Are black cats lucky or unlucky? What should you do when you hear the first cuckoo? Since when have people believed that it's unlucky to shoot an albatross? Why does breaking a mirror lead to misfortune? This fascinating collection answers these and many other questions about the world of superstitions and forms an endlessly browsable guide to a subject that continues to obsess and intrigue.

In Victorian times, England was famously dubbed the land without music - but one of the great musical discoveries of the early twentieth century was that England had a vital heritage of folk song and music which was easily good enough to stand comparison with those of other parts of Britain and overseas. Cecil Sharp, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Percy Grainger, and a number of other enthusiasts gathered a huge harvest of songs and tunes which we can study and enjoy at our leisure....

Pregnancy and childbirth remains a mystical and magical time, characterised by feelings of hope, uncertainty and worry. No matter how many scientific innovations come along, there's still room for home-grown beliefs and traditions handed down through the family. Couples buying a pram may still ask for it to be delivered after the birth, and some grandparents will shrink from tickling the baby's feet in case it grows up to have a stammer. Monday's Child is Fair of Face gathers toge...

Shortly before his death, the Devonshire-born cleric, writer and antiquarian, Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924) wrote: ‘To this day I consider that the recovery of our West Country melodies has been the principal achievement of my life.’ Though there have been a number of biographies of this Victorian polymath, none has looked in detail at his role as a leading figure in the English folk song.Most of Baring-Gould’s childhood was spent travelling in Europe with his family. Away from the influ...

This broad-based collection of essays is an introduction both to the concerns of contemporary folklore scholarship and to the variety of forms that folk performance has taken throughout English history.Combining case studies of specific folk practices with discussion of the various different lenses through which they have been viewed since becoming the subject of concerted study in Victorian times, this book builds on the latest work in an ever-growing body of contemporary folklore...

Are there any legends about cats? Is Cinderella an English story? What is a Mumming Play? The subject of folklore covers an extremely wide field, with connections to virtually every aspect of life. It ranges from the bizarre to the seemingly mundane. Similarly, folklore is as much a feature of the modern technological age as the ancient world, of every part of the country, both urban and rural, and of every age group and occupation. Containing 1,250 entries, from dragons to Mother Goose, M...

This deeply researched collection offers a comprehensive introduction to the eighteenth-century trade in street literature – ballads, chapbooks, and popular prints – in England and Scotland. Offering detailed studies of a selection of the printers, types of publication, and places of publication that constituted the cheap and popular print trade during the period, these essays delve into ballads, slip songs, story books, pictures, and more to push back against neat divisions between low an...

Occult detectives—sometimes called psychic investigators—have been in vogue since the middle of the 19th century. This collection goes back to the roots of the occult detective story. The earliest story in this collection—Fitz-James O'Brien's "The Pot of Tulips"—originally appeared in 1855. Rare stories by Mary Fortune and Bayard Taylor, famous tales from the end of the 19th century by E. and H. Heron, plus 20th Century stories by Robert E. Howard, Edmond Hamilton, Manly Wade Wellman, Seab...

Editor Duane Parsons has assembled a treasure-trove of rare macabre stories for lovers of classic fantasy and horror. From ghosts of mind and spirit to exotic paranormal tales, each story in this volume has never before appeared in an anthology. Included are:The Silent Man, by Henry Fothergill ChorleyThe Strange Ormonds, by Leitch RitchieThe Mysterious Wedding: A Danish Story, by Heinrich SteffansThe Burial by Fire, by Louisa Medina HamblinThe Vampyre, b...

This box set contains three complete novels: Books 1-3 of the Out of Time Series.Don't miss the rest of the series including the brand new book 10, Revolution in Time, or the exciting spin-off series starting with Jacks Are Wild also available on Kobo!Out of Time: A Time Travel Mystery (Book #1)Mystery, romance and adventure...Professor Simon Cross has spent his life searching for evidence of vampires and avoiding emotional entanglements. Wh...

Published under a pseudonym, J. K. Rowling's brilliant debut mystery introduces Detective Cormoran Strike as he investigates a supermodel's suicide in "one of the best books of the year" (USA Today), the first novel in the brilliant series that inspired the acclaimed HBO Max series C.B. Strike.After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, creditors...

Why is it that for many people 'England' has always meant an unspoilt rural landscape rather than the ever-changing urban world in which most English people live? What was the 'England' for which people fought in two world wars? What is about the English that makes them constantly hanker for a vanished past, so that nostalgia has become a national characteristic?In March 1896 a small volume of sixty-three poems was published by the small British firm of Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner ...