ELT & Literary Studies Books

Book SynopsisHarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.Help one another, was a favourite Plumfield motto, and Nat learned how much sweetness is added to life by trying to live up to it.Spirited Jo March, now Mrs Bhaer, has settled into living and teaching at Plumfield boarding school, also home to a lively band of orphan boys. Jo's many pupils include Nat, a shy but talented musician, Dan, an ill-mannered troublemaker and Tommy Bangs, the school's mischievous class clown. Despite the troubles and scrapes that come with adolescent life, the lessons of kindness and gratitude taught at Plumfield prove to have a profound impact on each child.Published in 1871, Little Men was received with delight by the many who cherished the coming-of-age tale Little Women, and proved a worthy sequel. Wisdom, courage and love is at the heart of Louisa May Alcott's writing, which continues to inspire and give solace to readers around the world today.

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Book Synopsis''The Life of Herod The Great like Hurston herself is a masterpiece, a miracle, and a marvel. In other words, treasure for the whole world'' Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage*In the 1950s Zora Neale Hurston penned a historical novel reconsidering the life of one of the most well-known biblical figures, Herod the Great. That novel was never published in Hurston''s lifetime. Now for the first time, it is brought to glorious life with commentary from scholar Deborah G. Plant.Far from his villainous portrayal in the New Testament, Hurston casts Herod as a forerunner of Christ, a beloved king who enriched Jewish culture and brought prosperity and peace to Judea. An intimate of both Marc Antony and Julius Caesar, the Judean king lived in a time of war and imperial expansion that was rife with political assassinations and bribery, as the old world gave way to the new.By bringing this complex, compelling and oft misunderstood leader into shining focus, The Life of Herod the Great invites the reader to reassess history and the world as they know it. What was in Herod's time is and will be again. Zora Neale Hurston's never-before-published novel is a lantern of understanding that might be held up to the present or the future, and nothing short of a masterpiece.A never-before-published novel from beloved author Zora Neale Hurston, revealing the historical Herod the Great not the demon the Bible makes him out to be but a religious and philosophical man who lived a life of adventure.*Praise for Zora Neale Hurston:''Zora Neale was a knockout in her life'' MAYA ANGELOU''Their Eyes Were Watching God is one of the very greatest American novels of the 20th century. It is so lyrical it should be sentimental; it is so passionate it should be overwrought, but it is instead a rigorous, convincing and dazzling piece of prose, as emotionally satisfying as it is impressive. There is no novel I love more'' ZADIE SMITH''To the last page that fills the soul with tears, Hurston''s novel delivers. To me, it is also a welcome reminder that books are democratic, subversive and life-changing'' THE TIMES

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Book SynopsisPam Ayres, our much-loved comedienne and broadcaster, has entertained us for almost 40 years since winning Opportunity Knocks in 1975. Her series on BBC Radio 4 is Ayres on the Air, and she has also appeared as a guest on Just A Minute, Loose Ends and Saturday Live. She is one of the UK's top-selling comediennes with her theatre shows.Pam's poetry collections include The Works, With These Hands and Surgically Enhanced, and The Necessary Aptitude is her memoir of growing up in Berkshire during the post-war years. Pam has appeared three times for HM Queen Elizabeth, and was awarded the MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 2004. Pam and her husband have lived in Gloucestershire for over 25 years, where they have a smallholding with cattle, sheep, bees, chickens and guinea fowl.www.pamayres.com@PamAyresTrade ReviewWhen I say that Pam Ayres ought to be the Oxford Professor of Poetry, even the Poet Laureate, I am not being facetious ... Ayres uses simple verse forms - comic ballads or folk song idioms - to make poignant observations about tiresome husbands, gossiping wives, false teeth or battery hens. I find her work sweet and sour, gentle and sad, and often very moving in its wistful way -- Roger Lewis * Daily Mail *Her wistful, funny and perceptive verse captures both the joy and unfairness of life * Sunday Times *A wonderful, wonderful book -- Paul O’GradyHer humour, which verges on the black at times, is contagious and so original * Daily Telegraph *A national treasure. There are clear comparisons between Pam and Sir John Betjeman * Daily Express *

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Book SynopsisBorn in 1964, Tom Reiss is an American author and journalist who lives in New York. He is the author of The Orientalist, an acclaimed biography of Lev Nussimbaum (aka Kurban Said) which was shortlisted for the 2006 Samuel Johnson Prize; and The Black Count, a book about the real Count of Monte Christo.Trade ReviewWonderfully compelling... Deeply moving * Sunday Times *A wonderous tale, beautifully told...mesmerising, poignant and almost incredible * New York Times *Meticulous and fascinating... Inspiring reading * Spectator *Extraordinary on many counts... It has taken the tireless detective work of Tom Reiss to uncover the real Lev Nussimbaum * Sunday Times *A highly entertaining biography of a very unusual person * Literary Review *

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Book SynopsisAzar Nafisi is a visiting professor and the executive director of Cultural Conversations at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University. She has taught Western literature at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University and the University of Allameh Tabatabai in Iran. In 1981 she was expelled from the University of Tehran after refusing to wear the veil. In 1994 she won a teaching fellowship from Oxford University, and in 1997 she and her family left Iran for America. She is the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and Things I've Been Silent About, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the New Republic, and has appeared on countless radio and television programs. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and two children.www.azarnafisi.comTrade ReviewPlayful, sombre and tender, Nafisi's character-vignettes persuade us that reading nourishes empathy and friendship, opening the forbidden path through the green gate. * Independent *Resonant and deeply affecting . . . an eloquent brief on the transformative powers of fiction. * New York Times *We are all citizens of Azar Nafisi’s The Republic of Imagination. Without imagination there are no dreams, without dreams there is no art, and without art there is nothing. Her words are essential. * Marjane Satrapi *A lovely book: sharp in observation and wholly readable. * Larry McMurtry *An arresting read … striking and utterly persuasive * Times Higher Education *

