Isabel Colegate

A portrayal of the British upper classes before World War I follows the lives of two men and their rivalry in the hunt and in the drawing room. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

The Shooting Party

Statues in a Garden

'As a novelist of English manners, Isabel Colegate has no rival.' - "The Times" 'Colegate's prose is flowing and unpretentious. She tells an excellent tale.' - "Daily Telegraph" '[Colegate's] strengths - neat psychological details, coolly literate narration, dry humor - are on ample display throughout.' "Kirkus Reviews" Anthony Lane is dead, a casualty of the Korean War, and at home in England he is praised a hero. But Baldwin Reeves, who served with him, knows the truth: Lane, a traitor and a coward, was executed ignominiously by his own men. Envious of the wealth and social position Lane possessed, Reeves decides to put his knowledge to good use by blackmailing his widow Judith. Anxious to prevent a scandal and protect Lane's elderly mother from the disclosure of his disgrace, Judith seems to be wholly into Reeves's power. But when the blackmailer finds himself falling in love with his victim, the balance of power shifts, and the stage is set for an ironic and surprising conclusion. Darkly humorous, with a wonderfully offbeat cast of characters and featuring the distinguished style for which she is known, "The Blackmailer" (1958) was the first novel by Isabel Colegate, author of the modern classic "The Shooting Party." This edition, the first in 30 years, includes a new foreword by the author.

The Blackmailer

A Pelican in the Wilderness

Orlando King

Julian Fellowes

Shooting Party

The glittering, sharp and sinister work of one of our most incisive and wickedly funny satirists; 'Isabel Colegate has no rival' (The Times) 'What we feel for each other is really a passion for power,' said Judith. 'We want to destroy each other by making the other fall in love with us.' Judith Lane, not-quite-beautiful but charmingly serious, is the young widow of the war hero Anthony Lane, and an editor at the successful if rather rakish publisher Hanescu Lane & Co. Ltd. But one evening the harmonious routine of Judith's life is interrupted when she receives her first visit from Baldwin Reeves, who reveals that Anthony's wartime adventures were not quite as glorious as the newspaper reports would have her believe. To protect Anthony's family from the scandal, Judith reluctantly acquiesces to the repellent but attractive Reeves's demands – but both blackmailer and blackmailee soon find themselves out of their depth in ways they could not have anticipated. Darkly funny, strangely sexy, and glittering with Isabel Colegate's scalpel-sharp wit, The Blackmailer is a savage and sinister comic classic.

It is the autumn of 1913. Sir Randolph Nettleby has assembled a brilliant array of guests at his Oxfordshire estate for the biggest hunt of the season. An army of gamekeepers, beaters, and servants has rehearsed the intricate age-old ritual, the gentlemen are falling into the prescribed mode of fellowship and sporting rivalry, the ladies intrigued by the latest gossip and fashion. Everything about this splendid weekend would seem a perfect consummation of the pleasures afforded the privileged in Edwardian England. And yet it is not: the moral and social code of this group is not so secure as it appears. Competition beyond the bounds of sportsmanship, revulsion at the slaughter of the animals, anger at the inequities of class --these forces are about to rise up and engulf the assured social peace, a peace that can last only a brief while longer. In imagining Sir Randolph's shooting party, wrote The Spectator, "Miss Colegate has found a perfect metaphor for the passing of a way of life."

By the author of T̀he shooting party' and D̀eceits of time'. A royal visit and the whiff of corruption in late nineteenth century Bath leads to a shocking discovery.

The Summer of the Royal Visit

From Lao-tse and the Buddha, St. Anthony and the early Celtic hermits, through Rousseau, Thoreau, Ruskin, and up to the present day, certain gifted persons have shown a vocation for living alone and apart, finding in simplicity and attention to nature a spiritual space to be explored and rejoiced in. Others, retreating from the world in scorn or cut off from it by scandal, have found that solitude is Hell, a pit of melancholy and morbid fancy. In this, her first work of nonfiction, novelist Isabel Colegate gives us the lives of the solitaries -- male and female, medieval and modern, divinely inspired and patently fraudulent. But this is no mere gallery of saints and sinners, poets and misanthropes. It is also a reevaluation of solitude for our times, and a reminder that it is in solitude that the soul meets itself, refreshes itself, and from there goes out to join the communal dance.

Isabel Colegate

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