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The question taxing Detective Inspector Purbright's brain was whether anything untoward had been going on in the tiny village of Mumblesby. Certainly the circumstances surrounding the death of 'Rich Dick' Loughbury, the solicitor, seemed genuinely beyond suspicion. And although his widow (if that was what she was) left a certain amount to be desired socially in local eyes, and his house was stuffed with antiques acquired without bills of sale from neighbouring Mumblesby residents, there was nothing Purbright could actually put his finger on. That was, until the day of the funeral...'Whatever's Been Going on at Mumblesby?' is an entertaining and witty excursion into rural deviance and the foibles of Flaxborough and its environs.

My Dear Friend . . . I am in great danger. The person whose loyal and faithful companion I have been . . . intends to have me done away with . . . When this unsigned letter is sent to three people in town none of them take it seriously. However, as with most events Inspector Purbright and the residents of Flaxborough realise that hindsight is a wonderful thing, especially when a woman is found dead in suspicious circumstances. Charity Ends at Home is the fifth novel in the Flaxborough series and was first published in 1968. Faber Finds will be reissuing all the Flaxborough novels in sequence.'Arguably the best of comic crime writers.' Time Out

Right at the bottom of the column, it was.Something for which she had not dared to hope. Not in remote, prosperous, hard-headed Flaxborough.A matrimonial bureau. Two women have disappeared in the small market town of Flaxborough. They are about the same age, both quite shy and both unmarried. As Inspector Purbright discovers the only connection between them appears to be the Handclasp House Marriage Bureau, but what begins as a seemingly straightforward missing persons case soon spirals out of control as Purbright encounters deceit, blackmail and murder. Lonelyheart 4122 is the fourth in Colin Watson's Flaxborough series and was first published in 1967.'Flaxborough, that olde-worlde town with Dada trimmings.' Sunday Times'Watson's Flaxborough begins to take on the solidity of Bennett's Five Towns, with murder, murky past and much acidic comment added.' H. R. F. Keating

Within the quiet respectable market town of Flaxborough lurks a dangerous criminal: someone who has no compunction in committing horrific crimes. A secret agent has been murdered in unsavoury circumstances connected to an acid bath and it is up to Inspector Purbright to investigate, but it does not take long for two more operatives to arrive in Flaxborough looking for the same answers. How can one of their colleagues have been murdered in such a bland, provincial town? As ever Purbright must use all his skills as an investigator to get to the truth. Described by the Literary Review as 'wickedly funny,' Hopjoy was Here, the third in the Flaxborough series, was first published in 1962.'[A] macabre and jolly English tale.' New Yorker'Mr Watson has an unforgivably sharp eye for the ridiculous.' Anthony Boucher, New York Times Faber Finds will be reissuing all the Flaxborough novels in sequence.

The Brothers' War: Biafra and Nigeria was first published in 1972. In the UK it had the title The Nigerian Civil War. That is what it is about. In the early 1960s Nigeria looked set to be the major black African country. It seemed to be immune from the internecine struggles that bedevilled so many of the African states. The illusion of stability was shattered at the beginning of 1966. During the next four years the country suffered two bloody coups, a series of appalling massacres, and a protracted and savage civil war which claimed a million lives. This was a civil war on a par with the American and Spanish civil wars and like both those it was a desperate affair, fought to the bitter end by determined people who shared a common past and a common language.John de St. Jorre covered the conflict for the Observer. He was one of the few people to keep in touch with both sides. His account was objective and remains definitive.

Keith Douglas was almost certainly the greatest poet of the Second World War. He was killed in Normandy three days after D-Day. He was only twenty-four. His short life was one of contradictions: the gifted artist and romantic, always in love with the wrong girl also enjoyed soldiering and was quick to volunteer at the beginning of the war. The brave and resourceful tank commander with the Sherwood Rangers in the Western Desert, in the campaign of which his Alemein to Zem Zem is the classic account, was also an outspoken critic of the military establishment and often in trouble with his superiors. There was always another side to Keith Douglas: difficult, even arrogant, he was at the same time, as Desmond Graham, observes in his original preface, 'generous, sensitive to the difficulties of others, remorselessly honest, energetic, and passionately, innocently open.' Douglas made in his brief life some friends who never forgot him, and whose memories of him have contributed much to this book.For this biography, Desmond Graham had access to much private and unpublished material. From that, interviews, Keith Douglas' own poems, letters and drawings emerges a definitive biography.'An almost unqualified success . . . Mr Graham has used his material with great skill and tact.' Roy Fuller'It is difficult to imagine a better biography than this being written about Keith Douglas . . . Desmond Graham provides us with an astonishing amount of information.' Stephen Spender'Extremely well-done . . It is written with authority and it will be standard.' Peter Levi'Sumptuously evocative' John Carey

