Photo Post: Introducing Mini Modern Classics

A Russian Affair

One of my very first reviews on Paperback Reader was of First Love by Ivan Turgenev and soon after I was gifted the complete Penguin Great Loves boxset. When the Classics Circuit announced a tour of Imperial Russian literature, I was given the opportunity to read further about Russian love from the collection by opting [...]

Foster by Claire Keegan

Foster by Claire Keegan is an extended and amended short story being released by Faber later this year; a shorter version with the same title is available to read here on The New Yorker. I am posting my thoughts on the proof copy so far in advance of its publication (September in the UK) to [...]

Wayward Girls and Wicked Women

Angela Carter was enthusiastically involved with Virago Press and collected and edited two volumes of short stories for the publisher of books by women: Wayward Girls and Wicked Women and Angela Carter’s Book of Fairy Tales; the former is the book I wish to discuss today. I have reviewed a few short story collections in [...]

Black Venus by Angela Carter

Black Venus was Angela Carter’s third collection (the fourth, American Ghosts and Old World Wonders was published posthumously in 1993), published in 1985 (it is entitled Saints and Strangers in the U.S.). I like it more than the early, experimental Fireworks (reviewed here) but less than the inventive, fairy-tale dependent, The Bloody Chamber. Black Venus [...]

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