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Which statesman was, by the end, “bored with it all?” Which world-renowned economist considered on his deathbed whether he ought to have been less abstemious, saying “I should have drunk more champagne.” Did Admiral Horatio Nelson, one of England’s greatest naval heroes, really utter “Kiss me, Hardy” to his captain just before his death in the Battle of Trafalgar?
           
Over the years, family and loved ones have recorded an extraordinary number of famous last words, from kings and queens to politicians, philosophers, scientists, writers, and actors. These exit lines can impart keen insights from an extraordinary life, reveal a sense of humor indomitable in even the darkest hours, or tell us something about a celebrated person’s last moments of life. Perhaps unavoidably given their provenance, many last words have proven irresistible to embellishment or remain in question. King Charles II, for example, was said to have instructed his brothers to “let not Poor Nelly starve,” asking that his favorite mistress be provided a pension of 1,500 pounds a year. Although she did indeed receive said pension, some contend that Charles’s actual last words, following a long period of illness, were, “You must pardon me, gentlemen, for being a most unconscionable time a-dying.”

For Famous Last Words, Claire Cock-Starkey has collected the most interesting, insightful, and controversial last words, from deathbed desperation to the fondest of farewells.

Fire and Ink is a powerful and impassioned anthology of stories, poems, interviews, and essays that confront some of the most pressing social issues of our day. Designed to inspire and inform, this collection embodies the concepts of “breaking silence,” “bearing witness,” resistance, and resilience. Beyond students and teachers, the book will appeal to all readers with a commitment to social justice.

Fire and Ink brings together, for the first time in one volume, politically engaged writing by poets, fiction writers, and essayists. Including many of our finest writers—Martín Espada, Adrienne Rich, June Jordan, Patricia Smith, Gloria Anzaldúa, Sharon Olds, Arundhati Roy, Sonia Sanchez, Carolyn Forche, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Alice Walker, Linda Hogan, Gary Soto, Kim Blaeser, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Li-Young Lee, and Jimmy Santiago Baca, among others—this is an indispensable collection.

This groundbreaking anthology marks the emergence of social action writing as a distinct field within creative writing and literature. Featuring never-before-published pieces, as well as reprinted material, Fire and Ink is divided into ten sections focused on significant social issues, including identity, sexuality and gender, the environment, social justice, work, war, and peace. The pieces can often be gripping, such as “Frame,” in which Adrienne Rich confronts government and police brutality, or Chris Abani’s “Ode to Joy,” which documents great courage in the face of mortal danger.

Fire and Ink serves as a wonderful reader for a wide range of courses, from composition and rhetoric classes to courses in ethnic studies, gender studies, American studies, and even political science, by facing a past that was often accompanied by injustice and suffering. But beyond that, this collection teaches us that we all have the power to create a more equitable and just future.

Fiction created by and for the working class emerged worldwide in the early twentieth century as a response to rapid modernization, dramatic inequality, and imperial expansion. In Japan, literary youth, men and women, sought to turn their imaginations and craft to tackling the ensuing injustices, with results that captured both middle-class and worker-farmer readers. This anthology is a landmark introduction to Japanese proletarian literature from that period.

Contextualized by introductory essays, forty expertly translated stories touch on topics like perilous factories, predatory bosses, ethnic discrimination, and the myriad indignities of poverty. Together, they show how even intensely personal issues form a pattern of oppression.  Fostering labor consciousness as part of an international leftist arts movement, these writers, lovers of literature, were also challenging the institution of modern literature itself. This anthology demonstrates the vitality of the “red decade” long buried in modern Japanese literary history.

In the seventeenth century, Dutch seafarers brought back reports of journeys to the East Indies, a realm of more than 3,000 islands that for over three centuries would be under Dutch rule. The twelve-volume Library of the Indies presents in English translation, with critical introductions and notes, a substantial body of the literature that arose from the Dutch encounter with the tropical Indies. Fugitive Dreams is the final volume in the Library of the Indies. It presents a selection of creative and critical writings by eight authors who span the Dutch colonial presence in Indonesia, ranging around 1600 to the beginning of the Second World War. The authors are Willem Bontekoe, Alexander Coen, Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn, Kartini, Herman Neubroner van der Turk, Francois Valentijn, Bas Veth, and Willem Walraven. The translated texts are accompanied by essays by E.M. Beekman on such topics as Holland's maritime history, seventeenth-century intellectual life, the life of the ordinary foot soldier in the colonial army, the first Javanese advocate of women's rights, and the beauty of the tropics.