Spyderwort Press
Spyderwort Classic Reprints
New reprint editions of classic, long-out-of-print historical works
Our Reprints are unabridged, fully proofread texts of long-out-of print works of nonfiction history: irreplaceable books that, rather than just languishing on the shelves of university libraries and dusty second-hand-book stores, deserve to have a second life in the 21st century as ebooks and as affordable trade paperbacks.
These books have been proofed to eliminate misprints and errors so that they are as clear and readable as the original hardcover editions, and edited to add explanatory footnotes for the 21st-century reader. Unlike most other reprints available today, our paperbacks are not overpriced photo-facsimiles of the original printing and our eBooks are not unedited OCR scans full of strange misspellings and weirdly misplaced typographical characters, but new, clean, modern editions.
Click on a book cover or title to visit the individual book page.
In Bygone London Life, social historian G.L. Apperson gives us glimpses of a day-to-day London that was already long gone when his book was first published in 1903—the raucous, vibrant city of Elizabethan eating-houses, literary taverns, private museums, mincing Restoration fops, and rowdy Georgian rakes. Here are types and institutions from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries—a kaleidoscope of for the historian, the historical novelist, or anyone who takes delight in the gone-but-not-forgotten past of a great modern city.
In April, 1793, the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris condemned a handful of prisoners to death for crimes against the French Republic—and judges, jury, and spectators wept as sentence was passed. In July, 1794, the Tribunal sent thirty to fifty people a day to the guillotine.
What, in fifteen months, turned the Tribunal into an instrument of mass murder? In this book, first published in 1909, historian Lenôtre examines the Revolutionary Tribunal, its beginnings, its personnel, its premises, its most famous trials, and finally its downfall. His extensive archival research strips away layers of myth and presents a factual and fascinating history of a dark and often misunderstood era.
Modern history’s most extravagant kingdom and century—France before the Revolution, 1700 to 1789—comes alive in fascinating detail as Paul Lacroix, master of historical minutiae, re-creates the splendor and squalor of a fateful era, from royal etiquette to the raucous cries of Parisian street peddlers. Quotations from contemporary memoirs, diaries, and social commentary add vivid immediacy to Lacroix’s portrait of a vanished epoch. This treasure of details, first published in 1875 and newly edited and annotated to provide additional information for the 21st-century reader, is an invaluable reference for specialists in the period, for historical researchers, and for any lover of history.
Buy the paperback of any of these books new at Amazon.com and get the Kindle edition of the same book for 99 cents or free via Amazon's Kindle MatchBook program. This offer is retroactive—if you already bought the paperback new at Amazon, you can still get the free eBook for your Kindle. Or buy the paperback as a gift for a friend and keep the eBook for yourself.