"Francis Jeffrey is celebrated as the editor of the Edinburgh Review, but little is known of his remarkable visit to America and his enthusiastic reception by American readers. Elliott and Hook have produced a marvellous edition of Jeffrey's record of his journey between New York and Washington during the second Anglo-American War. Historians will be fascinated by Jeffrey's account of his discussion of British-American differences with President James Madison and Secretary of State James Monroe, which furnish remarkable first hand accounts of these men's beliefs about the origins and nature of the conflict. Literary scholars will be intrigued by the unsuspected romantic sensibilities evident in Jeffrey's descriptions of the American environment. This is an excellent edition of Jeffrey's engaging account of the new American republic." -- Simon P. Newman, Sir Denis Brogan Professor of American Studies, University of Glasgow. Clare Elliott is Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature at Northumbria University and has taught at the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, recently completing a post at Teesside University. Her research interests lie in Transatlantic Literary Studies, Transnationalism and Transatlantic Romanticisms. Clare has published on William Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman and is reviewer of American literature to 1900 for the Years Work in English Studies. The long eighteenth century in Scotland is increasingly recognized as a period of outstanding cultural achievement. In these years both the Scottish Enlightenment and Scottish Romanticism made lasting contributions to Western intellectual and cultural life. This series is designed to further our understanding of this crucial era in a range of ways: by reprinting less familiar but important works by writers in the period itself; by producing new editions of key out-of-print books by modern scholars; and by publishing new research and criticism by contemporary scholars. Perspectives: Scottish Studies of the long Eighteenth Century Series Editor: Andrew Hook

The nation's favourite annual guide to the short story, now in its tenth year. Best British Short Stories invites you to judge a book by its cover - or, more accurately, by its title. This new series aims to reprint the best short stories published in the previous calendar year by British writers, whether based in the UK or elsewhere. The editor's brief is wide ranging, covering anthologies, collections, magazines, newspapers and web sites, looking for the best of the bunch to reprint all in one volume. Featuring: Richard Lawrence Bennett, Luke Brown, David Constantine, Tim Etchells, Nicola Freeman, Amanthi Harris, Andrew Hook, Sonia Hope, Hanif Kureishi, Helen Mort, Jeff Noon, Irenosen Okojie, KJ Orr, Bridget Penney, Diana Powell, David Rose, Sarah Schofield, Adrian Slatcher, NJ Stallard, Robert Stone, Stephen Thompson and Zakia Uddin.

Candescent Blooms is a collection of twelve short stories which form fictionalised biographies of mostly Golden Era Hollywood actors who suffered untimely deaths. From Olive Thomas in 1920 through to Grace Kelly in 1982, these pieces utilise facts, fiction, gossip, movies and unreliable memories to examine the life of each individual character set against a Hollywood background of hope and corruption, opportunity and reality.

The Glasgow Enlightenment is widely regarded as the first book to explore the nature and accomplishments of the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century Glasgow in a comprehensive manner. In addition to a general introduction by the editors, there are seven chapters devoted to Glasgow University professors, such as Adam Smith, Francis Hutcheson, Thomas Reid, John Millar, William Leechman, and John Anderson. At a time when the Glasgow economy was booming in the strength of its trade with America, these and other Glasgow men of science and learning were making major contributions to the European world of philosophy, law, political economy, natural philosophy, medicine, and religious toleration. There are also five chapters on other individuals and topics, including the physician and author John Moore, James Boswell during his student days, images of Glasgow in popular poetry, and Popular party clergymen who challenged the dominant views of the academic Enlightenment with an alternative vision of liberty and piety. This edition features a new bibliographical preface by Richard B. Sher that discusses the substantial secondary literature on eighteenth-century Glasgow and the Glasgow Enlightenment since the original publication of this book more than a quarter of a century ago.

First published between 1982 and 1983, this series examines the peculiarly American cultural context out of which the nation's literature has developed. Covering the years from 1865 to 1900, this third volume of American Literature in Context focuses on the struggles of American writers to make sense of their rapidly changing world. In addition to such major figures as Walt Whitman, Henry James, Emily Dickinson and Mark Twain, it analyses the writings of an unorthodox economist (Henry George), a Utopian reformer (Edward Bellamy) and a critical sociologist (Thorstein Veblen). Particular attention is paid to the challenge to conventional literary and cultural values represented by writers such as William Dean Howell who pursued a new form of scientific, democratic realism in American writing. This book will be of interest to those studying American literature and American studies.

