Nige recommends Jonathan Raban's account of the praire homesteaders... Mixing history with reportage, travelogue, reconstruction and personal narrative, Jonathan Raban's wonderful book Bad Land (available for 1p here) tells the story of the homesteaders who came to settle on the all but unpopulated prairies of Montana in the teens of the 20th ... Read More...

We mark the anniversary of the birth of Russian poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky, a great and, even now, much-loved writer in his homeland - even if he penned a fair bit of turgid, politicised rubbish. This year, the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky would have turned 120 years old. Given that he was born in ... Read More...

Today we begin a new series. A few years ago bookseller Steerforth came across a remarkable diary, which he began to publish on his blog and which we now serialise, in an edited form, on The Dabbler. In this opening post, Steerforth explains how he discovered the diary and addresses ... Read More...