A comprehensive guide to the techniques of orchestral playing and the development of non-professional orchestras, Orchestral Performance covers all areas of orchestral music-making - instrumental technique and combination, ensemble, layout, repertoire and presentation. Christopher Adey - renowned specialist in the training of student orchestras - explores the responsibilities of both players and conductor, exposing many of the inadvertent results of interpretation with regard to sound and projection, and broadening the musical communication to which the less experienced orchestra can aspire.Written in a lively and authoritative style, this unique book is essential reading for performing musicians of all standards, instrumental teachers and aspiring conductors, and all who have any dealings with the performance of youth or student orchestras throughout the world, as well as anyone interested in what orchestral performance entails. 'A labour of love and wisdom.' Times Educational Supplement'A treasure house of facts, advice, and hints. I could not put it down ... clearly written from the heart and from an obvious enthusiasm for the non-professional orchestra and orchestral musician.' Classical Music'This is a thoroughly readable book, full of illustrations and containing the thoughts of someone with a wealth of experience.' Music Teacher

Disappointment can be salutary. In the 1955 election Michael Foot surprisingly lost his seat. Until then he had been a journalist, albeit a prolific and influential one. He now had more time on his hands. To both his father, Isaac Foot, and himself Jonathan Swift was a hero. His father, who believed writing to be the supreme vocation, now encouraged him to write a book on Swift. The result was The Pen and the Sword. Michael Foot concentrates on the crucial two years of 1710-11. In that time Swift published one of his most devastating polemics The Conduct of the Allies that tore into the Whig government and the Duke of Marlborough in particular. It is an important moment in English History: the pen and the sword fought a duel, and the pen proved the stronger of the two.First published in 1957 it was well and widely reviewed. 'Enthralling ... a fine piece of historical writing.' Spectator 'An exciting story excellently narrated ... a lucid guide to one of the most complicated patterns of intrigue and manoeuvre that the eighteenth-century can provide ... intensely dramatic.' Harold Nicolson, Observer

In 1995 Toby Green became friends with El Hadji, a Senegalese photographer who swore that, in the West African hinterland, there were mystics who possessed the secrets of how to become invisible and invulnerable. Four years later, he returns to meet up with his old friend, and test the strengths of these surreal claims for himself.'By turns mysterious, hilarious, beautiful and troubling, this book brings to light the disturbing links between the seeds of racism and the nature of contemporary culture. An excellent and thought-provoking book.' Global Adventure'Green is a brave and intrepid traveller ... West Africa tests his resolve to the limit, presenting some of the toughest travelling conditions to be found anywhere in the world.' Sunday Times

Olivier Messiaen was one of the outstanding creative artists of his time. The strength of his appeal, to listeners as well as to composers, is a measure of the individuality of his music, which draws on a vast range of sources: rhythms of twentieth-century Europe and thirteenth-century India, ripe romantic harmony and brittle birdsong, the sounds of Indonesian percussion and modern electronic instruments. What binds all these together is, on one level, his unswerving devotion to praising God in his art, and on another, his independent view of how music is made. Messiaen's music offers a range of ways of experiencing time: time suspended in music of unparalleled changelessness, time racing in music of wild exuberance, time repeating itself in vast cycles of reiteration.In Olivier Messiaen and the Music of Time, leading writer and musicologist, Paul Griffiths, explores the problems of religious art, and includes searching analyses and discussions of all the major works, suggesting how they function as works of art and not only as theological symbols. This comprehensive and stimulating book covers the whole of Messiaen's output up to and including his opera, Saint Fran,oise d'Assise.

