Spradabach

11/06/2024

AVAILABLE NOW
Max Nordau’s Degeneration

ABOUT THE BOOK:
A sensational success when first published in 1893, the violent hatreds Degeneration roused among younger artists followed the author for the rest of his life. The book pursues a medicalised examination of some of the literary and artistic movements of the period. However, though taking inspiration from Cesare Lombroso's examination of genius and insanity, and to a lesser degree of criminal man, Nordau's language is anything but scientific. Rude and acerbic in tone, the author's sceptical disdain for his targets results in a vitriolic, vituperative, and systematic ripping to pieces of the prose, poetry, plays, and operatic works selected for analysis. One truly gets the sense of a middle-aged critic, seated on a leather armchair, looking down his nose at the works he is unable to enjoy. Nevertheless, he is not devoid of insight, and his criticisms are salutary when the targets have since become renowned philosophers, authors, or composers of the first rank. Why is it not surprising that such a book would inspire an embittered misanthrope, and later Stalinist, like György Lukács? According to Nordau's biographer, Degeneration caused an explosion of criticisms in Germany, to which followed a chain of explosions throughout Europe each time the work appeared in translation. Driven by utopian visions, Nordau stuck to his guns, but came in the end to regret going after some authors-like Zola-in the way that he did. Having pathologised him, the latter Nordau came to respect, and Zola bore him no umbrage. Others were, of course, less generous, and modern critics slate him for establishing the theory of degenerate art. Despite its bulk, Degeneration is written with clarity and precision, and proves an enormously entertaining read.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Max Nordau (1849 - 1923) was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Pest, in the Kingdom of Hungary. He obtained a medical degree from the University of Pest in 1872 and travelled Europe for six years before practising medicine in Budapest in 1878. In 1880 he relocated to Paris, where he remained most of his life. He felt connected to German culture, classed himself as an agnostic, and took a Christian wife. His literary career began while in Budapest as contributor to Der Zwischenact. In Paris he was a correspondent for Die Neue Freie Presse. In his lifetime he became best known for The Conventional Lies of Our Civilization (1883), a vitriolic attack on 19th-century institutions. Following the Dreyfus Affair, he experienced an awakening and became advisor to his friend Theodor Herzl, later playing a central role in the early World Zionist Congresses. In death he is remembered primarily for Degeneration.

ISBN:
978-1909606302

PAGINATION:
1042

AVAILABILITY:
https://amzn.eu/d/gmZRMR4

18/04/2024

AVAILABLE NOW

ABOUT THE BOOK:
In November 1664, rumours began winding their way through crowded, filthy, stinking alleyways about the death of two Frenchmen from the Plague at Long Acre. The plague had raged in Amsterdam with incredible violence the year before, as some still remembered, and it appeared to have its made to London by boat. At first, the family with whom the Frenchmen were staying, and then those who had caught the invisible contagion, attempted to conceal it, but soon enough the deaths began to mount, and the cat was out of the bag. Along with the disgusting buboes, the dead carts, and the secret mass graves, people's fervid imagination snowballed too, conjuring all manner of horrors-about the symptoms, about the disease, about pestilential houses filled with rotting corpses-sweeping the city with a foul wave of paranoia and terror. Who had it? Was it in the air? Was it divine punishment? Whither could one flee? Defoe, who lived through these events during infancy, and apparently basing his narrative on his uncle's diary, plus a variety documents, tells the story in the manner of a witness account. Its frightening immediacy makes it far superior, and vastly more engrossing, than Hodges' formal, medically-focused volume on the same subject. In the end, the plague claimed over 68,000 lives, about a quarter of the city's population. Sociologically and in terms of the official response, astonishing, sometimes tragicomical parallels, emerge in the mind of the modern reader, between what became known as the Great Plague of London of 1665, and the more recent coronavirus pandemic. There are occasions for eyerolls, anger, laugher, and contempt herein. It seems that although we know history, we are condemned to repeat it anyway.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Daniel Foe was born in London c. 1660, the son of James, a prosperous chandler and Presbyterian dissenter. He lived through the Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666, which left only his and two other houses standing in the area. As a general merchant, he was able to buy a country estate and a ship, though he was nearly always in debt. He joined the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685, but was pardoned. However, he spent a spell in debtor's prison, after which he travelled Europe and Scotland, returning in 1695, when, now surnamed Defoe, he began serving as a Commissioner of the Glass Duty and, in 1696, running a brick and tile factory. He became a prolific pamphleteer, which led him to the pillory and Newgate Prison. In exchange for his liberty, he agreed to work as an intelligence agent for the Tories, then as a propagandist for the Whigs, and then as a mouthpiece for the Anglo-Scottish Union. His novels and non-fiction books occupied him from the mid 1710s until his death in 1731.

