ELT & Literary Studies Books

Book SynopsisThis edition of one of Shakespeare's best known and most frequently performed plays argues for Julius Caesar as a new kind of political play, a radical departure from contemporary practice, combining fast action and immediacy with compelling rhetorical language, and finding a clear context for its study of tyranny in the last decade of the reign of Elizabeth 1. The richly experimental verse and the complex structure of the play are analysed in depth, and a strong case is made for this to be the first play to be performed at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.'Daniell's edition is a hefty piece of serious scholarship that makes a genuine contribution.'Eric Rasmussen, University of Nevada at Reno, Shakespeare Survey'This is a stimulating new look at a play which is too often exhibited in a critical museum.' Paul Dean, English Studies

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Book SynopsisOn December 1727 an intriguing play called Double Falshood; Or, The Distrest Lovers was presented for production by Lewis Theobald, who had it published in January 1728 after a successful run at the TheatreRoyal, Drury Lane, London. The title page to the published version claims that the play was 'Written Originally by W.SHAKESPEARE'. Double Falsehood's plot is a version of the story of Cardenio found in Cervantes's Don Quixote (1605) as translated by Thomas Shelton, published in 1612 though in circulation earlier. Documentary records testify to the existence of a play, certainly performed in 1613, by John Fletcher and William Shakespeare, probably entitled The History of Cardenio and presumed to have been lost. The audience in 1727 would certainly have recognised stage situations and dramatic structures and patterns reminiscent of those in Shakespeare's canonical plays as well as many linguistic echoes. This intriguing complex textual and performance history is thoroughly explored and debated in this fully annotated edition, including the views of other major Shakespeare scholars. The illustrated introduction provides a comprehensive overview of the debates and opinions surrounding the play and the text is fully annotated with detailed commentary notes as in any Arden edition.Trade Review‘The publication of Theobald's adaptation in the Arden Shakespeare series is to be welcomed.' * Jonathan Bate, Daily Telegraph *‘For most of the three centuries since its debut, Double Falsehood; or, the Distrest Lovers has been ridiculed as a hoax or just disregarded. Yesterday that changed when The Arden Shakespeare, one of the best regarded scholarly editions of Shakespeare's plays, published Double Falsehood, endorsing its credentials and making it available for the first time in 250 years.' * The Times *‘The play's ‘bardic provenance' has been given fresh credibility by publishers Arden, who have included it in a new series of Shakespeare's work. The publication of the play, which is bound to spark heated scholarly discussion, comes after a ten year mission to crack a literary mystery by Professor Brean Hammond, of Nottingham University.' * Daily Mail *‘Professor Brean Hammond will publish compelling new evidence next week that the play is.. substantially based on a real Shakespeare play called Cardenio. Hammond has been backed in his assertion by the Shakespeare published Arden...' * The Guardian *‘This week, British publishers Arden Shakespeare published the play for the first time in 250 years with evidence Hammond has gathered over the past decade that shows Shakespeare's hand in the work, which was co-written by John Fletcher.' * CNN.com *‘Play, possibly reworked from Shakespeare, is added to a literary collection:: A play from the 1700s contains reworked material of Shakespeare's has gained a qualified endorsement from the Arden Shakespeare, a scholarly anthology of that playwright's work.' * New York Times *'...a thorough and judicious account of the relevant scholarship....Brean Hammond's excellent edition is indispensable.' * Times Literary Supplement (May 2010) *'The play was recently published by the Arden Shakespeare, for the first time in 250 years, with evidence Prof Hammond has gathered over the past decade that shows Shakespeare's hand in the work.' * Birmingham Post (July 2010) *'It is brilliant and unusual; the Bard's style and influence seemed irrefutable...even though there is a darker twist to the dialogue and plot than one might expect from him immediately.' * The Observer (January 2011) *

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Book SynopsisThe Merchant of Venice is perhaps most associated not with its titular hero, Antonio, but with the complex figure of the money lender, Shylock. The play was described as a comedy in the First Folio but its modern audiences find it more problematic to categorise. The vilification of Shylock 'the Jew' can be very uncomfortable for a post-holocaust audience and debates continue as to whether Shakespeare's portrayal of this complex man is sympathetic or anti-semitic. John Drakakis' comprehensive introduction traces the stage history of the figure of the Jew and looks boldly at twenty-first century issues surrounding it. He also explores other themes of the play such as father/daughter relations, the power of money and the forceful character of Portia, to offer readers an energetic, original and revelatory reading of this challenging play.

