and most importantly, love. His troubled mind is taken up with the fascinating and elusive Jane Matlock, whose evasions and temptations lead him into what seems like a new assault-course, a strikingly different form of combat. Although John's story is astonishingly powerful and deeply moving, this extraordinary book has one more ace up its sleeve: Hugo Charteris' intense, atmospheric, drily witty and emotionally searching style. In it there are ingredients which make for one of the great experiences of post-war British literature. A Share of the World burst onto the 1950s literary scene like a truth-incendiary. The author's daughter, Jane Charteris, looks back at this brilliant book, and provides a unique personal insight into its author, in an introduction written specially for this edition.

In 1827 youthful, vigorous John Holdsworth, newly married to his sweetheart Dolly, leaves the village of Southbourne in Kent for his next adventure at sea on board the Meteor, bound for America. He is young to be a chief mate, but all the crew, and his superiors, are impressed with his skill, knowledge and strong, kind leadership. But well out into the Atlantic disaster strikes unexpectedly and the ship founders. The three boats are launched and capable John takes charge of one of them, containing seven people. Ten long days later, John's boat is finally spotted. Of the two remaining on board, the only one alive is John. What he has been through has changed him completely; having had no food and water for many days, and having witnessed unspeakable horrors of searing privation, he is wizened, sunken, white-haired, virtually crippled - and barely alive. Crucially, he has been so near to death that his memory is completely gone. He is taken to Australia on board the vessel of his rescuers with no idea of his name, the name of his ship, or any clue as to his connections. It is as though his mind has sealed off the past. After five years under an assumed name as a clerk in a Sydney company, something tells him that he needs to return to England. There, in 1832, a chance meeting in a London tavern triggers a tiny rush of recognition. He starts out for Kent, little realizing what a moving train of events his regaining of memory will set in motion... First published in 1875.

Stella Benson's debut was one of the most acclaimed of her generation:"e;One of the brightest, most original, and best written books that have come my way for a long time,"e; wrote Sir Henry Lucy. "e;As the mature work of an experienced author it would have been a remarkable achievement: being 'the first book of a new writer' it is an astonishing performance,' hailed the reviewer from The Daily Graphic. In this incredibly original satirical novel we are introduced to the two main characters as The Gardener and The Suffragette, and so they remain throughout. Inhabiting a huge first chapter of 302 pages and then only a tiny second one of 8 pages, these two are wildly comic and disturbingly real at one and the same time. Benson's cheekiness in commenting directly to the reader on the progress of the story, the saltiness of her slightly cynical view of the world and its ways, and the strange newness of the tale she was telling meant that, on first publication in 1915, the literary world's curiosity was most certainly piqued. Both of them are the beautifully mixed, endearingly crazy creations of Benson's unusual talent, which spins its fizzing wit on a sixpence, creating absurd comedy and wise satire out of thin air. Delivering, in its fools' progress, one of the significant debuts of its era and one of the funniest novels of the suffragette movement in one package, I Pose was hailed immediately as a classic of a new kind, establishing Stella Benson as a fresh genius of the human spirit, in all its poses.

Welcome to the colourful world of the White family. It is the early 1930s, the Great Depression, and they have fallen on hard times. Like many others, they have been 'on the road', travelling in search of work, but have now settled in the travellers' camp at Warning Hill, just outside the country town of Tiburon in central New South Wales, living in a hut of their own making. With an extraordinary cast of memorable characters, Kylie Tennant's first novel explores an Australian country town of the time with a sharp eye for what makes people tick. Whether it be a harridan pub-keeper who can't keep her bargirls in order, an obsessed policeman who concentrates so hard on the letter of law and order that he's constantly undone by simple humanity, a left-leaning parson who loves a good talk a little too much, ladies of means who can't believe it when their charity is rejected, or various shonky shop owners who'd sell their own grandmothers if only they could, no-one escapes Tennant's genially inquiring eye and wry grin. In laconic, poetic prose of great realistic warmth, Kylie Tennant draws a picture of a time when enormous hardship was the stuff of every day; laughter was a vital response to keep one's sanity. With phenomenal panache and great control of her material, she echoes Dickens in terms of the warmth, wit and understanding with which she investigates all the joys and prejudices of a country town in Australia. This brilliant novel won the S. H. Prior Memorial Prize for fiction. This edition includes an introduction by the author.

