Rosalind Belben's 'Is Beauty Good' gets a new life from And Other Stories
A novel first published in the late 1980s is back on shelves this summer. And Other Stories, the independent press based in Sheffield, has issued a new edition of Rosalind Belben's Is Beauty Good as a B-format paperback — the standard trade paperback size — with a publication date of 14 July.
Belben is the kind of novelist whose name circulates more among other writers than on bestseller lists. Her admired works include Hound Music, Choosing Spectacles, Is Beauty Good and Dreaming of Dead People, the last of those originally published in 1979 and reissued by And Other Stories in 2025 (Penguin Random House author page). Is Beauty Good followed roughly a decade after Dreaming of Dead People, placing its original publication in the late 1980s (The Guardian, 10 August 2026).
The novel is built in an unusual shape. It divides into three sections — The Insatiable Wheel, Peacock Island and The Great White Worm — and comprises 30 vignettes, some as brief as a single page, the longest running to nine (The Guardian, 10 August 2026). One chapter, titled Florus, appears on the publisher's page for the book, where the author reads from it (And Other Stories).
This is not the first time Is Beauty Good has been brought back into print. New York Review Books, through its NYRB Classics imprint — a series dedicated to rediscovered and out-of-print literary works — has previously published Is Beauty Good alongside Belben's novel The Limit (NYRB author page). The And Other Stories edition now gives the book a UK-based home on a list that has been steadily building a Belben presence: the press's 2025 catalogue lists forthcoming new editions of Dreaming of Dead People, Is Beauty Good and Choosing Spectacles (And Other Stories 2025 catalogue).
The Guardian published a review of the new edition on 10 August, bringing Belben's work to a wider readership at a moment when three of her novels are appearing or reappearing under one imprint within a short span (The Guardian, 10 August 2026).
For readers who have never encountered Belben, the And Other Stories reissues offer a low-cost entry point. A paperback from an indie press, priced for a general audience and distributed through standard trade channels, is the simplest way a nearly forty-year-old novel finds a new borrower — and, for those who still use them, a library card.
