"Mountaineering is the first real literature of the Sierra, and, as a book of familiar travels in unfamiliar places in America, it brooks no equal." Pacific Historian

Clarence King was an internationally renowned explorer, famous for exposing a great diamond hoax.

He was a great pioneer and highly regarded in his time.

This tale from his younger years gives some insight into the mind of this controversial figure in American history.

In his own words, hear how this troubled man and his team mapped the treacherous Sierra mountains.

Rather than a dry account of pure events, the text is imbibed with a sense of wonder and adventure.

The writing is beautiful and compelling: over an over, King finds beauty in the worst conditions.

King comes across as likeable and optimistic, which makes the perils and dangers that he undergoes seem all the more important and questions the assumptions we might have about his life.

Ascending and descending mountains, fighting wind and hail and snow, surviving terrifying storms, King was an extraordinary man.

He led a life that was radical and challenging but which has captivated the minds of historians for many years.

In this book is an incredible journey - one of great personal risk but which reveals the richness of the early American landscape.

King was a young man at the time, mapping a young America, but at times he seems to step out of his own time and address the reader, asking us to question our perceptions.

His youthful optimism is contagious and his work helps us to make more sense of the life of Clarence King.

This autobiographical account is an instant classic – beautifully written – that weaves past and present together.

"Scientifically accurate as well as charmingly descriptive of the region." James D. Hart, The Oxford Companion to American Literature

"A fine book . . . [that] will please the mountain climber and allow him to enjoy his precarious pastime within the safe confines of his armchair." New York Times

Clarence King (1842-1901) was an American geologist, mountaineer, and author. He served as the first director of the United States Geological Survey from 1879 to 1881. King was noted for his exploration of the Sierra Nevada.

Albion Press is an imprint of Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

Kimberly Rae Miller is an immaculately put-together woman with a great career, a loving boyfriend, and a beautifully tidy apartment in Brooklyn. You would never guess that behind the closed doors of her family’s idyllic Long Island house hid teetering stacks of aging newspaper, broken computers, and boxes upon boxes of unused junk festering in every room—the product of her father’s painful and unending struggle with hoarding.

In this dazzling memoir, Miller brings to life her experience growing up in a rat-infested home, hiding her father’s shameful secret from friends for years, and the emotional burden that ultimately led to her suicide attempt. In beautiful prose, Miller sheds light on her complicated yet loving relationship with her parents, which has thrived in spite of the odds.

Coming Clean is a story about recognizing where you come from and understanding the relationships that define you. It is also a powerful story of recovery and redemption.

“To those bred under an elaborate social order few such moments of exhilaration can come as that which stands at the threshold of wild travel.”

In 1905 the Ottoman Empire’s rule in its chief province, greater Syria, was drawing precariously towards its close.

Remaining unfazed by hardship or convention, Gertrude Bell, the daughter of an industrialist and land owner, set off on her journey across the region’s interior.

During the months that followed, Bell grew to understand and respect the Arab peoples to a degree that few ever have, travelling further than any western woman before her.

Although in a place with gender roles so clearly defined, Bell was welcomed at the coffee hearth, like a male guest, able to engage with them on the matters that interested her most.

The Desert and the Sown is an account of those people Bell met or that accompanied her, showing what the world in which they lived was like and how it appeared to them, bringing to life the desert landscape and culture for a western world fascinated by the Orient.

Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) was an English writer, traveller, archaeologist, and political officer. In her lifetime she explored Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Persia. A contemporary of T. E. Lawrence, she worked for the Arab Bureau in Cairo during the First World War and became influential in British Imperial policy making, helping establish the Hashemite dynasties. To this day she is still remembered in Iraq.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832) was Germany’s greatest literary figure.

Poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, critic, and amateur artist, Goethe was the central and unsurpassed representative of the Romantic movement.

Goethe’s education was irregular; he went to no school, and his father stimulated rather than instructed him. But the atmosphere in which he was surrounded gave him, perhaps, the best education he could have received.

His home was a cultivated one. From his father he derived the steadfastness of character which enabled him to pursue an independent career of self-culture and devotion to art; from his mother he inherited the flow of language and love of narration, without which he could not have been a poet.

By the age of eight he had a grasp of Greek, Latin, French, and Italian and at sixteen he went to Leipzig University to study law.

Already a successful playwright, at the age of 25 the publication of his novel ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’ brought him world-wide success, and cemented his literary career.