Deep in George Sand's own natal countryside of Berri in central France, Valentine de Raimbault, daughter of the chateau, and Benedict Lhery, cousin and adopted son of one of its tenant farmers, meet and fall headlong in love. Though they are very young, she 18 and he 22, both are already engaged to be married: he to his cousin, a beautiful and imperious girl who sees him as a stepping stone to comfort and security, and she to a dissolute diplomat who needs her wealth to pay his gigantic gambling debts. They must both first realize the extraordinary power of their feelings, and then enter a terrible battle with relatives, expectations and conventions, where their difference in rank proves a massive obstacle. Their union will indeed be hard won, if it can be. As they fight to understand and fulfil their love, the world bends, breaks and remakes itself around them many times. In the uncertainty, one of them unwillingly marries; the other rejects passionately the idea of a life united to any but their loved one. Lives are lost, arguments are precipitated into great conflicts, scores are settled and new ones created, intrigues are pursued, misunderstandings are promoted, long-held secrets are finally revealed. It is only when a chance mistake proves disastrously final that their tragic love finds its whole meaning, that the pattern they are creating in their lives fulfils its extraordinary design. This intensely passionate novel, the author's second, was first published in 1832.

It is a long and golden summer in the Edwardian period. London is abuzz with gentlemen in tall hats and ladies in flowing silk, some with money, and others who want it badly. Love and marriage are the great game, but the adventure is vastly varied, depending on who is playing. Creatures of wit find it their most impressive subject; creatures of love are either pinnacled or torn apart by its demands. Felicity, Sylvia and Savile Crofton, aged 25, 20 and 16 respectively, are deep in the melee. Felicity is married to Lord Chetwode, the man of her dreams, and is largely happy, but she is already feeling deeply the falling-off of contact as he pursues horseflesh and antiques across the country in ever-longer stays away. Her younger sister Sylvia is very much in the market, according to her father, who has many ideas of whom she might marry, but particularly favours a Greek millionaire, Mr Ridokanaki. He has no idea that her great love is his penniless secretary, Frank Woodville. Their brother Savile, on holiday from Eton, has not only the spirited attentions of young Dolly Clive to contend with, but also his great passion for an opera singer, whom he loves from afar. Somehow, all their problems must be brought to a satisfactory conclusion. A typically confident Savile tries to engineer a solution, but in the end it is love itself which cuts through. This mischievously witty tale of love and intrigue, the author's first, was published in 1907. Ada Leverson (nee Beddington) was born in 1862. She married Ernest Leverson at the age of 19, against her parents' consent, but the marriage was not a success. She became a contributor to several literary and artistic journals including Black and White, St Stephen's Review and, most notably, The Yellow Book in the 1890s. It was at this time, after she published a brilliantly successful sketch parody of his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, that Oscar Wilde desired to meet her, and dubbed her The Sphinx. They became the greatest of friends, and she was instrumental in helping him after the disaster of his trial, when many others deserted him. Her six sparklingly witty novels were published between 1907 and 1916. She died in 1933.

