This classic work, originally published in 1932, is now being republished with a new introductory biography. Thomas Burke, born in Clapham, London in 1886, considered himself a true Londoner and the large majority of his writings are on the subject of everyday life in London. We are republishing this classic work with a new biographical introduction.

Some manuscripts have been produced for the personal use of their scribe only; whereas a number of them are valued as autographs, most have been ephemeral and were discarded. Personal manuscripts were not written for a patron, commissioner, or client. They are personal copies, anthologies, florilegia, personal notes, excerpts, drafts and notebooks, as well as family books, accountancy notebooks and many others; these forms often being mixed with one another. This volume introduces a number of such manuscripts in a comparative perspective, from Japan to Europe through the Middle East, with a focus on the Near and Middle East. The main concern is the possibility of identifying typical features of such manuscripts in terms of materials, visual organization and content. In attempting this, both the conditions of production and traces of the manuscripts' use are taken into consideration, with particular attention to their material aspects.

If we want to decolonize the history of art, argues Kristopher Kersey, we must rethink our approach to the historical record. This means dispensing with Eurocentric binaries—divisions between Western and non-Western, modern and premodern—and making a commitment to artworks that challenge the perspectives we build upon them. In Facing Images, the question takes elegant and intriguing form: If the aesthetic hallmarks of “modernity” can be found in twelfth-century art, what does it really mean to be “modern”? Kersey’s answer to this question models a new historiography. Facing Images begins by tracing the turbulent discourse surrounding the emergence of Japanese art history as a modern field. In lieu of examining canonical works from the twelfth century, Kersey foregrounds the elusive and the enigmatic in artworks little known and understudied outside Japan; the manuscripts he selects defy traditional art-historical narratives by exhibiting decidedly modern techniques, including montage, self-reference, reuse, noise, dissonance, and chronological disarray. Kersey weaves these medieval case studies together with insights from a wide range of interdisciplinary scholarship, using a methodology that will prove important for historians: Facing Images produces a history of non-Western art in which diverse and anachronic works are brought responsibly and equitably into dialogue with the present, without being subsumed under Eurocentric formalisms or false universals. A timely intervention in the history of medieval Japanese art, art historiography, and the history of global modernism, Facing Images redefines the relationship of the “premodern” non-West to “modern” art. It will be of particular interest to scholars of medieval Japanese art and of modernism.

The Grapes of Wrath: A Re-Consideration is a collection of essays compiled by Steinbeck bibliographer, Michael J. Meyer, in celebration of the novel's seventieth anniversary. Following the pattern of previous books in the Dialogue series, this study presents analyses by senior Steinbeck scholars and also introduces several new voices. Issues addressed include accusations about the novel's sentimentality, speculations about its status as a work of naturalism, and questions about its experimental structure. In addition, the language and imagery of the novel, its religious overtones, and its reputation as a radical work of art are revisited with fresh insights. Because The Grapes of Wrath holds iconic stature as an American masterpiece, both scholarly and lay readers will welcome this two volume set since it includes many new avenues of approach that will encourage greater insights, deeper understandings, and further explorations of the complexities of Steinbeck’s achievements in this classic work of art.