A beautifully illustrated art history and cultural biography, The Street of Wonderful Possibilities focuses on one of the most influential artistic quarters in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – London’s Tite Street, where a staggering amount of talent thrived, including James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Oscar Wilde and John Singer Sargent. For Wilde, the street was full of ‘wonderful possibilities’, while for Whistler it was ‘the birthplace of art’, where a new brand of aestheticism was nurtured in his controversial White House. Modern masterpieces in art and literature flowed from the studios and houses of Tite Street, but this bohemian enclave had a dark side as well. Here Whistler was bankrupted, Frank Miles was sent to an asylum, Wilde was imprisoned, and Peter Warlock was gassed to death. Throughout its turbulent existence, Tite Street mirrored the world around it. From the Aesthetic movement and its challenge to Victorian values, through the Edwardian struggle for women’s suffrage, to the bombs of the Blitz in the 1940s, it remained home to innumerable artists and writers, socialites and suffragettes, musicians and madmen. The Street of Wonderful Possibilities reveals this complex history, tying together private and professional lives to form a colourful tapestry of art and intrigue, illuminating their relationships to each other, to Tite Street and to a rapidly modernising London at the fin de siècle.

A beautifully illustrated art history and cultural biography, The Street of Wonderful Possibilities focuses on one of the most influential artistic quarters in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - London's Tite Street, where a staggering amount of talent thrived between the 1870s and 1930s, including James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Oscar Wilde and John Singer Sargent. It provides a new, fresh perspective on legendary figures in British art and literature and explores the relationship between these artists and their living environment. Today Tite Street is a narrow, quiet thoroughfare tucked away in a cosy corner of London. With the exception of a few blue plaques upon its walls, there is little indication of the rich and vibrant history of a street that once stood at the heart of the London art world. In this thriving artistic quarter, artists and writers created a bohemian enclave that would challenge Victorian values in art and literature. For Oscar Wilde, Tite Street was full of 'wonderful possibilities', while for Whistler it was 'the birthplace of art' where the nascent Aesthetic Movement was nurtured in his highly controversial White House. From the studios and houses of Tite Street issued modern masterpieces in art such as Whistler's Harmony in Pink and Greyand Sargent's Lady Agnew, and in literature with Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.But Tite Street had a dark side as well. Here Whistler was bankrupted, Frank Miles was sent to an asylum, Wilde was imprisoned, and Peter Warlock was gassed to death. Throughout its turbulent existence, Tite Street mirrored the world around it. From the Aesthetic Movement to the Edwardian suffragettes, through the bombs of the Blitz in the 1940s to the bombs of the IRA in the 1970s, Tite Street remained a home to innumerable artists and writers, socialites and suffragettes, musicians and madmen. Countless biographies have explored the major figures in Tite Street individually, but never in the context of their living and working environment. The Street of Wonderful Possibilitiesunfolds this complex history, tying together the private and professional lives of Tite Street's artists, writers and bohemians to form a colourful tapestry of art and intrigue, illuminating their relationships to each other, to Tite Street and to a rapidly modernising London at the fin de siecle.

How local, specific, and personal understandings about belonging, ownership, and agency intersect with law to shape the city. In Owning the Street, Amelia Thorpe examines everyday experiences of and feelings about property and belonging in contemporary cities. She grounds her account in an empirical study of PARK(ing) Day, an annual event that reclaims street space from cars. A popular and highly recognizable example of DIY Urbanism, PARK(ing) Day has attracted considerable media attention, but has not yet been the subject of close scholarly examination. Focusing on the event's trajectories in San Francisco, Sydney, and Montreal, Thorpe addresses this gap, making use of extensive interview data, field work, and careful reflection to explore these tiny, temporary, and often transformative interventions. PARK(ing) Day is based on a creative interpretation of the property producible by paying a parking meter. Paying a meter, the event’s organizers explained, amounts to taking out a lease on the space; while most “lessees” use that property to store a car, the space could be put to other uses—engaging politics (a free health clinic for migrant workers, a same sex wedding, a protest against fossil fuels) and play (a dance floor, giant Jenga, a pocket park). Through this novel rereading of everyday regulation, PARK(ing) Day provides an example of the connection between belief and action—a connection at the heart of Thorpe’s argument. Thorpe examines ways in which local, personal, and materially grounded understandings about belonging, ownership, and agency intersect with law to shape the city. Her analysis offers insights into the ways in which citizens can shape the governance of urban space, particularly in contested environments. The book's foreword is by Davina Cooper, Research Professor in Law at King’s College London.