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Book SynopsisThis book considers Mansfield's ambivalent position as a colonial woman writer by examining her contributions to the political weekly The New Age, the avant-garde little magazine Rhythm and the literary journal The Athenaeum.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"In Hooked, [Felski] examines the way we connect to novels, films, paintings and music, and argues that our enthusiasms should be an integral part of conversations about art. Only this can deliver the ‘course correction’ the humanities need, and dissolve the boundary between academic interpretation and ordinary appreciation." -- Helen Thaventhiran * London Review of Books *"The sensual stuff of culture gets under our skin, draws us in, expands our world, fashions our consciousness, sets the tone and tempo of our responsiveness to the world around us. The ‘tuning of sentiments’ is precisely the sort of phenomenal work that Rita Felski’s Hooked: Art and Attachment is suggesting that humanities scholars could and should pay attention to. . . . [Felski is] concerned with proposing the vocabularies and protocols for an approach to cultural works that are open to their immediacy, to their ability to connect us to the world, and to their intimate sociality. The project, then, is to imagine a postcritical attention to art (broadly conceived) that can hang on to our first-person response to works (which might be visceral, indifferent, traumatic, melancholic, consoling, and so on), while ensuring that such attention isn’t a flight from the social but a more capacious form of contact with it." -- Ben Highmore * New Formations *“Over the past decade, Felski has been a breath of fresh air: working to nudge literary criticism away from an exclusive focus on politics. . . Felski is not against critique, the world being what it is. She is one of the growing number of malcontents who merely want to discuss other ways in which people respond to art. . . [Hooked] is an exposé aimed at critics who disavow their personal allegiances.” -- Matthew Rubery * Public Books *"The chief virtue of Hooked is that it encourages scholars to be more honest. . . . If accepted, Felski’s proposals would lead to aesthetic engagements which speak openly about why the interaction is happening in the first place. Such honesty can only be welcomed as a step forward in that old philosophical project—namely, knowing ourselves." -- Thomas Millay * Marginalia Review of Books *"Among professors of English and comparative literature, Felski is one of the most influential scholars writing about aesthetics today. . . . Hooked: Art and Attachment picks up where The Limits of Critique leaves off by homing in on a crucial dimension of aesthetic experience discounted by critique: the attachments we form to works of art, the sources of their appeal to us, the personal growth they can excite and sustain. . . . Hooked honors this indispensable attachment to the arts and bolsters our efforts to understand and share what we care about." -- Michael Fischer * The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism *"Hooked is concerned with the phenomenological and sociological vagaries of aesthetic experience; the seemingly intangible or impenetrable nature of our attachments with art. . . . Felski’s argument—art isn’t a ‘microcosm of the world,’ but part of the ordinary fabric of sociality itself—is useful and rewarding, as is her particular interest in ‘diversifying the scales of criticism.’ Attachment is fundamental to all processes of meaning-making, in art as elsewhere. Aesthetics matter because they ‘create, or cocreate, enduring ties’ but we need methods capacious enough to reflect the messiness of this reality." -- Nell Osborne * Review 31 *“The book invites a conversation that ranges widely beyond literature; its arguments span media and its scope is expansive. . . . There are many insights in Hooked that will facilitate a productive interdisciplinary conversation about aesthetics, politics, and the future of critique.” -- Michael Gallope * nonsite.org *"In Hooked Felski examines aesthetic experience in terms of co-creation and enduring ties. . . . Using essays, memoirs, works of fiction, ethnographic research and a variety of examples from high to popular culture, Felski argues that works of art make a difference in the world and matter - they act - because they 'create, or co-create, enduring ties' . . . Hooked offers a plethora of hypotheses and a wealth of ideas to think with and to research empirically. The book will be of interest to sociologists and social theorists interested in cultural objects, emotion and aesthetic experience." -- María Angélica Thumala Olave * Theory, Culture & Society *“Rita Felski’s new book puts in place… a less counterintuitive, secluded, and priggish way of addressing art.” * Forma de Vida *“Hooked is the third in a de facto trilogy defending the varied ways in which people like and care about works of art, both inside and outside the academy and its various critical traditions. Felski argues that we write about works of art because we care about them and get pleasure from them— we're hooked!—and that examining them critically is neither the same as, nor opposed to, being hooked in other ways. Hooked provides a way forward, not only a description of what we already do or a reason to stop doing it, but a way to say more and do more." * Stephanie Burt, Harvard University *“Hooked is a marvelous achievement. It is a rousing book that returns to one of the main questions at the heart of Felski’s scholarship—how people become attached to particular works of literature or art. Hooked offers a form of reception studies that invites alliances with different schools and modes of inquiry, from book history and curation theory to biography, ethnography, and practical pedagogy. It will excite and energize readers for years to come.” * James English, University of Pennsylvania *"Foregrounding first-person accounts of aesthetic experience imbues Hooked with a particular ambient quality evocative of those environments—theater bars, the sidewalks onto which viewers spill after a movie—that thrum with the sound of people talking about their aesthetic responses." * Critical Inquiry *"Taken on its merits, and treated in the generous, open way that it advocates, Hooked is a satisfying, thought-provoking read for anyone concerned with questions about the natures of our relations to artworks and why we bother forming them." * British Journal of Aesthetics *Table of ContentsPreface Chapter 1 On Being Attached Chapter 2 Art and Attunement Chapter 3 Identification: A Defense Chapter 4 Interpreting as Relating Acknowledgments Notes Index

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Book SynopsisLiterature and a love of the English countryside are natural companions.Walking the Literary Landscape by Ian Hamilton and Diane Roberts brings the two together in a collection of 20 circular routes in the north of England, all between 3 and 9 miles (5 and 15 kilometres) in length. The walks explore the physical settings that inspired some of our greatest literature.Walk in the footsteps of writers like Arthur Ransome, who drew inspiration from the Lake District for his classic children's adventure Swallows and Amazons, or the Brontë sisters whose love of the moors around Haworth echoes through the centuries. See Chatsworth, the Peak District house that thrilled Jane Austen, and tread carefully in Whitby, the Yorkshire seaside town where Bram Stoker set his most famous creation Dracula.Each route introduces you to a landscape familiar to some of our greatest writers, and is accompanied by clear and easy-to-use Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 maps, straightforward directions, and information on each area's literary links, refreshment stops and local amenities. Everything you need for a great literary walk.Table of ContentsIntroductionAcknowledgementsAbout the walksWalk timesNavigationFootpaths and rights of waySafetyThe Countryside CodeHow to use this bookMaps, descriptions, distancesKm/mile conversion chartArea MapThe Lake District1 Bassenthwaite Lake and Dodd (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)2 Carrock Fell (Charles Dickens)3 Coniston Water and Torver (Arthur Ransome)4 Far Sawrey and Windermere (Beatrix Potter)5 Grasmere and Rydal Water (William Wordsworth)6 Walla Crag and Derwentwater (John Ruskin)The North East, the Moors & the Dales7 Blanchland (W. H. Auden)8 Humbleton Hill and Wooler (William Shakespeare)9 Cleadon Hills and Marsden Rock (Catherine Cookson)10 Whitby (Bram Stoker)11 Around Thirsk (James Herriot)12 Upper Wharfedale and Hubberholme (J. B. Priestley)13 Malham Tarn and Cove (Charles Kingsley)Peak District, South Pennines & Cheshire14 Hurst Green and Stonyhurst College (J. R. R. Tolkien)15 Haworth and the moors (The Brontë sisters)16 Mytholmroyd and the Calder Valley (Ted Hughes)17 Mam Tor and the caverns (Arthur Conan Doyle)18 Around Chatsworth (Jane Austen)19 Knutsford and Tatton Park (Elizabeth Gaskell)20 Daresbury (Lewis Carroll)AppendixAbout the authors

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Book SynopsisThe work of Michel Houellebecq – one of the most widely read and controversial novelists of our time – is marked by the thought of Schopenhauer. When Houellebecq came across a copy of Schopenhauer's Aphorisms in a library in his mid-twenties, he was bowled over by it and he hunted down a copy of his major philosophical work, The World as Will and Representation. Houellebecq found in Schopenhauer – the radical pessimist, the chronicler of human suffering, the lonely misanthrope – a powerful conception of the human condition and of the future that awaits us, and when Houellebecq’s first writings appeared in the early 1990s, the influence of Schopenhauer was everywhere apparent. But it was only much later, in 2005, that Houellebecq began to translate and write a commentary on Schopenhauer’s work. He thought of turning it into a book but soon abandoned the idea and the text remained unpublished until 2017. Now available in English for the first time, In the Presence of Schopenhauer is the story of a remarkable encounter between a novelist and a philosopher and a testimony to the deep and enduring impact of Schopenhauer’s philosophy on one of France’s greatest living writers.Trade Review‘So when I borrowed “Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life” from the municipal library of the seventh arrondissement in Paris (more specifically, its annex in the Latour-Maubourg district), I may have been aged twenty-six, but equally possibly twenty-five, or twenty-seven. In any case, this is very late in life for such a major discovery. At the time, I already knew Baudelaire, Dostoevsky, Lautréamont, Verlaine, almost all the Romantics; a lot of science fiction, too. I had read the Bible, Pascal’s Pensées, Clifford D. Simak’s City, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. I wrote poems; I already had the impression I was rereading, rather than really reading; I thought I had at least completed one period in my discovery of literature.’‘And then, in a few minutes, everything dramatically changed.’"In the Presence of Schopenhauer is a profound tribute that illuminates the French novelist’s own work."Times Literary SupplementTable of ContentsPreface by Agathe Novak-Lechevalier Leave childhood behind, my friend, and wake up! Chapter One: The world is my representation Chapter Two: Look at things attentively Chapter Three: In this way the will to live objectifies itself Chapter Four: The theatre of the world Chapter Five: The conduct of life: what we are Chapter Six: The conduct of life: what we have Notes