ISBN:
978-190960647

PAGINATION:
376

AVAILABILITY:
Amazon:
https://amzn.eu/d/4d3GEFW

30/03/2024

We will soon be publishing a book by this author (Daniel Defoe), and it seemed opportune to share a few interesting facts about him.

He was born Daniel Foe, but added the ‘De’ after a spell travelling in Europe and Scotland, after being released from debtor’s prison.

The fact is, although an ambitious merchant, trading in hosiery, woollen goods, and wine at different times, and although able to buy himself a country estate and a ship, he was almost always in debt.

After his return, he became a tax collector, serving as Commissioner of the glass duty, which affected glass bottles. He also ran a brick and tile factory.

From 1697 he became a prolific propagandist. This eventually got him into trouble, and led him to the pillory and a return to prison.

He found a benefactor in Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, who brokered his release and paid his debts in exchange for his becoming a Tory spy.

When the Tories fell, he wrote propaganda for the Whigs (while pretending to be a Tory).

Later he wrote for The Review, back on the Earl’s employ, advocating for the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707.

It was only in his final years that he wrote the books we know him for today. The novels, beginning with Robinson Crusoe, were published between 1719 and 1724. He also wrote a number non-fiction books, and it’s one of these that we have coming out in a stunning new edition in less than two weeks’ time.

01/01/2024

Available now: The Itching Palm by William R. Scott

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Fed up of walking around like a money sieve, draining money everywhere you go because of the constant pressure to tip? Take a taxi? Tip. Hotel porter? Tip. Baggageman? Tip. Bellboy? Tip. Elevator boy? Tip. Hatboy? Tip. Lunch? Tip. Room service? Tip. Uber? Tip. Parking attendant? Tip. And as if this were not enough, we have now reached the point where even self-checkout machines are robotically prompting customers to tip. The custom is ubiquitous. It is also not optional in practice, even though it is in theory. Woe to the customer who tips poorly! As to those who defiantly refuse to tip? They might as well be dead, for they will never be served again. And in some cases their order will be vandalised by irate workers. In The Itching Palm, first published in 1916, William R. Scott demonstrates that complaints about the evils of this custom go a long way back. Aside from its pervasiveness, he details the devious (and humorous) psychological tactics used to extract tips from customers, both in America and Europe; the role of etiquette literature; the huge boost in profits it brings to employers; and the specious arguments used by said employers to justify shifting the majority-if not all- of the staff payroll onto the customer. Additionally, he surveys the various legislative efforts to eradicate the custom and the reasons they failed, as well as the opposition of labour leaders and their motivations. Ultimately, he argues that the custom is unethical, an affront to human dignity, and incompatible with a democratic society. As expected tip percentages have doubled since its initial publication, this text is twice as relevant today as it was a hundred years ago.