In 1909, ten years had elapsed since Max Beerbohm's last volume of essays. In the time which had passed, his style had evolved to become a little more elegiac, a little less over-consciously clever. Yet Again gave full voice to his new mode, moulded by constant journalism into a superb clear flow. Still present are trenchantly funny criticism of banality, gorgeous erudition, countered expectations and, most of all, delicious irony. In ¿Seeing People Off we are asked to examine the terrible truth behind awkward goodbyes; in A Club in Ruins the strange and lugubrious magnetism of dying buildings is surveyed; in Ichabod¿ the author shamefacedly asks himself why he should mind that all the labels have been cleaned from his luggage; in The House of Commons Manner he bemoans the surprising lack of skill in speaking of the august members of that house; and in Dulcedo Judiciorum a full account is rendered of the superiority of the entertainment provided by the law courts over that of the theatre. Alongside seventeen other brilliant essays, there is here also a special section of nine imaginative depictions inspired by famous artworks.

Edith and Bruce Ottley could not be called idyllically married. But a form of love persists between them, and their two precocious young children, Archie and Dilly, provide a further bond.Bruce's latest enthusiasms in their social circle are the Mitchells, whose parties are slightly risque and enormous fun, attracting all comers except the most staid. There the Ottleys meet Aylmer Ross, a handsome widowed barrister. Edith and he are drawn together irresistibly. But whilst Aylmer would like to take things further, Edith is loyal to Bruce. Their friendship, almost immediately quite intense, suffers onrushes and reverses as they grow to understand one another's limits.Then one day in Kensington Gardens Edith's world of loyalty is torn apart. She sees a couple clearly in love, hand in hand, sitting in a secluded seat. On closer examination she can't believe her eyes - one of them is Bruce! And the other is Miss Townsend, Archie and Dilly's governess! Will this deceit be enough to sway Edith and send her into Aylmer's willing embrace? What must she do ensure that everything turns out as it should?In Tenterhooks, her fourth novel, Ada Leverson rehearsed quite closely details of her own life. The decision of her husband Ernest to leave her and emigrate to Canada had been a major wrench. Exactly how nearly the plot follows reality is not known for certain but, with dash and sureness, the author delineates a sensitive and principled woman's responses to adversity, super-imposing upon them the wit and gaiety for which she was so renowned, creating a moving and entertaining portrait of a crisis in a marriage. The second of the three Ottleys novels,Tenterhooks was first published in 1912.

The neat ship Grosvenor is fully laden and crewed, and slowly traversing the English Channel, ready to leave on a trading journey to the other side of the Atlantic. Edward Royle has joined as second mate, new to the ship. As they make headway there are rumblings among the crew. Their provisions are rotten: damp, weevilled biscuit and stinking meat.The Grosvenor's firebrand captain and his tough American first mate won't stand for any interruption to the journey. They falsely indicate to the men that they will stop somewhere en route to take on new provisions. Royle is incensed on the men's behalf. The four survivors of a mid-Atlantic wreck are added to the ship's company at great risk, against the wishes of the mercenary captain, who would have left them to die. One of them, the capable Mary Robertson, quickly gains Royle's admiration.Things rapidly reach boiling point back on the Grosvenor. The mutiny is swift; Royle is forcibly enjoined to run the ship. Most of the crew are desperate to avoid the inevitable punishment - Royle gets wind of their plan to leave him, Mary and her father, the loyal boatswain and the cowardly steward to die in the deliberately holed ship once Royle has guided them near to land at Bermuda. His growing feelings for Mary further invigorate his determination to survive. The scene is set for a great trial against seemingly insurmountable odds.......W. Clark Russell's The Wreck of the 'Grosvenor' was the most successful novel of mutiny of the Victorian era. His sensitive depiction of the moods of both the sea and the skies, and the technical skill which only a seasoned seafarer could bring to the tale, make for a stirring and realistic spectacle. This moving novel became Russell's signature work.

