An anthology of compelling essays by Marina Warner, one of our pre-eminent writers and critics. Art-writing at its most useful should share the dynamism, fluidity and passions of the objects of its enquiry, argues Marina Warner. In this new anthology of some of her most compelling work, she captures the visual experience of the work of several artists – with a notable focus on the inner lives of women – through an exploration of the range of stories and symbols to which they allude. Metamorphosis features vividly in the imagery, stories and media of the art that Warner has chosen to write about: in connection with animals in the work of Louise Bourgeois, for instance; with the Catholicism of Damien Hirst; and with performance as a medium of memory and resistance in the installations of Joan Jonas. Rather than drawing on connoisseurship, the author’s approach grows principally out of anthropology and mythology. She argues that art and aesthetics increasingly fulfil a magical social function – a principle that runs through these writings to give the collection a quality that is polemical as well as coherent. With an introductory essay and illustrations throughout, Marina Warner investigates how artists noted for their treatment of disturbing, uncanny material have reached beyond the visible, to express interior states. Truly inspiring, her writing unites the imagination of artist, writer and reader, creating a reading experience parallel to the intrinsic pleasure of looking at art.

A luminous memoir of post-war childhood, adventure and loss on the banks of the Nile. 'Wonderful - a brave, inventive, touching distillation of memory and imagination' JENNY UGLOW Inventory of a Life Mislaid follows Marina Warner's beautiful, penniless young mother Ilia as she leaves southern Italy in 1945 to travel alone to London. Her husband, an English colonel, is still away in the war in the East as she begins to learn how to be Mrs Esmond Warner, an Englishwoman. With diamond rings on her fingers and brogues on her feet, Ilia steps fearlessly into the world of cricket and riding. But, without prospect of work in a bleak, war-ravaged England, Esmond remembers the glorious ease of Cairo during his periods of leave from the desert campaign. There, they start a bookshop, a branch of W. H. Smith's. But growing resistance to foreign interests, especially British, erupts in the 1952 uprising, and the Cairo Fire burns the city clean. Evocative and imaginative, at once historical and speculative, this memoir powerfully resurrects the fraught union and unrequited hopes of Warner's parents. Memory intertwines richly with myth, the river Lethe feeling as real as the Nile. Vivid recollections of Cairo swirl with ever-present dreams of a city where Warner's parents, friends and associates are still restlessly wandering.

Timeless fables of loyalty and betrayal Like Aesop's Fables, Kalilah and Dimnah is a collection designed not only for moral instruction, but also for the entertainment of readers. The stories, which originated in the Sanskrit Panchatantra and Mahabharata, were adapted, augmented, and translated into Arabic by the scholar and state official Ibn al-Muqaffa' in the second/eighth century. The stories are engaging, entertaining, and often funny, from "The Man Who Found a Treasure But Could Not Keep It," to "The Raven Who Tried To Learn To Walk Like a Partridge" and "How the Wolf, the Raven, and the Jackal Destroyed the Camel." Kalilah and Dimnah is a "mirror for princes," a book meant to inculcate virtues and discernment in rulers and warn against flattery and deception. Many of the animals who populate the book represent ministers counseling kings, friends advising friends, or wives admonishing husbands. Throughout, Kalilah and Dimnah offers insight into the moral lessons Ibn al-Muqaffa' wished to impart to rulers-and readers. An English-only edition.

The bold, distinctive style of Paula Rego's paintings has acquired for her not only an ever-increasing critical reputation but also an unusually large and enthusiastic following. Her be-ribboned little-girl heroines and fairy-tale characters seem firmly rooted in childhood, yet the innocence of this art is darkened by the underlying themes of power, domination and rebellion, sexuality and gender, that run through her work. Here Rego has turned to the nursery rhyme as a source for her imagery. It is a genre that perfectly complements her art; full of double meanings, rhymes are written from a child's perspective but are open to adult interpretation. Twenty-six well-known nursery rhymes are accompanied by a series of etchings which she has executed spontaneously as a child might, drawing directly on the plate without preparatory planning. Following the traditions of earlier artists such as Beatrix Potter, she treats the fantastic realistically, dressing animals in human costume and using dream-like dislocations of scale. These are wonderfully comic and rich illustrations with a hint of the sinister, that turn classic nursery rhymes into colourful stories about folly and delusion, cruelty, convention and sex.

