The editors of BRICK magazine had the idea of celebrating the new century by asking their contributors for short essays about their favourite 'lost classics': books they treasured and would love to pass on to friends, but that are, for all intents and purposes, forgotten. The next issue contained 32 such essays - pithy, witty, passionate, surprising - which led to the idea of soliciting more, and celebrating again with a book.

In LOST CLASSICS you will find Margaret Atwood on sex and death in the scandalous DR GLAS, first published in Sweden in 1905 and Helen Garner on the delightfully sinister Australian children's epic, THE JOURNEY OF THE STAMP ANIMALS. You will also find David Malouf on Stendhal's LIFE OF ROSSINI; Jeffrey Eugenides on THE PILGRIM HAWK by Glenway Westcott; John Irving on THE HEADMASTER'S PAPERS by Richard A Hawley; Edmund White on THE STORY OF HAROLD by Terry Andrews; Bill Richardson on a children's book for adults by Russell Hoban, and much, much more.