Francis Steegmuller

The whole situation was most provoking and mysterious; the sudden radical change in the iodine shipments, the truculent, insulting letters. Further negotiations by mail were hopeless--someone had to go to France, to the agent in Paris and to the Brittany coast, where the seaweed was gathered and burned. It would be a delicate mission, of course, one that required tact and a certain amount of courage, but no one suspected it of being a dangerous one. . . . If you are looking for the conventional mystery pattern which starts off with a bizarre crime to be followed by a deluge of foxy questions, another crime or so and finally the round-up of the "killer," you had better pass this one by. It's a curious story. Disarming at first, it will lead the reader to believe that he is a pretty clever fellow, only to trip him up neatly just as he is about to reach an unshakable conclusion. Written with a smoothness and subtlety, and a picturesqueness of detail that puts it way ahead of the mystery story class, the story grows on the reader, gathering in intensity and suspense until the wildly scattered events converge to a climax that is as utterly surprising as it is dramatic and original. A Matter of Iodine was the Red Badge Prize Mystery for 1940. Additional mysteries available from CoachwhipBooks.com.

Pre-revolutionary Paris comes to life in this fascinating story surrounding the correspondence between two colorful and witty society figures: the French author Louise d'Epinay and the Italian priest-diplomat Ferdinando Galiani. Their friends included Voltaire, Diderot, Melchior Grimm, and the famous women of the salons, and their letters touched upon everything from social gossip to issues of education and politics. Francis Steegmuller's book is at once a unique history and a charming account of friendship sustained in a turbulent age. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Pre-revolutionary Paris comes to life in this fascinating story surrounding the correspondence between two colorful and witty society figures: the French author Louise d'Epinay and the Italian priest-diplomat Ferdinando Galiani. Their friends included Voltaire, Diderot, Melchior Grimm, and the famous women of the salons, and their letters touched upon everything from social gossip to issues of education and politics. Francis Steegmuller's book is at once a unique history and a charming account of friendship sustained in a turbulent age. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Born in Australia, Shirley Hazzard first moved to Naples as a young woman in the 1950s to take up a job with the United Nations. It was the beginning of a long love affair with the city. "The Ancient Shore" collects the best of Hazzard's writings on Naples, along with a classic "New Yorker" essay by her late husband, Francis Steegmuller. For the pair, both insatiable readers, the Naples of Pliny, Gibbon, and Auden is constantly alive to them in the present. With Hazzard as our guide, we encounter Henry James, Oscar Wilde, and of course Goethe, but Hazzard's concern is primarily with the Naples of our own time - often violently unforgiving to innocent tourists, but able to transport the visitor who attends patiently to its rhythms and history. A town shadowed by both the symbol and the reality of Vesuvius can never fail to acknowledge the essential precariousness of life - nor, as the lover of Naples discovers, the human compassion, generosity, and friendship that are necessary to sustain it. Beautifully illustrated with photographs from such masters as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Herbert List, "The Ancient Shore" is a lyrical letter to a lifelong love: honest and clear-eyed, yet still fervently, endlessly enchanted.