ISBN: 978-1909606456
PAGINATION: 166

AVAILABILITY: https://amzn.to/3S1VTot

14/12/2023

Available now:

Memoirs of the Secret Societies of the South of Italy, and Particularly the Carbonari

by

Jakob Salomon Bartholdy
(attributed)

About the Book:

First published in 1821, in the aftermath of the Neapolitan revolt of the year prior, Memoirs of the Secret Societies of the South of Italy, and Particularly the Carbonari, supplies an insight onto a tumultuous period in Italian history, shining a light into a mysterious network of subversive organisations. One of them, the Carbonari, of murky origins, an off-shoot of Freemasonry, had by that time infiltrated even the highest echelons of society—including ministries and the army—and become powerful enough to alter the course of events. Hastily written with a sense of immediacy after their failed efforts resulted in arrests, imprisonment, torture, and the death penalty for some of its members, the account herein relies on primary sources, including legal documents and the Carbonari's internal literature. The latter give insight into their origins, mythology, rituals, organisation, secret alliances, and beliefs. The author, allegedly Jakob Bartholdy, a diplomat then stationed in Rome, seems thoroughly well informed of the inner workings of the sect. It becomes clear that though it attracted adepts of various persuasions, including royalists, Muratists, and Bourbonists, and though they used Christian and nationalist rhetoric, they also contained ultras with republican ideas, and the general tenor of their belief system was liberal and progressive. Assassinations were attributed to them and the Emperor of Austria denounced the Carbonari as a conspiracy to destroy all governments. It seems not to be without reason that reference is made early in the narrative to Augustin Barruel's Memoirs to Illustrate the History of Jacobinism, for this intrepid exposé, belongs to the same genre.

About the Author:

Jakob Salomon Bartholdy (1779 - 1825) was born from Jewish parents and was educated at the University of Halle. He took the Bartholdy second surname from a family property upon converting to Christianity. He fought in the Austrian army against Napoleon, following which he entered the Prussian diplomatic service and accompanied the Allied armies to Paris in 1814. Later he was made Prussian Consul General and dispatched to Rome, where he became a patron of the arts. The revival of fresco painting by young German artists in Italy owes largely to his patronage. His collection of antiques was subsequently bought by the Berlin Museum of Art and the frescos decorating Casa Zuccari, his mansion in Rome, were transferred to the Berlin National Gallery.

ISBN: 978-1909606432
Pagination: 284

Available from: https://amzn.to/46XtRP5

30/07/2023

Spradabach… the story so far…

06/07/2023

The Scoundrel's Dictionary was first published in 1754, in a rough-and-ready pocket edition designed for practical use, the product of a time of rising crime, when criminals were viewed as folk heroes. Despite the romantic framing story provided on the title page, however, the text is largely derived from Shirley's The Triumph of Wit (1688), and the cant entries in B. E.'s A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew (1699). All the same, The Scoundrel's Dictionary has its own charms, having had presumed contact with the beggars; its studious predecessors were, by contrast, intended for the diversion of the middle class, and were designed for consultation, or found only, in libraries. The volume is also more than simply a dictionary, since it contains a number of expository essays on the types of person who used the cant lexicon, when and for what purposes it was used, how its users were inducted into gangs, their methods of operation, and so on, plus a collection of songs, both in cant and in plain English translation. Since so many copies are thought to have been destroyed in a great fire, the original 18th-century edition is extremely rare, with only one having ever appeared at auction since 1976.⁣
⁣