His masterpiece, ‘Faust’, still one of the most famous works of European literature, became a life-long project. Starting work on it at the age of twenty-three, it wasn’t ready for publication until after his death.

Oscar Browning’s classic biography explores Goethe’s fascinating life, using biographical details to analyse his literature. This short biography is the perfect starting point for anybody interested in Goethe’s life and works.

Oscar Browning (1837 –1923) was an English writer, historian, and educational reformer. His greatest achievement was the cofounding, along with Henry Sidgwick, of the Cambridge University Day Training College in 1891. This was one of the earliest institutions in Great Britain to focus on the training of educators, preempted only by the founding of the Cambridge Teaching College for Women by Elizabeth Hughes in 1885.

Albion Press is an imprint of Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

“This first-hand acquaintance with Thoreau and his friends lends an authority to Sanborn's writings, and… he was able to put into print many details of Thoreau's life that would otherwise have been lost.” — Walter Harding, A Thoreau Handbook

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”

This personal biography is a great insight into the life of a great man. Journalist, abolitionist, philosopher, and poet, Henry David Thoreau lived a fascinating life surrounded by great figures, including Ralph Waldo Emerson.

As a lifelong abolitionist, Thoreau delivered many lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave law. His most famous work, Civil Disobedience, has been the basis of many protest movements all around the world, influencing the political manifestos of figures like Leo Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Frank B. Sanborn’s biography is informal and affectionate, coming from a man who knew Thoreau and moved in his circles. It relies not on Thoreau’s reputation, but on the words of his friends, family, and Thoreau’s own personal letters.

This biography is a chance for readers to get an idea of the man behind the myth, perhaps more than any academic biography could. Far from the dry accounts of his life, Sanborn’s Henry David Thoreau is a biography with heart.

Frank B. Sanborn (1831 –1917) was an American journalist, author, and reformer. A memorialist of American transcendentalism, Sanborn wrote early biographies of many of the movement's key figures.

Edgar Allan Poe, author, poet, literary critic and editor, was born in Boston, January 19, 1809. His parents, Elizabeth Arnold and David Poe, were both actors who separated shortly after his birth.

By the age of 2, Edgar was alone and semi-destitute with his siblings Henry and Rosalie – David remained an absent father and Elizabeth died tragically from tuberculosis, alone on a straw bed while her children looked on helplessly.

This uncertainty and instability were patterns that continued throughout Poe’s life, mimicked in his art. Catastrophe, insanity, excess, dereliction and depression would haunt him whilst informing the psychological horror of his wildly popular tales and poems of horror and mystery, including ‘The Fall of the House of the Usher’, ‘The Raven’ and ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’.

Poe heralded a new interpretation of the Gothic form in American fiction and his genius and artistic prowess remain iconic. Yet his extraordinary life has frequently been the subject of conflicting, doubtful and contested information.

Carefully documenting one of the most flawed, troubled and fascinating figures in literary history, a man of letters, philosophy, art and science, Woodberry presents a rare and in-depth account of Poe’s family background.

Including personal correspondence and private notes, this is an elegant and mesmerising biography documenting Poe’s greatest eccentricities, achievements, affairs and sorrows.

George Edward Woodberry (1855-1930) was an American literary critic and poet. Born in Massachusetts, he studied at Harvard University. His other titles include the biographies Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Swinburne.

“This book is more than the story of two French soldiers, although that story is worth telling by reason of the strange inversion of their two careers. For one of them surrendered Metz in 1870 and was sentenced to death, while the other surrendered France in 1940 and was sentenced to become its ruler. The first Marshal was made a scapegoat by his defeated country; and when the second Marshal came to power, the scapegoat was France.”

François Bazaine and Henri Petain are two of France’s most famous generals.

Bazaine joined the Foreign Legion in 1832, a time when standards were reasonably poor. Their expeditions often took them miles away from home, so requests to travel to lands afar from King Louis Phillipe were expected. From the beginning of his career, Bazaine’s dedication, and hard work were noted. His position of Mariscal had not been an easy achievement, he’d risen through the ranks, only for his country to betray him.

Surrendering at Metz, Mariscal Bazaine became a scapegoat when France was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War.

Bazaine was held captive for a while, and on his return, he realised he’d been put forth as a scapegoat.

Immediately, he launched into clearing his name, but was then given a life-sentence, much to the repulsion of Mac-Mahon, who’d served with Bazaine in the Foreign Legion.

Marshal Petain’s life was elusive, only for the sake of preserving his objectivity.

