What wouldn’t I give to bring back pigeon post?! Horror stories of sending emails ‘reply all’ aside, I do wonder about the actual expediency of the email as opposed to the written letter. True, it does make group get-togethers much easier to arrange, though I would more often than not rather be left out of the processes involved, the tangential conversations one’s unwillingly made party to, the confusion of fifteen people all replying at the same time saying different things, and the general mess of conversations spanning several weeks and five hundred utterly pointless and unproductive individual messages… And I know too well that Royal Mail cannot be trusted to climb a flight of stairs in order to deliver ‘signed for’ letters but will rather leave them in communal hallways open to the street. But in this day and age surely one must be wary of the easy option, and the internet is no exception, arguably just as open to the street, also requiring just the tools to pick a lock. Just a month or so ago I opened my private email to discover that I’d sent myself an message from another personal account inviting me to buy a dishwasher; I think my friends must have assumed that I had changed careers as no-one seemed to question my affiliation with electrical appliances…

It may seem naïve of me, but I just still don’t see the point of spam. I’ve even developed a remarkable sang-froid in the face of the 250 emails I get every day offering me Russian Brides, Rolexes, and Anti Anxiety Drugs (though these are increasingly a temptation I have to say - paranoia is the modern-day Black Death, I religiously carry my bird’s-beak-gas-mask around with me: yet another of those things that any self-respecting gal should carry in her bag, like eyeliner, or the complete A la recherche du temps perdu). I mean - is there really anyone who’s titillated by pictures of bikers in their trollies, or believes that Kofi Annan wants to be their new best friend?!

And so, dear readers, it is my unfortunate duty to report that, as so many before us, and so many still no doubt to come, we were hacked last weekend, and an email purporting to be from us (hard workers though we may be, I’m still not convinced that we’d ever be found in the office of a Sunday night…!) was sent out to our web-mailing list. I would like to assure you, one and all, that the problem has been speedily resolved, and that not only would we never ask for any personal or financial details from anyone - addresses, credit card details - but that we would also NEVER send out an email what was ingrammatically correct. So please - if you have received an email from us asking you in bad English for any information - do not fill anything in!

KA, The Diamond Standard

Despite my flippancy (no doubt some childhood-instilled need to camouflage my inner self) we have taken this incident very seriously. Let me reassure you all that we have now double-Yale- and Chubb-locked our security to ensure that this will not happen again. And please let me reiterate, that if you have received any email from us asking for anything other than book reviews or praise for our endeavours, charm, beauty and/or intelligence, it will not have been from us: NEVER provide your personal details either by email or via links.

Agghhh. I have to admit to a little web-rage today, as this post nearly doesn’t exist - I blame the language barrier, someone should create a translation gadget for correspondence between IT experts and us literary types: Why is my computer offering me free trips to China, all expenses paid, our edition of Cao Xueqin’s collected works is not due ’til 2010… Something, something, something else, you have a Trojan. Err… At this point in the day all this response does is reduce me to a glassy-eyed state, slavering over thoughts of a nice cold pint of Guinness and a Mars Bar (trust me, there is a logic there…!)

It does however lead me quite neatly into the main reason for this post (via the Unicorn - again, it does make sense, honest): it is of course St George’s Day, and so our heartfelt felicitations to… well, to practically everybody in the whole wide world, actually. A little something from the Today programme in celebration for you here.

And now I think that the day after St George’s Day should be a Bank Holiday so that I can get over my battle with technology - would I could be as victorious.

KA, OBE (Free book for the best interpretation…)

A fleeting Friday note before I depart to collapse from post-Book Fair exhaustion. How was it for you? Despite not seeing natural light for three days and feeling frighteningly as though I was, in fact, in a spaceship, it was lovely as ever to meet up with some agents, translators, foreword writers, VIPs and assorted bookie types (that’s you, Mark) and put some faces to names - or, to be precise, to email addresses, such is the nature of the industry nowadays. We ligged and pilfered our way through the event (best canapé - chorizo and potato at the Nordic reception, hands down) and have emerged slightly the worse for wear, but full of the joys of new books, new contacts and new directions. Of which more next week…

Ellie

It’s this Hesperette’s final functioning day before Easter festivities begin, and I’d like to extend the warmest of spring wishes to all readers of the blog. April is the cruellest month for weary publishers, and shortly after my return we will be hopping, skipping and jumping through the launch of our ‘On’ series of seminal works of non-fiction, the arrival of our autumn catalogue and the London Book Fair. Several days stationed between the teapot and the television just what the doctor ordered.