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Book SynopsisSalman Rushdie is the author of eleven novels, one collection of short stories, three works of non-fiction, and the co-editor of The Vintage Book of Indian Writing. In 2008 Midnight's Children was judged to be the Best of the Booker, the best novel to have won the Booker Prize in its forty year history. The Moor's Last Sigh won the Whitbread Prize in 1995 and the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature in 1996. He is a Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres and in 2007 was knighted for his services to literature.Trade ReviewJoseph Anton is a splendid book, the finest new memoir to cross my desk in many a year -- Jonathan Yardley * Washington Post *Funny, painfully moving and absolutely necessary to read -- Nicholas Shakespeare * Daily Telegraph *Joseph Anton is a book that makes you laugh. It makes you sympathise. It may even scare you. It should also make you — if you believe that freedom is essential — very, very angry. -- David Aaronovitch * Times *Frank and…more gripping than any spy story…the prose makes for powerful reading... He is a great writer who has been brave. -- Margaret Drabble * Observer *An intimate tale of fathers and sons, of the beginnings and ends of marriages, of friendships and betrayals. At the same time, Joseph Anton is a large-scale spectacle of political and cultural conflicts. * New York Times Book Review *

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Book SynopsisPliny''s Natural History is an astonishingly ambitious work that ranges from astronomy to art and from geography to zoology. Mingling acute observation with often wild speculation, it offers a fascinating view of the world as it was understood in the first century AD, whether describing the danger of diving for sponges, the first water-clock, or the use of asses'' milk to remove wrinkles. Pliny himself died while investigating the volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii in AD 79, and the natural curiosity that brought about his death is also very much evident in the Natural History - a book that proved highly influential right up until the Renaissance and that his nephew, Pliny the younger, described ''as full of variety as nature itself''.Table of ContentsIntroductionFurther ReadingTranslator's NoteNatural HistoryPrefaceThe Universe and the WorldBook II. AstronomyBook III. Spain and ItalyBook IV. Europe and BritainBook V. The Continents of Africa and AsiaBook VI. The Black Sea, India, and the Far EastZoologyBook VII. ManBook VIII. Land AnimalsBook IX. Creatures of the SeaBook X. BirdsBook XI. InsectsBotanyBooks XII-XIII. TreesBook XIV. Vines and ViticultureBook XV. The Olive and Other Fruit-TreesBook XVI. Forest TreesBook XVIII. AgricultureMateria MedicaBook XX. Drugs Obtained from Garden PlantsBooks XI-XXII. Flowers and HerbsBook XXIII. The Vine and the WalnutBook XXIV. Drugs Obtained from Foreign TreesBook XXV. The Nature of Wild PlantsBook XXVI. Diseases and Their RemediesBook XXVII. More Plants Used in MedicineBook XXVIII. Drugs Obtained from Man; Magic and SuperstitionBook XXIX. Medicine, Doctors and Medical PracticeBook XXX. MagicBook XXXI. WaterBook XXXII. Fish and Aquatic CreaturesMining and MineralsBook XXXIII. Gold and SilverBook XXXIV. Copper and Bronze Sculpture, Tin, Lead and IronBook XXXV. Painting, Sculpture and ArchitectureBook XXXVI. Stones, Minerals and MonumentsBook XXXVII. Precious StonesKey to Place-NamesIndex

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Book SynopsisThe Satyricon is one of the most outrageous and strikingly modern works to have survived from the ancient world. Most likely written by an advisor of Nero, it recounts the adventures of Encolpius and his companions as they travel around Italy, encountering courtesans, priestesses, con men, brothel-keepers, pompous professors and, above all, Trimalchio, the nouveau riche millionaire whose debauched feasting and pretentious vulgarity make him one of the great comic characters in literature. Estimated to date from 63 - 65 AD, and only surviving in fragments, The Satyricon nevertheless offers an unmatched satirical portrait of the age of Nero, in all its excesses and chaos.Trade Review"This version by a translator who understands the high art of low humor is conspicuously funny." —Time"William Arrowsmith's translation of The Satyricon meets the two fundamental requirements of the translator's art: perfect fidelity to the original and a vitality of style that tempts the reader to believe that the English version is not a translation.… A classic of literature." —Allen Tate"Arrowsmith's brilliant translation … at one stroke renders every other version obsolete." —London Times Literary Supplement

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Book SynopsisAccessing the huge selection of critical theory can be an intimidating experience. This acclaimed dictionary is an invaluable introduction to the theories and theorists in the field and will prove an authoritative resource for all students.Trade Review'extremely good...Bravo!' Professor Jonathan Culler 'This is an unusual instance of an academic reference book that I do believe doubles quite effectively as a textbook for students and I would recommend it unreservedly to anyone with an interest in theoretical matters, or just in the history of ideas.' Dr Duncan Wu, University of Cambridge

