Poetical Works

Roscius is dead, and London’s actors are scrambling for his vacant chair. Their campaign offerings range from Shuter’s open house to Foote’s tea—and the Muse is watching with a critic’s unsparing eye.

In Charles Churchill’s eighteenth-century satire The Rosciad, the theatre becomes a hustings: players court applause while audiences choose sides for reasons as flimsy as a wig, a leg, or a well-placed patch. Churchill’s Muse sets out to judge the performers honestly, but first must navigate a contest where vanity, faction and self-interest crowd the stage. As candidates plead their cases and would-be judges are weighed in turn, the question is not simply who can act—but who can see clearly through the noise. When every vote has its price, whose merit will survive the trial?

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.