The expression 'femme fatale' could have been coined for Barbara Skelton. She had many admirers - Peter Quennell, Feliks Topolski, Cyril Connolly, King Farouk, George Weidenfeld, Derek Jackson, the list is not exhaustive - some of whom she married. Tears Before Bedtime and Weep No More were first published separately in 1987 and 1989; they then appeared in one paperback volume in 1993. It is in this form they are being reissued in Faber Finds.As Jeremy Lewis, her literary executor, puts it these memoirs 'combine waspishness and wit in equal measure. She had a keen eye for the absurd, and a ruthless ability to skewer friends and foes alike with an exact and colourful turn of phrase ...''Uniquely savage memoirs of rackety highbrow life ... One feels Balzac is the novelist who would best do justice to all this in fictional form.' Anthony Powell'Provides some of the funniest reading I can remember.' Auberon Waugh, Independent 'The two volumes together make a memorable portrait. She deserves to have her likeness preserved and by a writer as good as herself.' Frank Kermode, Guardian

Covering the period from the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Winnie-the-Pooh, Humphrey Carpenter examines the lives and writings of Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Grahame, George Macdonald, Louisa May Alcott, Frances Hodgson Burnett, A.A. Milne and others whose works make up the Golden Age of children's literature.Both a collective biography and a work of criticism, Secret Gardens forces us to reconsider childhood classics in a new light. 'Secret Gardens permits us to see in a fresh light the interaction between cultural history and literature, and to realize that ... it wasn't mere misfits who withdrew into the writing of children's books, but rather the sort of misfits who reflected the prevailing dissatisfactions of the age.' New York Times Book Review

In 1946 Roy Farrell and Syd de Kantzow's beloved, battered wartime DC-3 touched down in Shanghai for the first time. On board was a cargo of morning coats and toothbrushes from New York, forging the first post-war supply route across the treacherous eastern Himalayas. The international airline now known as Cathay Pacific was born.Gavin Young tells the swashbuckling story of an empire of the air, a thrilling, action-packed adventure that began in an era closer to Biggles and biplanes held together by wire and safety pins than to our own.'Pioneers like Farrell and de Kantzow would have had plenty of time to enjoy the dawn over Kangchebjunga. Would thye think of us with envy or contempt, cruising seven miles up with hundreds of passengers, air-conditioning, i-flight concerts, movies, hot four-course meals with an elaborate wine line and all mod-cons? . . . All this in forty years! Could the world have changed so much and so fast?' This is Gavin Young himself eloquently reflecting on the extraordinary changes in air travel. There can be little doubt where his own sympathies lie.

Mass Observation was founded by Tom Harrisson, Charles Madge and Humphrey Jennings in 1937. Its purpose was to create 'an anthropology of ourselves' in other words, to study the everyday lives of ordinary people in Britain. Discounting an initial pamphlet, this was the first book to be published. It appears in Faber Finds as a part of an extensive reissue programme of the original Mass Observation titles. May the Twelfth is a portrait of life on a single day, the day of the Coronation of George V1 in 1937. Compiled from the individual reports of hundreds of people, the Mass Observers, from all walks of life, it vividly recreates the atmosphere and excitement of a great national occasion. When first published it received a long review from Evelyn Waugh in the short-lived Night and Day. One might have imagined it wouldn't have been to his taste but he was won round. Having congratulated Faber on the price of 12s 6d he goes on to say, '. . . it would be hard to find any recent work of the same length which had so little that was dull and so much that was highly amusing.' He especially praises the London section, 'The succeeding section on London's May 12 could scarcely be better. It provides a real documentary survey of the event as seen by the crowds.'

Mass Observation was founded by Tom Harrisson, Charles Madge and Humphrey Jennings in 1937. Its purpose was to create 'an anthropology of ourselves' in other words, to study the everyday lives of ordinary people in Britain. Discounting an initial pamphlet, this was the second book to be published. It appears in Faber Finds as a part of an extensive reissue programme of the original Mass Observation titles. Subjects covered include smoking, pub-going and football pools. There is a section given over to some of those who had joined Mass Observation where they explain their reasons for doing so. To quote the original blurb, 'They include a London park-keeper, a working class girl in the North of England, a middle-aged worker in an armaments factory, a woman teacher in an infant school, a naval petty-officer, a bus-driver's wife, a Yorkshire weaver, a hospital nurse, a pharmacist in the East End and a steel worker in Scotland.'

