This is the first major account of an important part of the life of the naval officer who rose to be the eminent Admiral Sir John Corbett, KCB, (1822-1893) and became Commander-in-Chief in the East Indies and at the Nore. He played significant roles in the expansion and management of the British Empire, and his adventures including in the Opium War are visually captured by the full-colour and black and white illustrations, many from his own skilled paintings.

The work draws on public documents, family papers, contemporary photographs, and the archive of Sir John's paintings which feature the many places where he served all over the globe.

Corbett's informative detailed letters in particular provide an important insight into life in the Victorian navy in many parts of the world, and how senior officers recorded and communicated their experiences.

The work starts with the shipwreck of HMS Wolverene in the Caribbean in 1855 and Corbett's subsequent court martial in Bermuda. It continues with the commissioning of his new command, the paddle steamer HMS Inflexible, in 1856 and his epic voyage towing a gunboat to Hong Kong in record time. The Shropshire-born officer served in China, India, the Mediterranean, North America, Syria, and on the East African coast. His descendant, David Peretz, provides Corbett's vivid detailed account of his time in China, including his involvement in the May/June 1857 actions there.

In the 19th century middle-class and elite readers were served by subscription circulating libraries, notably by Mudie's Select library and his bookshop, by Hatchards in Piccadilly in London and other retail bookshops. But what about the working man or woman who might have felt out of place in Mudie's or in a bookshop, or of someone who lived in a country town without a bookshop, in prison, or in the American frontier? Where did they get their reading material?

As these new essays show, there were many options: the second-hand trade, religious societies, free and workingman's libraries, railway booksellers, local circulating libraries, newsagents, direct mail, prize books, books distributed as premiums, street booksellers, and books sold by drapers, grocers, and other retail outlets. Books, pamphlets, newspapers, and magazines were readily available at prices that even working people could afford, and often for free.

The essays in this volume look at nineteenth century readers and the publishers and distributors who catered to them. Missionary societies and Sunday schools distributed tracts, Bibles, and prize books for good attendance. Subscription, and workingman's libraries brought books and periodicals to the working man, though that flow may have been controlled by middle- and upper-class boards. Penny fiction was available in many places besides railway bookstalls. Drapers sold books, often purchased from publishers who sold cheap editions to them and to street booksellers. Country grocers also sold books and even had lending libraries. Prison libraries provided inmates with books and periodicals, and humble Canadian tinsmiths were able to improve their lot by reading. And people loaned books and periodicals to their friends.

This new study offers unique insights into the variety of Irish American identities and nationalist ideologies as well as on the larger question of what it meant to be 'ethnic' in the U.S. during and after America's entry into World War 1.

'Reshaping' Atlantic Connections uses the mission of the American-born Irish leader Eamon de Valera to the U.S. from June 1919 to December 1920 to explore these questions. Dr. Cosi argues that on the basis of de Valera's American mission, neither Ireland nor Irish America can be understood as a separate entity. When the two are taken together, fresh insights emerge on the nature of diaspora, especially its political dimensions.

Dr. Cosi thus offers a new and critical examination of de Valera's interplay with multiple Irish networks and circuits across the U.S. This goes well beyond the traditional focus of the Northeast and Midwest, and suggests a re-evaluation of Irish American ideological, political, and geographical borders, both internally and in its relations with Ireland.

The study also presents valuable insights into how the Irish Free State achieved independence, and how a nation moving toward independence interacted with its diaspora. It offers a new understanding of the multilateral connections and interactions among the Irish at home and abroad in the critical years between 1917 and 1921.

As a result of these years Irish America's ideological borders expanded to embrace a set of varied and composite identities both within the U.S. and across the Atlantic Ocean. Multiple identities and ideologies, formed and shaped in part by location, interacted with one another during de Valera's visit. The mission helped to reframe the relationships between Irish and Irish American nationalisms and demonstrated how Ireland's and Irish America's images of each other evolved and were crucially intertwined within a specific conceptualisation of the Irish claim to nationhood, in line with Wilsonian idealism and the principle of self-determination.

'Reshaping' Atlantic Connections in fact examines how these relationships were shaped and formed by previous missions of Irish nationalists to America and how de Valera's visit was built on - and in some cases departed from - this history. Dr. Cosi also examines the complex relationships between the Irish and Irish American nationalist movements. Although it focuses on the significance of de Valera's mission in re-shaping these.

This extensive new work joins the internationally acclaimed series of bibliographies of Charles Dickens's work edited by Professor Duane DeVries. The detailed listings, full annotations, and evaluative notes will prove indispensable to scholars. The two volumes represent many years of work by the distinguished Dickens scholar Professor C. Hanna.

This strikingly original crime novel opens our eyes to fascinating villainy and mystery on the other side of the world.

It also introduces a classic new investigator, Detective Inspector Frank Heineken, himself a mysterious figure who is also known as 'Pufferfish'.

Prickly, curmudgeonly, brilliant even if irony-charged, he probes gangland violence, outlawed motorcycle gangs, and other dangerous relationships in the paradise island of Tasmania. As he does so he has to make deadly choices.

David Owen's novel is like no other crime tale, and 'Pufferish' is a true original.