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Book SynopsisA pivotal work in the history of feminism and a groundbreaking intervention into film theory, Sexuality in the Field of Vision is a brilliantly original exploration of the interface between feminism, psychoanalysis, semiotics and film theoryTrade ReviewFormidably intelligent, eloquent, and knowledgeable. * City Limits *Jacqueline Rose has no peer among critics of her generation. The brilliance of her literary insight, the lucidity of her prose, and the subtlety of her analyses are simply breathtaking. -- Edward Said

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Alexander Kluge and Gerhard Richter’s December (translated by Martin Chalmers) revives a related tradition: the calendar as history, or the 'chronicle.' Kluge’s texts—one for each day of the month—appear opposite images of winter wastescapes by Richter, together forming a stark, disconcerting record of a Germany frozen if not temporally then spiritually.” -- Joshua Cohen * Harper's *"December physically ferries the reader back and forth between word and image, prompting a search for equivalents, as well as for those lost elements that have no equivalents. The space that December inhabits—a winter at once ominous and intimate, the last breath of the year in anticipation of its end and rebirth—is not unlike the space of translation." -- Madeleine LaRue * Quarterly Conversation *Table of Contents1 December 19412 December 19913 December 19314 December 19415 December 19426 December 19897 December 19328 December 19419 December 194110 December 193210 December 194110 December 194410 December 200911 December 194412 December 200913 December 200914 December 200915 December 200916 December 200917 December 200918 December 194119 December 200920 December 183221 December 194522 December 194323 December 194323 December 193224 December 194325 December 200926 December 200427 December 200328 December 198929 December 21,999 BC30 December 194031 December 2009Calendars Are Conservative

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Book SynopsisBetween the world wars, a generation of Jewish leftists reached out to other embattled peoples of the earth—Palestinian Arabs, African Americans, Spanish Republicans—in Yiddish verse. Songs in Dark Times examines the richly layered meanings of this project, grounded in Jewish collective trauma but embracing a global community of the oppressed.Trade ReviewSongs in Dark Times arrives at just the right moment. The internationalist visions of cross-ethnic, multiracial solidarity that Glaser finds in Yiddish poetry of the 1930s are more urgent than ever in our own dark times of crisis. Her original account of the multilingual ‘passwords’ that allowed left-wing poets to connect Jewish experiences to those of other minority groups grows out of an acute sensitivity to the way literary language can forge powerful political affiliations. -- Michael Rothberg, author of The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and PerpetratorsBefore there was Google, there was poetry. This is a book about passwords that performed not in the technical but in the aesthetic realm: words that allowed for the crossing of the border from Jews to others who suffered. Today, when the uses and abuses of historical comparisons are so intensely debated, Glaser reminds us that thinking through analogies—translating untranslatable suffering—is inextricably bound up with empathy. Though set in the catastrophic ‘long 1930s,’ Songs in Dark Times speaks uncannily to our present moment. -- Marci Shore, author of Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation's Life And Death In Marxism, 1918–1968Glaser takes us on a truly international journey: from China to riot-torn Palestine to the Jim Crow American South to war-torn Spain to Soviet Ukraine. It is a compelling journey guided by an astute literary scholar with a keen sense of historical context. Intriguing, original, and acutely intelligent, Songs in Dark Times will take its place as one of the finest analyses of Yiddish literature to have been written in several decades. It is a joy to read, and I recommend it heartily. -- Joshua M. Karlip, author of The Tragedy of a Generation: The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism in Eastern EuropeSongs in Dark Times impresses and delights with close readings, careful analysis, breadth of vision, and unmistakably transnational sensibility. Glaser uses the key term ‘passwords’ to enter a radically reconfigured space in which Yiddish writers of the interwar period used markers of Jewish identity to embrace other marginalized groups. This welcome intervention in Jewish studies and comparative literature has an added bonus: Glaser’s translations of ten Yiddish poems, with work by women writers not readily available elsewhere. -- Harriet Murav, author of David Bergelson’s Strange New World: Untimeliness and FuturityGlaser tells the story of too-little-known interventions in modernist Jewish and North American poetry, chronicling the ingenuity of Yiddish communist poets, who used their ethnic and social particularity as a means to join international struggles against injustice, racism, and economic inequality. Chock full of provocative poems, still simmering debates, and irresolvable contradictions, Songs in Dark Times is fascinating, informative, challenging, exuberantly archival, and necessary. -- Charles Bernstein, author of Near/MissRescues long-forgotten poems from communist periodicals in the United States and Soviet Union and shows how they used Jewish ‘passwords’ in behalf of a vision of multi-ethnic and racial solidarity. Challenging but accessible, poignant and provocative, Songs in Dark Times makes an invaluable contribution to Jewish studies, Yiddish literature, and transnational political discourse. -- Glenn C. Altschuler * Jerusalem Post *Deeply probing…Glaser lifts up the work of Yiddish poets grappling with the issues of their day. -- Eric A. Gordon * People’s World *

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Book SynopsisThe Satyrica, traditionally attributed to the Neronian courtier Petronius, is a comic-picaresque fiction recalling the narrator’s adventures in the early imperial demimonde, including Trimalchio’s banquet. Apocolocyntosis (Pumpkinification) is a satirical pamphlet lampooning the death and deification of the emperor Claudius.

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Book SynopsisIn On Temperaments, Galen of Pergamum sets out his concept of the combination of the four elemental qualities (hot, cold, wet, and dry), which is fundamental to his account of the structure and function of human, animal, and plant bodies. Two related works explore disturbances in this combination and their consequences.

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Book SynopsisJames Macpherson''s "poems of Ossian", first published from 1760 as Fragments of Ancient Poetry, were the literary sensation of the age. Attacked by Samuel Johnson and others as "forgeries", nonetheless the poems enthralled readers around the world, attracting rapturous admiration from such figures as diverse as Goethe, Diderot, Jefferson, Bonaparte and Mendelssohn. This International Companion examines the social, political and philosophical context of the poems, their disputed origins, their impact on world literature, and the various critical afterlives of Macpherson and of "Ossian".