Roderick Random's story is a classic rambunctious tale of rags and riches, set in the mid-eighteenth century.Roderick's father goes mad soon after he is born, in grief at his beloved wife's death. Roderick is cast into life as a virtual orphan, tumbles through a wild time at school, and ends up, on leaving, escaping to the heaving metropolis of London. There he encounters, with his best friend Strap, characters of a huge variety; card-sharpers, fallen women, bumbling doctors and malicious quacks, and very dubious gentlemen-about-town. He finally goes to sea after an inordinate waiting period spent hazarding the interminable bureaucracy of trying to get a place as a ship's medic. His fortunes rise and fall it seems on the spin of a coin, diving into indigence after being raised to the heights of elegance, time and again. His luck with women is similarly strange-starred and various, until one day he meets the lovely Narcissa Topehall and his heart is given forever.In splendidly picaresque scenes Smollett's story ranges from tattered London to the high social intensities of Bath society, to France and the soldier's life, out to sea and the West Indies and South America, roiling with grotesque humour and biting satire. With the support of a few good friends and despite the resistance of a goodl;y number of enemies, Roderick's fortunes are tested, luck and fate rolling the dice as to his chances, forging a scapegrace hero fit for his times.

Dormer is an old house with Elizabethan origins, much added to. It sits, very isolated, in a cup of the Shropshire hills, surrounded by forest. The Darke family have lived there for centuries. Solomon Darke is a squire farmer who tends to unthinking conservatism; his wife Rachel is harsh, fierce and uncompromising. They have four children - the eldest is the sensitive and original Amber, who feels, at thirty, that life has passed her by. Her brothers Jasper and Peter are more strong-willed - Jasper questions all around him in a determined but romantic way, while Peter has no time for any fuss and forcefully seeks simple pleasures. Their younger sister Ruby is biddable, nä¿¿ve and full of laughter. Rachel Darke's ancient mother lives with them, a harridan remnant in ringlets and flounces, dominating this already intense family with savage outbursts and calculating glances. Completing the family is Catherine, a young relative of Rachel and her mother, whose icy beauty has entrapped Jasper, and whose cold passions equal in power the heat of the Darkes'. A complex web of personal desires and long held antipathies becomes activated in the first instance by Jasper's return home, having been expelled from college for his rejection of religion. As hoped-for alliances collapse, dubious loves flower, well-laid plans go awry, and thwarted yearnings erupt into flame, this singular family and all around them are drawn into a seeming vortex which threatens to carry all with it to destruction. Mary Webb's personality shared a great deal with that of Emily Brontë, in terms not only of her love of nature and its kindling power, but also of her openness to the fullness of ardency. In this extraordinary third novel she delved this self profoundly, also introducing, in a way she hadn't before, leavening humour and cool analysis of character to balance this modern gothic vehemence. The House in Dormer Forest is heady and fascinating, risking a great deal and triumphing uniquely.

It is the late 1920s, and beautiful young Eve Wentworth is in a sticky situation. Both Harold and Hubert have asked her to marry them, and her inability to decide on either of them speaks volumes.Then Hugh Erskine, her sister Serena's husband, receives a letter from Jeremy Vaughan, a young family friend. He invites all three of them to join him on a tour of the Nile, sailing on a traditional dahabeah, but with all the mod cons of course. It seems the perfect solution to Eve's dilemma, and a delightful escape into the bargain.But things turn out to be not quite so simple. Eve has always liked Jeremy; she's known him since she was a little girl and he a slightly older boy. Soaking up all his knowledge of ancient Egypt, and enormously moved by the exotic beauty of an extraordinary and powerful landscape, slowly she registers that her feelings toward him are changing. To her chagrin, though, she can't help noticing that Jeremy seems very taken with Isobel Page, a wealthy young American they meet along the way.With delicately witty dialogue and amusing situations, Stella Tennyson Jesse takes us on an entertaining tour, not only of these tentatively perched emotions, but also of the magnificent and romantic remains of one of the world's great civilisations. Eve in Egypt is the sparklingly satisfying answer to a fascinating question: can one turn a travelogue into a beguiling novel? Jesse proves that one can, brilliantly.

