Author: Peter Ackroyd
Publisher: Viking Adult
Keywords: retelling, tales, canterbury
Number of Pages: 464
Published: 2009-10-29
List price: $35.00
ISBN-10: 0670021229
ISBN-13: 9780670021222

A fresh, modern prose retelling captures the vigorous and bawdy spirit of Chaucer’s classic Renowned critic, historian, and biographer Peter Ackroyd takes on what is arguably the greatest poem in the English language and presents the work in a prose vernacular that makes it accessible to modern readers while preserving the spirit of the original. A mirror for medieval society, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales concerns a motley group of pilgrims who meet in a London inn on their way to Canterbury and agree to take part in a storytelling competition. Ranging from comedy to tragedy, pious s

Author: Peter Ackroyd
Publisher: Grove Press
Keywords: light, first
Number of Pages: 336
Published: 1996-09-12
List price: $13.50
ISBN-10: 0802134815
ISBN-13: 9780802134813

First Light begins with an ominous coincidence: the reappearance of the ancient night sky during the excavation of an astronomically aligned Neolithic grave in Dorset. A group of eccentrics — archaeologists, astronomers, local rustics, a civil servant, and a stand-up comic — converge on the site, disturbing the quiet seclusion of Pilgrin Valley. Someone (or something) is trying to sabotage the best efforts of the excavators, headed by Mark Clare, to unearth the dormant secrets of the burial ground. Meanwhile, at the nearby observatory, astronomer Damien Fall, his telescope focused on the r

Author: Peter Ackroyd
Publisher: Grove Press
Keywords: chatterton
Number of Pages: 234
Published: 1996-09-12
List price: $15.95
ISBN-10: 0802134807
ISBN-13: 9780802134806

The mystery of Chatterton is investigated by two Londoners, a young poet and an elderly female novelist, who find more riddles than answers from their search. At once hilarious, this entertaining comedy is a thoughtful exploration of the deepest issues of both life and art.

Author: Peter Ackroyd
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Keywords: lives, brief, ackroyd, newton
Number of Pages: 192
Published: 2008-04-15
List price: $21.95
ISBN-10: 0385507992
ISBN-13: 9780385507998

When Newton was not yet twenty-five years old, he formulated calculus, hit upon the idea of gravity, and discovered that white light was made up of all the colors of the spectrum. By 1678, Newton designed a telescope to study the movement of the planets and published Principia, a milestone in the history of science, which set forth his famous laws of motion and universal gravitation. Newton’s long-time research on calculus, finally made public in 1704, triggered a heated controversy as European scientists accused him of plagiarizing the work of the German scientist Gottfried Leibniz. In thi

Author: Peter Ackroyd
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Keywords: lives, brief, ackroyd, chaucer
Number of Pages: 208
Published: 2005-01-18
List price: $19.95
ISBN-10: 0385507976
ISBN-13: 9780385507974

In the first in a new series of brief biographies, bestselling author Peter Ackroyd brilliantly evokes the medieval world of England and provides an incomparable introduction to the great poet’s works. Geoffrey Chaucer, who died in 1400, lived a surprisingly eventful life. He served with the Duke of Clarence and with Edward III, and in 1359 was taken prisoner in France and ransomed. Through his wife, Philippa, he gained the patronage of John of Gaunt, which helped him carve out a career at Court. His posts included Controller of Customs at the Port of London, Knight of the Shire for Kent, an

Author: Peter Ackroyd
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Keywords: prophecy, papers, plato
Number of Pages: 192
Published: 2000
List price: $21.95
ISBN-10: 0385497687
ISBN-13: 9780385497688

"Ackroyd has written what we always knew that he alone could produce: a timeless literary masterpiece....This is a marvelous fable for our times. It is funny, wise, and strange...In the 18th century, Dean Swift cast a scorching searchlight on his own times by isolating their follies in imagined lands to which Gulliver made his imaginary travels. Ackroyd has pulled off a similar feat of travel in time and imagination." --A.N. Wilson, Daily MailAt the turn of the thirty-eighth century, London’s greatest orator, Plato, regularly delivers bravura public lectures on the long, tumultuous histo

Author: Peter Ackroyd
Publisher: Anchor
Keywords: biography, london
Number of Pages: 848
Published: 2003-04-08
List price: $21.00
ISBN-10: 0385497717
ISBN-13: 9780385497718

Here are two thousand years of London’s history and folklore, its chroniclers and criminals and plain citizens, its food and drink and countless pleasures. Blackfriar’s and Charing Cross, Paddington and Bedlam. Westminster Abbey and St. Martin in the Fields. Cockneys and vagrants. Immigrants, peasants, and punks. The Plague, the Great Fire, the Blitz. London at all times of day and night, and in all kinds of weather. In well-chosen anecdotes, keen observations, and the words of hundreds of its citizens and visitors, Ackroyd reveals the ingenuity and grit and vitality of London. Thro