The Handheld Diaries by Kate Macdonald
Reviewed by Harriet, 4 Feb 2025 Christoph says, ‘Kate, you should really set up your own publishing house.’ Many of Shiny’s regular readers will have read the wonderful books published…
Interview with Kate Macdonald of Handheld Press
Interview by Harriet Harriet: Hi Kate – thanks for agreeing to do this. We know you’re working on a memoir of your Handheld days, so this will be a special…
Books about Books, Lit Crit, Publishing, Reading & Writing
Aldridge, Mark – Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the world (Dec-20) ESL Ansell, Neil – Article: The Art of Memoir and Narrative Non-Fiction (Jan-15) Archer, Jodie & Jocker, Mark L…
Spotlight on Publishers: Handheld Press
Harriet talks to Kate Macdonald Harriet: Thanks for agreeing to do this for us Kate. Can you tell us a bit about the genesis of Handheld Press and what prompted…
Women’s Weird 2: More Strange Stories by Women, 1891-1937, edited by Melissa Edmundson
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton Women’s Weird: Strange Stories by Women 1890 -1940 was a standout book from last year – it’s still genuinely one of the most unsettling anthologies I’ve…
Non-Combatants and Others by Rose Macaulay
Reviewed by Karen Langley Rose Macaulay is mainly known for her 1956 novel The Towers of Trebizond; yet she was an astonishingly prolific writer, publishing her first novel in 1906…
The Gulls Fly Inland by Sylvia Thompson
Reviewed by Harriet October 3rd 1939 Inaction is difficult to bear. Since I am forced into inaction, here, I shall write. Not, as I have written in peace-time, brief things…
Tatting and Mandolinata by Faith Compton Mackenzie
Reviewed by Harriet This intriguing title indicates the presence of two separate works by Faith Compton Mackenzie, of whom you’ve probably never heard. The name will ring a bell though,…
The House of Silence by Edith Nesbit
Reviewed by Harriet Here at Shiny, I’m proud to say, we have now covered every aspect of Edith Nesbit’s wonderful fiction writing. Best known to most people as a writer…
Blue Remembered Hills by Rosemary Sutcliff
Reviewed by Harriet Who remembers reading The Eagle of the Ninth? First published in 1954, when Sutcliff was 34, it is set in Roman Britain and tells the story of…
The Voluble Topsy by A.P. Herbert
Reviewed by Harriet First published in 1927, nearly a hundred years ago, in the satirical British magazine Punch, the letters of fictional girl-about-town Topsy to her best friend Trix actually…
My Life and I, by Betty Bendell
Reviewed by Harriet One of the problems with bounding spontaneously through life, I’ve discovered, is that people do tend to react to me quite strongly. I’d like to say that…
T H White: A Biography, by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Reviewed by Helen Parry Not every writer lives a particularly interesting life (it is, after all, for their sitting down and imagining things that we value them) and not every…
Latchkey Ladies by Marjorie Grant
Reviewed by Harriet These girls, buffeting with the world as they did war-work, or any work that would support them, were apt to have moments when independence seemed the most…
Jane’s Country Year by Malcolm Saville
Reviewed by Harriet Jane woke slowly. For a long minute she lay drowsing with her eyes shut, wondering why the bed felt so different. She loved her own little bed…
Dreaming of Rose: A Biographer’s Journal, by Sarah LeFanu
Review by Helen Parry Reconstructing anyone’s life poses enormous difficulties, for however copious the evidence of letters, diaries, journals, and eye-witness accounts, the problem of interpretation remains, the problem of…
Valentine Ackland: A Transgressive Life by Frances Bingham
Reviewed by Gill Davies This is a remarkable book about a remarkable woman. Valentine Ackland (1906-1969) was “transgressive” in so many ways. She was a cross-dressing lesbian; a communist from…
There’s No Story There – Wartime Writing, 1944-1945 by Inez Holden
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton This is one of two recent releases from Handheld Press that cover aspects of wartime experience – in this case life in a huge munitions factory…
Where Stands a Wingèd Sentry by Margaret Kennedy
Reviewed by Harriet If you’ve heard of, or read, Margaret Kennedy at all, it’s likely to be her 1924 novel The Constant Nymph. Written when she was 28, it made…
British Weird, Selected Shorter Fiction 1893-1937 edited by James Machin
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton I spent some time looking up the definition of Weird as opposed to Horror in preparation for writing this, and now have the perfect opportunity to…
Potterism by Rose Macaulay
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton Handheld Press are fast becoming my favourite independent press. Their book choices are consistently interesting, their editions well produced with particularly good introductions. I’m also going to…
Dangerous Ages by Rose Macaulay
Reviewed by Harriet Another very welcome addition to the new British Library Women Writers series, Dangerous Ages was published in 1921. It’s a fascinating novel because it is both a…
Business as Usual by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford
Reviewed by Ali Business as Usual is an early work from the formidably productive writing partnership of Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford (both pseudonyms) – and it is utterly delightful. A…
Of Cats and Elfins by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Reviewed by Harriet Just over a year ago I reviewed the newly published Handheld Press edition of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin, a collection of strange, glittering, fascinating stories,…
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