Few lives of great men offer so much interest
- & so many mysteries
- as the life of Charles Darwin, the greatest figure of

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Charles Darwin: the man who discovered evolution? The man who killed off God? Or a flawed man of his age, part genius, part ruthless careerist who would not acknowledge his debts to other thinkers? In this bold new life
- the first single volume biography in twenty-five years
- A. N. Wilson, the acclaimed author of The Victorians & God`s Funeral, goes in search of the celebrated but contradictory figure Charles Darwin. Darwin was described by his friend & champion, Thomas Huxley, as a `symbol`. But what did he symbolize? In Wilson`s portrait, both sympathetic & critical, Darwin was two men. On the one h&, he was a naturalist of genius, a patient & precise collector & curator who greatly expanded the possibilities of taxonomy & geology. On the other h&, Darwin, a seemingly diffident man who appeared gentle & even lazy, hid a burning ambition to be a universal genius. He longed to have a theory which explained everything. But was Darwin`s 1859 master work, On the Origin of Species, really what it seemed, a work about natural history? Or was it in fact a consolation myth for the Victorian middle classes, reassuring them that the selfishness & indifference to the poor were part of nature`s grand plan? Charles Darwin: Victorian Mythmaker is a radical reappraisal of one of the great Victorians, a book which isn`t afraid to challenge the Darwinian orthodoxy while bringing us closer to the man, his revolutionary idea & the wider Victorian age.

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Charles Darwin was a scientist by profession but an explorer at heart. At age 22, Darwin embarked on his first voyage aboard a ship called the Beagle. This picture book follows Charles as he explores South America for the first time, collecting insects, galloping with Gauchos, digging up dinosaur bones, eating armadillo for breakfast, & making early discoveries related to evolution & natural selection. He encounters a volcano, a glacier & an earthquake & survives a harrowing five-year journey before returning home to Engl&, determined to devote his life to the natural world. Complete with mesmerizing map work charting his voyage, the biography communicates Darwin`s ideas & discoveries with gentle illustrations that capture his admiration for the world around him. ...

Charles Dickens truly was a phenomenon: hardworking journalist, father of ten children, tireless walker & traveller, supporter of liberal social causes, but most of all one of the greatest novelists that ever lived. At the age of twelve he was sent to work in a blacking factory by his affectionate but feckless parents. From these unpromising beginnings, he rose to scale all the social & literary heights, entirely through his own efforts. When he died, the world mourned, & he was buried
- against his wishes
- in Westminster Abbey. Yet the brilliance concealed a divided character: a republican, he disliked America; sentimental about the family in his writings, he took up passionately with a young actress; usually generous, he cut off his impecunious children. Claire Tomalin, author of Whitbread Book of the Year ” Samuel Pepys”, paints an insightful portrait of Dickens, capturing brilliantly the complex character of this great genius. ” Charles Dickens: A Life” is the examination of Dickens we deserve.

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The latest title in the award-winning notebooks series sends the reader to the streets of Charles Dickens` Victorian London. Through extracts from Dickens` letters & correspondence, plus many paper novelties to open, lift & explore, the reader can learn all about the man himself & the inspiration behind both his literary & philanthropic work. Discover the fascinating story of his early life & family, the plight of London`s poor & the fight for social reform, his experiences in America & much more. ...

London in Charles Dickens`s time was a city of great contrast. The affluent & middle classes enjoyed a comfortable existence but for the poor, life was cruel & harsh, the more so for girls & young women. Many characters in Dickens`s classic novels exemplify this: Little Em`ly in David Copperfield is perhaps the best known. Dickens was clearly troubled by what he saw & in autumn 1847 established Urania Cottage in Shepherd`s Bush as a hostel for destitute young women. The residents came from prisons, workhouses, police courts & from the streets of London. They included prostitutes, petty thieves & homeless teenagers. Urania Cottage was financed by the millionairess Angela Burdett Coutts of the banking family & details of the residents, its routines & its dramas are brought to life in the treasure-trove of letters written to her by Dickens. The aims of Urania Cottage were simple
- to rehabilitate the residents & prepare them for a normal life as domestic servants in Britain`s expanding colonies
- Australia chiefly but some went to Canada & South Africa. Charles Dickens & the House of Fallen Women vividly portrays the lot of the poor in mid-nineteenth century London & some of the people who were moved to help. Whatever his motives Charles Dickens was one of them. Jenny Hartley`s meticulous research has revealed the identities of many of the residents of Urania Cottage & how they fared later in life. The book is at once moving & dramatic
- life at the cottage didn`t always run smoothly
- & shows that with help, even the most deprived people can recover.



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Charles Dickens on Travel is a volume which presents a variety of key excerpts & essays written by the great novelist on the virtues & follies of travelling. Dickens’s travels took him to Italy, Switzerl&, Italy, France, America, & up & down the length & breadth of nineteenth century Britain. His writings recall an age when travel meant a far greater investment of emotion & time. Spanning widely varies modes of transport, these writings place emphasis on the experience of the journey itself, on the people encountered & the sights absorbed. ...

This is a celebration of Charles Nicholson, known internationally for his revolutionary yacht designs. He designed all the British-built J-class yachts, four America`s Cup challengers & schooners such as ” Margherita” & ” Creole”. It chronicles the development of Nicholson`s designs from the 1890s to the start of the Second World War. ...

Charles Rennie Mackintosh`s finest work dates from about a dozen intensely creative years around 1900. His buildings in Glasgow, & especially his craggy masterpiece the Glasgow School of Art, are more complex & playful than any other work in Britain at that time. His interiors, many of them designed in collaboration with his wife, Margaret Macdonald, are both spare & sensuous; a world of heightened aesthetic sensibility inside the Willow Tea Rooms or The Hill House. & his inventive imagination, which played constantly with the shape of curves & squares, produced designs for furniture which transformed ordinary chairs into pieces of abstract sculpture. Finally, in the 1920s he painted a series of watercolours which are as original as anything he had done before. Since his death, Mackintosh has been both lauded as a pioneer of the Modern Movement & as a master of Art Nouveau. ...

Charles Waterton was the first conservationist who fought to protect wild nature against the destruction & pollution of Victorian industrialisation. During his lifetime he was famous for his eccentricities, but also for his achievements & his opinions. A Yorkshire landowner, he turned his park into a sanctuary for animals & birds. As an explorer he learned to survive in the tropical rain forests of South America without a gun or the society of other white men. He was an authority on the poisons used by South American Indians & a taxidermist of note. The huge public that read his books included Dickens, Darwin & Roosevelt. Since his death the memory of Waterton`s personal eccenticities has flourished, while the originality of his ideas & work has often suffered. Using his surviving papers, Julia Blackburn has redressed the balance in a biogr aphy that restores Waterton to his place as the first conservationist of the modern age. ...