12/06/2023

ABOUT THE BOOK:
When Lady Briget Perceval tricked John Mitford into supporting her campaign to promote Caroline of Brunswick, the then Princess of Wales, he was hidden away in Whitmore House, a for-profit mad-house owned by the cany and bombastic Thomas Warburton. From the inside, Mitford helped Lady Perceval place forged letters in the newspapers-an arrangement that ended badly, with a falling out and a lawsuit from which Mitford was acquitted. During his stay, he had opportunity to observe the cruel suffering to which mental patients were subjected in this and other private asylums, many of which were equally if not even more depraved and corrupt. The horrors were such that he, a Navy Officer who had seen his fair share of inhumanity and death, was moved to campaign for their abolition. In the two pamphlets collected herein, first published in the 1820s, he describes the filth and revolting conditions, the brutal punishments, the debauchery of the keeperesses, the fleecing of patients, the pretences put up for visiting relatives, the (perfectly sane) wealthy criminals absconding to evade justice, the weaponisation of certificates on insanity obtainable from quack doctors and corrupt physicians, and the preferential treatment given to those with money and aristocratic connections. The revelations helped trigger the 1827 Select Committee to investigate conditions at the Bethnal Green asylums, whose notoriety proved instrumental in the the introduction of the Act for the Regulation of Madhouses of 1828, which prescribed new rules for the committing of patients to asylums and licensed houses.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
John (Jack) Mitford, (1782 - 1831), was a British naval officer, poet, and journalist. Thanks to the patronage of his distant relative, Lord Redesdale, he secured a position as a midshipman on the Victory, aged 13. He was present at the Battle of Hyères Islands on 13 July 1795 and, aboard the Zealot, at the disastrous attack on Santa Cruz in July 1797 and at the battle of the Nile on 1-2 August 1798. In 1811 he became embroiled in the Blackheath affair, after Lady Bridget Perceval, daughter-in-law of the Earl of Edgmont, got him involved in her campaign in support of Caroline, Princess of Wales. In 1818 he published a book of verse, The Poems of a British Sailor, written while at sea and while working for Lady Perceval; as well as his most famous work, The Adventures of Johnny Newcome in the Navy, a Poem in Four Cantos. Further books of poetry followed. As an editor, he worked on Scourge, or Monthly Exposure of Imposture and Folly (1811-1814); New Bon-Ton Magazine or the Telescope of the Times (1818-21); New London Rambler's Magazine (1828-30), and the Quizzical Gazette and Merry Companion. Despite his literary talent, his alcoholism and association with disreputable publishers-of obscene, libellous, or politically radical material-incurred him harsh criticism, including from William Howitt, who pronounced him 'one of the most deplorable instances of misused talents, and one of the most pitiable victims of intemperance and want of prudence.'

ISBN:
978-1909606395

PAGINATION:
126

AVAILABILITY:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1909606391/ref=cm_sw_r_as_gl_api_gl_i_HVPAG2ZC0HE3G5VXF79N?linkCode=ml2&tag=alexkurt-21

18/05/2023

First rating for Angel on Amazon is 5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 💪🏻

Order your copy:

Angel

14/05/2023

The Whigs Unmask’d: The Secret History of the Calves’-Head-Club by Edward Ward

ABOUT THE BOOK:
The Calves' Head Club was a secret association of anti-monarchical incendiaries who met each 30 January to mock Charles I and celebrate the anniversary of his ex*****on. They met at night and their alcohol-fuelled shenaningans included dining on cod's, boar's, and calves' heads; and performances symbolising the King's beheading. Though a piece of Tory propaganda, Edward Ward's Secret History of the Calves'-Head Club remains the main source of information relating to this scandalous society. Via documents and testimonies, he shines a light on their shady gatherings, and conducts an exegesis of their songs, which prove replete with insolence, arrogance, and mean-spirited revanchism. Who did they think they were? seems to be the underlying question. Ward's popular text was published during the reign of Queen Anne, and enjoyed numerous reprints. This one, based on the 8th edition, comes with an appendix and other enlargments, including, as the author saw it, exposés, in verse and in prose, of the character of Presbyterians and modern Whigs; a vindication of Charles; and a defense of his character. The author has the cheek to nominate his targets his patrons, ostensibly posing as a 'friend' desiring to 'help' them by encouraging them to desist and thereby avoid prison or the chopping block.⁣

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Edward 'Ned' Ward (1667 - 1731), a publican by trade and a satirical writer by vocation, first enjoyed success with his Trip to Jamaica, published in 1698. This led to a series of other satirical travel books, including to New England, to Islington, to Sadler's Wells, to Bath, and to Stourbridge. Adapting the Jamaica format he then published his most famous work, The London Spy, which surveyed in 18 monthly instalments the seamier side of the London scene, and through which he established his name and style in the literary world. A High-Church Tory, he used his political writings to attack Whigs, Puritans, and Presbyterians; although they also landed him into trouble and, charged with sedition for accusing Queen Anne of not supporting the Tories in Parliament, was condemned to stand in the pillory. As a publican, he kept the King's Head Tavern, an alehouse in Clerkenwell, the Bacchus Tavern, and the British Coffee House, near Gray's Inn.

