Elspeth Muir's Books

Wasted

A Story of Alcohol, Grief and a Death in Brisbane

By: Elspeth Muir

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Wasted

A Story of Alcohol, Grief and a Death in Brisbane

By: Elspeth Muir

In 2009 Elspeth Muir’s youngest brother, Alexander, finished his last university exam and went out with some mates on the town. Later that night he wandered to the Story Bridge. He put his phone, wallet, T-shirt and thongs on the walkway, climbed over the railing, and jumped thirty metres into the Brisbane River below. Three days passed before police divers pulled his body out of the water. When Alexander had drowned, his blood-alcohol reading was almost five times the legal limit for driving. Why do some of us drink so much, and what happens when we do? Fewer young Australians are drinking heavily, but the rates of alcohol abuse and associated problems—from blackouts to sexual assaults and one-punch killings—are undiminished. Intimate and beautifully told, Wasted illuminates the sorrows, and the joys, of drinking. Elspeth Muir is a Brisbane author whose writing has appeared in the Lifted Brow, The Best of the Lifted Brow: Volume One, Griffith Review, Voiceworks and Bumf. She is a postgraduate student at the University of Queensland. ‘Deeply personal and unflinchingly honest, Muir’s debut book is among the best long-form explorations of how and why some Australians drink alcohol to excess...It is a striking work and among the strongest debut books I have read.’ Australian ‘Intricately crafted...An intimate portrait of a grieving family and a nation unable to reconcile itself to the harmful effects of its drinking culture...Reminiscent of writers such as Chloe Hooper and Helen Garner...This book will help you think critically and compassionately about those who seek solace in alcohol.’ Books + Publishing ‘Wasted barrels headfirst into the alcohol-soaked heart of Australia to report on our fraught love affair with drinking.’ Liam Pieper ‘There is no lapse in urgency in Wasted; this conversation is a crucial one to have. Five stars.’ Good Reading ‘The prose style of this unheralded writer...is so achingly beautiful and assured, Helen Garner might be pleased to hand her the keys to the creative nonfiction kingdom and ride off into the Carlton sunset.’ Saturday Paper ‘[Muir] gifts readers gorgeously evocative passages which convey a depth of emotion...Wasted is a haunting read.’ Readings ‘Elspeth writes beautifully and honestly, documenting the shocking loss...in such heartbreaking circumstances.’ Mamamia ‘[Muir] concludes of her brother’s death, “What a waste of a life that was.” Yet by determinedly documenting the drinking culture that coddled him, she has opened vital new lines of enquiry into our duty of care towards drinkers. It’s a tragedy, but now, not entirely a waste.’ Lifted Brow ‘Interweaving brilliant reportage with memoir, Wasted delves into Australia’s complicated relationship with alcohol...Timely and eye-opening.’ Canberra Weekly ‘The strongest new Australian voice I’ve come across this year.’ Readings, Our Favourite Books of 2016 (so far) ‘Wasted is a book that every New Zealander and Australian needs to read...If I had my way, I’d give this to everyone in their last year of high school, and their parents too.’ Booksellers New Zealand ‘Elspeth Muir’s memoir begins after her younger brother’s night of heavy drinking culminates with him jumping from a bridge and drowning in the Brisbane River. Her handling of the subject is, by turn, heartbreaking, evocative and, in parts, refreshingly weird, and her assured voice makes this a sobering read.’ Best Non-Fiction Books of 2016, Readings ’This devastating personal story of loss and grief is also an unflinching examination of the damaging drinking habits of young Australians, and of a society that not only permits, but encourages them.’ Junkee

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225

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Text Publishing

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ISBN 10

1925095134

ISBN 13

9781925095135

Wasted

A Story of Alcohol, Grief and a Death in Brisbane

By: Elspeth Muir

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Wasted

A Story of Alcohol, Grief and a Death in Brisbane

By: Elspeth Muir

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225

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Text Publishing

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ISBN 10

1925095134

ISBN 13

9781925095135

The Dorothy Dunnett Companion

Volume II

By: Elspeth Morrison

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The Dorothy Dunnett Companion

