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Medals and Prizes brings together eight of the best stories and
novellas by John Metcalf, a virtuosic champion of the short form.
Metcalf was born in Carlisle and emigrated to Canada as a young
man, where both his innovations as a prose stylist and his talent
as an editor are legendary. Until now, he has never been published
in Britain. Spanning more than fifty years, and ranging from some
of his earliest published stories to the astonishing late-career
'Medals and Prizes', the work gathered here shows us a writer whose
voice, at every stage, is unmistakeable. Entertaining and moving
and mischievous, these elegant fictions are a homecoming for a
writer ready to assume his rank among Britain's great short fiction
masters.
Paving Our Ways covers the international history of road paving in
an interesting, readable and technically accurate way. It provides
an overview of the associated technologies in a historical context.
It examines the earliest pavements in Egypt and Mesopotamia and
then moves to North Africa, Crete, Greece and Italy, before a
review of pavements used by the Romans in their magnificent road
system. After its empire collapsed, Roman pavements fell into ruin.
The slow recovery of pavements in Europe began in France and then
in England. The work of Trésaguet, Telford and McAdam is examined.
Asphalt and concrete slowly improved as paving materials in the
second part of the 19th century. Major advances occurred in the
20th century with the availability of powerful machinery, pneumatic
tyres and bitumen. The advances needed to bring pavements to their
current development are explored, as are the tools for financing,
constructing, managing and maintaining pavements. The book should
appeal to those interested in road paving, and in the history of
engineering and transport. It can also serve as a text for courses
in engineering history.
Paving Our Ways covers the international history of road paving in
an interesting, readable and technically accurate way. It provides
an overview of the associated technologies in a historical context.
It examines the earliest pavements in Egypt and Mesopotamia and
then moves to North Africa, Crete, Greece and Italy, before a
review of pavements used by the Romans in their magnificent road
system. After its empire collapsed, Roman pavements fell into ruin.
The slow recovery of pavements in Europe began in France and then
in England. The work of Tresaguet, Telford and McAdam is examined.
Asphalt and concrete slowly improved as paving materials in the
second part of the 19th century. Major advances occurred in the
20th century with the availability of powerful machinery, pneumatic
tyres and bitumen. The advances needed to bring pavements to their
current development are explored, as are the tools for financing,
constructing, managing and maintaining pavements. The book should
appeal to those interested in road paving, and in the history of
engineering and transport. It can also serve as a text for courses
in engineering history.
Blinded by smallpox at the age of six, John Metcalf (1717-1810) led
a life that might have featured in an eighteenth-century novel.
Popularly known as 'Blind Jack of Knaresborough', Metcalf had many
and varied careers, including musician, horse trader, fish
supplier, textile merchant and stage-wagon operator. Developing a
method for building roads on marshy ground, using heather and gorse
as a foundation, he eventually became one of the eighteenth
century's great road builders, laying over 120 miles of
high-quality roads in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire and
Cheshire. Published in 1795 and based on conversations with
Metcalf, this book recounts his life in a series of anecdotes.
Metcalf starts with his boyhood escapades, and his becoming an
accomplished swimmer, climber and gambler. Among the later episodes
recounted are his services in raising troops to fight Jacobite
rebels, during which he was present at the battles of Falkirk Muir
and Culloden.
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Selected Essays (Paperback)
Clark Blaise; Edited by John Metcalf, J. R. Tim Struthers
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R613
R556
Discovery Miles 5 560
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Clark Blaise is a North American treasure, one of a handful of the
truly important short-story writers in the last 50 years. His
"Selected Essays" bring together for the first time another aspect
of his tremendous and courageous oeuvre, belles-lettres, essays and
occasional pieces which range over autobiography, his
French-Canadian heritage, the craft of fiction, American fiction,
Australian fiction, and the work of such individual writers as Jack
Kerouac, V.S. Naipaul, Salmon Rushdie, Alice Munro, Leon Rooke, and
Bernard Malamud, his friend and mentor. His essays on literary
craft and technique are essential reading for aspiring writers and
for readers eager for knowledge of literature's nuts-and-bolts.
Always elegant, profound, thought-provoking and contrarian,
Blaise's essays grapple with the themes and preoccupations that
have animated his fiction, and give us a more intimate
understanding of the work of this most modern of North American
writers.
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Off the Record (Paperback)
John Metcalf; Contributions by Caroline Adderson, Kristyn Dunnion, Cynthia Flood, Shaena Lambert, …
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R497
R465
Discovery Miles 4 650
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A collection of stories and essays gathered by literary critic,
writer, and editor John Metcalf. Featuring six Canadian fiction
writers, among them the winners of the Rogers Writers’ Trust
Fiction Prize, The Butler Book Prize, and the Marian Engel Award,
these collected works offer an in-depth look at the processes and
inspiration behind their stories.
"[Metcalf's] talent is generous, hectoring, huge, and
remarkable."-Washington Post In Temerity & Gall, Metcalf looks
back on a lifetime spent in letters; surveys, with no punches
pulled, the current state of CanLit; and offers a passionate
defense of the promise and potential of Canadian writing. In a 1983
editorial letter to the Globe and Mail, celebrated Canadian
novelist W.P. Kinsella railed that "Mr. Metcalf-an
immigrant-continually and in the most galling manner has the
temerity to preach to Canadians about their own literature." Forty
years later, in spite of Kinsella's effort to discredit him in the
name of a misguided nationalism both embarrassing and familiar,
John Metcalf still has the temerity and gall to preach, to teach,
and to write passionately (and uproariously) about literature in
Canada. Part memoir, meditation, and apologia, part criticism and
pure Metcalf, the present volume distills a lifetime of reading and
writing, thinking and collecting, and continues his necessary work
kicking against the ever-present pricks. As is the case with all of
his critical work, Temerity & Gall will challenge, delight,
anger, and inspire in equal measure, and is essential reading for
anyone interested in literature in Canada and its place within the
wider tradition of writing in English. Temerity & Gall is
printed in a limited paperback edition of 750 copies signed and
numbered by the author.
In this much-anticipated memoir, Metcalf takes us on a personal
journey through his life and those influences that inform his own
literary aesthetic. Here is a fascinating story peopled with the
likes of Alice Munro, Norman Levine, Ernest Hemingway, John
Newlove, Hugh Hood, Keath Fraser, Irving Layton, Mavis Gallant, and
many other literary luminaries. By turns humorous and iconoclastic
and brimming with intelligence and brio, this highly readable
memoir provides much-needed perspective on the art of editing,
literary values, and the current state of Canadian literary
publishing.
It's always easy to trace the breadcrumb trail backwards and note
the causes retrospectively, but what if you could see the signs
beforehand? What if you could filter out the noise? Could you tune
into weak signals and know the future? Lee believed you could.
What's more he was proving it could be done in some of the most
unpredictable environments. Praesagium follows three strangers who
are preoccupied with their own futures. But when their paths cross
in Mexico none of them had foreseen the outcome...
This book is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS series. The creators of
this series are united by passion for literature and driven by the
intention of making all public domain books available in printed
format again - worldwide. At tredition we believe that a great book
never goes out of style. Several mostly non-profit literature
projects provide content to tredition. To support their good work,
tredition donates a portion of the proceeds from each sold copy. As
a reader of a TREDITION CLASSICS book, you support our mission to
save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion.
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