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Book SynopsisThe Penguin Classics Marvel Collection presents the origin stories, seminal tales, and characters of the Marvel Universe to explore Marvel’s transformative and timeless influence on an entire genre of fantasy.   A Penguin Classics Marvel Collection Edition   Collects Captain America Comics #1 (1941); the Captain America stories from Tales of Suspense #59, #63-68, #75-81, #92-95, #110-113 (1964-1969); “Captain America…Commie Smasher” from Captain America #78 (1954). It is impossible to imagine American popular culture without Marvel Comics. For decades, Marvel has published groundbreaking visual narratives that sustain attention on multiple levels: as metaphors for the experience of difference and otherness; as meditations on the fluid nature of identity; and as high-water marks in the artistic tradition of American cartooning, to name a few.   Drawing upon multiple comic book series, thisTrade Review“A groundbreaking example of comics representation in literature.”—Publishers Weekly“Penguin provides introductory essays; superb analyses by the series editor, Ben Saunders; and extensive bibliographies.”—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post“Stories become classics when generations of readers sort through them, talk about them, imitate them, and recommend them. In this case, baby boomers read them when they débuted, Gen X-ers grew up with their sequels, and millennials encountered them through Marvel movies. Each generation of fans—initially fanboys, increasingly fangirls, and these days nonbinary fans, too—found new ways not just to read the comics but to use them. That’s how canons form. Amateurs and professionals, over decades, come to something like consensus about which books matter and why—or else they love to argue about it, and we get to follow the arguments. Canons rise and fall, gain works and lose others, when one generation of people with the power to publish, teach, and edit diverges from the one before ... A top-flight comic by Kirby—or his successor on “Captain America,” Jim Steranko—barely needed words. You could follow the story just by watching the characters act and react. Thankfully, Penguin volumes do justice to these images. They reproduce sixties comics in bright, flat, colorful inks on thick white paper—unlike the dot-based process used on old newsprint, but perhaps truer to their bold, thrill-chasing spirit.”—Stephanie Burt, The New Yorker

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Book SynopsisPlease note this title is suitable for any student studying: Exam Board: AQA Level: AS/A Level Subject: English LiteratureFirst teaching: 2015First exams: 2017This book prepares students and teachers for the requirements of the 2015 AQA A Level English Literature B specification. Structured and written to develop the skills on which students will be assessed in the exams and coursework, students of all abilities, through the source texts, book features and approach, will be able to make clear progress. The book offers students the opportunity to build on skills acquired at GCSE, extending them into their A Level course, ensuring that they are fully prepared for the assessment requirements of the qualifications and that students become successful, independent all-round learners. Building on years of development work on earlier editions, this brand new book includes the latest thinking and research, thus maintaining relevance and instilling confidence. Whether students are taking AS or A

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Book SynopsisThis is a comprehensive critical guide to Chaucer''s Troilus and Criseyde. This new edition has been comprehensively revised in light of the latest scholarly and critical research and with a fully updated bibliography. It includes a full account of Chaucer''s imaginative deployment of his sources, and an extended survey of this narrative poem''s innovative combination of a range of generic identities. The chapters explain how Chaucer builds thematic significance into his poem''s symmetrical structure, and the poem''s distinctive variety in style and language, as well as a full commentary on the poem''s concerns with love in the contexts of time and mutability and human free will. The Guide explores the poem as an extended debate about the nature and value of love, and how love was conceptualized and experienced as a form of service in quest of compassionate reward, a quasi-religious devotion, and a potentially fatal illness always in hope of cure. The subjectivities of the chief protagTrade ReviewReview from previous edition carefully written ... deeply learned ... sensible and judicious ... with monumental patience and humility Windeatt has served Chaucer and his students well * Notes and Queries *provides a rich compendium of knowledge ... highly recommended * Choice *

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Book SynopsisOne of Jane Austen's final uncompleted novels, started in the January the year she died. Perhaps Austen's most original work, stepping away from the mystique of the country estates. This edition includes an introduction, notes and bibliographyTrade ReviewA terrific introduction by Kathryn Sutherland, Professor of English Literature at St Anne's College, goes further in explaining the rage of the seaside during Austen's life time, but also how it allows Austen here to conjure up a cast of colourful, uncertain characters as tangy as vinegary fish and chips. * Richard Lofthouse, Quad *Light and funny, it's Austen's most experimental and poignant work. * Angela Wintle, Sussex Life *Table of ContentsIntroduction Note on the Text Select Bibliography A Chronology of Jane Austen Sanditon Explanatory Notes

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Book SynopsisVery few readers and audiences know that Ibsen''s iconic feminist drama A Doll''s House was built upon the real-life story of a woman called Laura Kieler, who was his friend and fellow writer. Her life fell apart when A Doll''s House came out and the world saw her deeply private life splashed across its stages. With tremendous determination and perseverance, she managed to recover from the trauma that Ibsen''s play caused her, and channelled her pain into a successful play of her own called (pointedly) Men of Honour. The play, performed in Copenhagen in 1890, caused great debate and fierce controversy. Ibsen eventually responded to her play by likewise writing a drama: When We Dead Awaken, his final work. This new edition traces the conversation between Ibsen and Kieler through these plays, across almost two decades and brings Kieler centre stage, and deepens our understanding of Ibsen''s A Doll''s House and When We Dead Awaken. These three plays create a fascinating whole: a fusion of vantage points, contexts, and visions still reverberating on and off stage today. Furthermore, the two Ibsen plays speak to each other in startling and fresh ways. This volume also explores 21st century concerns about consent and the many ways in which women in particular are still not heard. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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Book Synopsis''I beg as soon as you get Fielding''s Joseph Andrews, I fear in Ridicule of your Pamela and of Virtue in the Notion of Don Quixote''s Manner, you would send it to me by the very first Coach.'' (George Cheyne in a letter to Samuel Richardson, February 1742) Both Joseph Andrews (1742) and Shamela (1741) were prompted by the success of Richardson''s Pamela (1740), of which Shamela is a splendidly bawdy parody. But in Shamela Fielding also demonstrates his concern for the corruption of contemporary society, politics, religion, morality, and taste. The same themes - together with a presentation of love as charity, as friendship, and in its sexual taste - are present in Joseph Andrews, Fielding''s first novel. It is a work of considerable literary sophistication and satirical verve, but its appeal lies also in its spirit of comic affirmation, epitomized in the celebrated character of Parson Adams. This revised and expanded edition follows the text of Joseph Andrews established by Martin C.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review'This modernized version of Jarvis is attractive and readable.' Times Literary SupplementTable of ContentsIntroduction; Note on the Translation; Select bibliography; A chronology of Miguel de Cervantes; Don Quixote; Explanatory notes

