Lost Classics

Belfort and Bastion's got something new headed your way. Very new. And yet… old at the same time.

We're going to be introducing a new line of e-books which we call "lost classics." These are great works which have, for some reason, dropped out of sight…or worse, stopped being read at all.

What sorts of books are both great and lost? You'd be amazed. You've heard of William Ernest Henley's "Invictus"…the poem that plays such an important role in the movie and book of the same name. It is the one that includes the compelling lines "I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul."

But have you ever read anything else he wrote? Like his strange and beautiful Song of Speed? We'll wager that you haven't. Yet, "Song" is a fabulous work, dated but weirdly modern, and should be explored by any scholar of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Or you've doubtless heard of Thomas Babington Macaulay, particularly if you are Indian (in which case you won't like him, but you will have heard of him). He was, of course, a leading member of the British Raj, and he did everything he could to supplant Indian languages (which he considered inferior) with English. He's thus hardly a man to win the hearts and minds of modern readers. Yet, at one time, his Lays of Ancient Rome was considered one of the greatest poems in the English language.

Or there are a thousand other writers, thinkers, journalists, and intellectuals whose works have been allowed to drop from sight (in the case of Macaulay, maybe justifiably) and whose absence is to be deeply regretted. Some of the Lost Classics are very, very good. And even at their worst, they provide a window into the past—its values, its thoughts, its beliefs.

And so our Lost Classics list. We will find such books, annotate them as extensively as we can, provide a new foreward, and generally make them accessible to today's audience.

Our first Lost Classic?

That's for next time. But don't worry. We'll let you know shortly.