Marshal Petain was raised and educated in his hometown. Hardened by regimental life, Petain joined the 3rd Chasseurs as lieutenant in 1884, a time when Paris was going through its rousing years.

In 1916, Petain’s heroic capabilities were put to the test, and he succeeded. Verdun was under attack from the Germans and Verdun’s defence was placed at the hands of Petain.

It seemed the Germans intended the attack to draw innumerable French forces to the protection of Verdun, thereby weakening its army.

But this was not Petain’s view.

He saw beyond what others were seeing. His reputation was sealed through his success at Verdun.

Through a twist of fate, Petain was sentenced to death for treason on his return to France from Germany; a fate he was pardoned from due to his service.

The Birth of Venus, Primavera, The Adoration of the Magi.

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, commonly known as Sandro Botticelli, created some of the most beautiful pieces of art the world has ever seen.

Born into a period of greatness for Florentine art he flourished under the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici.

Art historian Robert Henry Hobart Cust's concise work uncovers the depth of Botticelli’s work.

Cust provides an overview of Botticelli’s life in the context of Lorenzo de Medici’s patronage, Dante Alighieri’s friendship, Michelangelo’s competition and Girolamo Savonarola’s revolutionary sermons.

But mostly the weight of this study is placed on Botticelli’s art; how his invention demonstrates itself, how his conception of the figure is demonstrated and how he created some of the most interesting paintings of the early Renaissance.

Where possible art referenced in the work have been linked to and are visible as high definition images for anyone with an eReader with web browsing capabilities.

Robert Henry Hobart Cust (1861-1940) was an art historian of the Italian Renaissance and Sienna. After attending Eton, he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge and Magdalen College Oxford he published his first major work on Il Sodoma, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi. In subsequent years, Cust had to fend off reviewers who found - as Cust did himself - Sodoma's subject matter and lifestyle immoral. After writing books on Botticelli and Da Vinci he issued his own translation of an abbreviated version of the life of Benvenuto Cellini, based on a newer edition of the Italian. He served in the RAF during World War I.

Albion Press is an imprint of Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

‘The catastrophe of the fall of Rome, with all that its fall signified to the fifth century, came very near to accomplishment in the third. There was a long period when it seemed as though nothing could save the Empire. Her prestige sank to the vanishing point. Her armies had forgotten what it was to win a victory over a foreign enemy. Her Emperors were worthless and incapable. On every side the frontiers were being pierced and the barriers were giving way...’

Constantine the Great is a fascinating and in depth historical examination of the reorganisation of the Empire after its catastrophic fall, and the subsequent triumph of the Christian Church.

Firth, in a grounded approach to the period, questions whether Constantine really did deserve his epithet ‘the Great’ in real life, leaving it to his readers to make up their own minds.

What he does assert, though, is that under Constantine’s auspices, one of the most momentous upheavals in history took place. Constantine’s conversion to Christianity – the first of any Roman Emperor – caused shockwaves across the Roman world, and it is this that makes this period such an exciting and important area of study.

John B. Firth, a scholar of Queen’s College, Oxford, authored several other titles including Augusts Caesar, studied closely vast and numerous original authorities, all of whom, he jokes, ‘were bitter and malevolent partisans’. With the truth thus so distorted by personal agendas and decayed through the annals of time, Firth made it his priority to meticulously research with an impartial eye in order to produce the most historically accurate account. Constantine the Great is wonderful feat of scholarship, and a must-read for any Roman enthusiast.


Albion Press is an imprint of Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

“He had climbed to power over the dead bodies of those who stood in his path.”

When Julius Cæsar died there were two men who could have succeeded him: Antonius and Augustus.

For a while it seemed as though both could rule together, but when Antonius started his affair with Cleopatra, his hold on the reigns of Rome grew weaker and allowed Augustus to take control.

A complex man, Augustus was in turn both a womaniser and a puritan, a politician and a dictator, a soldier and a peace-maker.

His reign began with bloodshed but it ushered in a new world.

In this book, John B. Firth will introduce you to a man of conviction, of strength, of arrogance and tyranny.

And you will meet Augustus Cæsar, a man whose thirst for power drove him to become the most powerful man on earth.

The man who took Rome from a city to an Empire.

‘In all history there is no more patriotic spirit, none more intrepid, and none more pure.’

One of the most eminent of all British statesmen, William Pitt the Younger was born in 1759, he went up to Cambridge aged thirteen with a love of classical literature. In fact he went on to hold the Parliament seat for the University of Cambridge.