Fred and Helen Martini longed for a baby, and they ended up with dozens of lion and tiger cubs! Snuggle up to this purr-fect read aloud about the Bronx Zoo's first female zoo-keeper. When Bronx Zoo-keeper Fred brought home a lion cub, Helen Martini instantly embraced it. The cub's mother lost the instinct to care for him. "Just do for him what you would do with a human baby," Fred suggested...and she did. Helen named him MacArthur, and fed him milk from a bottle and cooed him to sleep in a crib. Soon enough, MacArthur was not the only cub bathed in the tub! The couple continues to raise lion and tiger cubs as their own, until they are old enough to return them to zoos. Helen becomes the first female zookeeper at the Bronx zoo, the keeper of the nursery. This is a terrific non-fiction book to read aloud while snuggling up with your cubs! Filled with adorable baby cats, this is a story about love, dedication, and a new kind of family. Gorgeously patterned illustrations by Julie Downing detail the in-home nursery and a warm pallet creates a cozy pairing with Candace Fleming's lovely language. Backmatter includes a short biography of Helen Martini and a selected bibliography. A Junior Library Guild Selection A Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year Named to the Texas Topaz Reading List

From the gothic fantasies of Walpole’s Otranto to post-modern takes on the country house by Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan, Phyllis Richardson guides us on a tour through buildings real and imagined to examine how authors’ personal experiences helped to shape the homes that have become icons of English literature. We encounter Jane Austen drinking ‘too much wine’ in the lavish ballroom of a Hampshire manor, discover how Virginia Woolf’s love of Talland House at St Ives is palpable in To the Lighthouse, and find Evelyn Waugh remembering Madresfield Court as he plots Charles Ryder’s return to Brideshead. Drawing on historical sources, biographies, letters, diaries and the novels themselves, House of Fiction opens the doors to these celebrated houses, while offering candid glimpses of the writers who brought them to life.

'If our love is a sin, then heaven must be full of such tender and selfless sinning as ours.' The Well of Loneliness is among the most famous banned books in history. A pioneering work of literature, Radclyffe Hall's novel charts the development of a 'female sexual invert', Stephen Gordon, who from childhood feels an innate sense of masculinity and desire for women. After relocating from Malvern to London and then to Paris, Stephen encounters fellow queer characters from all walks of life, from the sapphic salon hostess Valérie Seymour to the 'miserable army' of outcasts that frequents the 'merciless, drug-dealing, death-dealing' bars of Montmartre. Although Stephen and her acquaintances, allies, and antagonists are of their time, Hall's novel has offered support and solidarity to generations of LGBTQ+ readers, and it continues to shape debates about gender and sexuality today. This edition highlights previously overlooked points of influence, inspiration, and connections with other texts as well as situating the novel in historical contexts. In addition, the editors provide vital insights into Hall's engagement with religion, sexology, literary history, and popular culture.

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection “[Lucey] delivers the goods, disclosing the unhappy or colorful lives that Sargent sometimes hinted at but didn’t spell out.”—Boston Globe In this seductive, multilayered biography, based on original letters and diaries, Donna M. Lucey illuminates four extraordinary women painted by the iconic high-society portraitist John Singer Sargent. With uncanny intuition, Sargent hinted at the mysteries and passions that unfolded in his subjects’ lives. These women inhabited a rarefied world of wealth and strict conventions—yet all of them did something unexpected, something shocking, to upend society’s rules.