Lalla Bond was a wild, untamed vagabond of a man who lived in the mining village of Annesley in Nottinghamshire. He was a stoutly, independent spirit whose lifestyle was total nonconformity. Lallas bizarre lifestyle surprisingly included literature and music. Willie Pearson, a child of eight or so was almost a miniature edition of Lalla, a younger scarecrow. Based on segments of his own life from childhood until young manhood, our author Wilfrid A. Pearce (a.k.a. Stu Stevens) shares this story in his heart-warming memoir, Lalla. Pearce relates how Lalla became a father figure to young Willie, and despite the age difference, they developed a lasting friendship. Lalla proved to be the most influential educational benefactor in Willies rearing. An education instilled through word and mirrored deed; showing the importance of setting goals for himself as a man. After evaluating and using those goals in developing a tailored lifestyle, Willie would find a productive lifestyle suitable to feeding and fulfilling the needs of his own heart and spirit. A true rendering of two lives seemingly cut from the same mold, Lalla narrates how, with Lallas guidance and influence, Willie found ways to make changes to the impositions life had forced on him. Lalla tells a story filled with both joy and the sadness as these two conflicting independent spirits meet and form a life-long father-son-like bond of love and friendship of the greatest respect.

The poems of the fourteenth-century Kashmiri mystic Lal Ded, popularly known as Lalla, strike us like brief and blinding bursts of light. Emotionally rich yet philosophically precise, sumptuously enigmatic yet crisply structured, these poems are as sensuously evocative as they are charged with an ecstatic devotion. Stripping away a century of Victorian-inflected translations and paraphrases, and restoring the jagged, colloquial power of Lalla’s voice, in Ranjit Hoskote’s new translation these poems are glorious manifestos of illumination.

John Chatters, a poor farm labourer, travels to London to seek a better life. His daughter, Kate, finds fame as a music hall entertainer, abandoning her father to the workhouse. Her daughter, Lily Knight, marries Jack Selbini and they form the Selbini Troupe of cyclists who go on to achieve worldwide success. Their daughter, Lalla Selbini, also enters show business and she becomes even more famous. She receives notoriety as a risqué vaudeville performer and she later becomes a magician, taking over the company from The Great Lafayette. In addition to Kate, Jack and Lily Selbini, and Lalla, details are also given of the lives of Kate's other children and of the lives of Jack and Lily Selbini's other children. The book also covers the lives of other artistes who have been involved with the family. It gives partial biographies of Frank and Annie Chatters, Henry Flowerday, Frank Elton (Lorenzi), Archie Royer, Willy Pantzer, the Great Lafayette, Bert Nagle, and William Prati (Selbini).

Reprint of the original, first published in 1871. The publishing house Anatiposi publishes historical books as reprints. Due to their age, these books may have missing pages or inferior quality. Our aim is to preserve these books and make them available to the public so that they do not get lost.