In his early days in Parliament he sparred with historians, statesmen and ministers, gaining a reputation as a debater and politician who could challenge the coalition between Whigs and Tories.

Pitt watched as France was beset by revolution, but his focus was on domestic affairs, as Lord Rosebery writes of ‘the most strenuous peace-minister...He had, indeed, to restore vital warmth and consistence to the shattered fragments of empire.’ To this end, Pitt pursued neutrality and peace, but was nonetheless drawn into war against his will.

Defeating opponents including Fox and Shelburne, Pitt the Younger was Prime Minister of England for eighteen years, during the reign of King George III. He set in place a regent to rule England while George was mad.

Pitt dealt with Ireland throughout his Prime Ministership, attempting to find a solution to the Catholic question in a way many other statesmen would have shirked from handling. He also attended to British tax affairs, oversaw the famous Sinking Fund, and sent expeditions to Australia.

Lord Rosebery includes Pitt’s letters to friends such as Lord Wellesley, which reveal a kind and generous leader who was forced to resign from his position due to the Irish problem and pained relations with the King.

Soon after he was called back to Prime Ministership in a shorter, more difficult tenure, which is briefly recorded here.

Lord Rosebery’s fine biography truly demonstrates that Pitt was ‘the embodiment and watchword of British determination’.

Archibald Primrose, Lord Rosebery (7 May 1847 – 21 May 1929), was a Liberal British Prime Minister for just over a year (1894-5) and wrote biographies of Napoleon and Lord Randolph Churchill. Rosebery is reputed to have said that he had three aims in life: to win the Derby, to marry an heiress, and to become Prime Minister. He managed all three.

Albion Press is an imprint of Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

George Eliot was the nom de plume of Mary Ann Evans (1819-80), a novelist, poet, journalist and translator who was considered one of the leading writers of the Victorian Age.

In her time she was spoken of as a modern Shakespeare, and the enduring legacy of her penultimate novel, ‘Middlemarch’, bears testimony to the assertion.

In 1851 Eliot began the life she would continue on until her death, becoming assistant editor of the Westminster Review: while female writers were not uncommon, female editors were.

After surrendering the editorship and abruptly travelling abroad, her first complete novel, ‘Adam Bede’, was finally published in 1859.

Noted for drawing upon the places and people around her as much as the era and its many facets, Eliot also delved into history, and her works became literary and popular successes.

This biography, written by a friend of Eliot’s, also acts as a criticism, candidly exploring parallels and inspirations in her life so that we might better understand her as a writer.

Oscar Browning (1837-1923) was a historian and educational reformer, writing more than twenty books of British and European history, memories and educational theory over the course of his lifetime and co-founding the Cambridge University Day Training College.

Albion Press is an imprint of Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

On 20 June 1887 Queen Victoria celebrated fifty years on the throne.

Victoria, Queen and Empress was released in the Jubilee year as a record and celebration of Victoria’s reign.

G Holden Pike commemorates the Queen’s life through personal and public events during her years on the throne, with the support of notable sources.

What was the Queen like as a person?

How did she treat her family?

How did she treat the public?

With access to Queen Victoria’s diary, Holden Pike shows us an insight into the Queen and Empress’s life that is rarely touched upon.

Holden Pike covers topics such as the Queen’s education, through to Prince Albert’s death, and finally to the Golden Jubilee, alongside other contextually relevant aspects of the Victorian era.

Victoria, Queen and Empress is a distinguished commemorative memoir with plenty of factual reference.

Godfrey Holden Pike (1836-1910) was the sub-editor of The Sword and The Trowel for twenty years. He contributed numerous articles to the magazine, alongside penning many historical and biographical works such as Oliver Cromwell and His Times, and From Slave to College President.

A New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal Bestseller!

"the glowing ghosts of the radium girls haunt us still."—NPR Books

The incredible true story of the women who fought America's Undark danger

The Curies' newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.

Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these "shining girls" are the luckiest alive — until they begin to fall mysteriously ill.

But the factories that once offered golden opportunities are now ignoring all claims of the gruesome side effects, and the women's cries of corruption. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America's early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers' rights that will echo for centuries to come.

Written with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the "wonder" substance of radium, and their awe-inspiring strength in the face of almost impossible circumstances. Their courage and tenacity led to life-changing regulations, research into nuclear bombing, and ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives...