In the chaos of the English Civil War and Puritan Commonwealth, churches were defaced and organs broken, but the tradition of fine music survived. When Charles II returned from exile in 1660, one of the first things he demanded was music, sacred and profane, anthems and motets, pavannes and gavottes. In 1659 Henry Purcell was born, and his genius would give the period and nation an unforgettable voice.Jonathan Keates traces Purcell's development against the turbulent movements of his time - political, religious, theatrical and social. He shows him growing up in the shadow of Westminster Abbey and follows him as a chorister in the Chapel Royal, copying the innovative and colourful style of Matthew Locke; beginning to composer for the theatre, and for State occasions; writing his great settings of sacred music, his chamber sonatas, and his triumphant Dido and Aeneas, the first British opera.In the background are the heady politics of Restoration England, which expelled the Stuart James II and brought William and Mary to the throne. But almost more important is the rich musical history, the influence of French and Italian composers, blending with and modifying the native tradition. We know and love Purcell through his work; his songs were sung in taverns, his psalms in churches; he was urbane and witty, impassioned and profound.This engrossing biography is as remarkable for its sensitive critical appreciation of Purcell's music, in all its forms, as it is for its vivid portrait of the man, and the boisterous age in which he lived.

This is a tweedy purveyor of folklore; too many larks ascending and too much. "e;Linden Lea"e;: no composer's work has ever been more cruelly stereotyped than that of Ralph Vaughan Williams. The truth could hardly have been more different: that folksy feel masked the highest sophistication, that countrified air the most audacious experimentation. If, unlike his Germanizing contemporary Elgar, Vaughan Williams did indeed open the way to a distinctively English Music, his was an Englishness which owed nothing to narrow-mindedness or lack of artistic enterprise. Fifty years after his death in 1958, Vaughan Williams' reputation is greater than ever before and there is a resurgence of interest in his music. Re-issued to coincide with this anniversary, Simon Heffer's perceptive book lends weight to the increasingly compelling case for Vaughan Williams' recognition as the most important English composer of the twentieth century. "e;A vivid and appealing picture of an irresistibly likeable figure...I enjoyed this little book enormously"e;. ("e;Spectator"e;). "e;An affectionate, accurate and shrewd account of Vaughan Williams' life ...the author's astute commentary on it betokens close and knowledgeable acquaintance"e;. ("e;Sunday Telegraph"e;).

The Magic Bottle - originally published in 1946 - is the only book for children by much-loved Golden Age crime writer Cyril Hare.When Philip and his sister Mary opened the oddly-shaped bottle and found that they had released a Djinn, Philip, who knew his Arabian Nights, feared the worst. But the Djinn was an unexpected kind of Djinn, and his release was the start of some very unexpected adventures ...'His style is easy and fluent, and his books are eminently readable ... A great novelist.' Spectator

Erik Tawaststjerna embarked on his monumental and acclaimed study of Jean Sibelius's life and music in 1960 and it occupied him for over a quarter of a century. His study differs from other work on the composer in one important respect: he had unrestricted access to the composer's papers, diaries and letters as well as the advantage of numerous conversations with the composer's widow and other members of the family. Thus his researches can justifiably claim to have thrown entirely fresh light on the great Finnish composer. Far from the remote personality of the Sibelius legend, Sibelius emerges as a highly colourful figure. This third volume traces the composer's career from the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, which found him poised on the brink of the Fifth Symphony, through to his death in 1957. It traces the genesis of the Fifth Symphony and gives a vivid portrait of Finland during the early years of independence and civil war. Tawaststjerna relates in fascinating detail the composer's financial plight during these years and his struggles with his own psyche. We follow his career through to the Seventh Symphony and Tapiola, and the increasingly corrosive streak of self-criticism which blighted Sibelius's last years and resulted in the destruction of the Eighth Symphony.Translated by Robert Layton, himself a Sibelius specialist, this is a compelling and insightful account of the music of one of the twentieth century's greatest composers.

