They are sometimes called storksbills and originated in South Africa. They may be star-shaped or funnel-shaped, and they range in color from white, pink, and orange-red to fuchsia and deep purple. The geranium and its many species, much loved and also much loathed, have developed since the seventeenth century into one of the most popular garden plants. In this book, Kasia Boddy tells the story of geranium’s seemingly inexorable rise, unearthing the role it has played in everything from plant-hunting and commercial cultivation to alternative medicine, the philanthropic imagination, and changing styles in horticultural fashion. Boddy shows how geraniums became the latest fad for wealthy collectors and enterprising nurserymen after they were first collected by Dutch plant-hunters on the sandy flats near present-day Cape Town. She explains that the flower would not be rare for long—scarlet hybrids were soon found on every cottage windowsill and in every park bedding display, and the backlash against the innocent plant followed quickly on the heels of its ubiquity. Today, geraniums can be found throughout the world, grown as annuals in the regions too cold for them to regenerate. In addition to exploring the history of geraniums, Boddy reveals the plant’s other uses, including how they are cultivated and distilled for their scents of citrus, mint, pine, rose, and various spices to use in perfumes. With their edible leaves, they are also used to flavor desserts, cakes, jellies, and teas, and some people believe that certain species provide an effective treatment for a cough. Featuring over one hundred illustrations, Geranium shows how the plant is portrayed in painting, literature, film, and popular culture, and provides an intriguing example of the global industrialization of plant production.
The last 50 years have proved a particularly lively period in the history of the short story form. This new collection gives a full picture of the richness and diversity of this most American of genres from its very beginnings to the present day. The collection offers a freshly stimulating combination of old favourites such as Mark Twain's 'Jim Smiley's Jumping Frog' and Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart', unfamiliar works by well-known authors, such as Ernest Hemingway's 'Out of Season', Stephen Crane's 'An Episode of War' and F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Lost Decade' , and some remarkable stories by wonderful but less well known writers such as Mary Wilkins Freeman and Charles W. Chestnutt who deserve a wider audience. It's a compact book but it covers a lot of ground. There are 31 stories, covering 199 years (that is, the first story was published in 1807; the last is from 2006). The final three authors are Lorrie Moore, Jhumpa Lahiri and Lydia Davis. Table of contents Washington Irving - The Little Man in Black (1807) Nathaniel Hawthorne - Young Goodman Brown (1835) Edgar Allan Poe - The Tell-Tale Heart (1843) Fanny Fern - Aunt Hetty on Matrimony (1851) Mark Twain - Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog (1865) Joel Chandler Harris - The Tar Baby Story (1880) Mary Wilkins Freeman - Two Friends (1887) Charles W. Chesnutt - The Wife of his Youth (1898) Henry James - The Real Right Thing (1899) Stephen Crane - An Episode of War (1899) O. Henry - Hearts and Hands (1903) Sherwood Anderson - The Untold Lie (1917) Ernest HemingwayOut of Season (1923) Edith Wharton - Atrophy (1927) Dorothy Parker - New York to Detroit (1928) Eudora Welty - The Whistle (1938) William Faulkner - Barn Burning (1939) F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Lost Decade (1939) Zora Neale Hurston - Now You Cookin' with Gas (1942) Bernard Malamud - The First Seven Years (1950) Flannery O'Connor - A Late Encounter with the Enemy (1953) John Updike - Sunday Teasing (1956) John Cheever - Reunion (1962) Grace Paley - Wants (1971) Alice Walker - The Flowers (1973) Donald Barthelme - I Bought a Little City (1974) Raymond Carver - Collectors (1975) Richard Ford - Communist (1985) Lorrie Moore - Starving Again (1990) Jhumpa Lahiri - The Third and Final Continent (1999) Lydia Davis - The Caterpillar (2006)
The American Short Story since 1950 offers a reappraisal and contextualisation of a critically underrated genre during a particularly rich period in its history. It offers new readings of important stories by key writers including Flannery O'Connor, John Cheever, Donald Barthelme, Raymond Carver, Lorrie Moore and Grace Paley. These readings are related throughout to the various contexts in which stories are written and published, including creative writing schools, story-writing handbooks, mass market and 'little' magazines.
Throughout history, potters, sculptors, painters, poets, novelists, cartoonists, song-writers, photographers, and filmmakers have recorded and tried to make sense of boxing. From Daniel Mendoza to Mike Tyson, boxers have embodied and enacted our anxieties about race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. In her encyclopedic investigation of the shifting social, political, and cultural resonances of this most visceral of sports, Kasia Boddy throws new light on an elemental struggle for dominance whose weapons are nothing more than fists. Looking afresh at everything from neoclassical sculpture to hip-hop lyrics, Boddy explores the ways in which the history of boxing has intersected with the history of mass media. Boddy pulls no punches, looking to the work of such diverse figures as Henry Fielding and Spike Lee, Charlie Chaplin and Philip Roth, James Joyce and Mae West, Bertolt Brecht and Charles Dickens in an all-encompassing study that tells us just how and why boxing has mattered so much to so many.
An evocative and richly illustrated exploration of flowers and how, over the centuries, they have given us so much sustenance, meaning, and pleasureThe bright yellow of a marigold and the cheerful red of a geranium, the evocative fragrance of a lotus or a saffron-infused paella—there is no end of reasons to love flowers. Ranging through the centuries and across the globe, Kasia Boddy looks at the wealth of floral associations that has been passed down in perfumes, poems, and paintings; in the design of buildings, clothes, and jewelry; in songs, TV shows, and children’s names; and in nearly every religious, social, and political ritual.Exploring the first daffodils of spring and the last chrysanthemums of autumn, this is also a book about seasons. In vibrant detail and drawing on a rich array of illustrations, Boddy considers how the sunflower, poppy, rose, lily—and many others—have given rise to meaning, value, and inspiration throughout history, and why they are integral to so many different cultures.