Charles Dickens is one of England's best-loved authors.

A literary phenomenon in his own time, his is still immensely popular across the globe, nearly 150 years after his death.

Walter Dexter's classic biography of Dickens, first published in 1937 examines Dickens' life as a journalist, a writer, an actor and, perhaps most importantly, as a reader.

Dickens had great presence on the stage, and the readings he organised of passages of his novels were always a sell-out success.

No-one could bring to life Dickens' characters, with all their humour, sympathy, darkness and light, like Dickens could himself.

He became a celebrity, not just for his serialised, and increasingly popular novels, but for his performance art.

Walter Dexter reflects on Dickens' life to illuminate what shaped the man behind the novels, and what influences he drew from to create his infamous characters.

This short biography is essential reading for anyone wanting to learn more about Charles Dickens the man, the author, and the actor.

Walter Dexter (1877-1944) devoted his leisure time to studying Charles Dickens. He became a member of the Dickens Fellowship in 1905 and spent much of his spare time in travelling throughout England seeking to identify towns, villages and other scenes associated with the life and writing of his favourite author. Relinquishing the Honorary Treasurer of the Dickens Fellowship, a post he had held for some years, he became editor of Fellowship's magazine 'The Dickensian' in 1925 and he held the post until his death. He was also the first Honorary Secretary of the Dickens Fellowship Dramatic Society, formed in 1905. He had also been one of the joint editors, along with Arthur Waugh, Sir Hugh Walpole and Thomas Hatton, of the splendid Nonesuch Editions of Dickens' works and had been solely responsible for the monumental undertaking of preparing three volumes of Dickens' letters, the most complete collection ever made to that time, running to almost 2500 pages. After his death a Walter Dexter Memorial Fund was established to ensure that his name would be associated in perpetuity with The Dickens House at Doughty Street, as he was closely associated, with B W Matz, in the concept of securing the House as a centre, a museum, and a library from which to foster the love of the novelist and his works.

Albion Press is an imprint of Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography
A New York Times 2016 Notable Book
National Best Seller
Named one of TIME magazine’s "100 Most Influential People"
An Amazon Top 20 Best Book of 2016
A Washington Post Best Memoir of 2016
A TIME and Entertainment Weekly Best Book of 2016

An illuminating debut memoir of a woman in science; a moving portrait of a longtime friendship; and a stunningly fresh look at plants that will forever change how you see the natural world
 
Acclaimed scientist Hope Jahren has built three laboratories in which she’s studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Her first book is a revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also so much more.

Lab Girl is a book about work, love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahren’s remarkable stories: about her childhood in rural Minnesota with an uncompromising mother and a father who encouraged hours of play in his classroom’s labs; about how she found a sanctuary in science, and learned to perform lab work done “with both the heart and the hands”; and about the inevitable disappointments, but also the triumphs and exhilarating discoveries, of scientific work.

Yet at the core of this book is the story of a relationship Jahren forged with a brilliant, wounded man named Bill, who becomes her lab partner and best friend. Their sometimes rogue adventures in science take them from the Midwest across the United States and back again, over the Atlantic to the ever-light skies of the North Pole and to tropical Hawaii, where she and her lab currently make their home.

Jahren’s probing look at plants, her astonishing tenacity of spirit, and her acute insights on nature enliven every page of this extraordinary book. Lab Girl opens your eyes to the beautiful, sophisticated mechanisms within every leaf, blade of grass, and flower petal. Here is an eloquent demonstration of what can happen when you find the stamina, passion, and sense of sacrifice needed to make a life out of what you truly love, as you discover along the way the person you were meant to be.

“Dickens was my great hero — my “Chief” — in the pleasant bygone days when we were “on the road” together — by day and by night, week after week, month after month, right through the English and American tours”

One of the most famous and best-loved English writers of the nineteenth century, Charles Dickens is the author of such familiar tales as Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, A Christmas Carol, and The Pickwick Papers.

He is less well-known, however, for the several Reading tours he undertook in the years prior to his death, breathing life into his works for his readers from Glasgow to Washington, DC.

Charles Dickens As I Knew Him intimately reveals the Dickens behind the writer, depicting a man devoted to his work and determined to satisfy his audience despite severe and ongoing health problems.

Told from the perspective of his manager, George Dolby, Dickens is shown as a man of many facets, whose seeming serious nature was often interrupted by moments of levity, and whose intense passion in reading his works captivated audiences in multiple countries.