In two brilliant collections of stories, Reginald (1904) and Reginald in Russia (1910), which spanned the Edwardian period, Saki made his name as the predominant wit of the emergent twentieth century. As the new Georgian age dawned, his star was at its height:"..Sylvia, notwithstanding her name, was accustomed to nothing much more sylvan than "leafy Kensington." She looked on the country as something excellent and wholesome in its way, which was apt to become troublesome if you encouraged it overmuch...""...I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing it is that they never try to talk English...""...You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed."In this volume, first published in 1911, he introduced a new titular character, albeit with a huge resemblance to both Reginald and himself. Clovis Sangrail is unsurprisable, louche in conversation, thoroughly determined to avoid the banal. In this magnificent collection, he observes the ludicrous with an unswerving eye, and undermines it with rapier-like skill, while gleefully and covertly turning all to his advantage. Saki had announced himself as the brief Edwardian flame burnt itself out; with the brilliance of this volume he made it plain that he had no intention of fading away.

Gösta Berling is a failed parson in nineteenth century rural Sweden, too fond of pleasure and the drink, torn by conflicting aims -- the charm and deceit, love and laziness in him fighting for supremacy. He teams together with a group of sometimes dissolute, often well-meaning freemen of their district to evict the seemingly mad owner of a great rambling house at the centre of its own semi-feudal estate, Ekeby. This group call themselves the cavaliers.In her telling of what happens next, Lagerlöf creates a strange fusion between the realism of authors like Ibsen and Strindberg and the mythic force of the Scandinavian sagas. Gösta's great loves, his enemies, those to whom he teaches lessons about life, either intentionally or accidentally, and others whose stories he has only a small part in, all start up from the page into a strange, elemental clarity, creating a sprawling mosaic of romance and realism.This first novel from the deeply original mind of the 1909 Nobel Prize winner weaves a balance between everyday rural reality and underlying dreams and fable to create a patchwork of extraordinary complexity and looming fascination, in which the reader can detect the author's passion for the stories of her country, and her sceptical warmth for the troubled human spirit.

When republican revolution comes to the kingdom of Illyria, King Christian and Queen Frederique, their young son Zara, and a small retinue of the abandoned court escape to Paris. They set up home there in much reduced, but still elegant, circumstances. Christian is a devotee of pleasure, while Frederique is staunch in her desire to maintain not only royal standards, but their effort to regain their throne. Christian descends into Paris' pleasure pits and seeks only passing joys, while Frederique determinedly schemes for restoration. Only now will the real import of their vividly contrasting personalities come into focus. Trapped in the arms of a deceptive mistress, badly in debt, and imperfectly committed, Christian is asked to lead a counter-revolution - with disastrous results. With all hope of restoration gone, can their marriage survive? Alphonse Daudet masterfully charts this course to disaster with lyric colour, bitter melancholy, and an undertow of passion. This fascinating exposure of the regal and the rotten was first published in 1879.

Valentia and Romer Wyburn have what seems to be a typical Edwardian marriage. Beautiful Valentia has found the handsome, solid and silently devoted Romer a little duller than she expected, and her high spirits have sought out a distant cousin, the elegant but poor artist Harry de Freyne, whose worldly attitude of fun suits her admirably. They are carrying on what they hope is a discreet affair. Meanwhile, Valentia's younger sister Daphne is being pursued by a wealthy American friend of Harry, Matthew Van Buren, who worships women in a respectful way that is typically transatlantic. Harry finds his attitude needless, being much more selfish and practical in his aims where the fair sex are concerned. Unfortunately for Van Buren, Daphne is equally unimpressed; her heart is already captivated by Cyril Foster, a 'baby Guardsman' whose lack of wealth is a problem, but who returns Daphne's liking, to the concern of those who want to see her set up comfortably in life. Will Valentia and Harry manage to get away with their affair? What will happen if Harry's meagre artistic income finally peters out entirely? Will he marry the illimitably-moneyed Miss Walmer, who, like almost all women, finds his easy charm extraordinarily attractive, but whose healthy love of hockey and florid complexion do not appeal to him in the least? Will the Wyburns' friend, the hugely successful playwright Hereford Vaughan, be able to help Valentia see what she is risking? The affair sizzles and the two grow ever more emboldened, until an overheard conversation brings everything to a head; the limit is reached. Surprisingly, it is quiet Romer Wyburn himself who provides a very unexpected answer. This delightfully witty comedy with touches of deeper drama was Ada Leverson's third novel; it was first published in 1911.