A luminous memoir of post-war childhood, adventure and loss on the banks of the Nile. ‘Wonderful – a brave, inventive, touching distillation of memory and imagination’ JENNY UGLOW Inventory of a Life Mislaid follows Marina Warner’s beautiful, penniless young mother Ilia as she leaves southern Italy in 1945 to travel alone to London. Her husband, an English colonel, is still away in the war in the East as she begins to learn how to be Mrs Esmond Warner, an Englishwoman. With diamond rings on her fingers and brogues on her feet, Ilia steps fearlessly into the world of cricket and riding. But, without prospect of work in a bleak, war-ravaged England, Esmond remembers the glorious ease of Cairo during his periods of leave from the desert campaign. There, they start a bookshop, a branch of W. H. Smith’s. But growing resistance to foreign interests, especially British, erupts in the 1952 uprising, and the Cairo Fire burns the city clean. Evocative and imaginative, at once historical and speculative, this memoir powerfully resurrects the fraught union and unrequited hopes of Warner’s parents. Memory intertwines richly with myth, the river Lethe feeling as real as the Nile. Vivid recollections of Cairo swirl with ever-present dreams of a city where Warner’s parents, friends and associates are still restlessly wandering.

The much-loved tales from 'The Thousand and One Nights' first appeared in English translation in the early nineteenth century. The popularity of these ancient and beguiling tales set against the backdrop of Baghdad, a city of wealth and peace, stoked the widespread enthusiasm for and scholarly interest in eastern arts and culture, which had been a dominant fashion in Europe for almost a century. Four of the most well-known tales, translated by Laurence Housman, are reproduced in this collector's edition: 'Sindbad the Sailor', 'Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp', 'The Story of the Three Calenders' and 'The Sleeper Awakened'. Each is illustrated with exquisite watercolours by the renowned artist Edmund Dulac. The sumptuous illustrations reproduced here capture the beauty and timeless quality of these alluring stories, made at the zenith of early twentieth-century book illustration.

* Shortlisted for the Palestine Book Awards 2016* Memoirs of an Early Arab Feminist is the first English translation of the memoirs of Anbara Salam Khalidi, the iconic Arab feminist. At a time when the effects of the revolution and counterrevolution of the Arab Spring loom heavy over Middle Eastern politics, this book brings to life an earlier period of social turmoil and women's activism through one remarkable life. Anbara Salam was born in 1897 to a notable Sunni Muslim family of Beirut. She grew up in 'Greater Syria', in which unhindered travel and cross-cultural exchange between Beirut, Jerusalem and Damascus was possible. Her political activities caused countless scandals, from the series of newspaper articles calling on women to fight for their rights within the Ottoman Empire, to removing her veil during a 1927 lecture at the American University of Beirut. In later life she translated Homer and Virgil into Arabic and fled from Jerusalem to Beirut following the establishment of Israel in 1948. She died in Beirut in 1986. These memoirs have long been acclaimed by Middle East historians as an essential resource for the social history of Beirut and the larger Arab world in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Paula Rego is an artist of astonishing power with a unique and unforgettable aesthetic. Taking its cues from the artist, this fascinating study invites us to reflect on the complexities of storytelling on which Rego's work draws, emphasizing both the stories the pictures tell, and how it is that they are told. Deryn Rees-Jones sets interpretations of the pictures in the context of Rego's personal and artistic development across sixty years. We see how Rego's art intersects with the work of both the literary and the visual, and come to understand her rich and textured layering of reference: her use of the Old Masters; fiction, fairy tales and poems; the folk traditions of Rego's native Portugal; and her wider engagement with politics, feminism and more. The result is a highly original work that addresses urgent and topical questions of gender, subject and object, self and other.

L'Atalante is the work of French director Jean Vigo. It is a study of romantic love, told in a style influenced by surrealism, but still Vigo's own. This text is part of the 'BFI Film Classics' series. Each volume in the series presents a personal commentary on the film, together with a brief production history and a detailed filmography, notes and bibliography.

An enchanting collection that introduces the author and activist Naomi Mitchison to a new generation of readers The Fourth Pig, originally published in 1936, is a wide-ranging collection of fairy tales, poems, and ballads that reflect the hopes and forebodings of their era but also resonate with those of today. From a retelling of "Hansel and Gretel" to the experimental title story, a dark departure from "The Three Little Pigs," this book is a testament to the talents of Naomi Mitchison (1897-1999), who was an irrepressible phenomenon-a prominent Scottish political activist as well as a prolific author. Mitchison's work, exemplified by the tales in this superb new edition, is stamped with her characteristic sharp wit, magical invention, and vivid political and social consciousness. Marina Warner, the celebrated scholar of myths and fairy tales and writer of fiction, provides an insightful introduction to Mitchison as a remarkable writer and personality.

