A Remembrance from Leonie Gombrich:

My grandfather Ernst Gombrich did not usually write for children. Nor did he study history at university: art history was his subject. He was therefore delighted and astonished in almost equal degree that his very first book, Eine kurze Weltgeschichte fur junge Leser, should have endured so long and found so many friends all over the world.

He wrote it as a young man and in a considerable rush, and later considered that both these factors contributed to its long lived appeal. For this little book would never have been written at all were it not for the unusual circumstances that presented themselves in Vienna in 1935.

When the book came out, in 1936, it was very well received, reviewers assuming that my grandfather must be an experienced teacher. Though publication was stopped by the Nazisbecause they considered the outlook too pacifist it was reissued thirty years later. My grandfather added a new final chapter and was once again delighted by the books success, and the many translations that have followed.

36 new illustrations from the now legendary anarchist illustrator, together with an introduction from the writer Richard Boston.

James Thomson's epic poem The City Of Dreadful Night first appeared in 1874 and acheived in its day some fame and was read by many, but in the decades that followed the poem and the poet sank into obscurity, becoming known only to a few. Thomson's poem is a deeply questioning and extremely dark vision of the City that we inhabit, but more than that it challenges the illusions that inhabit us. Thomson - athiest, alcoholic, anarchist and insomniac - speaks to us all frm the place where we live. This new edition is illustrated with eight drawings by Clifford Harper, and will hopefully help give the poem a new audience, and a new fame. Includes a critical biography of Thomson and his work by Dr Philip Tew. Agraphia is Harper's own publishing imprint, and as you'd expect, the books are exquisitely designed, illustrated and printed.

This is a book about simplicity - not destitution, not parsimoniousness, not self-denial - but the restoration of wealth in the midst of an affluence in which the author believes we are starving the spirit. It has to do with having less and enjoying more - enjoying time to do the work you love, enjoying time to spend with your family, enjoying time to pursue creative projects, enjoying time for good eating, enjoying time just to be. Another theme of the book concerns the future of our home, the Earth. Our grandchildren will inherit an Earth with less than 20 per cent of its original forests still intact, with most of the readily available freshwater already spoken for, with most of the wetlands and reef systems either destroyed or degraded. Sooner or later, the author believes, a more frugal lifestyle will not only be desirable - it will become an imperative.

A new book by Sir Ernst Gombrich, author of the international bestsellers The Story of Art and Art & Illusion (among others), and Director of the Warburg Institute of the University of London 1959-1976, is clearly an event. In 1935, with a doctorate and no job, the 25 year-old Gombrich was invited by Walter Neurath (later founder of Thames and IIudson) to attempt a history of the world for younger readers. Written in an intense six weeks, Eine Kurze Weltgeshichte fur Junge Leser was first published in Vienna the same year. An immediate success, it has since been translated into seventeen languages, tailored for the different markets. The original German edition was reissued in 1985 with an Epilogue bringing the story to the present, and Gombrich further revised it shortly before his death, aged 92, in 2001. The Little History, as it came to be known, has never been published in English until now. In forty chapters, Gombrich tells the story of man from the stone age to the atomic bomb. There emerges a colourful picture of wars and conquests, grand works of art, the spread and limitations of science, tribes evolving towards society. mankind's experience across the centuries, a guide to man's achievements and an acute witness to his frailties. What has made the Little History an international success? The key is its tone - completely clear, straightforward, relaxed, unpompous, humane - Gombrich makes immediate contact with the curious of all ages. It is the product of a pan-European sensibility, and is wholly free of nationalistic preoccupations. The broad sweep of mankind's history seems freshly intelligible when told in this profoundly generous spirit. The first English edition of this classic book is being produced by Yale to reflect its status as a timeless work to be collected and savoured: fine design and setting, printed on a high quality of paper, cloth binding, ribbon marker, and newly commissioned illustrations.