Delight
By J.B.Priestley
Special 60th anniversary edition
60th anniversary edition of one of Priestley's most acclaimed and best loved collections of short essays.
SIGNED BOOKPLATE AVAILABLE
Available with dedicated bookplate signed by Tom Priestley
Best known today as a novelist, playwright and a social commentator J.B. Priestley first found fame as a master of the short essay - a form he described as his favourite. Delight is a superb collection of one hundred and fourteen brief essays that capture and record the moments of wonder and beauty that are found beneath the surface of everyday experience. In his characteristic elegant, simple language Priestley praises the pleasures and magic of music, theatre, newspapers, travel, sport, playing games, childhood, the profession of authorship, domestic life and much more. An instant success when first published this hugely entertaining, amusing and life-enhancing book now returns to enthral and delight the modern reader.
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"It's wonderful to see such handsomely-produced new editions of great works like 'English Journey'...I didn't know 'Delight', but as a fellow inveterate grumbler, I warmed to it at once!"
Timothy West
"JB Priestley knew what made him happy. While the Bradford-born author may have been a self-declared grumbler, he was also a man who found pleasure in the smallest things in life. In 1949, he decided to share with his readers the secret of hi contentment. Published under the simple title of Delight, the collection of essays detailed everything from the joys of a perfect gin and tonic to the unbeatable sound of football and the pleasure of smoking in a hot bath. With the austere times in which Priestley wrote, recently making an unwelcome return, his original book has just been republished as antidote to the present gloom."
Yorkshire Post, Tuesday 8th September
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"Three cheers for Great Northern Books, a small Yorkshire-based publisher who have just reissued a marvellous anthology of essays by JB Priestley, first published in 1949, entitled Delight. One of the most poignant is called "The Sound of a Football", in which Priestley recalled the evocative "thud-thud-thud of the ball, a sound unlike any other", as he went clattering in his football boots to join the game on the local recreation ground."
Independent, Saturday 5th September
"Yes, he [Priestley] was a curmudgeon...But read his book Delight, written 60 years ago but reissued this week and you see straight away what we've been missing. In over 100 small essays, he picks out some of life's small moments of delight...Written in that fine Edwardian style that is possibly the clearest, crispest English prose there's ever been, here's a book that lives up to its title. It is, indeed, a delight."
Scotsman, Saturday 12th September
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Radio 4 Today interview with Tom Priestley and Alexei Sayle
'J.B. Priestley was one of the great authors of the twentieth century and a prose writer of great skill and charm. His essays, many of which I published when I was editor of the New Statesman, were in the grand tradition of Hazlitt and Lamb, Chesterton and Belloc. I am delighted to hear that Delight is back in print - these wonderful essays are among his finest.' Paul Johnson, The Spectator.
'I have an old and treasured edition of Delight and it will be lovely to have a shiny new one. Delightful, you might say.' Alan Plater
"There is much here to raise a smile, not least Priestley's wonderfully lucid, humorous prose, which is a delight in itself."
Observer, 27/09/09
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"Here is a delight indeed for the mind and a treat for the heart: a hardback, pocket-sized reprint of JB Priestley’s 1949 book of essays, Delight."
Telegraph and Argus, 5/10/09
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"What we need is a shot of joy. And I have found just the thing. JB Priestley published his wonderful collection of essays, Delight, in 1949, another period of austerity. Now reissued by Great Northern Books, it seems particularly cheering because, as Priestley admits, he was a champion grumbler...Priestley’s vividly described delights are rich and various... It is strangely affecting to read about the wise, old curmudgeon’s delights 60 years on and to discover that I share so many of them myself."
Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, Mon 11th January
"[JB Priestley] was, unquestionably, one of the 20th century's most prolific men of letters...Great Northern Books [have] recently published a 60th-anniversary edition of one of Priestley's most popular collections of short pieces, Delight."
New Statesman, Thursday 31st December
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