In 1770, at the end of his tether, the seventeen-year-old poet Thomas Chatterton, penniless and starving, despairing of success and tormented by a sense of failure, committed suicide in his garret room.Within a few years he was transformed into a legend. In the dawning Romantic Movement, he became a symbol of some of its most powerful preoccupations - suicide, youth and neglected genius.During the two ensuing centuries, Chatterton has become one of the most famous of literary suicides. To the Romantics in the nineteenth century, the premature death of this precocious genius became a source of inspiration. His suicide inspired Vigny's melodramatic play Chatterton, and forty years later, Leoncavallo's opera spread to Italy. The Pre-Raphaelites, especially Rossetti, were fascinated by his death. In the twentieth century, the eccentric scholar and poet E. W. Meyerstein developed a lifelong passion for him.Linda Kelly explores the development, pervasiveness and astonishing persistence of the Chatterton legend, throwing new and revealing light on the writers and artists who admired him.'A book that leaves out nothing important and yet keeps us reading like a novel.' John Wain

Erik Tawaststjerna embarked on his authoritative study of Sibelius in 1960, and it occupied him for over a quarter of a century. His book differs from other work on the composer in one important respect: he had unrestricted access to the composer's papers, diaries and letters as well as the advantage of numerous conversations with the composer's widow and other members of the family. Thus his researches can justifiably claim to have thrown entirely fresh light on the great Finnish composer. Far from the remote personality of the Sibelius legend, Sibelius emerges as a highly colourful figure. Translated by Robert Layton, himself a Sibelius specialist, this first volume (the first of three) takes us up to the period of the Second Symphony and the Violin Concerto, with perceptive and searching studies of the music including a number of early works, The Burning of the Boat, the Kullervo Symphony and the two versions of En Saga.'A remarkable and deeply impressive book. The English text unquestionably succeeds in giving a subtle and scholarly rendering of a profound study of Sibelius and his music.' Economist

The first night of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The School for Scandal, on 8 May 1777, was one of the great dates in theatrical history. From then on, Sheridan was launched into eighteenth-century society, as much at home in the salons of the Duchess of Devonshire and the Prince of Wales as in the taverns and coffee-houses around Drury Lane.Sheridan's comedies were all written by the time he was twenty-eight. For the next thirty years he was wholly involved in his twin careers as manager of the Drury Lane theatre and Member of Parliament. At a time when politics were dominated by a few aristocratic families, he rose above his poverty to become one of the greatest parliamentary figures of the age. In the theatre, he presided over one of the most brilliant periods in the history of the English stage.Drawing on a wide variety of sources, Kelly gives a comprehensive picture of Sheridan's tempestuous career and chaotic private life. For all his faults, his charm was irresistible - 'there has been nothing like it since the days of Orpheus,' wrote Byron. It is charm that illuminates her narrative, bringing Sheridan to life.'I can imagine no better biography of this talented, dynamic, impossibly unreliable firework of a man.'Victoria Glendinning, Daily Telegraph

Conquerors of Time celebrates 150 years of courage, energy, innovation, resourcefulness and grand ideas, from the late 17th century to the early 20th. It's about the seafarers, engineers, inventors and trailblazers who enabled the British to hold together a vast empire and the Americans to push their frontiers west.Some, such as Captain Cook and Robert Stephenson are famous. Others, like the makers of chromonometers, the collectors of tropical plants or the railway engineers who roughed it in the Canadian wilderness are less well-known. What they all had in common is a desire to understand the world and a determination to harness the forces of nature. 'Trevor Fishlock's brio and broad vision matches those of his subjects and makes for a rattling good read.' Lawrence James, Daily Mail'Fact-filled and highly evocative ... the sheer romance of the story is irresistible.' Sunday Telegraph

This is the first novel by William Gerhardie, first published in 1922, and it was made famous by H. G. Wells, who described it as 'true, devastating - a wonderful book'.Based on Gerhardie's own experiences as a member of the British Military Mission to Siberia shortly after the October Revolution, Futility paints a picture of contemporary Russian society which deserves comparison with the writing of Chekhov. At the centre of the story is Nicolai Vasilievich, who trails across Russia in the wake of the British Mission in the perpetual and unrealistic hope of seeing his fortunes improve, even though they steadily deteriorate. In counterpoint to Nicolai's comic progression, Gerhardie tells the story of his narrator's hopeless love for Nina, the second of Nicolai's three bewitching adolescent daughters.'William Gerhardie is one of our immortals. He is our Gogol's Overcoat. We all came out of him.' Olivia Manning'He is a comic writer of genius ... but his art is profoundly serious.' C. P. Snow

'It was because I was afraid that I had decided to attempt a crossing of the great Sahara desert, from west to east, by myself and by camel. No one had ever made such a journey before . . .'In October 1972 Geoffrey Moorhouse began his odyssey across the Sahara from the Atlantic to the Nile, a distance of 3,600 miles. His reason for undertaking such an immense feat was to examine the roots of his fear, to explore an extremity of human experience.From the outset misfortune was never far away; and as he moved further into that 'awful emptiness' the physical and mental deprivation grew more intense. In March 1973, having walked the last 300 miles, Moorhouse, ill and exhausted, reached Tamanrasset, where he decided to end his journey. The Fearful Void is the moving record of his struggle with fear and loneliness and, ultimately, his coming to terms with the spiritual as well as the physical dangers of the desert.