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Book SynopsisHecuba The Trojan Women AndromacheIn the three great war plays contained in this volume Euripides subjects the sufferings of Troy''s survivors to a harrowing examination.The horrific brutality which both women and children undergo evokes a response of unparalleled intensity in the playwright whom Aristotle called the most tragic of the poets. Yet the new battleground of the aftermath of war is one in which the women of Troy evince an overwhelming greatness of spirit. We weep for the aged Hecuba in her name play and in The Trojan Women, yet we respond with an at times appalled admiration to her resilience amid unrelieved suffering. Andromache, the slave-concubine of her husband''s killer, endures her existence in the victor''s country with a Stoic nobility. Of their time yet timeless, these plays insist on the victory of the female spirit amid the horrors visited on them by the gods and men during war. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.Trade ReviewI imagine that everyone who teaches Greek tragedy in translation entertains a mental wish list for the ideal classroom text. . . . The volume under review, the third in a series of translations of selected plays of Euripides by the team of James Morwood and Edith Hall, comes closer to meeting these criteria than any other with which I am familiar; it is thus welcome indeed . . . This is a translation I shall definietly be ordering for my classes * Bryn Mawr Classical Review 20/09/01 *Review from other book by this author 'Morwood's prose translations read smoothly and reflect current, idiomatic English speech...the impressively ample and up-to-date select bibliography, genuinely helpful explanatory notes for each play, useful discussion of Euripides' thought and style, and the concise, informative background information about the world in which Euripides lived all contribute to the value of this book' Review of Medea and Other Plays * Choice *Table of ContentsHecuba ; The Trojan Women ; Andromache

