Alma Books Ltd – The Bell Bookshop

The Prophet

Emma — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Gibran's protagonist, called 'the Prophet', delivers spiritual, yet practical, homilies on a wide variety of topics central to daily life: love, marriage and children; work and play; possessions, beauty, truth, joy and sorrow, death and more.

Kim

Emma — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

“Kimball O’Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier, spends his childhood on the bustling streets of Lahore, begging and running errands in order to survive. One day he meets an old Tibetan lama, and he decides to accompany him on his travels across the Indian Subcontinent. After falling into the hands of his father’s old regiment, however, Kim is separated from the lama and sent away to school. There, his natural flair for espionage is spotted, and he soon finds himself among the majestic peaks of the Himalayas, playing a crucial part in the secret service’s confrontation withRussia known as the “Great Game”.With its peerless evocation of the teeming cities, breathtaking landscapes and diverse cultures of late-nineteenth-century India, Kim is widely considered to be Kipling’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels written in the English language.”

Selected Plays

Emma — Thu, 25 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Between 1892 and 1895, Oscar Wilde’s drawing-room comedies Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest made his name as a playwright who fearlessly mocked the hypocrisy and snobbery of Victorian society and took gleeful delight in appearing to trivialize its most sacred institutions. With its premiere on Valentine’s Day 1895, The Importance of Being Earnest – a hilarious comedy of mistaken identities and coruscating language – was a phenomenal success, but its run was cut short prematurely by Wilde’s court case and subsequent incarceration, and the play was not published until 1899, after Wilde had been released from prison.Also including the powerful Salome, originally written in French and banned by the British censor, this collection displays Wilde at his provocative and witty best, and demonstrates why he was a playwright who delighted audiences and infuriated critics in equal measure.

Room Of Ones Own

Emma — Thu, 21 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Based on lectures given at Cambridge colleges and first published by the Hogarth Press in 1929, A Room of One’s Own is an extended essay about the predicament of female writers and a stirring call for autonomy and recognition. As well as settling scores with reactionary critics and laying the foundations of a history of women’s literature, the text is also a triumph of imagination, with a celebrated passage envisaging the fate of a fictional sister of Shakespeare’s.A seminal, widely studied feminist polemic that touches on both literature and politics, A Room of One’s Own is essential reading for those wishing to understand the progress that has been made in women’s rights and the struggles that still lie ahead.

Castle Of Otranto

Emma — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

When Conrad, son of Prince Manfred of Otranto, is killed in mysterious circumstances on his wedding day, his father, fearing his line is at an end, declares that he will divorce his wife and marry his late son’s intended bride. Soon, however, this planned union brings about a series of supernatural events, tragic misunderstandings and cold-blooded murder. Presented as the translation of a medieval Italian text from the time of the crusades, The Castle of Otranto was the first and most influential novel of the eighteenth-century Gothic revival, and introduced several of what became its most recognizable tropes.

Silver Skates

Emma — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

As their father is sick, Hans Brinker and his younger sister Gretel must work to support their family. Despite this life of poverty, they long to take part in the annual ice-skating races on the frozen canal, where the victors win magnificent silver skates. But how can they hope to enter the races – let alone win – when their skates are wooden and home-made?After meeting the famous surgeon Dr Boekman, and hearing that he might be able to cure their father, Hans doesn’t hesitate in offering to pay for the necessary operation, although he has been saving up all his money to buy two pairs of swift steel skates. As the big day looms, can the children enter their respective races and win the longed-for prize?”They are going to give a splendid prize to the best skater.””Yes,” chimed in half a dozen voices, “a beautiful pair of silver skates – perfectly magnificent – with, oh! such straps and silver bells and buckles!”

Garden Party & Collected Short Stories

Emma — Thu, 28 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

When her wealthy family prepares to host a lavish summer party, the young, hitherto sheltered Laura Sheridan suddenly feels a kinship with the staff and the helpers hired to set up the venue for the festivities. As she learns of the death of one of their working-class neighbours, this burgeoning sense of class consciousness is heightened by a realization of her own mortality.

Published in 1922, at the height of literary modernism, ‘The Garden Party’ is now considered one of the key texts of that movement. This volume, which also includes a wide selection of Katherine Mansfield’s other short stories, is an invaluable resource for anyone wishing to discover one of the early twentieth century’s finest writers.

Poems From The Moor

Emma — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

“Though Earth and moon were gone,And suns and universes ceased to be, And Thou wert left alone,Every Existence would exist in Thee.”From the transcendent beauty of nature observed on the Yorkshire moors to fierce and forceful confrontations of mortality, Emily BrontÃ«’s poems are powerful and passionate works that eloquently elaborate upon her sister Charlotte’s description of her as “”a solitude-loving raven, no gentle dove”.While only twenty-one of Emily BrontÃ«’s poems were published in her lifetime, her poetic oeuvre is rich and varied, and not only includes visionary poems such as ‘No Coward Soul Is Mine’ and ‘Remembrance’, but also features the poems that describe the imagined realm of Gondal and its inhabitants, which she created with her sister Anne.

Three Men In A Boat

Emma — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

What could be better during the golden age of boating on the Thames than a relaxing row up the river? So think J., George and Harris – not forgetting Montmorency the dog – but little do they suspect the mishaps, the scrapes and the japes that lie along the winding way.From becoming impossibly lost in the maze at Hampton Court to battles with tins of pineapple chunks, all the while attempting to limit the destruction wrought by the mischievous Montmorency, Jerome K. Jerome’s classic novel of humorous misadventures and comedic authorial digressions is a paean to the banalities of everyday life and has entertained readers for more than a century.