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Book SynopsisThe past is what happened. History is what we remember and write about that past, the narratives we craft to make sense out of our memories and their sources. But what does it mean to look at the past and to remember that "nothing happened"? Why might we feel as if "nothing is the way it was"? This book transforms these utterly ordinary observations and redefines "Nothing" as something we have known and can remember. "Nothing" has been a catch-all term for everything that is supposedly uninteresting or is just not there. It will take some—possibly considerable—mental adjustment before we can see Nothing as Susan A. Crane does here, with a capital "n." But Nothing has actually been happening all along. As Crane shows in her witty and provocative discussion, Nothing is nothing less than fascinating. When Nothing has changed but we think that it should have, we might call that injustice; when Nothing has happened over a long, slow period of time, we might call that boring. Justice and boredom have histories. So too does being relieved or disappointed when Nothing happens—for instance, when a forecasted end of the world does not occur, and millennial movements have to regroup. By paying attention to how we understand Nothing to be happening in the present, what it means to "know Nothing" or to "do Nothing," we can begin to ask how those experiences will be remembered. Susan A. Crane moves effortlessly between different modes of seeing Nothing, drawing on visual analysis and cultural studies to suggest a new way of thinking about history. By remembering how Nothing happened, or how Nothing is the way it was, or how Nothing has changed, we can recover histories that were there all along.Trade Review"A startlingly original book: incisive, layered, punny and funny, politically sensitive and passionate, feisty, and thoroughly unimpressed with authority even when impressed with authority's insights."—Peter Fritzsche, author of Hitler's First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich"Nothing Happened is a delightful romp through what is really meant when nothing is invoked to describe something. This is a remarkably original book that transforms how we see history. It is clever and funny and serious and illuminating. You won't want to put it down."—Marita Sturken, author of Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero"Nothing's left? What does it mean to say that—of a page, of a photo, of a street, of a city, of a loved one? Susan A. Crane, in her invigorating and often funny study of Nothing, tells us vividly why saying Nothing reveals so much about its speaker and so little about history."—Peter Toohey, author of Hold On: The Life, Science, and Art of Waiting"Written with both wide-ranging intelligence and intellectual courage, Nothing Happened is a book of striking interest and originality. Susan A. Crane mobilizes a remarkable range of material and knowledge, creating her very idiosyncratic, and serially insightful discussion on a single unfathomable paradox."—Geoff Eley, author of A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society"[Crane] does not crowd her book or overwhelm the reader. Her patience remains consistent throughout, ensuring the reader's arrival in the end regardless of their scholarly starting point. Nothing Happened takes time to digest and can be enjoyed a second time around....Crane teaches the reader a way to view history. What we do with it is up to us."—Vesper North, Los Angeles Review of Books"Crane's book deserves attention because it deliberately changes the common point of view: Historians are usually aware of evolutionary processes, movements, acts of differentiation and thus of change in time. The author invites her readers to challenge such an 'action-based' approach to history by considering time as a continuum and by focusing not on events but on the 'gap' between them, when things seemingly remain the same."—Anna Karla, International Network for the Theory of History"Crane develops her imaginative argument in a conversational prose style that is filled with puns and references to her own life experiences. She is always present in her text, even when the complexity of Nothing becomes most mind-bending and when her stories move most deeply into the lives of others. This challenging book may push most historians beyond their usual epistemological assumptions, but its provocative themes and remarkable 'episodic' examples will also help them think about the possible significance in the sites of Nothingness they encounter in their own research. More generally, Nothing Happened should broaden the historical conversation among all those who believe that the past is never really dead and that everything has a history."—Lloyd Kramer, Journal of Modern HistoryTable of ContentsIntroduction. Episodes in a History of Nothing 1. Studying How Nothing Happens 2. Nothing Is the Way It Was 3. Nothing Happened Conclusion. There Is Nothing Left to Say

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Book Synopsis[Cappello''s] excellent new book-length essay, Lecture... at once defends the lecture and calls for holistic and creative improvements to the form.—The AtlanticIn twenty-first century America, there is so much that holds or demands our attention without requiring it. Imagine the lecture as a radical opening.Mary Cappello''s Lecture is a song for the forgotten art of the lecture. Brimming with energy and erudition, it is an attempt to restore the lecture''s capacity to wander, question, and excite. Cappello draws on examples from Virginia Woolf to Mary Ruefle, Ralph Waldo Emerson to James Baldwin, blending rigorous cultural criticism with personal history to explore the lecture in its many formsfrom the aphorism to the noteand give new life to knowledge's dramatic form.