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Book SynopsisRoderick Random (1748), Smollett''s first novel, is full of the dazzling vitality characteristics of all his work, as well as of his own life. Roderick is the boisterous and unprincipled hero who answers life''s many misfortunes with a sledgehammer. Left penniless, he leaves his native Scotland for London and on the way meets Strap, and old schoolfellow. Together they undergo many adventures at the hands of scoundrels and rogues. Roderick qualifies as a surgeon''s mate and is pressed as a common soldier on bord the man-of-war Thunder. In a tale of romance as well as adventure, Roderick also finds time to fall in love... Smollett drew on his own experiences as a surgeon''s mate in the navy for the memorable scenes on board ship, and the novel combines documentary realism with great humour and panache. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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Book Synopsis''It is in every way worthy of what one great woman should have written of another.'' Patrick BrontëElizabeth Gaskell''s The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) is a pioneering biography of one great Victorian woman novelist by another.Gaskell was a friend of Charlotte Brontë, and, having been invited to write the offical life, determined both to tell the truth and to honour her friend. She contacted those who had known Charlotte and travelled extensively in England and Belgium to gather material. She wrote from a vivid accumulation of letters, interviews, and observation, establishing the details of Charlotte''s life and recreating her background. Through an often difficult and demanding process, Gaskell created a vital sense of a life hidden from the world.This edition is based on the Third Edition of 1857, revised by Gaskell. It has been collated with the manuscript, and the previous two editions, as well as with Charlotte Bront''e''s letters, and thus offers fuller information about the process of composition than any previous edition.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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Book SynopsisJohn Burnside was among the most acclaimed writers of his generation. His novels, short stories, poetry and memoirs won numerous awards, including the Geoffrey Faber Memorial, Saltire Scottish Book of the Year and, in 2023, he received the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in literature. In 2011 Black Cat Bone won both the Forward and the T.S. Eliot Prizes for poetry.Trade ReviewThe unmistakable work of a master -- Bernard O’Donoghue * Times Literary Supplement *A tour de force of liminal expression... Burnside is not a wispily ethereal poet. A stretch of country crossed during the hunt is captured in oils, not in thin watercolours...poignantly luminous...[an] engrossing collection -- M. Wynn Thomas * Guardian *Black Cat Bone is a deserving winner of this year's Forward Prize for best collection. John Burnside's twelfth volume adds to and deepens a body of poetry that is already exceptionally significant - and utterly recognisable. A musician and chromaticist, he's a poet whose rapt, floating verse conjures up effects of great beauty in both the ear and the imagination -- Fiona Sampson * Independent *A haunting book of great beauty, powered by love, childhood memory, human longing and loneliness. In an exceptional year, it is an outstanding book, one which the judges felt grew with every reading -- Gillian Clarke, chair of the T.S. Eliot PrizeOne of the most gifted poets writing today -- Paul Batchelor * Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"With an acute ear for the references that give metaphors their edge, as in Eliot's unforgettable image of a squirrel’s heartbeat as a figure for that which we cannot bear to know, Brilmyer brings the soaringly evocative back to earth, giving us a new science of literary analysis." * Critical Inquiry *“Brilmyer’s book shows how the realist imperative to adequately describe the relation between characters and their circumstances unwound Victorian Realism from within, as new scientific theories of matter, force, and cellular life led high Victorian realists— such as George Eliot and Thomas Hardy—and a subsequent generation of New Woman novelists to press the form to its limits and beyond. A major new study of literary character, The Science of Character is important not least for the way it revises the literary history of Victorian Realism and its ends.” * Studies in the Novel *“Brilmyer’s work marks a new epoch in the study of realism. Developing out of deep historical research and an engagement of the thinking of philosophers, theorists, and scholars of character, Brilmyer reverses dominant understandings of the way late nineteenth-century fiction developed to trace the emergence of an impersonal dynamic materialism that from George Eliot forward reimagined the nature of character itself. This is an extraordinarily original and important contribution, both to the history of realism and the novel and to new theorizing about matter.” * George Levine, Rutgers University *“The Science of Character brilliantly and boldly renews discussions of the late Victorian history of the novel. Brilmyer shows us how figures such as George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Olive Schreiner revised the definition of a realistic character along new, materialist lines. That revision demonstrated literature’s ability to produce insights into the workings of both nature and culture.” * Deidre Shauna Lynch, Harvard University *“Character: a slippery term that can denote either a human-like entity in a literary text or the specific assemblage of traits that makes one person different from others. In this beautifully argued book, S. Pearl Brilmyer refuses to choose between these two possibilities. Instead, she shows how novelists at the end of the nineteenth century enlisted the former in the service of discovering the workings of the latter—how, that is, George Eliot, Sarah Grand, Olive Schreiner, George Gissing, and Thomas Hardy transformed their aesthetic practice into a science of character. Turning the study of literature and science on its head by demonstrating the degree to which the production of literature was a scientific endeavor for these writers, she also formulates a unified field theory of the late-nineteenth-century novel that recognizes the centrality of women writers and finds in New Woman fiction the key to that novel’s theorization of character and circumstance as inseparable. Bracingly rigorous, intellectually thrilling, exhaustively researched, with far-reaching consequences for our understanding of the novel: The Science of Character is a remarkable achievement.” * Cannon Schmitt, University of Toronto *“The Science of Character is learned and continuously intelligent, a model of philosophically informed criticism. Brilmyer makes a theoretical advance in the conceptualization of character, realism, and the novel itself. This book provides a rigorous proof of concept for feminist New Materialism, and deepens our understanding of several canonical writers. The Science of Character redraws late-century Victorian literary history.” * Andrew Miller, Johns Hopkins University *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"This book is a cogently original account of skilled practice, its expression in writing, and its significance for the culture of knowledge as the new sciences developed in early modern Europe. With roots in the world-renewed Making and Knowing Project, it offers an important addition to the histories of skilled craft practice, of science and technology, and of the premodern and early modern periods." -- Pamela O. Long, author of Engineering the Eternal City "This is a brilliant, groundbreaking, and timely book. Through a particularly novel and exciting approach, Smith offers the first book-length study on the way early modern practitioners wrote about their skills. It is a must read for the growing community of scholars interested in material culture and in the ways how bodies, minds, things, and materials interact with each other." -- Christine Goettler, author of Last ThingsTable of ContentsIntroduction: Lived Experience and the Written Word Part 1: Vernacular Theorizing in Craft 1. Is Handwork Knowledge? 2. The Metalworker's Philosophy 3. Thinking with Lizards Part 2: Writing Down Experience 4. Artisan Authors 5. Writing Kunst 6. Recipes for Kunst Part 3: Reading and Collecting 7. Who Read and Used Little Books of Art? 8. Kunst as Power: Making and Collecting Part 4: Making and Knowing 9. Reconstructing Practical Knowledge: Hastening to Experience 10. A Vocabulary for Mind-Body Knowing Epilogue: Global Routes of Practical Knowledge Acknowledgments Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisWhat makes Shakespeare''s late plays so special? Through detailed analyses of key passages, Kate Aughterson shows how these plays portray a world of political intrigue, familial chaos and crisis, which teeters continually into tragedy: a world we can recognise today.Part I of this engaging study:- Provides stimulating close readings of extracts from The Tempest, The Winter''s Tale, Cymbeline and Pericles- Examines major topics such as openings, endings, familial roles, stage properties, spectacle and song- Offers suggestions for further work and summarizes the methods of analysisPart II supplies essential background material, including:- Detailed accounts of Shakespeare''s literary and historical contexts- Samples from important critical works and performancesWith a helpful Further Reading section, this illuminating volume is ideal for anyone who wishes to appreciate and explore Shakespeare''s late plays for themselves.Table of ContentsGeneral Editor's Preface A Note on Editions Introduction: Ways of Reading PART I: ANALYSING SHAKESPEARE'S LATE PLAYS 1. Openings 2. Turning Points: Tragedy and Comedy 3. Endings 4. Fathers, Sons and Husbands 5. Mothers, Daughters and Wives 6. Masters, Servants and Slaves: Society and Politics 7. Stage Properties 8. Spectacle and Theatricality 9. Music and Song General Conclusions to Part I PART II: THE CONTEXT AND THE CRITICS Shakespeare's Literary Career Jacobean Contexts Sample Critical Views and Performances Further Reading Index.

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Book SynopsisEvelyn Waugh''s first book: a portrait of one of the greatest artists of the nienteenth century, from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth''Biography, as books about the dead are capriciously catalogued, is still very much in the mode''This is a sparkling account of Dante Gabriel Rossetti''s tragic and mysterious life, telling the story behind some of the greatest poetry and painting of the nineteenth century. Shot through with charm and dry wit, and illuminated by his sense of kinship with the Pre-Raphaelite artist, Rossetti is at once a brilliant reevaluation of Rosetti''s work and legacy, as well as a blast of defiance against the art establishment of Waugh''s day.''The youthful high spirits of the writing make this a true cultural delight'' New Statesman''To be celebrated with fireworks, bunting and marching bands'' Country LifeTrade ReviewThe youthful high spirits of the writing makes this a true cultural delight * The New Statesman *Its re-issue is an event to be celebrated with fireworks, bunting and marching bands * Country Life *