'The father of science fiction' Guardian The Time Machine is the first and greatest modern portrayal of time-travel. It sees a Victorian scientist propel himself into the year 802,701 AD, when he is initially delighted to find that suffering has been replaced by beauty, contentment and peace. Entranced at first by the Eloi, an elfin species descended from humans, he soon realizes that they are simply remnants of a once-great culture - now weak and childishly afraid of the dark. They have every reason to be afraid: in deep tunnels beneath their paradise lurks another race - the sinister Morlocks. Edited by PATRIC K PARRINDER with an Introduction by MARINA WARNER and notes by STEVEN MCLEAN

Accounts of remarkable women at the world's most powerful court Consorts of the Caliphs is a seventh/thirteenth-century compilation of anecdotes about thirty-eight women who were consorts to those in power, most of them concubines of the early Abbasid caliphs and wives of latter-day caliphs and sultans. This slim but illuminating volume is one of the few surviving texts by the prolific Baghdadi scholar Ibn al-Sa'i, who chronicled the academic and political elites of his city in the final years of the Abbasid dynasty and the period following the cataclysmic Mongol invasion of 656/1258. In this work, Ibn al-Sa'i is keen to forge a connection between the munificent wives of his time and the storied lovers of the so-called golden age of Baghdad. Thus, from the earlier period, we find Harun al-Rashid pining for his brother's beautiful slave, Ghadir, and the artistry of such musical and literary celebrities as Arib and Fadl, who bested the male poets and singers of their day. From times closer to Ibn al-Sa?i's own, we meet women such as Banafsha, who endowed law colleges, had bridges built, and provisioned pilgrims bound for Mecca; slave women whose funeral services were led by caliphs; and noble Saljuq princesses from Afghanistan. Informed by the author's own sources, his insider knowledge, and well-known literary materials, these singular biographical sketches bring the belletristic culture of the Baghdad court to life, particularly in the personal narratives and poetry of culture heroines otherwise lost to history. An English-only edition.

An NYRB Classics Original
In the last two years of his life, the Sicilian aristocrat Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa wrote not only the internationally celebrated novel "The Leopard" but also three shorter pieces of fiction, brought together here in a new translation.
"The Professor and the Siren," like "The Leopard," meditates on the past and the passage of time, and also on the relationship between erotic love and learning. Professor La Ciura is one of the world's most distinguished Hellenists; his knowledge, however, came at the cost of a loss that has haunted him for his entire life. This Lampedusa's final masterpiece, is accompanied here by the parable "Joy and the Law" and "The Blind Kittens," a story originally conceived as the first chapter of a followup to "The Leopard."

Scheherazade's Children gathers together leading scholars to explore the reverberations of the Arabian Nights tales across a startlingly wide and transnational range of cultural endeavors. The contributors, drawn from a wide array of disciplines, extend their inquiries into the book's metamorphoses on stage and screen as well as in literature--from India to Japan, from Sanskrit mythology to British pantomime, from Baroque opera to puppet shows. Their highly original research illuminates little-known manifestations of the Nights, and provides unexpected contexts for understanding the book's complex history. Polemical issues are thereby given unprecedented and enlightening interpretations. Organized under the rubrics of Translating, Engaging, and Staging, these essays view the Nights corpus as a uniquely accretive cultural bundle that absorbs the works upon which it has exerted influence. In this view, the Arabian Nights is a dynamic, living and breathing cross-cultural phenomenon that has left its mark on fields as disparate as the European novel and early Indian cinema. While scholarly, the writers' approach is also lively and entertaining, and the book is richly illustrated with unusual materials to deliver a sparkling and highly original exploration of the Arabian Nights' radiating influence on world literature, performance, and culture. Philip F. Kennedy is Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and Comparative Literature at New York University, and Vice Provost for Public Programming for the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute. Marina Warner is Professor of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex and Fellow of the British Academy. Her most recent book, Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights, won the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.

Long-listed for the 2016 Edge Hill Short Story Prize Fly Away Home is Marina Warner's third - and eagerly-awaited - collection of short stories. Inspired by fairy tales, legends, and mythology, this timeless selection explores the themes of love and war - in families, and between generations. In `Melusine' a gorgeous mermaid encounters disaster in love and visits her aunt, Morgan le Fay, to pour out her woes ; in `Breadcrumbs' a hospital patient overhears a night nurse recounting an extraordinary tale of family torn apart under terrifying circumstances. `Out of the Burning House' introduces an elderly actor recalling an unusual case of heartbreak at the hands of a TV personality; in `The Difference in the Dose' a young mother becomes increasingly anxious about the rift between herself and her adoptive mother. And in `Letter to an Unknown Soldier' a thirteen year-old girl writes a heartrending second letter to an older brother away at war, having had no reply to her first... Like her award-winning novels, Marina Warner's stories conjure up mysteries and wonders in a physical world, treading a delicate, magical line between the natural and the supernatural, between openness and fear. An elegant mix of the poignant, the caustic, and the bizarre, Fly Away Home will be treasured by fans and new readers alike.