Volume II

By: Elspeth Morrison

Dorothy Dunnett has earned worldwide acclaim for the masterful blending of historical fact and imagination in her two series of novels set in brilliantly reconstructed fifteenth- and sixteenth-century landscapes. The Dorothy Dunnett Companion II is an encyclopedic resource that completes and expands the reach of the first Companion in documenting the historical and literary riches of Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles and House of Niccolo novels. In this second guide, Elspeth Morrison not only covers the final three Niccolo novels for the first time, but also provides a wealth of additional information about all of the earlier novels and highlights the links between the two now-completed series. Once again, she illuminates the real figures and events and the cultural and literary allusions Dunnett weaves into her works, translating foreign phrases and offering up fascinating background details, from the history of golf and the argot of galley slaves to the uses of puffins and polar bears. Together with the first Companion, The Dorothy Dunnett Companion II provides a complete and essential guide to the world of Lymond and Niccolo.

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Page Count

431

Publisher

Vintage

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307428443

ISBN 13

9780307428448

Journeys in Time

A New Atlas of American History

By: Elspeth Leacock,Susan Washburn Buckley

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Journeys in Time

A New Atlas of American History

By: Elspeth Leacock,Susan Washburn Buckley

Americans have always been a people on the move. Journeys in Time maps twenty journeys that have shaped our national past. These are stories of change -- of pilgrims and pioneers, soldiers and children, explorers and adventurers building new lives and finding new worlds. From a cabin boy who sailed with Columbus to a Union soldier and a young migrant farm worker, these journeys changed the lives of those who took them.

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0618311149

ISBN 13

9780618311149

Abbotsford to Zion

The Story of Scottish Place-Names Around the World

By: Elspeth Wills

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Abbotsford to Zion

The Story of Scottish Place-Names Around the World

By: Elspeth Wills

Over the centuries countless Scots have travelled to every conceivable corner of the globe - some to start a new life, others asentrepreneurs, explorers, missionaries, colonial administrators, soldiers and in a multitude of other contexts. This book takes the reader on a journey from the wastes of Antarctica to the South African Highlands, from Canada's prairies to Australia's vineyards. It visits cities and deserted villages, scales mountain peaks and calls in at far-flung islands. All these places have one thing in common - the fact that they were named by, or after, Scots. The places named and the people they honoured provide a different way of looking at the influence of Scots overseas, whether railroad engineer, pioneer farmer, displaced crofter or multi-millionaire. Abbotsford to Zion also highlights the curious and the accidental - the Gretna Greens and the Xenias. It tells how Scots-born innkeepers and postmen who happened to be in the right place at the right time gained immortality. It looks at why developers used Scotland's image to sell real estate and how homesick emigrants recalled the land they had left. From Abbotsford to Zion, each place has its unique storyand identity.

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Page Count

269

Publisher

Birlinn Ltd

Published Date

ISBN 10

1780274467

ISBN 13

9781780274461

Speech, Print and Decorum in Britain, 1600--1750

Studies in Social Rank and Communication

By: Elspeth Jajdelska

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Speech, Print and Decorum in Britain, 1600--1750

Studies in Social Rank and Communication

By: Elspeth Jajdelska

Filling an important gap in the history of print and reading, Elspeth Jajdelska offers a new account of the changing relationship between speech, rank and writing from 1600 to 1750. Jajdelska draws on anthropological findings to shed light on the different ways that speech was understood to relate to writing across the period, bringing together status and speech, literary and verbal decorum, readership, the material text and performance. Jajdelska's ambitious array of sources includes letters, diaries, paratexts and genres from cookery books to philosophical discourses. She looks at authors ranging from John Donne to Jonathan Swift, alongside the writings of anonymous merchants, apothecaries and romance authors. Jajdelska argues that Renaissance readers were likely to approach written and printed documents less as utterances in their own right and more as representations of past speech or as scripts for future speech. In the latter part of the seventeenth century, however, some readers were treating books as proxies for the author's speech, rather than as representations of it. These adjustments in the way speech and print were understood had implications for changes in decorum as the inhibitions placed on lower-ranking authors in the Renaissance gave way to increasingly open social networks at the start of the eighteenth century. As a result, authors from the lower ranks could now publish on topics formerly reserved for the more privileged. While this apparently egalitarian development did not result in imagined communities that transcended class, readers of all ranks did encounter new models of reading and writing and were empowered to engage legitimately in the gentlemanly criticism that had once been the reserve of the cultural elites. Shortlisted for the European Society for the Study of English (ESSE) book prize 2018

