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The Sign of Jonah:
the Empirical Basis
for Christian Faith
by
R. J. P. Lyon

The “empirical” of the subtitle should not be confused with “empiricist”. Mr Lyon’s book assesses the reliability of the Gospel records, and the reasonableness of the Trinitarian theology based on them, empirically because he appeals only to a stringent judgement of what counts as historical fact. The book is especially interesting about the oral traditions on which the gospel writers in all probability drew, and about whether the differences between the Gospel accounts make their witness unreliable.

ISBN 0988049406
143 pages 5.3 x 8.3 inches, paperback, £7.80
The Brynmill Press Ltd distributes this Canadian publication in the UK and Europe. Elsewhere email graphikos@graphikos.ca.

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    • TWO RECENT PUBLICATIONS

    The Comedy of Forgiveness

    readings in Shakespeare and Dickens
    by

    John Haddon

    Has anybody noticed how important forgiveness is in Shakespeare’s plays?—in a number of forms and different degrees of seriousness and profundity.
         It is some support of the view of Dickens as a Shakespearean artist that he too can show forgiveness in particularly clear and beautiful ways.
          But Shakespeare and Dickens remain poets not preachers. Their pictures of forgiveness depend all the time on imaginative realisation, and so Mr Haddon’s discussion of their different creations—from the perfect forgiveness of Lear by Cordelia, or of his lady by Sir Leicester Dedlock, to the variously problematic forgivenesses in The Tempest, Measure for Measure, Little Dorrit and Othello—is all the time necessarily a sensitive close reading, asking how this moment is to be acted or how we take that line or paragraph.
         What new can be said about either Shakespeare or Dickens or forgiveness? Here is new thinking about all three.

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    • The Liza Doolittle Syndrome

    a brickbat aimed at the high achievers of our society
    by

    Michael Wallerstein

    In Dear Mr Howard Michael Wallerstein first noticed this modern mutation of a condition first described by Shaw in Pygmalion. Mr Wallerstein now treats this set of characteristic contemporary illiteracies and solecisms in a more systematic manner, by grammatical category.
          If this slim volume causes resentment in some quarters, it will have achieved its object; but Mr Wallerstein will not be answered, because his patients will not understand him. Ordinarily educated readers will, and will find this little book as funny as it is alarming. The subject is the decay of a whole language.

    For some serious responses to this book, by no means sugary-sweet, and Michael Wallerstein's reply, click on comments.

    For fuller details and to order click on

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    Directors Brian Lee (chairman)
    Ian Robinson (secretary)
    Michael DiSanto      Duke Maskell

    Since 1970 we have been publishing criticism, fiction, poetry, theology, politics. Our list shows that what Arnold called criticism of life can still flourish.






    copyright © 2013 Michael Wallerstein

    In the Garden Shed

    I am here at my father’s feet
    He’s smoking his pipe
    I am here at my father’s feet

    He’s smoking his pipe
    On the shed roof the raindrops beat
    He smokes his pipe

    Here my own son sits at my side
    Hugging his knees
    Here my Nicholas sits at my side

    He hugs his knees
    On the shed glass the raindrops slide
    And he hugs his knees

    It’s right snug and homely in this shed
    Isn’t it Dad
    It’s quiet and peaceful in this shed

    Isn’t it Dad
    The rest of the world could almost be dead
    Couldn’t it Dad

    The raindrops tap on the roof of the shed
    He reaches his hand
    The raindrops tap on the roof of the shed

    He reaches his hand
    Into the hand of a father who’s dead
    He reaches his hand
                                              Michael Wallerstein



    Column 93, 30 April 2013, a review of a new essay by James Alexander, “The Contra-dictions of Conservatism”, is only two A4 double-column pages, but this is too long to put up comfortably here. To read it click on

  • Columns

    • and scroll down. Try not to be distracted on the way there by the ninety-two other delights.



    Edgeways Books
    is a division of
    The Brynmill Press Ltd.

    AVAILABLE FROM EDGEWAYS



    The New Compass

    The Canadian critical journal The New Compass ran for four issues ten years ago only as a web magazine. Now one of its editors (now one of our directors) has produced a printed edition. The New Compass was a serious magazine of criticism, which any time in the last forty years made it a rarity.This side of the Atlantic the printed edition is available only from this website, and there will be more of a delay than usual in servicing orders because copies will have to be despatched from Canada.

    For further details and to purchase see the alphabetical list in our Shop, under N.

    517 pages, paperback, £18.00 with free delivery in Europe.



    E-texts


    The Selected Criticism of
    D. H. Lawrence     and the reset edition of Wittgenstein on Frazer can both be had as downloadable pdfs [portable document files]. The texts and pages are exactly the same as the printed books and are sent to the purchaser’s email address usually within one day of ordering, usually in a zip folder. They are fully protected by copyright and only available from this website. For details and prices click on

  • Web Texts


    • FREE TO READ ONLINE
    OR DOWNLOAD

    F. R. Leavis
    the Cambridge Don
    by
    Ian Robinson
    An extensively revised talk previously published in an abridged form in
    The Use of English

    *

    Every Literature Helps
    Presidential Address
    to the Leicester Theological Society
    by
    Duncan Campbell OP

    How literature does good is one of the great questions raised by all serious readers and unlikely to receive a definitive answer. Also, the world’s literature is very extensive. So to survey it in an hour’s lecture, organised around the question (asked from the point of view of a Christian priest) how literature helps, is to undertake at least two daunting tasks at once. Fr Campbell does so jauntily and as a critic with fresh responses to some wonderful works. Because this is genuine criticism it invites replies of the form “yes, but”. The memorable remark on the damnation of the leading characters in Wuthering Heights would be even better if extended to include the self-righteous Nelly Dean. The deepest insight in Bleak House is surely not about renunciation of the beloved but about forgiveness. (On which theme we see the notice about The Comedy of Forgiveness in column 1.) And so on. Here, that is, is a treatment of real questions that deserves attention and discussion—as a new demonstration that literary criticism is a non-scientific non-methodical form of thought.

    *

    Poetry in the New Matrix
    The Poet Laureate
    and the Bane
    by
    Brian Lee

    This thirty-two page pamphlet continues the series that includes Poetry and the System with some reflections on recent events and their bearing on the state of poetry and our common life.
    *

    Translation
    vs
    Paraphrase
    by
    A. C. Capey

    Mr Capey’s long-promised criticism of twentieth-century Bible translations


    *
    Memories
    of
    F. R. Leavis
    by
    David Matthews

    Mr Matthews’s memories of more than sixty years, going back to the great days of Downing, are a fresh testimony to the greatest English critic of modern times.
    *