*Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize*In late eighteenth-century London, a group of extraordinary people gathered around a dining table once a week.The host was Joseph Johnson, publisher and bookseller and he was joined at dinner by a shifting constellation of great minds including William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Henry Fuseli, Anna Barbauld and Mary Wollstonecraft.Johnson's years as a maker of books s...

"[An] eminently readable account of the interconnected lives of Leigh Hunt, Percy and Mary Shelley, Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont, Lord Byron and Keats." — IndependentYoung Romantics tells the story of the interlinked lives of the young English Romantic poets from an entirely fresh perspective—celebrating their extreme youth and outsize yearning for friendship as well as their individuality and political radicalism.The book focuses on t...

He was a debt-ridden dandy, a mid-ranking novelist armed with enormous political ambition.She was a moneyed widow twelve years older than her new husband, always overdressed for society dinners and never one to hold her tongue.From the outset, Mary Anne and Benjamin Disraeli made an unlikely match, yet they rose to the very pinnacle of Victorian society.Drawing on the couple's love letters and Mary Anne's own formidable archives, Daisy Hay reveals the heady mix of r...

'A most impressive achievement' Michael Holroyd'Enthralling' Sunday Times'Masterly' Telegraph_______________________'The web of our Life is of mingled Yarn'- John KeatsIn Young Romantics Daisy Hay shatters the myth of the Romantic poet as a solitary, introspective genius, telling the story of the communal existence of an astonishingly youthful circle. Th...

The first biography to give Mary Anne Lewis her due and to examine her singular marriage to Benjamin DisraeliWhen Mary Anne Lewis met Benjamin Disraeli, she was married to Wyndham Lewis, a rich, mildly successful politician at the center of nineteenth-century British high society. The three became friends and with his deep pockets Wyndham helped Disraeli—young, ambitious, and swimming in debt—get his start in the political arena. Mary Anne even referred to him as h...

Bloomsbury presents Young Romantics by Daisy Hay, read by Simon Vance‘A most impressive achievement' Michael Holroyd'Enthralling' Sunday Times'Masterly' Telegraph_______________________'The web of our Life is of mingled Yarn'- John KeatsIn Young Romantics Daisy Hay shatters the myth of the Romantic poet as a solitary, introspective geniu...

Brought to you by Penguin.A portrait of a radical age via the writers who gather around a publisher's dining table - from William Wordsworth to Mary WollstonecraftOnce a week, in late eighteenth-century London, writers of contrasting politics and personalities gathered around a dining table. The veal and boiled vegetables on offer at 72 St Pauls Churchyard may have been unappetising but the company was convivial and the conversation was at ...

Ukraine's remarkable aptitude for resilience and grassroots activism, as witnessed since February 2022, is closely connected to a process that began with the Euromaidan Revolution in 2013-14, when over two million Ukrainians took to the streets in defense of democracy and human rights. In the months directly following the Revolution, Russia illegally occupied Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, and began funneling both arms and troops into the eastern region of Donbas to fuel a conflict between t...