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Book SynopsisRoberto Calasso is one of the most original and acclaimed of writers on literature, art, culture and mythology. In Baudelaire''s Folly, Calasso turns his attention to the poets and writers of Paris in the nineteenth century who created what was later called ''the Modern.'' His protagonist is Charles Baudelaire: poet of nerves, art lover, pioneering critic, man about Paris, whose groundbreaking works on modern culture described the ephemeral, fleeting nature of life in the metropolis - and the artist''s role in capturing this - as no other writer had done. With Baudelaire''s critical intelligence as his inspiration, Calasso ranges through his life and work, focusing on two painters - Ingres and Delacroix - about whom Baudelaire wrote acutely, and then turns to Degas and Manet, who followed in the tracks Baudelaire laid down in his great essay The Painter of Modern Life. In a mosaic of stories, insights, dreams, close readings of poems and commentaries on painTrade ReviewRoberto Calasso [is] the most inquisitively suggestive literary critic in the world today . . . -- Thomas McGonigle * Los Angeles Times *What a rare and special book this is, from its opening paragraph . . . But then what a rare writer is the prolific, post-Calvino Italian master Roberto Calasso-72-year-old scholar, translator, author of film scripts, radio and television adaptations, operatic librettos and seemingly most other viable prose forms in the late 20th and early 21st centuries . . . [La Folie Baudelaire is] an ideal introduction in English to one of the most urbane and readable of living masters. * Jeff Simon, Buffalo News *Arresting observations on painters and paintings alike, aided and abetted by some discriminatingly chosen illustrations, beautifully reproduced . . . La Folie Baudelaire is bedazzling. * Alex Danchev, The Guardian *It is a gorgeous, willful, and convincing re-staging of Baudelaire's style . . . * Adam Thirlwell, The New Republic *Smoothing the way is the curiously conversational tone in which even the most arcane information is conveyed, as well as the underlying sense that, as the author piles detail upon detail, he's having a huge amount of fun. Calasso may identify with his hero, but there is no Baudelairean melancholy in his work. There's no show-off either-only a sincere delight, an innocent reveling in his own encyclopedic mind at play. This mood is catching, and if one adopts the right dreamy pace, one can commune with Calasso through a kind of imaginative osmosis. * Andrea Lee, New Yorker *[Roberto Calasso is] an ambitious artist-critic, pushing the subject as far as he can, bent on penetrating the mind of both Baudelaire and his time. In the process, he delivers plenty of insight. . . Tough but rewarding, written with bold intelligence and panache. * Kirkus *[Roberto Calasso is] a writer about the foundational myths and tales of human society who has no equal in the sparkle of his storytelling and the depth of his learning . . . His writing . . . these lost voices speak again, in magical, uncanny and something even sinister ways . . . * Boyd Tonkin, The Independent *

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Book SynopsisLOOKING FOR A GIFT FOR THE BOOKWORM IN YOUR LIFE? THIS QUIZ BOOK IS IT!Which Haruki Murakami novel shares its title with a Beatles song? In Roald Dahl''s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, what is Charlie''s surname? What is heavy-drinking Rachel Watson known as in the title of a 21st-century bestseller? And what do you get if you add the number of Bennet sisters in Jane Austen''s Pride and Prejudice to the number of Karamazov brothers in Fyodor Dostoevsky''s The Brothers Karamazov?With four hundred questions covering books from literary classics to modern bestsellers, through iconic children''s books and books you say that you''ve read but really you haven''t, The Penguin Book Quiz is as appropriate for making you look well-read at a party as it is for a book-loving family to tuck into after Christmas dinner: it''s as enjoyable to read as it is to play.Featuring the work of everyone from Antony Beevor to Zadie Smith, books from The Very Hungry Caterpillar to Ulysses, and with movie, music, television, theatre and literary references abounding, this entertaining quiz tickles the fancy (and the brains) of light and heavy readers alike.Answers:- Norwegian Wood- Bucket- The Girl on the Train- Eight (five sisters, three brothers)''Unceasingly enormous fun'' Alan Connor, author of The Joy of Quiz''I''ll definitely be buying copies of this book as gifts'' Emma Healey, author of Elizabeth is Missing''The greatest social lubricant since the invention of alcohol'' John Preston, author of A Very English ScandalTrade ReviewTip: Start the day with a quiz. My long-suffering partner bought me James Walton's The Penguin Book Quiz for Christmas. It wakes you up, gives you a laugh and makes you feel like you're not wasting your time, because you're learning things -- Jacqueline Wilson * The Sunday Times *Detailed, entertaining and wonderfully informative, a must-have for quiz aficionados and bibliophiles alike * Kevin Ashman *It's so much fun. The perfect level for keen but not necessarily expert readers. Specific enough to make you reach back into your memory and occasionally kick yourself at not finding the answer, but not so specialised that you want to give up . . . I'll definitely be buying copies of this book as giftsFew quiz questions make you smile, laugh or gasp. James Walton's always do. The Penguin Book Quiz is unceasingly enormous funQuite possibly the greatest social lubricant since the invention of alcohol. An absolute delightAttractively presented in vintage Penguin livery, this is the ultimate literary quiz, packed full of questions on everyone from Dickens to Dahl. With such a broad range of genres and topics covered, The Penguin Book Quiz really is the perfect antidote to tired parlour games and awkward small talk this Christmas * Waterstones, Top 10 Gifts for Bookworms this Christmas *The perfect gift for the sort of person (like me) who shouts the answers at University ChallengeFiendish, funny and endlessly surprising, James Walton has provided the perfect volume for anyone who loves books, relishes a quiz or just fancies showing off at a dinner partyA must for those who think they know their literature . . . includes the unexpected, alongside the more serious * Independent on 'Sonnets, Bonnets & Bennetts' *How nice it would be if the family would sit around the Boxing Day fireside considering the questions in affable competition * Daily Telegraph on 'Sonnets, Bonnets & Bennetts' *