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Page Count

263

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1317051343

ISBN 13

9781317051343

Authority, Authorship and Aristocratic Identity in Seventeenth-Century England

William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, and his Political, Social and Cultural Connections

By: Peter Edwards,Elspeth Graham

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Authority, Authorship and Aristocratic Identity in Seventeenth-Century England

William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, and his Political, Social and Cultural Connections

By: Peter Edwards,Elspeth Graham

The lives of William Cavendish, first duke of Newcastle, and his family including, centrally, his second wife, Margaret Cavendish, are intimately bound up with the overarching story of seventeenth-century England: the violently negotiated changes in structures of power that constituted the Civil Wars, and the ensuing Commonwealth and Restoration of the monarchy. William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, and his Political, Social and Cultural Connections: Authority, Authorship and Aristocratic Identity in Seventeenth Century England brings together a series of interrelated essays that present William Cavendish, his family, household and connections as an aristocratic, royalist case study, relating the intellectual and political underpinnings and implications of their beliefs, actions and writings to wider cultural currents in England and mainland Europe.

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Page Count

384

Publisher

BRILL

Published Date

ISBN 10

9004326219

ISBN 13

9789004326217

Out In The Midday Sun

By: Elspeth Huxley

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Out In The Midday Sun

By: Elspeth Huxley

Elspeth Huxley captivated readers throughout the world with her 'memories of an African childhood' in THE FLAME TREES OF THIKA and THE MOTTLED LIZARD. In this final volume of her trilogy she tells the story of her adult life in Africa, in which the vigorously evoked personalities - from the pioneer Lord Delamere and Baroness Blixen to Jomo Kenyatta - blend with her supurb description of the social, cultural and political upheavals of the time. 'An accomplished story-teller, she weaves anecdotes, character sketches, political history together without losing her thread or the readers momentum. ' SUNDAY TIMES 'She evokes it all lovingly but astringently, especially the glittering, often scandelous life of the young aristocrats who lived in Happy Valley. ' DAILY EXPRESS

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Page Count

341

Publisher

Random House

Published Date

ISBN 10

1446475816

ISBN 13

9781446475812

Tweed Dales

Journeys and Evocations

By: Donald Smith,Elspeth Turner

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Tweed Dales

Journeys and Evocations

By: Donald Smith,Elspeth Turner

An exploration of the Scottish Borders, Tweed Dales covers six journeys spanning from the Eildon Hills to Tweeddale, Kelso to Gala Water, Ettrick to Teviotdale. The long history of the Borders and their unique culture is evoked through key personalities, events, stories and folklore. Both accomplished storytellers, Donald and Elspeth spin the magic of the stories of Borders history with passion and vitality.

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244

Publisher

Luath Press Ltd

Published Date

ISBN 10

1912387182

ISBN 13

9781912387182

Glen Clova Through the Ages

A Short Guide to the History of an Angus Glen

By: Flora Davidson,Elspeth Reid

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Glen Clova Through the Ages

A Short Guide to the History of an Angus Glen

By: Flora Davidson,Elspeth Reid

In this book excerpts from original records bring the people vividly to life as they react to war and famine and enjoy traditional tales and gala-days. When handworkers could no longer compete with mass production and tenant and cottar were ousted by land reorganisation they emigrated. Their descendants will recognise named ancestors in this intimately researched book.

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Page Count

164

Published Date

ISBN 10

0900019506

ISBN 13

9780900019500

Book's by Elspeth Muir

Wasted

Wasted

Wasted

Wasted

The Dorothy Dunnett Companion

The Dorothy Dunnett Companion

Journeys in Time

Journeys in Time

Abbotsford to Zion

Abbotsford to Zion

Speech, Print and Decorum in Britain, 1600--1750

Speech, Print and Decorum in Britain, 1600--1750

Authority, Authorship and Aristocratic Identity in Seventeenth-Century England

Authority, Authorship and Aristocratic Identity in Seventeenth-Century England

Out In The Midday Sun

Out In The Midday Sun

Tweed Dales

Tweed Dales

Glen Clova Through the Ages

Glen Clova Through the Ages

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