"Damn Katherine! Why can't I be the only woman who knows how to write?" Virginia Woolf Katherine Mansfield was, most of all, a passionate spirit. Her poems are sometimes traditional, sometimes outbursts of emotion, sometimes experiments akin to prose poems. In all she manages a strange alchemy; ordinary words are somehow transformed into powerful arrows of meaning. Into the world you sent her, mother, Fashioned her body of coral and foam, Combed a wave in her hair's warm smother, And drove her away from home. In the dark of the night she crept to the town And under a doorway she laid her down, This little blue child in the foam-fringed gown. And never a sister and never a brother To hear her call, to answer her cry. Her face shone out from her hair's warm smother Like a moonkin up in the sky. She sold her corals; she sold her foam; Her rainbow heart like a singing shell Broke in her body: she crept back home. Peace, go back to the world, my daughter, Daughter, go back to the darkling land; There is nothing here but sad sea water, And a handful of sifting sand. The Sea-Child 1911 These 69 poems were collected together and published in 1923, just after Katherine Mansfield's death. Many had never been published before; others only in magazines. John Middleton Murry explains in his introductory note that they are effusions of what he calls her 'exquisite spirit, ' the uniqueness of which guarantees Mansfield her permanent place in twentieth century literature.

Ouida had one of the most powerful radical conservative voices of the late nineteenth century. Known primarily as a colourful and eccentric novelist, she embodied in her forthright essays a much more piercing energy and single-minded verve. The majority of these ten essays were first published in the early 1890s in the pages of the Pall Mall Magazine, the Fortnightly Review and the North American Review, journals of serious cultural and political debate where she rubbed shoulders with commentators of all persuasions. Ouida's decidedly original point of view added fire to their bloodstreams. All manner of subjects interested her, whether it be what she saw as the phenomenal vulgarity and dangerous venality of modern society in The Sins of Society, Conscription and O Beati Insipientes!, or the nature-hating disasters of modern outdoor design and town planning in Gardens and The Passing of Philomel, or, most searchingly, the grotesque stupidities of the modern political and cultural life of her beloved adopted Italy in four passionate cries of outrage included here. Perhaps this book's most amused and cool-headed piece, The Failure of Christianity, strips away the humbug of organised 'religion' and demolishes its time-serving with panache. In all of these pieces Ouida takes no prisoners. Utterly independent in outlook, she is more than happy to heap malediction upon the heads of peasant and royal alike, to praise unfashionable viewpoints, and to strike a blow, as she saw it, for those few enlightened souls who were in love with freedom, inspired by history, architecture and art, enthused by nature and empathetic toward animals. For Ouida, these qualities of higher sensitivity were definitive of civilisation in its true sense, and horrendously lacking in late nineteenth century Europe. One can only wonder with a shiver what she would have made of our twenty-first century life...

Mary Webb was passionately devoted to revealing nature in all of its expressions and forms. She was diagnosed with Graves' disease at the age of 20, and in times of recovery she early noticed that her love of nature sped her healing. She also, in these sensitive times of contemplation and struggle, saw the natural world more tenderly and luminously; the urgencies of life were clearer. The Spring of Joy collects together a group of exquisite essays of appreciation, written with the idea of succouring 'the weary and wounded in the battle of life.' They are an extraordinary record of a woman's empathy, not only for the beauty, colour, form, delicacy and majesty of the natural world, but also for her fellow human beings who suffer.