Dorothy Canfield Fisher (Dorothy Canfield when this photograph was taken) was not only a great writer, she was stunningly beautiful. Here she must again have been in her late teens or early twenties.

On Wednesday, in the shop, we are showing the 1925 film of The Home-Maker. What a profound and extraordinary book this is! And what a profound and extraordinary woman Dorothy Canfield Fisher was! This week on the Post we celebrate her: here she is with her father James Canfield, then the Chancellor of the University of Nebraska, in the 1890s when she was in her late teens.

A City Garden 1940 by James McIntosh Patrick is normally at the Dundee Museum but in Edinburgh for a few months. This is how cities should be – industrial buildings and gardens. What a great exhibition! We sell the catalogue in the shop.

By the Hills by  Gerald Brockhurst was painted in 1939 and is normally at the Ferens in Hull, it’s on the front of the exhibition catalogue. It would of course be an excellent illustration for To Bed with Grand Music.

Blackpool by Fortunino Matania (1937) is in the Edinburgh  exhibition, this painting was used on a railway poster which is, curiously, for sale in an Onslow’s auction this very Friday, details here (scroll down).

So the Edinburgh exhibition contains paintings like these – the 1930s Haytime in the Cotswolds by James Bateman (1893-1959). We haven’t used this to illustrate one of our books but goodness knows why, it would be so perfect for eg. The Country Housewife’s Book.

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‘This exhibition invites us to look at art that has long been scorned or ignored’ (Frances Spalding): on the Post this week, paintings newly on display in Edinburgh. They are in an exhibition (which is on until the end of October) called True to Life – British Realist Painting in the 1920s and ’30s. And there is an important parallel between these kind of pictures and the kind of novels we  publish. So it is no coincidence that several of the paintings now in Edinburgh appear on our website as visual illustrations of the books, for example James Walker Tucker’s Hiking illustrates Diana Athill’s short stories.