The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Babar, Ludwig Bemelmens' Madeline and Hansi who is packed onto a train by his mother and travels up the mountains, Edward Ardizzone's Lucy Brown and Mr Grimes and Little Tim books, Peter Rabbit, Tomi Ungerer's Moon Man, Edward Bawden, William Steig, Astrid Lindgren, Hans Christian Andersen, Ted Hughes, Maurice Sendak, David Gentleman's Fenella in the South of France, Felix Hoffman's The Sleeping Beauty. This unashamed visual feast of old and new, classic and not so famous but equally collectible imagery celebrates the best designed and illustrated picture books from around the world over the past 100 years. Each book is a creation of genius and inventiveness, and their design and illustration represent such diverse trends as the Russian Constructivists, Italian Futurists and Postwar Neo-romantics. They are also mirrors of their times reflecting social concerns from a child's and family's perspectives throughout the 20th and into the 21st century. Fearlessly confronting the frontiers between a child's picture book and art, this is a collectors of children's literature. Hundreds of gorgeous original colour images and book jackets reproduced. 22.86 x 2.54 x 29.21cm. Rare and collectible, 216 pages.

The survival of manuscripts is often random. Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales survive in 92 manuscripts because Chaucer was a well-connected diplomat. By contrast, no medieval manuscript survives of Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love, nowadays considered a great religious classic. Julian was a woman, and her radical theology was sometimes at odds with church teaching. In other chapters, the author discusses the Paston Letters, the Lindisfarne Gospel, the artists of the colourful Winchester Bible, Canterbury Pilgrims, the artist Tamaris pictured at work, the only surviving Beowulf manuscript singed at its edges and other books which have survived fires and floods, the personal prayer book of Henry VIII, and the work of hidden writers such as the Saxon nun Hugeburc, who lived in Germany and wrote the lives of saints Willibald and Wynnebald, coding her name into the text. The world of manuscripts is full of breathtaking, can't-believe-it discoveries, and in this fascinating book the author starts with three manuscript discoveries that not only made headlines but changed our understanding of history. In 1934 a house party in search of ping-pong balls found a cache of old books. Luckily one of the guests was a keeper at the Victoria and Albert Museum with an instinct for a find. In fact it was the lost Book of Margery Kempe, the first autobiographical work in English, from the early 14th century. Kempe had 14 children, suffered from post-natal depression, went abroad on pilgrimages and had visions, all of which she described in colourful style. In the same year there was another astonishing discovery, the original manuscript of Thomas Malory's great Arthurian epic, Le Morte D'Arthur, an exploration of the 15th century culture of chivalry. It also confirmed the identity of the author, which had been contested on the grounds that Malory was something of a career criminal unlikely to have penned the refined classic. In fact he wrote it in prison. The author's third dramatic discovery was made in the 12th century, when the monks of Durham Cathedral opened the coffin of St Cuthbert and found the Cuthbert gospel, the earliest intact European book. Created in the early 8th century, it subsequently travelled round the north of England as the monks of Lindisfarne sought to preserve Cuthbert's remains from the marauding Vikings. 340 pages, gorgeous gleaming-with-gold decoration and colour decoration and capitals in reproductions. Please note contents same as Hidden Hands: The Lives of Manuscripts and Their Makers.

Sub-titled 'Writers, Artists and a Peculiarly British Tradition', the book explores three fascinating examples of relationships between artists and writers - the illustrations of Paradise Lost and Pilgrim's Progress, Hogarth and Fielding; a writer and artist dealing with common material; Wordsworth and Thomas Bewick, a poet and engraver working separately but imbued with the spirit of their age. A brief coda turns to a fourth kind of relationship, the writers and artists who collaborate from the start, beginning with Dickens and Phiz and Lewis Carroll and Tenniel. All were great innovators who shared common aims and this is a book for all with an interest in the poetry, novel writing, painting, engraving or cartooning of the period, a rewarding and generally illustrated book. Includes colour plates, several of Thomas Bewick's birds and Hogarth's The Shrimp Girl and Blake's The Temptation of Eve. 162pp, softback.

According to Cecil Day-Lewis, the sonnet, the detective story and the blurb are all the most perfect crystallisation of literary form. Veteran Penguin Books blurb writer and editor Louise Willder distils her 25 years' experience and boasts that she has written over 5,000 blurbs in her career. Our editor Annie can certainly top that! Her book concerns our initial impressions of a book - title, strap line, quotes, opening line and cover design which all work together to make us want to pick it up. The second section stays with the bigger picture to consider the blurb's literary history. Has the way we use words to sell books changed over time and when did the earliest blurb appear? Writers have been eliciting words of praise from other writers for hundreds of years and markets have always been crowded. The oldest known printed advert in English is from the 15th century - and it is for a book. What can great writers from Jane Austen to J. D. Salinger and lesser known figures tell us? Which authors really hated blurbs? Then we narrow our focus in on the rules of good copy and the best way to capture something in as few words as possible while still making those words feel fresh and original. How do shape, structure, pace and style work together? Is it ever OK to swear or give away the ending? Yes of course it is! Another section looks at blurb writing from children's books to blockbusters and yet another what happens in our brains when we read a piece of persuasive copy. Can blurbs be sexist? How does copywriting relate to language, culture, screenwriting, fairy tales, advertising and even musicals? This is the outside story of books and some titbits on the eccentrics - gossipy, brilliantly created publishing world which has been the writer's home for over two decades. For all bibliophiles. 351pp of funny, curious and stylish thoughts about books.