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Book Synopsis'Evocative . . . poignant . . . acute and funny' Observer'The Revival of the Great Lucia Berlin Continues Apace' New York TimesBest known for her short fiction, it was upon publication of A Manual for Cleaning Women in 2015 that Lucia Berlin’s status as a great American writer was widely celebrated. To populate her stories – the places, relationships, the sentiments – Berlin often drew on her own rich, itinerant life. Before Berlin died, she was working on a book of previously unpublished autobiographical sketches called Welcome Home. The work consisted of more than twenty chapters that started in 1936 in Alaska and ended (prematurely) in 1966 in southern Mexico. In our publication of Welcome Home, her son Jeff Berlin is filling in the gaps with photos and letters from her eventful, romantic, and tragic life.From Alaska to Argentina, Kentucky to Mexico, New York City to Chile, Berlin’s world was wide. And the writing here is, as we’ve come to expect, dazzling. She describes the places she lived and the people she knew with all the style and wit and heart and humour that readers fell in love with in her stories.Trade ReviewA beauty inside and out. -- Chris Power, author of MothersA jigsaw-puzzle portrait of a long-neglected literary legend, baring the autobiographical material that filtered so forcefully into her fiction. The mystery of her fiction is not, it turns out, in the source of its inspiration. It is in how Berlin transformed her life into art that is as vital as the thing itself. * Vogue *Welcome Home comes sadly in fragments only . . . But everything that elevates her short fiction to the peaks of greatness is evident too in the pages documenting her peripatetic early life and her many trials. Her sentences have a smokiness and sad glamour to them; she evokes the many places of her life so memorably, so bluesily. -- Kevin Barry * Irish Times *Welcome Home gives a sense of the joyousness of [Berlin’s] personality, which is as urgently expressed in all her writing as loneliness and desperation are. Her writing loves the world, lingers over details of touch and smell. * Atlantic *An essential companion to her fiction . . . for all the upheaval they depict, the vignettes in Welcome Home are never depressing. They have too many of the appealing and funny qualities of her stories for that, from eye-catching description . . . to a knack for the absurd. -- John Self * Irish Times *Tantalizing glimpses into the life of a recently-discovered writer . . . Berlin describes each home [where she lived] in exquisite, imagistic language . . . [Welcome Home is] an excellent start to understanding a writer and her work. * Kirkus reviews *[In Welcome Home,] Berlin’s self-reflective and candid voice comes roaring through. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *[Berlin] writes candidly about what she enjoyed and endured; when her narrative peters out in mid-sentence, she leaves her reader wanting more . . . When the words flowed, Berlin managed to perform small miracles with them. Whether describing lucky breaks or hard knocks, her prose is intense and intimate, at once disconcerting and entrancing. * Economist *The more extended memories offered in Welcome Home delight and illuminate . . . Her impressions of her childhood in particular have the vividness of cherished old magazines . . . Lifting the language throughout is an elegant shrug of fatalism, a conviction that we are born exactly what we are, and what we are going to be. -- Patricia Lockwood * London Review of Books *This never-before-published memoir and new collection are cause for jubilation. In part because they make it clear Berlin's gifts were vast, complex, and full of tonal warmths . . . Like Chekhov, Berlin was a beautiful framer of stories. * Boston Globe *Berlin’s nonfiction makes apparent her genius for taking personal, idiosyncratic scenes from her memory and crafting them into fiction that speaks to us all. We come to understand through Welcome Home that Berlin’s fiction has catalyzed her memories into pointed, surprising short stories. Berlin converts memory into fiction, using fiction to revisit and revise memory. * The Washington Post *A collection of autobiographical pieces that reflect Berlin's singularly peripatetic life . . . As is the case with her fiction, Berlin's pieces here are as faceted as the brightest diamond, but rather than blind you, they just encourage you to examine them even more closely, so you get lost in their depths. * NYLON *There’s a delicious pleasure in tracing the nonfictional origins of Berlin’s fictions. * Los Angeles Times *Finding all the connections to the stories in the memoir is fun. The letters, the earliest written at age 11 and most in the author's mid-to-late 20s, offer some of that same pleasure but more powerfully underline the fact that the voice that seems so off-the-cuff and natural in the stories is something she consciously created; the version of her persona and her life that got into the stories is clarified and curated. * Newsday *Berlin is also known as a visionary who anticipated the merging of autobiography and fiction that’s so common right now. You can see just how much she merged her life and her fiction in the unfinished memoir Welcome Home . . . She’s so mordant here, and so observational, and there are so many gorgeous details that must have been painstakingly sifted out of a lifetime of experiences. * Lit Hub *

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisSuppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color ...A lyrical, philosophical, and often explicit exploration of personal suffering and the limitations of vision and love, as refracted through the color blue. With Bluets, Maggie Nelson has entered the pantheon of brilliant lyric essayists. Maggie Nelson is the author of numerous books of poetry and nonfiction, including Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007) and Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (University of Iowa Press, 2007). She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the California Institute of the Arts.Trade ReviewPraise for Previous Work: "A genre buster with an engaging prose style, Nelson interweaves psychoanalysis, personal memoir and true-crime tidbits into a darkly intelligent page-turner." -Time Out New York "Very rarely does a book come along that combines such extraordinary lyricism and ethical precision with the sense that the author is writing for her very life ... Nelson refuses complacency and pushes further into the unknown." -Annie Dillard

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Book SynopsisSocialist Cosmopolitanism offers an innovative interpretation of literary works from the Mao era that reads Chinese socialist literature as world literature. Nicolai Volland demonstrates that Chinese socialist literature was not driven solely by politics but by an ambitious—but ultimately doomed—attempt to redraw the literary world map.Trade ReviewNicolai Volland has tackled one of the most provocative issues in modern Chinese and world literature. Chinese socialist literature from the 1940s to the eve of the Great Cultural Revolution has for decades been interpreted solely in terms of propaganda. Volland argues for a more comprehensive understanding of its conception, production, circulation, and reception. Through the prism of socialist cosmopolitanism, Volland offers a new look at issues from translation to transculturation, from the technology of media to the politics of world literature. -- David Der-wei Wang, Harvard UniversityThis book should be required reading for anyone interested in the development of global literary systems in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Volland skillfully sketches the structure of a socialist literary world-system from the Chinese perspective, revealing exciting possibilities for world literature studies. As noteworthy for its sensitive readings of its texts as for its theoretical argument, Volland's book breaks important new ground. -- Alexander Beecroft, University of South CarolinaSocialist Cosmopolitanism forcefully intervenes in the study of modernity, crosscultural circulation, and Communist cultural institutions. The book contributes new paradigms to the study of modern China, world literature, and literary history and criticism. Volland argues that the Maoist "red classics" should be understood as part of the trajectory of literary development in China and abroad. Moreover, he shows that the Cold War ideological polarization was accompanied by a strong cosmopolitan impulse, one that has shaped literary works and the concept of literature itself. -- Yomi Braester, University of WashingtonAn engaging study of Chinese communist literature. * Hyperallergic *Theoretically informed, closely argued, and elegantly written. . . . Socialist Cosmopolitanism is a must-read for anyone interested in Chinese socialist culture and will undoubtedly further animate studies on cosmopolitanisms, transculturation, and world literature among scholars from across disciplines. -- Tie Xiao * Modern Chinese Literature and Culture *Nicolai Volland in Socialist Cosmopolitanism has taken on [a] herculean task, and he has succeeded with nuance and grace. -- Lisa Rofel * The China Journal *Within the growing body of scholarship reassessing the early years of the PRC in the bottom-up perspective of everyday history, Nicolai Volland’s study of the post-1949 literary system represents a valuable contribution. It provides new answers to questions about what ordinary people were commonly reading, how Chinese literature fitted into the new international cultural system centred on Moscow, and how Chinese writers were encouraged to contribute to building the new state. . . . Both historians and literature scholars will therefore find Volland’s study of great value in providing a richer, more nuanced picture of cultural production in the early PRC. -- Sebastian Veg * China Quarterly *[Socialist Cosmopolitanism] makes an important contribution to our understanding of both modern Chinese literature and global socialist culture, and is written in an extremely accessible voice that makes it a genuine pleasure to read. -- Krista Van Fleit * China Perspectives *This book is a valuable addition to Western studies of the culture of the early years of the People’s Republic. . . . Volland’s contribution demonstrates the international dimension of Chinese culture, in particular the profound influence of the Soviet Union, in this pivotal period. -- Richard King * Modern Language Quarterly *Socialist Cosmopolitanism enriches our understanding of the much discussed notion of 'world literature' by situating Chinese socialist literature as part of a transnational and pansocialist literary front. -- Gal Gvili * Comparative Literature Studies *Recommended. * Choice *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. The Politics of Texts in Motion2. The Geopoetics of Land Reform in Northeast Asia3. Fictionalizing the International Working Class4. Soviet Spaceships in Socialist China5. Sons and Daughters of the Revolution6. Mapping the Brave New World of LiteratureConclusionNotesGlossary of Chinese CharactersBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisCollins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners.Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners.Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins hasadapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These readers have beencarefully adapted using the Collins COBUILD grading scheme to ensure that the language is at thecorrect level for an intermediate learner. This book is Level 4 in the Collins ELT Readers series. Level4 is equivalent to CEF level B2 with a word count of 20,000 26,000 words.Each book includes: Full reading of the adapted version available for free online Helpful notes on characters Cultural and historical notes relevant to the plot A glossary of the more difficult wordsAn advertisement in the local newspaper announces that there is going to be a murder this evening at Little Paddocks but this is news even to the people who live at Little Paddocks! Interested villagers and friends appear that evening perhaps it's a game, they thinkThe lights go out, there is silence, and then a gun is firedIt seems this was no game. Someone really has been murdered!