ISBN:
978-1909606371

PAGINATION:
208

AVAILABILITY:
Amazon UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whigs-Unmaskd-Secret-History-Calves-Head/dp/1909606375/

Amazon US:
https://www.amazon.com/Whigs-Unmaskd-Secret-History-Calves-Head/dp/1909606375/

Barnes and Noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-whigs-unmaskd-edward-ward/1143411302?ean=9781909606371

14/05/2023

A Counterblaste to To***co, and Other Intemperate Diatribes Against To***co From the Early Modern Period.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
Besides a hatred of witches, King James had an extreme antipathy towards to***co, a habit he deemed so filthy, degrading, and harmful to the nation, that, trivial as the subject might have appeared on the surface, he thought it opportune to take quill to parchment and invect against smoking for the edification of his subjects. Later on, this same antipathy impelled a tax, which amounted to six shillings and eight pence per pound of imported product, a stiff imposition at the time. But, to his chagrin, his efforts proved futile against the stinking drug-it was addictive, after all. His treatise, being of kingly provenance, eclipsed a much longer one produced by a pseudonymous physician, published a couple of years earlier. Work for Chimney-Sweepers presents a more systematic attack on to***co, supplying eight reasons and arguments against it. Like James, he relied for this purpose on the Galenian theory of the four humours. And, alas, like his king, he censured in vain, for the matter had to be taken up again three generations later at a Sessions Court, this time by women fed up with their husbands' to***co-induced low libido, infertility, and chimney-like qualities. Married and unmarried, young and old, the women detailed their grievances in no uncertain terms, to the extent that an order was approved, restricting the husbands and authorising their sexually frustrated wives to seek their own redress. This collection of diatribes, intemperate as they are, provide an entertaining window into 17th-century English society, and the disruption caused by this exotic plant brought in from the New World.

ISBN:
978-1909606357

PAGINATION:
112

AVAILABILITY:
Amazon UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Counterblaste-To***co-Intemperate-Diatribes-Against/dp/1909606359/

Amazon US:
https://www.amazon.com/Counterblaste-To***co-Intemperate-Diatribes-Against/dp/1909606359/

Barnes and Noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-counterblaste-to-to***co-and-other-intemperate-diatribes-against-to***co-from-the-early-modern-period-james-stuart/1143157275?ean=9781909606357

Walmart:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/A-Counterblaste-to-To***co-and-Other-Intemperate-Diatribes-Against-To***co-From-the-Early-Modern-Period-Hardcover-9781909606357/3441530913

08/01/2023

A couple of images of the paperback.

08/01/2023

Images of the recently published hardcover version of Angel by Alex Kurtagic.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

A lovelorn university student with a poetical disposition, Angel fails at being a man. In fact, he fails at being a human, unable perform even the most basic of tasks without some mishap. Thousands of miles away is his beloved damsel, an American he met in London during the Spring—an elegant, traditional girl from a wealthy family. Deeply impoverished, he is forced to take a rude job to execute his design of visiting her during the Christmas break. Their reunion is to be a momentous occasion, a romantic collision of singular import, a fulfilment of cosmic proportions. Alas, early in the term he learns via social media that she has fallen under the nefarious, corrupting influences of poisonous new friends at her university, and as the weeks pass, her gradual transformation, physical and mental, becomes ever more distressing. He must reach her before it is too late! But the pennies seem maddeningly elusive, and along the way appear all manner of reverses and impediments. Not least because his is a brutal world of brawling thugs, rabid protesters, loan sharks, exploitative employers, hysterical students, pranking handymen, brick-wall administrators, impatient women, and much worse. Moreover, behind this tableau, subterranean forces are moving that will dramatically alter his life, but Angel is so focused on his quest that he is missing important clues. If he would only turn to look . . .

