'Completely fascinating, revelatory . . . A classic of its kind.' WILLIAM BOYD 'Compelling . . . compulsive.' MARGARET DRABBLE, NEW STATESMAN T.S. Eliot and Mary Trevelyan shared a close friendship - twenty-five years in each others' company: playing records; going for drives with Mary at the wheel; sharing dinners Eliot cooked in his rolled-up shirtsleeves; and attending church together. While Mary hoped it might become something more, the poet's heart was elsewhere. Using a collection of diaries, letters and pictures Mary left behind, Erica Wagner brings together this story of an unusual friendship in this intimate portrait of T.S. Eliot and Mary, a formidable woman thus far sidelined by literary history.

Described by Philip Pullman as 'the most important British writer of fantasy since Tolkein', Alan Garner has been enrapturing readers with works like The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, The Owl Service, Red Shift and The Stone Book Quartet for more than half a century. Now, a group of the writers and artists he has inspired over the years have come together to celebrate his life and work in First Light. This anthology includes original contributions from David Almond, Margaret Atwood, John Burnside, Susan Cooper, Helen Dunmore, Stephen Fry, Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Garner, Paul Kingsnorth, Katherine Langrish, Helen Macdonald, Robert Macfarlane, Gregory Maguire, Neel Mukherjee, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith, Elizabeth Wein, Michael Wood and many, many more. Whether a literary essay, a personal response to Garner's writing or a story about the man himself, each piece is a tribute to his remarkable impact. Edited by the acclaimed journalist and novelist Erica Wagner, First Light will touch the heart of anyone who grew up reading Alan Garner.

A New Statesman Book of the Year for 2017

His father conceived of the Brooklyn Bridge, but it was Washington Roebling who built this iconic feat of human engineering after his father's tragic death. It has stood for more than 130 years and is now as much a part of New York as the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. Yet, as recognisable as the bridge is, its builder is too often forgotten.

The Chief Engineer is a brilliant examination of the life of one of America's most distinguished engineers. Roebling's experience as an engineer building bridges in the Union Army during the civil War has never before been documented, and played a central role in the bridge that links Brooklyn and Manhattan. The Brooklyn Bridge took fourteen dramatic years to complete, and the personal story that lay behind that construction is told here for the first time.

The Chief Engineer is an engaging portrait of a brilliant and driven man, and of the era in which he lived. Meticulously researched, and written with revealing archival material only recently uncovered, including Washington Roebling's own memoir that was previously thought to be lost to history, in The Chief Engineer Erica Wagner relates the fascinating history of the bridge and its maker.

A rediscovered story of unrequited love which reveals an intimate new portrait of the poet T. S. Eliot - and of its author, a formidable woman sidelined by literary history. 'Heartbreaking and wonderfully told.' Susan Hill, Spectator Books of the Year 'Compelling ... compulsive.' Margaret Drabble, New Statesman In 1938 T.S. Eliot struck up a friendship with Mary Trevelyan, a passionately curious woman and intrepid traveller. Their relationship was cosy and domestic - characterised by churchgoing, record-playing, day trips with Mary at the wheel or Eliot in his rolled shirt-sleeves cooking up sausages for dinner. Over the years, Mary came to believe that their friendship might lead to something more . . . but their journey together did not end as she would have hoped. Trevelyan left a unique document - of diaries, letters and pictures - charting their twenty-year-long relationship in her vivid prose. Erica Wagner has brought this untold story together for the first time. Mary and Mr Eliot is a revelatory tale of joy, misunderstanding and betrayal that feels utterly modern and deeply human.

Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and the Story of Birthday Letters

"This erudite critical study...breathes new life into Plath scholarship."—Publishers Weekly starred review

When Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters was published in 1998, it was greeted with astonishment and acclaim, immediately landing on the bestseller list. Few suspected that Hughes had been at work for a quarter of a century on this cycle of poems addressed to his first wife, Sylvia Plath.

In Ariel's Gift, Erica Wagner explores the destructive relationship between these two poets through their lives and their writings. She provides a commentary to the poems in Birthday Letters, showing the events that shaped them and, crucially, showing how they draw upon Plath's own work. 8 pages of b/w photographs.

"Both narratively engaging and scholastically comprehensive."—Thomas Lynch, Los Angeles Times

"Wagner has set the poems of Hughes's Birthday Letters in the context of his marriage to Plath with great delicacy."—Times Literary Supplement

Published in 1915, THE VOYAGE OUT is Virginia Woolf's first novel, and came out after she had suffered a succession of severe mental crises. This definitive edition contains the original Hogarth Press text as overseen by the author, and a list of textual variants that appeared during her lifetime. THE VOYAGE OUT tells the story of a young Englishwoman, Rachel Vinrace, and her long sea voyage to South America, her engagement to Terence Hewet and her sudden illness and death. An extraordinary debut by one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century.

Raised by her father, Janet is shocked when she learns that she has inherited a house from her mother, long thought dead. The key in hand, Janet travels north to an old stone cottage at the sea's edge.Tom hides away in an old stone cottage at the sea's edge, waiting. He was raised by his mother, traveling from one place to another, his only stability the stories she told him stories of shape-shifters, danger, impossible love....When Janet arrives, she is surprised to find Tom and to find herself mysteriously drawn to him.In Erica Wagner's "haunting debut novel" (San Diego Union-Tribune), lives and stories become so interwoven that, in the end, all distinctions are lost. Reading group guide included."

Why sports? What is their function in society, how are they organized, and why do people participate? This groundbreaking volume is filled with descriptive data relating to these questions and many others, and it does what none has done previously, by bringing together an edited collection of essays that describe and compare sport in twelve Asian and African nations from a social science perspective. Written by an international team of anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, and physical educators, these chapters are not accounts by scholars viewing sport from afar; each writer is either a native of the country or has spent extensive time there teaching and/or conducting research. For ease of comparison, each chapter adheres to a common format, beginning with an historical overview of the development of sport in that country that focuses on indigenous traditional sports, the development of modern sports, and the place of contemporary sports. A description of the way sports are organized follows and includes discussions of the role of schools and government involvement. Next, where data were available, the authors evaluated levels of sports participation, including such variables as age, gender, social class, and urban or rural residence. An account is also presented of the nature of participation and success of the country in international sports competitions. Each chapter closes with an insightful appraisal of the future of sport in that country.

Seven figures and more than 25 tables facilitate comparisons, as does the editor's introductory essay that provides an overview of the following chapters. In the second introductory essay, Ruud Stokvis examines the process of international diffusion of sport, arguing that changes in sport participation patterns in countries over time reflect changes both in the world system and in the class structure of modernizing societies. Sport in Asia and Africa makes its substantial contribution to social science literature by enhancing cross-cultural understanding of sport as a vital social institution, and its voluminous descriptive data will surely be a catalyst in the evolution of further theories about the interrelationship of sport and society. A source of up-to-date sociological data, Wagner's superb reference will be an important resource for libraries, international studies programs, programs dealing with Asia and Africa, and physical education and sociology courses that examine sport in a comparative perspective.