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Book SynopsisElizabeth Bishop is one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. When she died in 1979, she had only published four collections, yet had won virtually every major American literary award, including the Pulitzer Prize. She maintained close friendships with poets such as Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell, and her work has always been highly regarded by other writers. In surveys of British poets carried out in 1984 and 1994 she emerged as a surprising major choice or influence for many, from Andrew Motion and Craig Raine to Kathleen Jamie and Lavinia Greenlaw. A virtual orphan from an early age, Elizabeth Bishop was brought up by relatives in New England and Nova Scotia. The tragic circumstances of her life - from alcoholism to repeated experiences of loss in her relationships with women - nourished an outsider's poetry notable both for its reticence and tentativeness. She once described a feeling that 'everything is interstitial' and reminds us in her poetry - in a way that is both radical and subdued - that understanding is at best provisional and that most vision is peripheral. Since her death, a definitive edition of Elizabeth Bishop's "Complete Poems" (1983) has been published, along with "The Collected Prose" (1984), her letters in "One Art" (1994), her paintings in "Exchanging Hats" (1996) and Brett C. Millier's important biography (1993). In America, there have been numerous critical studies and books of academic essays, but in Britain only studies by Victoria Harrison (1995) and Anne Stevenson (1998) have done anything to raise Bishop's critical profile. "Elizabeth Bishop: Poet of the Periphery" was the first collection of essays on Bishop to be published in Britain, and draws on work presented at the first UK Elizabeth Bishop conference, held at Newcastle University. It brings together papers by both academic critics and leading poets, including Michael Donaghy, Vicki Feaver, Jamie McKendrick, Deryn Rees-Jones and Anne Stevenson. Academic contributors include Professor Barbara Page of Vassar College, home of the Elizabeth Bishop Papers.

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Book SynopsisFresh perspectives and eye-opening discussions of contemporary American fiction In The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction: 1980-2020, a team of distinguished scholars delivers a focused and in-depth collection of essays on some of the most significant and influential authors and literary subjects of the last four decades. Cutting-edge entries from established and new voices discuss subjects as varied as multiculturalism, contemporary regionalisms, realism after poststructuralism, indigenous narratives, globalism, and big data in the context of American fiction from the last 40 years. The Encyclopedia provides an overview of American fiction at the turn of the millennium as well as a vision of what may come. It perfectly balances analysis, summary, and critique for an illuminating treatment of the subject matter. This collection also includes: An exciting mix of established and emerging contributors from around the world discTable of ContentsVolume I About the Editors Contributors Introduction XXX - XXX Volume II XXX - XXX Index

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Book Synopsis'Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking-Glass' are two of the most famous, translated and quoted books in the world. But how did a casual tale told by Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), an eccentric Oxford mathematician, to Alice Liddell, daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, grow into such a phenomenon? Peter Hunt cuts away the psychological speculation that has grown up around the ‘Alice’ books and traces the sources of their multi-layered in-jokes and political, literary and philosophical satire. He first places the books in the history of children’s literature – how they relate to the other giants of the period, such as Charles Kingsley – and explores the local and personal references that the real Alice would have understood. Equally fascinating is the rich texture of fragments of everything from the ‘sensation’ novel to Darwinian theory – not to mention Dodgson’s personal feelings – that he wove into the books as they developed. Richly illustrated with manuscripts, portraits, Sir John Tenniel’s original line drawings and contemporary photographs, this is a fresh look at two remarkable stories, which takes us on a guided tour from the treacle wells of Victorian Oxford through an astonishing world of politics, philosophy, humour – and nightmare.Trade Review"This attractive and ingeniously illustrated little volume. . .will add much enjoyment to reading and thinking about this remarkable book." * Kimberley Reynolds, Newcastle University *Table of ContentsContentsCharles and Lewis: ‘With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.’Prelude: ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ 1 Two Men and Three Girls in a Boat2 Before Alice3 What Alice Knew4 Outside Charles Dodgson 5 Inside Charles Dodgson 6 From Oxford to the WorldNotesBibliographyPicture CreditsIndex

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Book SynopsisUn análisis de la obra poética de Lope de Vega revela cómo amoldó su propio personaje "Lope" para adecuarse, generalmente con éxito, a los cambios de su entorno. La obra poética de Lope de Vega se diferencia del resto de la producción del Siglo de Oro por una insistente singularidad: escenas y figuras de la vida del autor aparecen frecuentemente en sus poemas. La crítica y el público general ha respondido a esta característica desde una perspectiva post-romántica, considerando que Lope escribió con sinceridad e inspiración biográfica, impulsado por su apasionada vida personal. En este libro se analiza lo que los post-románticos consideran "sinceridad" como un recurso literario. Lope consigue una apariencia de sinceridad pero, de hecho, reaccionaba a los cambios de su entorno social y literario creando nuevas actitudes "biográficas". Ensu poesía amorosa y épica, su conocida vida amorosa le proporciona fama y reconocimiento. En el Isidro, se presenta como el genio defensor de lo castellano y español por antonomasia. En las Rimas sacras adopta la retórica religiosa de la época para contrarrestar el éxito de Góngora en los círculos cortesanos. Finalmente, en las Rimas de Tomé de Burguillos repasa irónicamente su carrera poética desde la perspectiva de uno. Antonio Sánchez Jiménez es profesor de español en Miami University, Ohio.Table of ContentsIntroducción: imagen e imágenes de Lope - Antonio Sanchez Jimenez Castellano portugués. El poeta enamorado - Antonio Sanchez Jimenez La vega llana. El poeta del pueblo - Antonio Sanchez Jimenez Mea grandíssima culpa. El pecador arrepentido - Antonio Sanchez Jimenez Autoparodia y desengaño - Antonio Sanchez Jimenez Conclusión: un entierro `de Lope' - Antonio Sanchez Jimenez

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Book SynopsisWordsworth's lines on Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) contributed to a legend that became better known than Chatterton's work itself. His story is moving: a sensitive, unhappy boy, he fell in love with the medieval world and escaped into it from miserable schooling and the drudgery of apprenticeship. He read and then wrote "medieval" poetry which he passed off as genuine. When the poems he wrote in his own name brought him some success, he went to London to seek his fortune as a writer. After six months' struggle, too proud to admit defeat, starving and alone, he killed himself in his attic room. He was seventeen. There is more to Chatterton than the romantic archetype. His poetry was admired by Keats, Shelley, Coleridge and Wordsworth; as Grevel Lindop says in his introduction, "Chatterton's work contains in essence the whole of Romanticism". This selection, with its detailed notes, shows the historical significance and unexpected range of Chatterton's poetry, and also enables the reader to enjoy it for its rich resonance and wonderfully memorable rhythms.

