Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

First published in 1945, The Condemned Playground expresses the author’s personal views on art and literature and the social science. Infinitely entertaining and witty, at times devastatingly destructive and never merely kind, Mr. Connelly has, nevertheless, an underlying note of critical integrity and even moral fervour. This book will be of interest to students of history and literature.

This is a new release of the original 1946 edition.

In this engaging satire of the British upper class, a smug young literary man from Oxford joins an international group of artists and writers on the French Riviera, intending to study them as if they were aquatic organisms in a pool--with unexpected results. First published in 1936 by Jack Kahane's Obelisk Press.

Cyril Connolly (1903-1974) was one of the most influential book reviewers and critics in England, contributing regularly to The New Statesmen, The Observer, and The Sunday Times. His essays have been collected in book form and published to wide acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. Considered by many to be his most enduring work, The Unquiet Grave is a highly personal journal, written during the devastation of the Second World war and filled with reflections on aging, the break-up of his marriage, and the horrors of the war around him. It is also a wonderfully varied intellectual feast: a collection of aphorisms, epigrams, and quotations from such masters of European literature as Horace, Baudelaire, Sainte-Beuve, Flaubert, and Goethe. Dazzlingly original in both form and content, The Unquiet Grave has continued to influence generations of writers and readers.

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

"Whom the gods wish to destroy," writes Cyril Connolly, "they first call promising." First published in 1938 and long out of print, "Enemies of Promise," an "inquiry into the problem of how to write a book that lasts ten years," tests the boundaries of criticism, journalism, and autobiography with the blistering prose that became Connolly's trademark. Connolly here confronts the evils of domesticity, politics, drink, and advertising as well as novelists such as Joyce, Proust, Hemingway, and Faulkner in essays that remain fresh and penetrating to this day.
"A fine critic, compulsive traveler, and candid autobiographer. . . . [Connolly] lays down the law for all writers who wanted to count. . . . He had imagination and decisive images flashed with the speed of wit in his mind."--V. S. Pritchett, "New York"" Review of Books"
" "
"Anyone who writes, or wants to write, will find something on just about every single page that either endorses a long-held prejudice or outrages, and that makes it a pretty compelling read. . . . You end up muttering back at just about every ornately constructed pensee that Connolly utters, but that's one of the joys of this book."--Nick Hornby, "The Believer"
"A remarkable book."--Anthony Powell

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Critical and autobiographical essays by a noted British reviewer and literary journalist. "[Connolly] has the wonderful capacity for enthusiasm, for exciting in us his own unflagging joy in the presence of genius"(New Yorker). Index.