First published between 1982 and 1983, this series examines the peculiarly American cultural context out of which the nation's literature has developed. Covering the years from 1865 to 1900, this third volume of American Literature in Context focuses on the struggles of American writers to make sense of their rapidly changing world. In addition to such major figures as Walt Whitman, Henry James, Emily Dickinson and Mark Twain, it analyses the writings of an unorthodox economist (Henry George), a Utopian reformer (Edward Bellamy) and a critical sociologist (Thorstein Veblen). Particular attention is paid to the challenge to conventional literary and cultural values represented by writers such as William Dean Howell who pursued a new form of scientific, democratic realism in American writing. This book will be of interest to those studying American literature and American studies.

Japanese school children grow giant frogs, a superhero grapples with her secret identity, onions foretell global disasters and an undercover agent is ambivalent as to which side he works for and why. Relationships form and crumble with the slightest of nudges. World catastrophe is imminent; alien invasion blase. These twenty slipstream stories from acclaimed author Andrew Hook examine identity and our fragile existence, skid skewed realities and scratch the surface of our world, revealing another-not altogether dissimilar-layer beneath. Nitrospective is Andrew Hook's fourth collection of short fiction.

The Fair Maid of Perth centres on the merchant classes of Perth in the fourteenth century, and their commitment to the pacific values of trade, in a bloody and brutal era in which no right to life is recognised, and in which the Scottish nobles fight for control of the weak Scottish monarchy, and clans are prepared to extinguish each other to gain supremacy in the central Highlands. It is a remarkable novel, in part because late in his career Scott has a new subject, and in part because he employs a spare narrative style that is without parallel in the rest of his oeuvre. Far too many critics, from his son-in-law J.G. Lockhart to the present day, have written off late Scott, and seen his last works as evidence of failing powers. The readers of this edition of The Fair Maid of Perth will see that these critics are mistaken, for in it we witness a luminous creative intelligence working at high pressure to produce a tightly organised and deeply moving novel.

Two green-skinned children are discovered who claim to have come from within the earth. The local legend states that the boy died, and the girl married but had no children. Is the legend true? OCD sufferers often perpetuate their rituals believing that if they fail to do so their families will suffer. But what if they are correct - that their rituals are necessary to maintain life's balance? And what if it was discovered that many OCD sufferers are descendants of the green children...The Greens is a modern fantasy/horror novella which merges the 12th Century Suffolk legend of the green children and sufferers of obsessive compulsive disorder.

Two heads are better than one! This collection brings together two of the brightest stars in the science fiction, slipstream short story firmament. The combined talents of Allen Ashley and Andrew Hook have produced fourteen delicious, yet subtle, seamless stories full of wit, imagination, invention and emotion. What is the secret behind the gated community of "Xanadu Springs"? Will the online pharmaceutical "Vitamin X" really guarantee you fifteen minutes of fame? What is the best strategy to ensure victory at "Air Hockey 3000"? And can Lynsey the lowly "Abattoir Girl" successfully lead the resistance against the alien invasion? Pass along Pohl and Kornbluth; move over Maynard and Sims; forgetski the brothers Strugatski. Ashley and Hook are the new noises on the block

In 1940, John Archibald McKenzie Rillie - serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps and newly married to Betty - was posted to the African city of Freetown in Sierra Leone. This is the first publication of the writing and the poems, drawn in the main from his diary and the notebook in which he collated much of his war-time verse, that mark his experiences in the sixteen months that followed. In the words of his editor, and grandson, Alasdair Soussi, it is an 'expressive, outspoken, sometimes raw and uncomfortable account of a bygone age'. The later reflections of Jack Rillie, the by then greatly admired and influential university teacher, on this period - and on his life prior to the war - are presented in a brief introduction, "A Young Life Recalled". With a foreword by Andrew Hook and an afterword from Marshall Walker; reproductions of photographs and letters; and even a list of books Jack read while in Sierra Leone, the man who inspired so many is revealed both for his formidable scholarship and his love.

Morpheus Tales, the UK's most controversial horror, sf and fantasy magazine, proudly presents its first original dark fiction anthology: 13. Original fiction by Eric S Brown, Joseph D'Lacey, Gary Fry, Andrew Hook, Shaun Jeffrey, Matt Leyshon, Gary McMahon, Andy Remic, Stanley Riiks, Tommy B. Smith, Alan Spencer, Fred Venturini, and William R.D. Wood. Featuring a wide range of dark fiction, including horror, dark fantasy and dark SF, Morpheus Tales has pulled stories from around the world. 13 authors each present their own story: disturbing malevolence, personal fear, ghostly debts, the apocalypse, musical madness, sasquatch and more...All manner of disturbingly dark tales are contained in this collection. 13 tales of dark fiction.