Poet John Glassco wrote a great many unusual and eccentric works during his career, and ranks among the finest Canadian authors of the 20th Century. This particular title, published under the pseudoym "Miles Underwood," has achieved status as a must-have in your BDSM library. It is the account of Harriet Marwood, summoned to tutor the son of a 19th Century Victorian businessman, Arthur Lovel, whose wife has died, in the proper way to conduct himself, and to quit what is wonderfully termed "self-effacing." Our Ms. Marwood soon takes over the house, leaving the businessman free to consort with Kate, his whore, and the boy, young Richard, at her mercy, where he most wants to be.

Such was Chow Phya Sri Sury Wongse when I was first presented to him: a natural king among the dusky forms that surrounded him, the actual ruler of that semi- barbarous realm, and the prime contriver of its arbitrary policy. Black, but comely, robust, and vigorous, neck short and thick, nose large and nostrils wide, eyes inquisitive and penetrating, his was the massive brain proper to an intellect deliberate and systematic. Well found in the best idioms of his native tongue, he expressed strong, discriminative thoughts in words at once accurate and abundant. His only vanity was his English, with which he so interlarded his native speech, as often to impart the effect of levity to ideas that, in themselves, were grave, judicious, and impressive.

Between the 1780s and the end of the nineteenth century, an army of sad women took up residence in other people's homes, part and yet not part of the family, not servants, yet not equals. To become a governess, observed Jane Austen in Emma, was to "retire from all the pleasures of life, of rational intercourse, equal society, peace and hope, to penance and mortification for ever." However, in an ironic paradox, the governess, so marginal to her society, was central to its fiction-partly because governessing was the fate of some exceptionally talented women who later wrote novels based on their experiences. But personal experience was only one source, and writers like Wilkie Collins, William Makepeace Thackeray, Henry James, and Jane Austen all recognized that the governess's solitary figure, adrift in the world, offered more novelistic scope than did the constrained and respectable wife. Ruth Brandon weaves literary and social history with details from the lives of actual governesses, drawn from their letters and journals, to craft a rare portrait of real women whose lives were in stark contrast to the romantic tales of their fictional counterparts. Governess will resonate with the many fans of Jane Austen and the Brontës, whose novels continue to inspire films and books, as well as fans of The Nanny Diaries and other books that explore the longstanding tension between mothers and the women they hire to raise their children.

The memoir from which "The King and I" was adapted presents the author's experiences in the court of the King of Siam during the late 1800s.

Originally published in 1870, this unusual work is both expensive and hard to find in its first edition. Anna Leonowens, presents her memories of six years spent in the Siamese court as a governess. Lovers and historians of Thailand will be delighted by the insight she provides into a by-gone age. Illustrated with sixteen full page black and white drawings. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.