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Book SynopsisA searing testament to poetry’s power to define and defy injustice, from iconic writer-activist Serhiy ZhadanTrade Review“Zhadan yokes the pedestrian everyday life of eastern Ukraine with the invisible orders of existence, and is spiritually attuned to a deep understanding of the forced transience and fragility of buildings and social orders in the post-Soviet east.”—Oluwaseun Olayiwola, The Guardian“[Zhadan] focuses on gaps: in language, between people, between the living and the dead. This void, this ‘silence,’ is returned to so many times that it becomes a character in itself.”—Ella Creamer, The Guardian, “Five of the Best Recent Books from Ukraine”“These words blaze across the page like missiles aiming at the fourth dimension: What if someone spoke a sentence / That could stir the sonic field of death? In the eternal battle between Orpheus and Morpheus, a great poet’s verbal imagination is always his sharpest weapon, his impenetrable shield. In his face-off with memory and time, Zhadan is certain to prevail.”—Askold Melnyczuk “A classic of modern Ukrainian poetry.”—Gary Shteyngart “When Zhadan says ‘speak now,’ he is getting at all the ways that speaking matters: from the trenches in Ukraine that he’s known to the memories of Ukrainians that he carries. The urging to speak vibrates through these pages, as if the saying it is always an homage to those who have tasked the poet to sing, while alongside him they go about the business of loving or working or cajoling light out of suffering so that we all might ‘have enough stories to brave through winter.’”—Reginald Dwayne Betts “Serhiy Zhadan’s poetry allows the pain and bravery of those who can only speak through his poems to be heard. Today, in the context of war, his words resonate deeply, offering a powerful and moving journey through the human experience.”—Yevgenia Belorusets “Zhadan is a poet, rock star, and activist whose verse is rooted in his native Eastern Ukraine. He draws metaphors from daily life that in turn become the subjects of his poems, and Tkacz and Phipps have brought these images to life in an English that does justice to Zhadan’s urgent messages about life, war, and love.”—Amelia Glaser “This is the sound of War. Zhadan, reporting from the frontlines in Kharkiv, where words are bullets and voices are heard from the dead. From Ilya Kaminsky’s brilliant foreword to the last drops of blood on the book’s final pages, How Fire Descends is a book on fire. Poetry from bunkers, bomb shelters and graves—poetry from the depths.”—Bob Holman

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Book SynopsisHis analysis of the play helps students interpret Shakespeare's plot and interwoven subplots, the sources that helped shape the play and the characters, and the thematic issues relating to justice, mercy, and the myriad bonds of human relationships.Table of ContentsPreface Introduction Literary and Dramatic Analysis Venice and Her Treatment of Jews Attitudes Towards Jews Classical and Renaissance Concepts of Male Friendship Elizabethan Marriage Usury, Interest, and the Rise of Capitalism Contemporary Applications and Interpretation Index

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Book SynopsisJonathan Bate, born in 1958, is the author of The Genius of Shakespeare, Song of the Earth and a novel, The Cure for Love. He is the Leverhulme Research Professor of English at the University of Warwick and writes regularly for the Telegraph, the TLS and the Independent.

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Book SynopsisThis guide offers students of literature and culture a refreshingly clear introduction to Butler's crucial ideas, including the formation of identity, subjecthood and gender performativity.Table of ContentsPart 1 Why Butler?; Part 2 Key Ideas; Chapter 1 The subject; Chapter 2 Gender; Chapter 3 Sex; Chapter 4 Language; Chapter 5 The psychePart 3 After Butler;

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Book SynopsisJenny Uglow narrates the story of Walter Crane, an intriguing and most prolific figure not only in illustration, but in political culture more broadly. Uglow expertly weaves a fascinating study of how Crane's art and politics developed from his childhood love of Pre-Raphaelite painting to the influences of Morris and William Blake on the journals, books, banners, pamphlets and postcards he went on to create as he forged a new style for the international socialist movement. Comprising a staggering range of visual material, Crane's images became a symbolic code that leapt over linguistic boundaries. This book is a brilliant record of an artist who blended styles and influences like no one before him.

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Book SynopsisAspects of Othello, with its companion volume, Aspects of Macbeth, brings together authoritative articles by distinguished Shakespeare scholars. In making their selections from the entire range of Shakespeare Survey volumes, Professors Kenneth Muir and Philip Edwards have borne the interest of general readers in mind as well as the needs of teachers and students.Table of ContentsList of plates; Preface; Othello: A Retrospect, 1900–67 Helen Gardner; 'Egregiously an Ass': The Dark Side of the Moor. A View of Othello's Mind Albert Gerard; Extract from The Individualisation of Shakespeare's Characters through Imagery Mikhail M. Morozov; Shakespeare's Imagery: The Diabolic Images in Othello S. L. Bethell; Iago - Vice or Devil? Leah Scragg; Othello, Lepanto and the Cyprus Wars Emrys Jones; Othello and the Pattern of Shakespearian Tragedy G. R. Hibbard; The Two Parts of Othello Ned B. Allen; Othello: A Tragedy Built on a Comic Structure Barbara Heliodora C. De Mendonca; Thomas Rymer and Othello Nigel Alexander.

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Book SynopsisIn this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to some of the greatest poets in our literature.W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) was born in Dublin, and was educated in Ireland and England. He was instrumental in the development of a national Irish theatre - and in particular, the founding of the Abbey Theatre. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.

