Literary Collections

Ovid’s sensuous and witty poem brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation—often as a result of love or lust—where men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best-known myths and legends of ancient Greece and Rome, including Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Pygmalion, Perseus and Andromeda, and the fall of Troy. Erudite but light-hearted, dramatic and yet playful, the Metamorphoses has influenced writers and artists throughout the centuries from Shakespeare and Titian to Picasso and Ted Hughes. more...

Price: $12.00

This is an electronic edition of the complete book complemented by author biography. This booktable of contents linked to every chapter and act. ************. Mrs Warren''s Profession is a play written by G. Bernard Shaw in 1893. The story centers on the relationship between Mrs Warren, a prostitute, described by Shaw as "on the whole, a genial and fairly presentable old blackguard of a woman," and her "prudish" daughter, Vivie. Mrs Warren is a middle-aged woman whose Cambridge-educated daughter, Vivie, is horrified to discover that her mother''s fortune was made managing high-class whorehouses. The two strong women make a brief reconciliation when Mrs Warren explains her impoverished youth, which originally led her into prostitution. Vivie forgives her mother until learning that the highly profitable business remains in operation. — Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. . more...

Price: $3.99

On the Decay of the Art of Lying is a short essay by Mark Twain from 1885. In it he deplores that way man's "most faithful friend" is being used and indeed misused, declaring that "the wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others' advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and... more...

Price: $3.95

In The Place of Artists’ Cinema, Maeve Connolly identifies a recurrent concern with site, space and cinema architecture in film and video works by artists, extending from the late 1960s to the present day. Focusing on developments over the past decade, Connolly provides in-depth readings of selected recent works by twenty-four different artists including Carlos Amorales, Gerard Byrne, Jeremy Deller, Stan Douglas, Tacita Dean, Pierre Huyghe, Aernout Mik, Tobias Putrih and Anne Tallentire, ranging from multi-screen projections to site-specific installations and feature-length films. The book also explores changing structures of exhibition and curation, tracing the circulation of film and video works within public art contexts, galleries, museums, biennial exhibitions and art fairs. Providing a chapter on the role of public funding in the market for artists’ film and video,The Place of Artists’ Cinema will appeal to both curators and artists. more...

Price: $20.00

The Age of Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, also called the Age of Reason, was so named for an exultant intellectual movement that shook the foundations of Western civilization. In championing radical ideas such as individual liberty and an empirical appraisal of the universe through rational inquiry and natural experience, Enlightenment philosophers in Europe and America planted the seeds for modern liberalism, cultural humanism, science and technology, and laissez-faire capitalism. This volume brings together the era's classic works, with more than a hundred selections from a broad range of sources—including works by Kant, Diderot, Voltaire, Newton, Rousseau, Locke, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and Paine—that demonstrate the pervasive impact of Enlightenment views on philosophy and epistemology as well as on political, social, and economic institutions. Included are seminal discourses on science and religion, on the social contract, on the equality (and inequality) of the sexes and the races, and on economics and markets, as well as homages to nature and sexual pleasure, and poetry and opera librettos that embody the movement's social ideals. more...

Price: $18.00