Author: Sarah Jordan
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Keywords: culture, literature, century, idleness, eighteenth, studies, bucknell, british, anxieties
Number of Pages: 298
Published: 2003-03
List price: $52.50
ISBN-10: 0838755232
ISBN-13: 9780838755235

This book investigates the preoccupation with idleness that haunts the British eighteenth century, arguing that as Great Britain began to define itself as a nation during this period, one important quality it claimed was industriousness. Because this claim was undermined and complicated by many factors, such as leisure’s importance to class status, idleness was a subject of intense anxiety. Jordan analyzes how the "idleness" of the working classes, the nonwhite races, and women is figured, and she examines the lives and works of two writers especially obsessed with idleness.

Author:
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Keywords: idleness, essays
Number of Pages: 235
Published: 1998-04-15
List price: $26.00
ISBN-10: 0231112556
ISBN-13: 9780231112550

The Buddhist priest Kenko clung to tradition, Buddhism, and the pleasures of solitude, and the themes he treats in his Essays, written sometime between 1330 and 1332, are all suffused with an unspoken acceptance of Buddhist beliefs.

Author: Amanda Craig
Publisher: Anchor
Keywords: idleness, love
Number of Pages: 352
Published: 2004-06-08
List price: $16.95
ISBN-10: 1400031079
ISBN-13: 9781400031078

In her delightful reimagining of A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Amanda Craig slyly serves up a witty cross-cultural farce, a modern-day tale of love and lies set against the magical landscape of Tuscany. When Theo, a workaholic lawyer, his English wife Polly, and their two children rent an idyllic Italian villa, they expect a relaxing summer holiday together. Polly, with her loved ones’ romantic interests at heart, has invited an eccentric mix of friends and family along--including three eligible bachelors, a former model, an Indian-British divorcee with a young son, and her own appalling mot

Author: Yoshida Kenko
Publisher: Cosimo Classics
Keywords: idleness, essays
Number of Pages: 108
Published: 2009-12-01
List price: $29.95
ISBN-10: 1605208051
ISBN-13: 9781605208053

YOSHIDA KENKO (1283-1352) was a Buddhist priest, a reclusive scholar and poet who had ties to the aristocracy of medieval Japan. Despite his links to the Imperial court, Kenko spent much time in seclusion and mused on Buddhist and Taoist teachings. His "Essays in Idleness" is a collection of his thoughts on his inner world and the world of Japanese life in the fourteenth century. He touched on topics as diverse as the benefits of the simple life ("There is indeed none but the complete hermit who leads a desirable life"), solitude ("I am happiest when I have nothing to distract me and I am

Author: Dornford Yates
Publisher: House of Stratus
Keywords: idleness, courts
Number of Pages: 234
Published: 2008-09-23
List price: $14.95
ISBN-10: 1842329715
ISBN-13: 9781842329719

These comic stories are set during World War I and the period just after, when the genteel world of Edwardian England had changed beyond recognition. One of Yates’ earliest books, it harks back to that more decorous, decadent time, and we encounter the madcap adventures of a group of well-to-do young people as they career across Europe from Madeira to Macedonia fighting heinous villains and solving mysteries.

Author: Bertrand Russell
Publisher: Routledge
Keywords: classics, routledge, essays, idleness, praise
Number of Pages: 208
Published: 2004-03-04
List price: $19.95
ISBN-10: 0415325064
ISBN-13: 9780415325066

In this collection of essays, Russell surveys the social and political consequences of his beliefs with characteristic clarity and humour. In Praise of Idleness is a tour de force that only Bertrand Russell could perform.

Author: Jamie Benedickson
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Keywords: paddling, pleasure, reflections, canoe, water, idleness
Number of Pages: 300
Published: 1997-05-17
List price: $25.95
ISBN-10: 0802079105
ISBN-13: 9780802079107

In the spring of 1940, subscribers to Queen’s Quarterly read that the ’ingredients of a holiday in Canada are idleness, water, and a canoe.’ This statement bears witness to the enduring importance of the canoe generations after the decline of the North American fur trade. Jamie Benidickson explains that the canoe’s merit lies not strictly in its function as a transportation vehicle, but in its promise of unrestricted mobility, leisure, and independence. Idleness, Water, and a Canoe is a study of the place of the canoe in Canadian life, with comparative references to