Fly Leaves

The dawn arrives on white horses, chasing Night’s mares across the sky—only for the grand spectacle to end with a practical request: “Polly, put the kettle on at once.”

In these Victorian verses, Charles Stuart Calverley sends romantic moonlit walks, country scenes and heroic airs tumbling into the ordinary world of tea, boots and lunch. A lonely clerk savours a seaside holiday; a lover dreams of courtship’s delights; even a mysterious figure fleeing into a lake may not be quite what the observer imagines. Calverley delights in the gap between poetic grandeur and everyday folly, turning familiar scenes with a light, nimble touch. When the next solemn image appears, what small absurdity is waiting just behind it?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.