Chandler's Long Embrace

The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the woman he loved by Judith Freeman tells the story of Chandler's , marriage to Cissy who was 18 years his senior. Freeman shows how very important Cissy was to Chandler's life and art. In a fine appreciation she plots his life from "an accountant for an oil company into one of the most interesting and original writers America has ever produced."

The book is published by Pantheon and was reviewed by Martin Rubin in The Washington Times on 2 December 2007.

A book about a book

Rejoice my heart edited by Michael H Rosove is the latest offering from Adelie Books, named for the species of penguin, they specialise in publishing books about Antarctica. It is the correspondence between Emily Shackleton and Hugh Robert Mill, between 1922 and 1933 and tells the story behind the writing of Mill's biography of Sir Ernest Shackleton. The title comes from an expression in Emily's second letter, in which she expresses her gratitude to Mill, the greatest Antarctic historian of his time, for accepting the challenge of writing Shackleton's life story, just three months after his death.

Two new books from OA Poet

Anthony Barnett, OA has just published Listening for Henry Crowder, a monograph on his almost lost music with the poems and music on an accompanying CD. Henry Crowder travelled and worked with Nancy Cunard the daughter of the shipping magnate. This book proves that Henry was his own man and not just an adjunct to Cunard; as such he made a uniquely fascinating contribution to the jazz age.

The Archives have just acquired a copy of this book as well as the earlier Would you tread on a quadruped? (1992), in which Barnett's poems form an animal alphabet of questionable rhymes to accompany charming paintings by Natalie Cohen.

Henslowe Alleyn Theatre Papers' Research

Two recent publications which re-interpret the Henslowe Alleyn Theatre Papers have just been published.

The first is Re-locating the Fortune Theatre: a new history by S P Cerasano and is published by Globe Education as part of their Occasional Papers series. It is based on the lecture given by Professor Cerasano at the Fortune Theatre Symposium at the Globe in November 2006, when the Fortune contract from the Henslowe Alleyn Theatre Papers was loaned to Shakespeare's Globe.

The second is the two volume Oxford Middleton which brings together for the first time the Complete Works of Thomas Middleton in one volume and as a companion volume publishes a series of essays on Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture. The general editors are Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino.