Rejected Addresses

A phoenix is boiled, roasted, then bursts from its pot—and Drury Lane’s rebuilt theatre rises like a bird that “caws without a beak.”

In 1812, London’s new Drury Lane Theatre is ready to reopen, and a parade of would-be poets vies to supply its opening address. James and Horace Smith turn the rejected submissions into twenty-one comic performances, slipping into the voices of writers from William Wordsworth to Lord Byron. One moment, a little girl recounts a feud over a wax doll and a peg-top; the next, a solemn poet finds doom lurking beneath the theatre’s lamps. Behind every grand flourish, literary ambition is waiting to trip over its own rhyme. Which voice will make the most glorious—and most ridiculous—entrance?.

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.