Between 1347 and 1350, the Black Death killed at least one third of Europe's population. Philip Ziegler's classic account traces the course of the virulent epidemic through Europe and its dramatic effect on the lives of those whom it afflicted. First published nearly forty years ago, it remains definitive.'The clarity and restraint on every page produce a most potent cumulative effect.' Michael Foot

The main protagonist of Men Like Gods is Mr Barnstaple, a careful driver and depressive journalist writing for The Liberal newspaper. It is to his consternation, therefore, that while carefully motoring along the Maidenhead road he skids on a bend and finds himself in another world altogether - in short, a supposed Utopia. This Utopia has its own socialist government and is very similar to the Earth. However, as pathogens have been eliminated the newly arrived visitors from Earth pose a grave threat to the Utopians by compromising their already weak immune systems. The people from earth find themselves being quarantined until a solution to this problem can be found. As no progress is being made many begin to resent this isolation and before long some plot to take over Utopia. Mr Barnstaple finds himself a total outsider, both with the Utopians and his fellow earthlings, and escapes from the quarantine castle just as the Earthlings' revolt begins. How can he survive in this Utopia and how can he get back to his Earth?Men Like Gods was first published in 1923.

Lonely and forlorn after their mother's death and their sudden arrival at Aunt Mabel's seaside boarding-house, John, Mary and Ben Mallory are unimpressed with their new life in England. But there are wonderful surprises in store for them when they discover a secret way into the grand and empty house next door. Soon all sorts of unexpected events will unfold as the siblings encounter a whole host of eccentric characters and happenings.Completed in 1963, The Secret Passage is Nina Bawden's first children's novel and was written especially for her own three children after they had discovered a secret passage in the cellar of their house. It beautifully reflects her own inquisitive nature - as she herself has said: 'I was a keyhole child, fearsomely curious' - wedded to her subtly innovative ability to empathise with the child's view.

On the Scottish island of Skua, friendship develops between the lonely and mysterious Perdita and a blind girl, Janey. Both possess a kind of second sight - Janey's is the ability to hear, feel and remember more than others, and Perdita's is the ominous legacy of her being a witch's daughter. When Janey's brother, Tom, starts investigating a cluster of mysterious events and suspicious characters, all three become entwined in an adventure of hidden jewels, desperate criminals and dangerous detection.Written in 1963, The Witch's Daughter showcases Nina Bawden's innate regard for the integrity of her young characters. As she has said: 'I like writing for children. It seems to me that most people underestimate their understanding and the strength of their feelings and in my books for them I try to put this right.' Hugely admired on publication by both reviewers and readers, it was described as 'thrilling' by the Times Literary Supplement.

In The Great Tradition, published in 1948, F. R. Leavis seemed to rate the work of Charles Dickens - with the exception of Hard Times - as lacking the seriousness and formal control of the true masters of English fiction. By 1970, when Dickens the Novelist was published on the first centenary of the writer's death, Leavis and his lifelong collaborator Q. D. (Queenie) Leavis, had changed their minds. 'Our purpose', they wrote, 'is to enforce as unanswerably as possible the conviction that Dickens was one of the greatest of creative writers . . .'In seven typically robust and uncompromising chapters, the Leavises grapple with the evaluation of a writer who was then still open to dismissal as a mere entertainer, a caricaturist not worthy of discussion in the same breath as Henry James. Q. D. Leavis shows, for example, how deeply influential David Copperfield was on the work of Tolstoy, and explores the symbolic richness of the nightmare world of Bleak House. F. R. Leavis reprints his famous essay on Hard Times, with its moral critique of utilitarianism, and reveals the imaginative influence of Blake on Little Dorrit. Q. D. Leavis contributes a pathbreaking chapter on the importance of Dickens's illustrators to the effect of his work.