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Book SynopsisJohn Clare (1793-1864), the ''peasant poet'', worked as an agricultural labourer in Northamptonshire until a deterioration in his mental health saw him committed to an insane asylum. He published four volumes of verse, including Poems, Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820), and The Shepherd''s Calendar (1827).In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to some of the greatest poets of our literature.Trade Review"'Faber has a poetry list worth bragging about. What other publisher could conjure up a series like this?' The Times"

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Book SynopsisIt was as a poet that Samuel Beckett launched himself in the little reviews of 1930s Paris, and as a poet that he ended his career. This new selection, from Whoroscope (1930) to ''what is the word'' (1988), describes a lifetime''s arc of writing. It was as a poet moreover that Beckett made his first breakthrough into writing in French, and the Selected Poems represents work in both languages, including the sequence of brief but highly crafted mirlitonnades, which did so much to usher in the style of his late prose, and come as close as anything he wrote to honouring the ambition to ''bore one hole after another in language, until what lurks behind it - be it something or nothing - begins to seep through.'' Also included are several of Beckett''s translations from contemporaries - Apollinaire, Eluard, Michaux, Montale - in versions which count among his own poetic achievements. Edited by David Wheatley

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Book SynopsisSir John Betjeman (1906-84) was born in Highgate, the son of a manufacturer of Dutch descent. His poetry enjoyed immense popularity, as did his personality, and his knighthood in 1969 and appointment as Poet Laureate in 1972 were universally welcomed.Other volumes in this series: Auden, Eliot, Plath, Hughes and Yeats.

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Book SynopsisWriters like to elude their public, lead them a bit of a dance. They take them down untrodden paths, land them in unknown country where they have to ask for directions.In this personal anthology, Alan Bennett has chosen over seventy poems by six well-loved poets, discussing the writers and their verse in his customary conversational style through anecdote, shrewd appraisal and spare but telling biographical detail. Ranging from hidden treasures to famous poems, this is a collection for the beginner and the expert alike. Speaking with candour about his own reactions to the work, Alan Bennett creates profound and witty portraits of Thomas Hardy, A. E. Housman, John Betjeman, W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice and Philip Larkin, all the more enjoyable for being in his own particular voice.Anybody writing poetry in the thirties had somehow to come to terms with Auden. Auden, you see, had got a head start on the other poets. He''d got into the thirties first, like some

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Book Synopsis''Anyone who reads or ever read children''s books - read this. It''s a joy.'' Irish Times ''Exhilarating.'' New York Times Book Review ''Sublime.'' Peter Ackroyd, The Times ** An Evening Standard, Daily Telegraph, Independent, Guardian and Irish Times Book of the Year. ** What would you find if you went back and re-read your favourite books from childhood?In The Child That Books Built Francis Spufford revisits all those childhood obsessions: fairy tales; Where the Wild Things Are; The Lord of the Rings; The Chronicles of Narnia; Little House on the Prairie; The Wind in the Willows; The Earthsea Trilogy and more. In these treasured tales Francis Spufford discovers both delight and sadness the thrill as worlds of imagination opened up before him mixed with the memories of a boy who retreated into books when faced with a family tragedy.

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Book SynopsisI''m a killer I told youI told you that all alongYou were the dummy to believeI could ever be anything elseTwo teenagers fall in love on Long Island. There's fun and dancing, sports and team spirit, there's the woods and beer and physical hard work. But it's 1938, the world is on the brink of war, and their wholesome summer camp is exclusively for American youth of German descent. As their mutual attraction deepens, so they become intoxicated by the Nazi ideology that fuels the camp, an ideology that will culminate in global atrocity and genocide.Inspired by the real Camp Siegfried, Bess Wohl's play premiered at the Old Vic Theatre, London, in September 2021.

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Book SynopsisIntroduced by Claire-Louise Bennett, experience one new mother's psychological journey in this lost 1930 foremother of Sylvia Plath''s The Bell Jar.''Astonishing and moving. A pretty amazing book.'' Tessa Hadley''Extraordinary. A fascinating and unexpected delight.'' Lucy Ellmann''Haunting and evocative, this is a timeless portrayal of madness.'' Catherine Cho''A startling, luminous and magnetic novel about the complexity of motherhood.'' Yiyun Li''With its deep musicality, Coleman''s unforgettable voice was years ahead of its time.'' Sinéad Gleeson''The most famous unknown of the century.'' Djuna Barnes, author of NightwoodThe only thing to do is to put hammers in the porridge and when there are enough hammers we shall break down the windows and all of us shall dance in the snow. Some days, Marthe Gail believes she is God; others, Jesus Christ. Her baby,

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Book SynopsisYork Notes Advanced offer a fresh and accessible approach to English Literature. This market-leading series has been completely updated to meet the needs of today's A-level and undergraduate students. Written by established literature experts, York Notes Advanced intorduce students to more sophisticated analysis, a range of critical perspectives and wider contexts. Table of Contents Part 1: Introduction Part 2: The poems Part 3: Critical approachs Part 4: Critical history Part 5: Background Further Reading Literacy Terms

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Book SynopsisThe argument that this book presents is that narrative and visual representations of death can be read as symptoms of our culture and because the feminine body is culturally constructed as the superlative site of other and not me, culture uses art to dream the deaths of beautiful women. -- .Trade ReviewAside from the originality - or fearful finality - of its arguments, the book will be invaluable as an introduction to the use of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of cultural texts' - New Statesman & Society'Death faces a similar taboo in our century to the one that sex suffered in the last...Bronfen addresses an important silence in contemporary culture.' - The TImes -- .Table of ContentsPart 1 Death - the epitome of tropes: preparation for an autopsy; the lady vanishes; violence of representation - representation of violence. Part 2 From animate body to inanimate text: the "most" poetic topic; deathbed scenes; bodies on display; the lady is a portrait; noli me videre; case study - wife to Mr Rossetti - Elizabeth Siddall (1829-1862). Part 3 Strategies of translation, mitigation and exchange: sacrificing extremity; femininity - missing in action; close encounters of a fatal kind. Part 4 Stabilizing the ambivalence of repetition: the speculated woman; rigour has set in - the wasted bride; necromancy, or closing the crack in the gravestone; risk resemblances; spectral stories; the dead beloved as muse; case study - Henry's sister - Alice James (1848-1892). Part 5 Conclusion - aporias of resistance: from muse to creatrix - Snow White unbound.

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