An unusual, witty anthology of love stories selected by Ali Smith, Kasia Boddy and Sarah Wood. Love means never having to say you're sorry. No, love is in the air. No, love is the sweetest thing. No, it's soft as an easy chair. No, it's a stranger in an open car. No, it's a many-splendoured thing. No, it's the drug. No, it's like a butterfly. Oh, let's call the whole thing off. Love stories don't always involve hearts and flowers and walks in the park. This sparkling collection of the world's greatest love quarrels, from Chekhov to Colette, from D. H. Lawrence to Jhumpa Lahiri, features love stories for every mood and occasion. Here are new lovers testing the ground, cosy couples enjoying a quiet squabble before bedtime, and exes intent on picking up where they left off. Often love quarrels start with trivial matters, such as a bride's new hat in Dorothy Parker's 'Here We Are' or a choice of bedtime book in Jackie Kay's 'You Go When You Can No Longer Stay'. But it doesn't usually take long for the stakes to be raised. Love is a risky business ... ALI SMITH was born in Inverness in 1962 and lives in Cambridge. She is the author of Like (1997); Other Stories And Other Stories (1999); Hotel World (2001), which was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize; The Whole Stories and Other Stories (2003) and The Accidental, published by Hamish Hamilton in 2005. Ali Smith also writes for the Guardian, the Scotsman and the TLS. KASIA BODDY is a senior lecturer in English at UCL. She is the author of Boxing: A Cultural History (2008) and co-editor (with Ali Smith & Sarah Wood) of Brilliant Careers: The Virago Book of Twentieth-Century Fiction (2000); she has contributed an introduction to the Penguin Modern Classics edition of Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. SARAH WOOD is an artist, filmmaker and film curator.
Boxing is one of the oldest and most exciting of sports: its bruising and bloody confrontations have permeated Western culture since 3000 BC. During that period, there has hardly been a time in which young men, and sometimes women, did not raise their gloved or naked fists to one other. Throughout this history, potters, sculptors, painters, poets, novelists, cartoonists, song-writers, photographers and film-makers have been there to record and make sense of it all. In her encyclopaedic investigation, Kasia Boddy sheds new light on an elemental sports and struggle for dominance whose weapons are nothing more than fists. Boddy examines the shifting social, political and cultural resonances of this most visceral of sports, and shows how from Daniel Mendoza to Mike Tyson, boxers have embodied and enacted our anxieties about race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. Looking afresh at everything from neoclassical sculpture to hip-hop lyrics, Boxing explores the way in which the history of boxing has intersected with the history of mass media, from cinema to radio to pay-per-view. The book also offers an intriguing new perspective on the work of such diverse figures as Henry Fielding, Spike Lee, Charlie Chaplin, Philip Roth, James Joyce, Mae West, Bertolt Brecht, and Charles Dickens. An all-encompassing study, Boxing ultimately reveals to us just how and why boxing has mattered so much to so many.
This book focuses specifically on short fiction written since 1950, a particularly rich and diverse period in the history of the form. A selective approach has been taken, focusing on the best and most representative work.
They are sometimes called storksbills and originated in South Africa. They may be star-shaped or funnel-shaped, and they range in color from white, pink, and orange-red to fuchsia and deep purple. The geranium and its many species, much loved and also much loathed, have developed since the seventeenth century into one of the most popular garden plants. In this book, Kasia Boddy tells the story of geranium’s seemingly inexorable rise, unearthing the role it has played in everything from plant-hunting and commercial cultivation to alternative medicine, the philanthropic imagination, and changing styles in horticultural fashion. Boddy shows how geraniums became the latest fad for wealthy collectors and enterprising nurserymen after they were first collected by Dutch plant-hunters on the sandy flats near present-day Cape Town. She explains that the flower would not be rare for long—scarlet hybrids were soon found on every cottage windowsill and in every park bedding display, and the backlash against the innocent plant followed quickly on the heels of its ubiquity. Today, geraniums can be found throughout the world, grown as annuals in the regions too cold for them to regenerate. In addition to exploring the history of geraniums, Boddy reveals the plant’s other uses, including how they are cultivated and distilled for their scents of citrus, mint, pine, rose, and various spices to use in perfumes. With their edible leaves, they are also used to flavor desserts, cakes, jellies, and teas, and some people believe that certain species provide an effective treatment for a cough. Featuring over one hundred illustrations, Geranium shows how the plant is portrayed in painting, literature, film, and popular culture, and provides an intriguing example of the global industrialization of plant production.
An evocative and richly illustrated exploration of flowers and how, over the centuries, they have given us so much sustenance, meaning, and pleasureThe bright yellow of a marigold and the cheerful red of a geranium, the evocative fragrance of a lotus or a saffron-infused paella—there is no end of reasons to love flowers. Ranging through the centuries and across the globe, Kasia Boddy looks at the wealth of floral associations that has been passed down in perfumes, poems, and paintings; in the design of buildings, clothes, and jewelry; in songs, TV shows, and children’s names; and in nearly every religious, social, and political ritual.Exploring the first daffodils of spring and the last chrysanthemums of autumn, this is also a book about seasons. In vibrant detail and drawing on a rich array of illustrations, Boddy considers how the sunflower, poppy, rose, lily—and many others—have given rise to meaning, value, and inspiration throughout history, and why they are integral to so many different cultures.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.