Smith & Taylor Classics is an imprint of Unnamed Press, founded in 2024, combining Unnamed’s mission to uplift the unlikely and unexpected from around the world with editors Allison Miriam Smith and Brandon Taylor’s shared love of craftsmanship and classic literature. Featuring both celebrated and lesser-known authors from the past, S&T seeks to reintroduce titles that pushed the boundaries of their time, and whose themes continue to resonate today. Each edition features a conversational afterword between two esteemed readers: established writers, critics, satirists, academics, scientists and more. 

Amy Levy – The Romance Of A Shop

Amy Levy’s The Romance of a Shop (1888) follows the four Lorimer sisters in the wake of their father’s death. Penniless and reliant on each other, they decide to open a photography studio at 20B Baker Street, offering the citizens of London quality portraits. It’s the 1880s and photography is not only growing in popularity and accessibility, but those with a critical eye are elevating the medium associated with quick and steady cash into a true art form. With more women entering the workforce out of necessity and rebellion, the Lorimer sisters take advantage of newfound independence as they work to survive poverty, the grind and smoke of London, fraught courtships, and melodramatic twists of fate. A novel of sisterhood, love, the female gaze and postmortem photography Levy deftly balances along the thin lines of romance and realism, art and commerce. 

Amy Judith Levy (November 10, 1861 – September 10, 1889) was an English essayist, poet and novelist who wrote three novels, three collections of poetry and short stories. She is best remembered for her literary gifts and her relationship with both women and men in literary and politically activist circles in London during the 1880s. Upon her death at the age of 27, Levy was eulogized in the pages of Woman’s World by its editor Oscar Wilde, who said that her work “was not poured out lightly, but drawn drop by drop from the very depth of her own feeling.”

The conversation with:

Ruth Madievsky is the author of the national bestselling novel, All-Night Pharmacy, winner of the California Book Award and the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction, and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her work appears in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, The Cut, Harper’s Bazaar, and elsewhere. Originally from Moldova, she lives in Los Angeles, where she works as a clinical pharmacist.

Rachel León is a writer, editor, and social worker based in Rockford, IL. She is the Managing Director for Chicago Review of Books and Fiction Director for Arcturus. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Catapult, LA Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is the editor of The Rockford Anthology (Belt Publishing, 2025) and the author of the novel, How We See the Gray (Curbstone Books, 2026). 

Robert Hunziker

Freelance writer, environmental journalist and a frequent contributor to Life Elsewhere Robert Hunziker has a new disturbing essay for CounterPunch titled Antartica’s Red Flag Warning. Robert says, “By the year 2035 the first 100 feet of coastline around Florida will be flooded! But there’s more, the last time the earth had the same temperatures as today over100,000 years ago sea levels were 18 to 30 feet higher!” Hunziker is certainly not a scaremonger, he has been studying and writing about climate change and the environment for almost two decades. He diligently sources and collates his information. His concern is also a passion to urgently share his findings. “What can be done about it” This is by far the most provocative question of the 21st century argues Hunziker. He continues, “More importantly, massive glacial meltdown throughout the world hasn’t been formally recognized as a major threat to the world’s coastal megacities by the world at large. Meaning, a “world approach” to some kind of solution is not even on the table!”

Image by Torsten Dederichs