The National Portrait Gallery's collections hold numerous portraits of creative partnerships. This book looks at the extensive collection of the Gallery and explores the role of love and the people featured both as sitters and artists. Drawing on recent scholarship, the exhibition will explore changing ideas of love, and give readers the opportunity to discover love stories both tragic and transcendent. The stories cover a variety of topicsincluding: the role of the muse,featuring stories such as George Romney, Lady Emma Hamilton and Nelson,and the Bloomsbury group; scandal and tragedy, exploringthe relationshipsof Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson,and John Lennon and Yoko Ono; literary love,highlightingthe talesof Mary and Percy Shelley,and Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes; a shared studio, featuring the stories of artists Lee Miller and Man Ray,and Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson;and love and the lens,which exploresthe stories of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh,and Mick and Bianca Jagger. Love Stories will be brought to life through the perspective of various authors, using material from the sitter's own letters, diaries and poetry, while highlighting their connection and influence on some of the greatest masterpieces of art.

From wicked queens, beautiful princesses, elves, monsters, and goblins to giants, glass slippers, poisoned apples, magic keys, and mirrors, the characters and images of fairy tales have cast a spell over readers and audiences, both adults and children, for centuries. These fantastic stories have travelled across cultural borders, and been passed on from generation to generation, ever-changing, renewed with each re-telling. Few forms of literature have greater power to enchant us and rekindle our imagination than a fairy tale. But what is a fairy tale? Where do they come from and what do they mean? What do they try and communicate to us about morality, sexuality, and society? The range of fairy tales stretches across great distances and time; their history is entangled with folklore and myth, and their inspiration draws on ideas about nature and the supernatural, imagination and fantasy, psychoanalysis, and feminism. Marina Warner has loved fairy tales over a long writing life, and she explores here a multitude of tales through the ages, their different manifestations on the page, the stage, and the screen. From the phenomenal rise of Victorian and Edwardian literature to contemporary children's stories, Warner unfolds a glittering array of examples, from classics such as Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and The Sleeping Beauty, the Grimm Brothers' Hansel and Gretel, and Hans Andersen's The Little Mermaid, to modern-day realizations including Walt Disney's Snow White and gothic interpretations such as Pan's Labyrinth. In ten succinct chapters, Marina Warner digs into a rich hoard of fairy tales in their brilliant and fantastical variations, in order to define a genre and evaluate a literary form that keeps shifting through time and history. Her book makes a persuasive case for fairy tale as a crucial repository of human understanding and culture.

Our foremost theorist of myth, fairytales, and folktales explores the magical realm of the imagination where carpets fly, objects speak, dreams reveal hidden truths, and genies grant prophetic wishes. "Stranger Magic" examines the wondrous tales of the "Arabian Nights, " their profound impact on the West, and the progressive exoticization of magic since the eighteenth century, when the first European translations appeared.

The "Nights" seized European readers' imaginations during the siecle des Lumieres, inspiring imitations, spoofs, turqueries, extravaganzas, pantomimes, and mauresque tastes in dress and furniture. Writers from Voltaire to Goethe to Borges, filmmakers from Raoul Walsh on, and countless authors of children's books have adapted its stories. What gives these tales their enduring power to bring pleasure to readers and audiences? Their appeal, Marina Warner suggests, lies in how the stories' magic stimulates the creative activity of the imagination. Their popularity during the Enlightenment was no accident: dreams, projections, and fantasies are essential to making the leap beyond the frontiers of accepted knowledge into new scientific and literary spheres. The magical tradition, so long disavowed by Western rationality, underlies modernity's most characteristic developments, including the charmed states of brand-name luxury goods, paper money, and psychoanalytic dream interpretation.

In Warner's hands, the "Nights" reveal the underappreciated cultural exchanges between East and West, Islam and Christianity, and cast light on the magical underpinnings of contemporary experience, where mythical principles, as distinct from religious belief, enjoy growing acceptance. These tales meet the need for enchantment, in the safe guise of oriental costume.

Marina Warner has gathered together a magical collection of fairy tales by the great women storytellers of the 17th and 18th centuries. These are passionate, extraordinary, and occasionally proto-feminist retellings of classic fairy stories by women who ingeniously used the fairy tale genre to comment on their own times and experiences. The stories are all in superb new translations by celebrated writers, including A. S. Byatt, Gilbert Adair and John Ashbery. With a brilliant intorduction by Marina Warner, recognised as one of our greatest experts on myth and fairy tale.

Marina Warner's 1994 Reith Lectures, in which she offered a definition of myth and its many contemporary faces, exploring the monster, children, mothers, strangers, and the idea of home.