Sub-titled 'Dostoevsky and the Gentleman Murderer Who Inspired a Masterpiece', Kevin Birmingham's impressive research is combined with his flair for characterising the teeming intellectual debates of the day and giving insight into one of the world's great novels. It is the immersive tale of how Fyodor Dostoevsky came to write Crime and Punishment and why it changed the world. As a young man, Dostoevsky was a celebrated writer, but his involvement with the radical politics of his day condemned him to a long Siberian exile. There he spent years studying the criminals who were his companions. Upon his return to St Petersburg in the 1860s, he fought his way through multiple hardships - gambling addiction, debilitating debt, epilepsy, the deaths of loved ones, and literary banishment - to craft an enduring classic. The germ of the novel came from the sensational story of Pierre-Francois Lacenaire, a notorious murderer who charmed and outraged Paris in the 1830s. Lacenaire was a glamorous egotist who embodied the instincts that lie beneath nihilism, a western-influenced philosophy inspiring a new generation of Russian revolutionaries. Lacenaire was a character who could demonstrate the errors of radical politics and ideas through the character of Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov began to merge with Dostoevsky. The novelist was determined to tell a murder story from the murderer's perspective, but his character couldn't be a monster because he wanted so desperately to be good. The writing consumed Dostoevsky. As his debts and the predatory terms of his contract caught up with him, he hired a stenographer so that he could dictate the final chapters in time. Anna Grigorievna Snitkina became Dostoevsky's first reader and chief critic, and she changed the way he wrote forever. By the time he finished his great novel, he had fallen in love. We are brought back into the fevered panic of Raskolnikov as he murders an old woman, and Birmingham braids a hat trick of three biographies - the life of the man who wrote the novel, the murderer who inspired the tale, and the evolution of the novel itself. A magnificent achievement, 416pp, photos. Remainder mark.

Always judge a book by its wrapping. Gift wrap for books, what is nicer than wrapping up a book with a specially themed design. With badges on a linen background design with slogans like GONE READING!, Read 'em & weep, FACT OR FICTION, HAPPILY Ever After!, A BOOK IS FOR LIFE, I HEART BOOKS, ALWAYS JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS WRAPPING. And now indeed you can with this special gift wrap paper with TO: FROM: in the centre to write on the front of the gift parcel printed on this quality 120gsm weave paper. Quality lithographic print, paper size 15.7 x 19.3" to fit the most popular paperback and hardback book sizes.

Giving a book as a gift is a lovely thing, and after spending so long choosing just the right one, wouldn't it be super to add another layer of loveliness by gift wrapping with a special reading theme design? Bibliophile has chosen two designs, with This Book Belongs To: on an antique label on beautiful swirling marbled green, cream and black marbled paper exactly as you would find on the endpapers of an antique book. The wrapping paper folds perfectly so this would look like the title on the front cover of the gift wrapped book. The quality lithographic print is on 120gsm weave paper size 400 x 490mm (15.7 x 19.3") paper size to fit all of the most popular paperback and hardback book sizes. Sold as individual sheets.

Well, it has our name on it! Share the literary love with this colourful set featuring 20 assorted book stacks of well-loved and discoverable books with titles from contemporary fiction, classics, scifi and more. At a glance we can see The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, Beloved by Toni Morrison and Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, Roots by Alex Haley, Wild Swans by Jung Chang, a stack of cookbooks and colourful spine art, some from under-represented writers, with beguiling mysteries, favourite poetry collections and kids' picture books. Book stacks galore for all bibliophiles, 20 different notecards and quality envelopes, 4.45 x 11.18 x 13.97cm boxed.

How do you find a book when you can't recall the title...or the author? This homage to a bibliophile's dilemma is inspired by this torturous predicament. Artist Marina Luz creates paintings of books based on the descriptions we use when we can't remember their titles like 'Cat, possibly named Henry.' 'It was a dream, girl, horse, lightning, paranormal romance, a witch who owns a candle shop, man dies in embrace of hated woman, magic alleyway to prostitutionland, insane husband burns down house, polar bear wearing pants possibly named Victor or Vincent.' I think you get the picture! A unique appreciation of book love and the bizarre ways that books leave impressions on our souls. Marina Luz is an Emmy-Award-winning illustrator whose work has appeared in the New York Times and here she created some very clever book 'covers' for misremembered books. One beautiful artwork in colour per page, 96pp, 20.7 x 15.9cm.

In the beginning was the word, and in the Middle Ages were kings, princes, and high-ranking religious members whose wealth and influence produced illustrated bibles of extraordinary craftsmanship. This edition brings together 50 of the finest medieval bible manuscripts from the Austrian National Library. With examples from every epoch of the Middle Ages, the collection explores visualizations of the bible in various theological and historical contexts. In impeccable reproduction quality, these stunning images may be appreciated as much as art historical treasures as they are important religious artifacts and masterpieces of illumination. Texts by a team of 15 scientific authors describe each manuscript in detail, exploring both the evolution of the Bible and the medieval understanding of history. A glossary of important terms is also included so that those not versed in bible history can enjoy the texts as well. Colour, 15.6 x 21.7cm, 460 pages. New from Taschen.