Just in time for Christmas come the latest additions to Melville House’s range, including two more titles in stunning and superb Art of the Novella series, and a new edition of an H. P. Lovecraft’s classic – any (or all!) of which will make perfect stocking fillers for the literature lover in your life.
Two new titles – At The Bay by Katherine Mansfield and Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville – join incredibly illustrious company as part of this AIGA Design Award-winning set of fiction.
The Art of the Novella series is a range of beautifully produced and iconic short novels – including texts from an array of world renowned authors, such as Jane Austen, Anton Chekov, Italo Svevo, Edith Wharton, Leo Tolstoy, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Virginia Woolf – in glorious Pantone-esque colour jackets, published in order to celebrate the “renegade form” of the novella.
Modernist writer Katherine Mansfield’s dreamlike and formally audacious story At The Bay originally published in 1922, takes place on a summer day in the life of one family in Mansfield’s native New Zealand. At just sixty-four pages, the story is non-the-less brimming with reference to classical literature and myth; divided into twelve sections but with no set structure and multiple narrative shifts, it represents some of the boldest modernist prose style by an author who has come to be regarded as highly as her friend Virginia Woolf. This is the first of Mansfield’s large output of stories to be published by Melville House, but hopefully not the last.
The second new title comes from an author who is no stranger to Melville House – none other than Moby Dick author Herman Melville, from whom the publisher takes its name. Billy Budd, Sailor is the third novella published in this series – following Bartleby the Scrivener and Benito Cereno – and was Melville’s final work, found on his desk upon his death in 1891. Since its publication in 1924 it has become one of the author’s best-loved stories due to its openness and frank discussion of homosexuality.
Also published as a standalone title – but one that will no doubt also appeal to fan’s of the Art of the Novella series – is H. P. Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror. Lovecraft is a new author for (and welcome addition to) Melville House’s range of classic fiction. Part of the core Cthulhu Mythos The Dunwich Horror is printed with an especially eye-catching cover:
Lovecraft, the now famous master of weird fiction, was virtually unknown during his own lifetime but is now regarded as one of the most influential authors of the twentieth-century. The Dunwich Horror (which was originally written in 1928 and published in 1929), takes place in the wild hills and grim village of Dunwich and centres around the Whateley family – each more hideously deformed than the next. Lovecraft allegedly based the narrative on several old legends of New England as well as the work of Welsh horror writer Arthur Machen.
Any one of these new titles, each priced at only £8.99, will make a thoughtful and impressive stocking filler for book-loving friends and family.
At the Bay by Katherine Mansfield (9781612195834, 64pp p/b),
Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville (9781612195858, 128pp p/b)
The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft (9781612195810, 80pp p/b),
All published on 8 December by Melville House.
- Posted by Rachel