As a parting note, I was perhaps disproportionately excited to see the recent Hesperus release Essays on India, by Carlo Levi, on prominent display in the London Review Bookshop. I’d love to hear about any and all sightings of Brief Lives. Perhaps we could start a Heat magazine-inspired ‘Spotted’ section. ‘Brief Lives: Anton Chekhov stumbling out of The Ivy’? Perhaps not.

Ellie

Surely it’s only a matter of time before this festivity becomes nationally recognised? Simon over at Stuck in a Book has instated the first ever Hesperus Week with a review of L.P. Hartley’s Simonetta Perkins. More reviews are promised later in the week, and Simon and yours truly may just have put our heads together and concocted a competition. All celebratory cakes and champagne to be sent to 4 Rickett Street, marked for the attention of Ellie…

I’m afraid I’ve been shamefully remiss at blogging of late; my only defence is that we’ve been hard at work producing lovely, lovely books. It’s a sad fact that the more there is to blog about, the less time there is in which to set pen to paper - or finger to keyboard.

Perhaps the most exciting development here at Hesperus Press is that we have lift-off with the Brief Lives. I am, in fact, holding three in my hands right now, which is making typing slightly difficult but is tremendously satisfying. There’s more about this new series of concise biographies of literary greats in the new edition of the Hesperus magazine, which you can find right about here. Those taking the trip over to peruse those pages will be rewarded with information on how to claim a discount on the first three titles in the Brief Lives series: Anton Chekhov, Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde.

More tales from Hesperus Towers soon…

Ellie

A slightly belated response to an article which caught my eye recently in The Guardian: Blake Morrison reported on the charity Get Into Reading, which operates under the premise that reading, studying and discussing great works of literature can have healing effects on those suffering from physical, emotional or mental illness. 

I would imagine that most visitors to this blog have found themselves, at some point, succoured and soothed by great writing.  The most appealing thing about this charity is that it doesn’t employ self-help books, or even necessarily books geared to psychoanalytical introspection — rather the opposite, it relies on the enormous power of great literature in itself to lift and transport.  I couldn’t agree more.

This charity currently only operates in the Wirral, but I would love to see it expand to become a nationwide initiative.  I can’t think that they’d be short of volunteers after such an article.

 Ellie

I’ve just discovered the following musing on the subject of borrowing books, and thought it might appeal to the bibliophiles among you.  That’s everyone, then?

To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of alienators more formidable than that which I have touched upon; I mean your borrowers of books — those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.  There is Comberbatch, matchless in his depredations!

That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great eye-tooth knocked out  (you are now with me in my little back study in Bloomsbury, reader!), with the huge Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, guardant of nothing) once held the tallest of my folios, Opera Bonaventurae, choice and massy divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity also, but of a lesser calibre — Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas), showed but as dwarfs — itself an Ascapart! — that Comberbatch abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that ‘the title to property (my Bonaventure, for instance) is in exact ratio to the claimant’s powers of understand and appreciating the same.’  Should he go on acting upon this theory, which of our shelves is safe?

Which indeed?  Foul gaps in bookshelves: enough to send shivers down your spine.  Gold star for anyone who can tell me where this extract comes from.

Ellie

Slightly belated, but nonetheless heartfelt, new year’s greetings from all at Hesperus!  I feel thoroughly put to shame by some of the wonderful round ups of 2007’s literary goodies to be found elsewhere on the lit blogs, but can offer, by way of recompense for our somewhat relaxed attitude to the year’s end, a lovely link to our new magazine.  Clicky here for details of how to claim a discount on our titles in Victorian fiction, an interview with Russian translator extraordinaire Hugh Aplin, and all the latest news and reviews from Hesperus Press.  And, as ever, if you’d like to be featured in the next issue of the magazine, direct all missives to erobins [AT] hesperuspress [DOT] com.

Ellie

Well, here it is, in all its terrifying glory - the end of 2007 is upon us, and what a year it has been! Thank you all for your support, encouragement and above all for reading as much as you do… I’m off to curl up in front of various fires for the next two weeks, and indulge my cravings for mulled wine and Christmas pud (shop bought at the ready, just in case), but before I go, and on behalf of all the Hesperus Collective, I would like to wish you all a very merry holiday, and a propserous new year.

Right. Now what do I do without a computer for the coming fortnight…?!

KA, in the manner of Judy Garland…

ps, Bloody Marys when I get back, the ultimate restorative…!