Yet Dolby’s tale is woven through with the overhanging menace of Dickens’s illness and eventual death.

The devotion Dickens poured into his final two Reading tours — in America, and then in England, Scotland, and Ireland — so severely damaged his health that it soon became clear that nothing but giving up the tours would have any hope of restoring his vigour.

But Dickens was determined: for himself, for his audience, and for his publishers, he insisted upon continuing until he was at death’s door.

Dickens’s end is a matter of history, but Dolby’s account of the final years of the writer’s life offers a glimpse into a side of a great man not often seen.

Praise for Charles Dickens As I Knew Him

‘Dolby was Dickens’ sometime manager and this is as intimate, as vivid, as deeply moving (and sometimes as deeply funny) as anything ever written about the great man.’ – Simon Callow, author of Charles Dickens

George Dolby (1831-1900) served as Charles Dickens’s third manager, scouting out and organising the author’s second Reading Tour to America as well as his Farewell Tour throughout England, Ireland, and Scotland. Prior to working with Dickens, Dolby was a Theatre Manager.

"It is not my intention in my prison diary to discuss the constitutional or legal question of arbitrary arrests and imprisonment of non-combatants, but to present to my readers a picture of the daily routine of prison life as I saw it, together with incidents related to me by fellow-prisoners..."

Originally published in 1911, James J. Williamson's Prison Life in the Old Capitol tracks his time served as a prisoner in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington D.C during the time of the American Civil War. Throughout this memoir, Williamson presents a true picture of the daily life and routine observed by those in the prison as William himself saw it. William’s diary of prison life is given added scope through his appended facts concerning the treatment of prisoners of war during the period, claiming that in giving a frank and honest account prejudice and hostile feeling may be overcome and a reunion may be achieved by ‘all those who have the peace and prosperity of the country at heart’. Were these the true intentions of the memoir? Or did Williamson pen the work as a propagandist celebration of the Confederate lives lost and a damnation of the North’s actions following their victory? Read on, and decide for yourself…

James J. Williamson was one of Mosby's Rangers in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War, who was arrested and imprisoned for a stint in Old Capitol prison. His other works include the often studied part-Confederate memoir, part-biography of the 43rd Battalion Virginia Cavalry, Mosby’s Rangers.

Albion Press is an imprint of Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living?

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The New York Times Book Review • People • NPR • The Washington Post • Slate • Harper’s Bazaar • Esquire • Time Out New York • Publishers Weekly • BookPage

Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

Praise for When Breath Becomes Air

“I guarantee that finishing this book and then forgetting about it is simply not an option. . . . Part of this book’s tremendous impact comes from the obvious fact that its author was such a brilliant polymath. And part comes from the way he conveys what happened to him—passionately working and striving, deferring gratification, waiting to live, learning to die—so well.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“An emotional investment well worth making: a moving and thoughtful memoir of family, medicine and literature. It is, despite its grim undertone, accidentally inspiring.”—The Washington Post

“Possesses the gravity and wisdom of an ancient Greek tragedy . . . [Kalanithi] delivers his chronicle in austere, beautiful prose. The book brims with insightful reflections on mortality that are especially poignant coming from a trained physician familiar with what lies ahead.”—The Boston Globe

“Devastating and spectacular . . . [Kalanithi] is so likeable, so relatable, and so humble, that you become immersed in his world and forget where it’s all heading.”—USA Today

“From the forest depths there burst forth the terrible uproar of battle. The deep tones of the cannon marked time to the incessant roll of musketry, which, like the explosion of long strings of fire-crackers, ran along the whole line where the contestants retreated or advanced to the attack…”

Recollections of a Private is a vibrant and exhilarating account of what life was like as an ordinary Union soldier in the Army of the Potomac. Unusually for an account of the Civil War of the mid-1800s, Warren Lee Goss describes with detail life behind-the-scenes in the soldiers’ camps, lending as much detail to these prosaic but intimate scenes as to the violent battle scenes. Grave accounts of skirmishes, campaigns, human losses, injuries are juxtaposed with humorous interjections about the diets of mules – did you know “they eat anything, including canal boats and rubber blankets”? – or snippets of the playful conversations between the young men. These lend this Civil War account an unparalleled sense of honesty. Bursting with vivid, colourful details about life interacting with civilians, both friend and foe, the perils of marching through mud, and the heart-stopping first experiences on the battle-field, Goss’s writing is sure to transport you back in time with his eye-opening, frank-yet-funny recollections.

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