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Book SynopsisCIXOUS, IRIGARAY, KRISTEVATHE JOUISSANCE OF FRENCH FEMINISM This book is a poetic study of three French feminists, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva and Hélène Cixous, the ''holy trinity'' of French feminism. Kelly Ives writes: ''I hope to convey some the inspiration and excitement that their work instils. For these three feminists/ philosophers/ speakers/ poets are extraordinarily enriching. Their writings are not dull, nor yet are they limited to having one or two things to say. Rather, they say a lot, about a lot. Sometimes they write things that are outrageous, at other times they are incredibly, searingly poignant. They annoy many feminists - their insistence on the body and biology, for instance, aggravates some theorists.'' EXTRACT FROM THE INTRODUCTION Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva all have different modes of writing. There are times when they are writing in the sober, tones of a cultural critic, philosopher or psychoanalyst. They have strident feminist voices (Cixous and Irigaray more than Kristeva). They are personal reminiscence modes. They have a relaxed, informal mode in interviews. And, most powerful of all, they have lyrical modes. Thus, Cixous, the most ''poetic'' of the three, will break into a visionary, ultra-lyrical way of writing. Luce Irigaray, too, changes, less frequently than Hélène Cixous, from a critical to a lyrical form. Thus, in a piece such as "When Our Lips Speak Together", Irigaray will write poetic sentences such as ''Kiss me. Two lips kiss two lips, and openness is ours again.'' This is the kind of phrase which never appears in most cultural theorists outside of quotation marks. One doesn''t find Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze, Jean Baudrillard, Mikhail Bakhtin, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes or Jean-Paul Sartre writing ''kiss me'' very often. What marks Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva apart from many cultural theorists and philosophers, then, is this personal, confessional and poetic way of writing, where they directly address the reader as the other, the ''you'' in an intimate relationship. Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard, and Jakobson are rarely, if ever, this personal. KELLY IVES has written widely on feminism, philosophy and art. Her previous books include Julia Kristeva and Hélène Cixous. The text has been revised and updated for this edition. Illustrated, with a revised text. European Writers Series. Bibliography and notes. 188pp. ISBN 9781861714206. www.crmoon.com

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Book SynopsisThe authors studied in this book can be visualized as the islands that constitute an unknown, fragile and trembling literary and cultural Francophone archipelago. The archipelago does not appear on any map, in the middle of an ocean whose name we already know. No Francophone anthology would put these authors together as a matter of course because what connects them is a narrative grammar rather than a national origin or even a language. Yet, their writing techniques and their apprehension of the real (the ways in which they know and name the world) both reflect and actively participate in our evolving perception of what Gayatri Spivak calls the “planet”. The Reparative in Narratives argues that argue that they repair trauma through writing. One description of these awe-inspiring, tender and sometimes horrifying tales is that their narrators are survivors who have experienced and sometimes inflicted unspeakable acts of violence. And yet, ultimately, despair, nihilism, cynicism or silence are never the consequences of their encounter with what some quickly call evil. The traumatic event has not killed them and has not killed their desire to write or perform, although the decidedly altered life that they live in the aftermath of the disaster forces them to become different types of storytellers. They are the first-person narrators of their story, and their narration reinvents them as speaking subjects. In turn, this requires that we accept new reading pacts. That pact is a temporal and geographical signature: the reparative narrative needs readers prepared to accept that healing belongs to the realm of possibilities and that exposure and denunciation do not exhaust the victim’s range of possibilities. Rosello contends that this context-specific yet repeating pattern constitutes a response to the contemporary figuration of both globalized and extremely localized types of traumatic memories.Trade ReviewEngagingly written and brilliantly argued, this is a landmark work that will shape critical thinking on memory and colonialism in France and beyond. * French Studies, vol 65 *Table of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction: From the Debate on ‘Repentance’ to the Reparative in Memorial Narratives 1. Algerian Humour: ‘Jay Translating’ Words and Silences 2. René-Nicolas Ehni: Matricide and Deicide as Figures of Unforgivable Violence and Redemption during the Algerian War of Independence 3. The Truth of False Testimonies: False Brothers in Michael Haneke’s Caché 4. Gisèle Halimi’s Autobiographical and Legal Narratives: Doing to Trees what They Did to Me Conclusion: Repentance and Detective Fiction: Legal Powerlessness and the Power of Narratives Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAnthony Hope's swashbuckling romance transports his English gentleman hero, Rudolf Rassendyll, from a comfortable life in London to fast-moving adventures in Ruritania, a mythical land steeped in political intrigue. The Prisoner of Zenda has been deservedly popular as a classic of romance and adventure since its publication in 1894.Trade ReviewA hugely enjoyable rip-roaring adventure of chivalry and romance. * The New European *Table of ContentsIntroduction Note on the Text Select Bibliography A Chronology of Anthony Hope The Prisoner of Zenda Explanatory Notes

