Masques & Phases

At 6:30, beneath the amused stare of a mummy, Professor Lachsyrma lays down his papyrus and reads astonishing news: Sappho’s long-lost poems have been found. For a scholar who has waited years to edit them, the discovery could change everything.

In early-twentieth-century London, Robert Baldwin Ross’s Masques & Phases moves among museums, studios and the tangled borderlands of art and literature. Its opening story finds the melancholy Professor Lachsyrma in a cluttered Bloomsbury retreat, surrounded by ancient fragments and the labours of scholarship. Ross brings a playful eye to collectors, critics and scholars, while probing the serious feelings stirred by books, drama and works of art. Here, an archaeological relic may be more than an object—and a discovery may unsettle the quiet life built around it. What will the newly recovered poems mean to the professor who has been waiting for them?

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.