The culmination of a lifetime's work by the great journalist and historian Paul Foot, The Vote tells the thrilling story of the hard, long-fought struggle for the right to vote in Britain, and the slow erosion that followed. In the tradition of "history from below", Paul Foot examines the great democratic debates that dominated the fight for electoral democracy. Taking readers from the smoke-filled church of the Putney debates, to the dramatic arguments between Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke in the aftermath of the French Revolution, to the rise of Chartism and the struggles for votes for women. Throughout, Foot shows how vested interested first delayed and then hobbled the progress of parliamentary democracy. Concentrating on the vital role played by direct action, he shows how rank-and-file resistance to ruling-class injustice was followed by retreat into parliamentary impotence. Into the twentieth-century, Foot exposes the gaps between the promises of a succession of Labour governments and their actions once in power, and its abandonment of any aspiration to economic democracy. A gripping work of narrative history, written in Paul Foot's inimitable energy and engaged style, this book is a classic work of history, and a must-read for anyone interested in how today's political scene was formed.

‘I’m still in love with her … I’d give my life for her. But she bores me’

Proud, wilful and intensely charismatic, Pechorin is bored by the stifling world that envelops him. With a predatory energy for any activity that will relieve his ennui, he embarks on a series of adventures, encountering smugglers, brigands, soldiers, lovers and rivals – and leaving a trail of broken hearts behind him. With its cynical, immoral hero, Lermontov’s novel outraged many critics when it was published in 1840. Yet it was also a literary landmark: an acutely observed psychological novel, narrated from a number of different perspectives, through which the true and complex nature of Pechorin slowly emerges. 

Paul Foote’s fine translation is accompanied by an introduction discussing the figure of Pechorin within the literary tradition of ‘superfluous men’, and the novel’s influence on Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Chekhov. The edition also includes a chronology, explanatory notes and a historical note on the Caucasus.

In 1851, at the age of twenty-two, Tolstoy joined the Russian army and travelled to the Caucasus as a soldier. The four years that followed were among the most significant in his life, and deeply influenced the stories collected here. Begun in 1852 but unfinished for a decade, The Cossacks describes the experiences of Olenin, a young cultured Russian who comes to despise civilization after spending time with the wild Cossack people. Sevastopol Sketches, based on Tolstoy's own experiences of the siege of Sevastopol in 1854-55, is a compelling consideration of the nature of war, while Hadji Murat, written towards the end of his life, returns to the Caucasus of Tolstoy's youth to explore the life of a great leader torn apart by a conflict of loyalties. Written at the end of the nineteenth century, it is amongst the last and greatest of Tolstoy's shorter works.

Our ambitious program of new Tolstoy editions continues with two collections of powerful stories

The violent spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life that inspired his last period of creativity produced the stories in this compelling and startling collection. They portray the multifaceted nature of desire, from idealistic romance to sexual jealousy, from desperate lust to relentless longing. ?The K reutzer Sonata? caused a public sensation with its indictment of so-called Christian marriage, a theme echoed in ?Family Happiness.? In ?The Devil, ? a young man finds it impossible to resist a beautiful peasant woman with whom he had an affair before his marriage. And ?Father Sergius? shows a man going to increasingly desperate ends in order to avoid the temptations of the flesh.

The ten stories collected in this volume demonstrate Tolstoy's artistic prowess displayed over five decades experimenting with prose styles and drawing on his own experiences with humour, realism and compassion. Inspired by his experiences in the army, The Two Hussars' contrasts a dashing father and his mean-spirited son. Illustrating Tolstoy's belief that art must serve a moral purpose, What Men Live By' portrays an angel sent to earth to learn three existential rules of life, and Two Old Men' shows a peasant abandoning his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in order to help his neighbours. And in the highly moving Master and Man', Tolstoy depicts a mercenary merchant travelling with his unprotesting servant through a blizzard to close a business deal little realizing he may soon have to settle accounts with his maker.