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Alex Kurtagic is not a New York Times best-selling author and has never appeared on the Sunday Times Best Seller list. He has not published numerous books nor sold sixty-eight million copies worldwide-and he is yet to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He does live in a region where the sky is always grey or black, and where it rains almost every day of the year. For no good reason, his prose remains untranslated in 170 languages.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION:

Alex Kurtagic, Angel (London: Spradabach, 2022) ISBN: Hardback: 978-1999357375; Paperback: 978-1999357382; Kindle: 978-1909606340

AVAILABILITY:

You can order the book on Amazon in three formats: hardback, paperback, and kindle.

Hardback:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Angel-Alex-Kurtagic/dp/199935737X/

Paperback:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Angel-Alex-Kurtagic/dp/1999357388/

Kindle:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Angel-Alex-Kurtagic-ebook/dp/B0BQWXWZ8L/

25/12/2022

Angel, a new novel by Alex Kurtagic, will be published on 29 December 2022. It is available for pre-order now.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

A lovelorn university student with a poetical disposition, Angel fails at being a man. In fact, he fails at being a human, unable perform even the most basic of tasks without some mishap. Thousands of miles away is his beloved damsel, an American he met in London during the Spring—an elegant, traditional girl from a wealthy family. Deeply impoverished, he is forced to take a rude job to execute his design of visiting her during the Christmas break. Their reunion is to be a momentous occasion, a romantic collision of singular import, a fulfilment of cosmic proportions. Alas, early in the term he learns via social media that she has fallen under the nefarious, corrupting influences of poisonous new friends at her university, and as the weeks pass, her gradual transformation, physical and mental, becomes ever more distressing. He must reach her before it is too late! But the pennies seem maddeningly elusive, and along the way appear all manner of reverses and impediments. Not least because his is a brutal world of brawling thugs, rabid protesters, loan sharks, exploitative employers, hysterical students, pranking handymen, brick-wall administrators, impatient women, and much worse. Moreover, behind this tableau, subterranean forces are moving that will dramatically alter his life, but Angel is so focused on his quest that he is missing important clues. If he would only turn to look . . .

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Alex Kurtagic is not a New York Times best-selling author and has never appeared on the Sunday Times Best Seller list. He has not published numerous books nor sold sixty-eight million copies worldwide-and he is yet to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He does live in a region where the sky is always grey or black, and where it rains almost every day of the year. For no good reason, his prose remains untranslated in 170 languages.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION:

Alex Kurtagic, Angel (London: Spradabach, 2022) ISBN: Hardback: 978-1999357375; Paperback: 978-1999357382; Kindle: 978-1909606340

AVAILABILITY:

You can order the book on Amazon in three formats: hardback, paperback, and kindle.

Hardback:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Angel-Alex-Kurtagic/dp/199935737X/

Paperback:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Angel-Alex-Kurtagic/dp/1999357388/

Kindle:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Angel-Alex-Kurtagic-ebook/dp/B0BQWXWZ8L/

17/12/2022

We are pleased to announce the 2022 edition of Cesare Lombroso’s 1891 classic:

The Man of Genius ⁣

ABOUT THE BOOK:

First published in English in 1891, the present work argues that genius is a morbid condition, a very special form of insanity, which often occurs alongside physical or other mental abnormalities. Alexander was short. Cardano a hypochondriac. Socrates had a cretin-like physiognomy. Giotto rickets. Kant an abnormal development of the left parietal bone. Erasmus stammered. Saint Paul was an epileptic. Coleridge an alcoholic. Nerval a manic depressive. Carlyle abused his wife. And so on. Lombroso surveys hundreds of artistic, literary, and religious figures, noting the aberrations in their personalities, private lives, habits, creative work, physical traits, and psychological characteristics. The theory herein advanced, though controversial even in its day, proved nevertheless culturally influential. Notably, the author offered one of the earliest examinations of the art of the insane. Hans Prinzhorn, author of The Artistry of the Mentally Ill (1922) was inspired by Lombroso’s examination of psychiatric art. Prinzhorn’s work would in turn inspire Jean Dubuffet to found the Art Brut movement. Similarly, Max Nordau’s Degeneration (1892)—an attack on ‘degenerate’ art—owes much to Lombroso’s work concerning men of genius in art and literature. Though outdated as a scientific study, with its fusion of criminology, criminal anthropology, degeneration theory, psychiatry, and physiognomy, The Man of Genius remains, all the same, a landmark in the history of ideas. And, though modern psychology classes much of what Lombroso deemed signs of insanity as minor deviations, have his insights not retained an element of truth?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Cesare Lombroso (1835 - 1909) was born in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia from a wealthy Jewish family. A professor of forensic medicine, he rejected the view of the Classical School, whereby crime was a choice made by man as a calculating animal with free will; instead, he posited that the criminal could be identified anthropologically, earning him the soubriquet of the father of criminology and of criminal anthropology. However, his wide-ranging, substantive, and original writings went beyond these subject areas to include studies on genius and insanity, a pioneering examinations of the art of the insane, and, towards the end of his life, mediumship and spiritualism.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION:

