
Created by Matt Zoller Seitz
Directed by Judith Carter
NEW TO STORE:
Mad Men, Sopranos AND
Biography Collections
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
Haruki Murakami
This perfect present allows fans to revisit the home and the lives of the family and staff of the Emmy Award-winning series--and now feature film--with Jessica Fellowes's Downton Abbey--A Celebration: The Official Companion to All Six Seasons.
"Downton Abbey set a new standard, and it's probable that in 20 or 50 years critics will look back and say that this was period drama at its very best, often imitated but never bettered." ―The Daily Mail
Since the moment we first entered Downton Abbey in 1912, we have been swept away by Julian Fellowes’s evocative world of romance, intrigue, drama and tradition. Now, in 1925, as Downton Abbey prepares to close its doors for the final time, Jessica Fellowes leads us through the house and estate, reliving the iconic moments of the wonderfully aristocratic Crawley family and their servants as they navigate the emerging modern age.
Travelling from Great Hall to servants’ hall, bedroom to boot room, we glimpse as we go Matthew and Isobel Crawley arriving for the first time, the death of Kemal Pamuk, Cora’s tragic miscarriage, Edith’s affair with Michael Gregson, Mary’s new haircut, Thomas and O’Brien’s scheming, Anna and Bates’s troubles with the law, and Carson’s marriage to Mrs Hughes.
Alongside are in-depth interviews with the cast, who have worked on the show for six years and know it so well, as well as a complete episode guide for the first five seasons and a teaser for the sixth. Packed full of stunning location shots and stills from all six seasons of the show including exclusive behind-the-scenes photography, this celebratory book is the ultimate gift for Downton Abbey fans the world over.
"It's a posh soap opera but it's a pretty bloody splendid posh soap opera. . . .Television will be a dowdier place without it. " ―The Guardian
"What is a Sunday night without the Crawley family? Golly gumdrops, Downton, we're going to miss you." ―Allison Pearson
"Devotees dreading saying goodbye...can linger over this deep bow to Lady Mary, Lord Grantham, the Dowager Violet, Bates, Anna, Daisy. . . sob!" ―USA Today on Downton Abbey - A Celebration
“Downton Abbey is a cultural phenomenon, [with] many and varied famous fans.” ―The Daily Beast
“This series has a connoisseur's eye for the most exquisite emblems of privilege and breeding and a fan's gusto for intrigue and melodrama.” ―The New York Times
Julian Fellowes is the Emmy Award-winning writer and creator of Downton Abbey and the winner of the 2001 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Gosford Park. He also wrote the screenplays for Vanity Fair and The Young Victoria. He is the bestselling author of Snobs and Past Imperfect. His other works include The Curious Adventure of the Abandoned Toys and the book for the Disney stage musical of Mary Poppins.
As an actor, his roles include Lord Kilwillie in the BBC Television series Monarch of Glen and the 2nd Duke of Richmond in Aristocrats, as well as appearances in the films Shadowlands, Damage, and Tomorrow Never Dies.
He lives in London and Dorset, England.
MZS.Press is the online arts bookstore founded by author, critic, and filmmaker Matt Zoller Seitz and directed by Judith Carter. It offers new, used, signed, collectible, and rare books on film, TV, music, photography, and the visual arts. The store was launched in 2019 on a different platform and has expanded to incorporate arts books published by MZSPress's private imprint: titles currently include Seitz's The Deadwood Bible: A Lie Agreed Upon and Dreams of Deadwood, about the HBO Western, and Walter Chaw's A Walter Hill Film.
Our deepest wish is to promote, encourage, and distribute work by small presses, academic presses, and individuals. Extraordinary work tends to get swallowed up on giant platforms like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The store's inventory of nearly 1000 volumes is currently in the process of being reconstructed after its relocation from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Dallas, Texas. The titles featured here are personally selected by a group of curators and advisors, including Seitz, Carter, and an array of critics, artists, journalists, educators, publishers, and arts mavens who are known for their ability to suss out what Seitz's jazz musician dad liked to call "the good sh*t."
“Please. Have mercy. I’ve been wearing the same underwear since Tuesday.”
Matt Zoller Seitz
Critic, Author, Filmmaker, MZS Press Creator
Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large and film critic of RogerEbert.com; a staff writer for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism. His writing on film and TV has appeared in Sight and Sound, The New York Times, Salon.com, The New Republic and Rolling Stone. Seitz is the founder and original editor of the influential film blog The House Next Door, now a part of Slant Magazine.
Seitz has written, narrated, edited or produced over a hundred hours’ worth of video essays about cinema history and style for The Museum of the Moving Image, Salon.com and Vulture, among other outlets. His five-part 2009 video essay Wes Anderson: The Substance of Style was spun off into the hardcover book The Wes Anderson Collection. This book and its follow-up, The Wes Anderson Collection: Grand Budapest Hotel were New York Times bestsellers.
Other Seitz books include the New York Times bestellers The Sopranos Sessions and Mad Men Carousel; TV (The Book), The Deadwood Bible: A Lie Agreed Upon, and the forthcoming The Wes Anderson Collection: The French Dispatch. He is also an interviewer, moderator, and film programmer who has curated and hosted film and TV presentations for the Museum of the Moving Image, IFC Center, San Francisco's Roxie Cinema, and other venues. He is currently working on a memoir about his marriages and a feature-length documentary about his father, jazz musician and composer Dave Zoller.
His hobbies include exotic dancing, moonwalking, and affixing masking tape labels to every food item in the refrigerator, including eggs. He has the attention span of a gnat.