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Book SynopsisIn Suppose a Sentence, Brian Dillon turns his attention to the oblique and complex pleasures of the sentence. A series of essays prompted by a single sentence – from Shakespeare to Gertrude Stein, John Ruskin to Joan Didion – the book explores style, voice, and language, along with the subjectivity of reading. Both an exercise in practical criticism and a set of experiments or challenges, Suppose a Sentence is a polemical and personal reflection on the art of the sentence in literature. Whether the sentence in question is a rigorous expression of a state of vulnerability, extremity, even madness, or a carefully calibrated arrangement, Dillon examines not only how it works and why but also, in the course of the book, what the sentence once was, what it is today, and what it might become tomorrow.Trade Review‘Each chapter focuses on a sentence chosen not for its historical importance, nor for its connection to the book’s other essays, but simply out of love. As Dillon puts it, his chief criterion is a sense of “affinity.” What emerges is a record of appreciation, a rare treasure in an age that rewards bashing.’ — Becca Rothfeld, New York Times‘Essayist and critic Brian Dillon is in thrall to sentences. For a quarter of a century, he tells us in his marvelous new book, he has been collecting them, in “the back pages of whatever notebook I happen to be using,” ... The product of decades of close reading, Suppose a Sentence is eclectic yet tightly shaped. Mr. Dillon has a taste for the more eccentric prose stylists, and lights with delight upon the likes of John Ruskin ... His essay on Thomas De Quincey is a small masterpiece ... The best and certainly most beautiful piece in the book is on Roland Barthes, “the patron saint of my sentences” without whom “I would never have written a word.” It is easy to understand what Mr. Dillon means when he speaks of Barthes, one of whose books is called A Lover’s Discourse, as “the most seductive writer I know,” for Mr. Dillon’s own book is a record of successive enrapturings.’ — John Banville, Wall Street Journal ‘Dillon, with his Suppose a Sentence, a collection of reflections on the nature of the sentence, made me wonder why any of the rest of us bother trying to write non-fiction.’ — Ian Sansom, TLS‘The book has a lot of what I can only call pleasure—of the kind that I imagine athletes or dancers experience when they are doing what they do, which is then communicated to those watching them do it. I share with Dillon some misgivings about general theories and overarching ideas, but in thinking about the writing I enjoy most, this quality feels like the one constant: that the author takes some pleasure in using these muscles and finding them capable of what they are asked. That delight is evident both in the sentences Dillon looks at and in those he writes himself.’ — Hasan Altaf, Paris Review‘Reducing great writers and works to a single sentence is a provocative act, but one that in an age of 280-character opinions does not feel inappropriate. Used as we are to monosyllabic messaging and governance by tweet, it is an important reminder of the potential beauty, rather than mere convenience, that can be conjured in concision.[...] Suppose a Sentence is an absorbing defence of literary originality and interpretation, inviting us not just to take words as they first appear but to let them abstract themselves before our very eyes.’ — Chris Allnut, Financial Times‘Taking as his starting point a sentence that has intrigued him for years or, in some cases, come into his ken more recently, Brian Dillon in Suppose a Sentence ranges through the centuries exploring the associations of what he observes and discovers about his object of study and its writer, through biographical anecdote, linguistic speculation, and a look at related writings. This rich and various collection resembles a beguiling, inspiriting conversation with a personable and wry intelligence who keeps you happily up late, incites you to note some follow-up reading, and opens your eyes further to the multifarious syntactical and emotional capacities of even a few joined words of English. Enjoyable and thought-provoking reading!’ — Lydia Davis, author of Can’t and Won’t‘Dillon has brilliantly reinvented the commonplace book in this witty, erudite, and addictively readable guide to the sentences that have stayed with him over the years.’ — Jenny Offill, author of Weather

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Book SynopsisThis book will reveal the real Jane: bitchy, gossipy, badly behaved at times as well as show the side we all love: the writer, sister, true romantic.

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Book SynopsisA complete volume of the writer's poetry and songs includes previously unpublished pieces, draws on extensive scholarship and Burn's own letters, and offers supplemental information about his life, early hardships, political beliefs, and literary contexts.Trade ReviewA magnificent and definitive work of scholarship. A thousand pages long, it provides not only a glossary and a context for the poems, but also a textual and historical note for each poem and song. -- Colm Toibin * * The Independent * *A very fine edition, and the long introduction, which sets out to clear the tangled banks, is alone worth the cover price. -- Andrew O'Hagan * * The Scotsman * *Scholarly and comprehensive. * * Sunday Telegraph * *

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Book Synopsis'One of the very few necessary and inevitable utterances of the century.' William Morris, in the Preface. The Nature of Gothic started life as a chapter in Ruskin's masterwork, The Stones of Venice. Ruskin came to lament the 'Frankenstein monsters' of Victorian buildings with added Gothic which 'The Stones' inspired; but despite his misgivings the original moral purpose of his writing had not fallen on stony ground. The Nature of Gothic, the last chapter of the second volume, had marked his progression from art critic to social critic; in it he found the true seam of his thought, and it was quickly recognised for the revolutionary writing it was. As Morris himself put it, The Nature of Gothic 'pointed out a new road on which the world should travel'; and in its indictment of meaningless modern labour and its celebration of medieval architecture it could be called the foundation stone of Morris's aesthetic and purpose in life. 40 years after he first read it, Morris chose Ruskin's text for one of the first books to be published at his Kelmscott Press, using his own Golden type. It is one of the summits of his career, and one of the most beautiful books ever published. Few books can so completely sum up an era. The Kelmscott Nature of Gothic encapsulates the meeting of two remarkable minds and embodies their influence in word, image and design. But more than that, Ruskin's words are increasingly relevant for our times. In this facsimile edition, the first ever made of this rare book, the reader can fully appreciate their importance and their legacy, as understood by one of the most potent visual imaginations to have worked in Britain. In this enlarged edition, essays by leading scholars, Robert Hewison (who was one of Ruskin's successors as Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University), Tony Pinkney (Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University) and Robert Brownell (lecturer, stained glass maker and author of Marriage of Inconvenience) explain the importance of this book for Ruskin, for Morris and for us today.

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Book SynopsisSeventy-seven tales of the supernatural, intended to frighten and excite and bring to heel their medieval audience, gathered from medieval chronicles, sagas, heroic poetry and romances. Strongly recommended. M R JAMES NEWSLETTER Stories of restless spirits returning from the afterlife are as old as storytelling. In medieval Europe ghosts, nightstalkers and unearthly visitors from parallel worlds had beenin circulation since before the coming of Christianity. Here is a collection of ghostly encounters from medieval romances, monastic chronicles, sagas and heroic poetry. These tales bore a peculiar freight of spooks and spirituality which can still make the hair stand on end. Look at the story of Richard Rowntree's stillborn child, glimpsed by his father tangled in swaddling clothes on the road to Santiago, or the sly habits of water sprites restingas golden rings on the surface of the river, just out of reach. The writer and broadcaster Andrew Joynes brings together a vivid selection of these tales, with a thoughtful commentary that puts them in context and lays bare the layers of meaning in them.Trade Review(Reviewd together with 'Medieval Comic Tales') Both make a delightful contribution to our understanding and mapping of those mental landscapes. They also allowed me to see the physical medieval landscape differently, reminding me that in the medieval period it had supernatural and metaphorical dimensions. In these tales a wide range of medieval people come to life. * FINDS RESEARCH GROUP NEWSLETTER *A collection of stories that have stood the test of time. * HISTORY MAGAZINE (US) *[An] excellent compendium of medieval folklore. * FORTEAN TIMES *Truly ... a landmark work. This impeccably researched and very readable book should appeal to a wide audience. * MEDIEVAL REVIEW *Every reader is sure to find something new and many readers may find something to treasure in this sprightly anthology. * ARTHURIANA *Strongly recommended. A convenient compendium indeed! * MR JAMES NEWSLETTER *Assembles dozens of ghostly tales from an impressive array of original sources ranging from Iceland to Florence. * BBC HISTORY *

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