Cesare Lombroso, The Man of Genius (London: Spradabach, 2022) ISBN: 978-1999357399

PURCHASING INFORMATION:

Amazon UK
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1999357396/

Amazon US
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1999357396/

Barnes and Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/man-of-genius-cesare-lombroso/1100014092?ean=9781999357399

05/12/2022

AVAILABLE NOW

Not only the first book by Lefranc, but the first to accuse of a Masonic conspiracy behind the French Revolution, The Veil Lifted for the Curious is of enormous historical importance. The book pre-dated Augustin Barruel's Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism by six years; the latter became a sensation, in parallel with John Robison's Proofs of a Conspiracy. Both were widely available in the English speaking world, the former because it was promptly translated, the latter because the author was a Scotsman. Lefranc's pioneering volume, however, remained untranslated for 231 years. In 2022 we can make it available in English for the very first time. Lefranc traces the origins of Freemasonry, and claims that, even with the Christianity-inflected Rectified Scottish Rite, the ultimate aim was the destruction of the Christian religion-its replacement by a secular fiction concocted by the Freemasons, following their rationalist ideology. He finds proof by lifting the veil from the dark, mysterious, and macabre initiation rituals conducted in the secrecy of the lodges, and the tremendous oaths of loyalty extracted from candidates seeking to join the brotherhood and rise through its ranks. Just as importantly, he traces the astonishing parallels between the arrangements of Masonic lodges and those of the National Assembly, arguing that the latter had derived directly from the former. Lefranc denounces the revolutionaries and the conspirators alike, whom, having promised liberty and equality, made of France a terrifying abattoir, where some citizens were more equal than others, the church was despoiled of its property, the roads made unsafe, violent ideologues forced their beliefs both in the capital and in the provinces, and more restrictions were imposed on travellers than under the ancient régime.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jacques-François Lefranc was born in Vire, France, in 1739. He was superior of the Eudist seminary at Caen. Having refused to swear an oath to the revolutionary constitution, in 1791 he was targeted by the authorities, forced to hand over control of the seminary, expelled, and finally imprisoned at Carmes in Paris. He was assassinated along with 180 clerics on 2 September 1792. His writings put forth the first accusations of a Masonic conspiracy behind the French Revolution.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION:

Jacques-François Lefranc, The Veil Lifted for the Curious, or The Secret of the French Revolution (London: Spradabach Publishing, 2022) ISBN: 9781909606265.

AVAILABILITY:
Amazon UK
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lifted-Curious-Revolution-Revealed-Freemasonry/dp/190960626X/

Amazon US
https://www.amazon.com/Lifted-Curious-Revolution-Revealed-Freemasonry/dp/190960626X/

Barnes and Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-veil-lifted-for-the-curious-or-the-secret-of-the-french-revolution-revealed-with-the-aid-of-freemasonry-jacques-fran-ois-lefranc/1142645060?ean=9781909606265

Wordery
https://wordery.com/the-veil-lifted-for-the-curious-or-the-secret-of-the-french-revolution-revealed-with-the-aid-of-freemasonry-jacques-francois-lefranc-9781909606265 #

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