ELT & Literary Studies Books
WW Norton & Co The Tempest
Book Synopsis
£11.99
Cambridge University Press The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative
Book SynopsisWhat is narrative? How does it work and how does it shape our lives? H. Porter Abbott emphasizes that narrative is found not just in literature, film, and theatre, but everywhere in the ordinary course of people''s lives. This widely used introduction, now revised and expanded in its third edition, is informed throughout by recent developments in the field and includes one new chapter. The glossary and bibliography have been expanded, and new sections explore unnatural narrative, retrograde narrative, reader-resistant narratives, intermedial narrative, narrativity, and multiple interpretation. With its lucid exposition of concepts, and suggestions for further reading, this book is not only an excellent introduction for courses focused on narrative but also an invaluable resource for students and scholars across a wide range of fields, including literature and drama, film and media, society and politics, journalism, autobiography, history, and still others throughout the arts, humanities, and social sciences.Trade ReviewPraise for the second edition: 'This second edition of H. Porter Abbott's very widely used (and highly regarded) Introduction is even stronger than the first edition. The new edition includes two additional chapters, one on 'Narrative and Truth' and the other on 'Narrative Worlds,' which incorporate recent research by a range of scholars exploring the relevant issues, and, furthermore, the author has painstakingly reworked the entire volume to ensure accuracy, comprehensiveness, and clarity in its treatment of major trends in the study of narrative … What was true of the first edition is even more true of the second: this Introduction is not only an appropriate text for classes focusing on narrative - including advanced undergraduate and graduate classes in such (sub)disciplines as literary theory, film theory, communication studies, discourse analysis, women's and gender studies, history, comparative media studies, and critical legal theory - but also an invaluable resource for specialists.' David Herman, editor of The Cambridge Companion to NarrativePraise for the first edition: 'Abbott brilliantly zeroes in on the architecture of narrative with an exactness and bent for orderly exposition that utterly redeems his subject.' The Chronicle of Higher EducationPraise for the first edition: 'Anyone seeking a lucidly written guide to the study of narrative technique should turn immediately to H. Porter Abbott's Cambridge Introduction to Narrative.' Literature/Film QuarterlyPraise for the first edition: 'Directness, accessibility, and coherence distinguish this brief but comprehensive study of narrative … Most highly recommended.' ChoicePraise for the first edition: 'A lucid, practical, wide-ranging, and often original introduction to narrative, which will be extremely useful in undergraduate and graduate courses on literary theory and criticism. This is not a dry textbook, however; the reader is made aware of a real voice and of a fascination with the role of narrative across many areas of culture and beyond.' Derek Attridge, University of YorkTable of Contents1. Narrative and life; 2. Defining narrative; 3. The borders of narrative; 4. The rhetoric of narrative; 5. Closure; 6. Narration; 7. Interpreting narrative; 8. Three ways to interpret narrative; 9. Adaptation across media; 10. Character and Self in narrative; 11. Narrative and truth; 12. Narrative worlds; 13. Narrative contestation; 14. Narrative negotiation: conflict revisited; 15. Narrative negotiation: closure revisited.
£23.74
University of California Press Ulysses Annotated
Book SynopsisPresents annotations to Joyce's classic that can inform any reading of "Ulysses". This volume includes annotations that gloss place names, define slang terms, give capsule histories of institutions and political and cultural movements and figures, supply bits of local and Irish legend and lore, and explain religious nomenclature and practices.Trade ReviewRecommended Text * James Joyce Centre, Dublin *"This sturdy, handsomely produced reference book is here to stay; we will use it, fill in its margins, rely on it, find fault with it. . . . Ulysses Annotated will be one of the most handy and most important critical tools we have, simply by virtue of its existence and availability. The Revised and Expanded Edition has been substantially enlarged and greatly improved. Many Joyceans have contributed to it; . . . No serious reader of Ulysses can neglect it." * James Joyce Quarterly *"Truly useful in its explanation of puns, jokes, foreign phrases, and a myriad of other items including many helpful glosses on terms belonging to the vernacular of Dublin. . . . Gifford's achievement remains a humbling one." * Modern Fiction Studies *Table of ContentsPREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (I974) THE NOTES AND THEIR USE INTRODUCTION NOTES FOR JOYCE'S Ulysses CONTENTS PART I. The Telemachiad EPISODE I. Telemachus EPISODE 2. Nestor EPISODE 3· Proteus PART II. The Wanderings of Ulysses EPISODE 4· Calypso EPISODE 5· Lotus-Eaters EPISODE 6. Hades EPISODE 7· Aeolus EPISODE 8. Lestrygonians EPISODE 9· Scylla and Charybdis EPISODE IO. The Wandering Rocks EPISODE II. Sirens EPISODE 12. Cyclops EPISODE I3. Nausicaa EPISODE I4. Oxen of the Sun EPISODE IS. Circe PART III. The Homecoming EPISODE I6. Eumaeus EPISODE I7. Ithaca EPISODE I8. Penelope APPENDIX: Rhetorical Figures in Aeolus INDEX
£27.90
Little, Brown Book Group And Still I Rise
Book SynopsisA new cover reissue of AND STILL I RISE, first published in 1986, from Maya Angelou, one of the most celebrated writers and poets of the world.Trade ReviewA brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman -- President Barack ObamaThe poems and stories she wrote . . . were gifts of wisdom and wit, courage and grace -- President Bill ClintonShe moved through the world with unshakeable calm, confidence and a fierce grace . . . She will always be the rainbow in my clouds -- Oprah WinfreyShe was important in so many ways. She launched African American women writing in the United States. She was generous to a fault. She had nineteen talents - used ten. And was a real original. There is no duplicate -- Toni MorrisonAngelou was the first poet since Robert Frost to recite work at a presidential inauguration. And Still I Rise is a tribute to determination, from the title poem to the anthemic "Phenomenal Woman", which sounds like something that Beyoncé could set to music -- Stig Abell * The Times *
£10.44
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC King Richard III: Third Series
Book SynopsisRichard III is one of the great Shakespearean characters and roles. James R Siemon examines the attraction of this villain to audiences and focuses on how beguiling, even funny, he can be, especially in the earlier parts of the play. Siemon also places King Richard III in its historical context; as Elizabeth I had no heirs the issue of succession was a very real one for Shakespeare's audience. The introduction is well-illustrated and provides a comprehensive account of the play and of critical approaches to it. The edition also provides a clear and authoritative playtext, edited to the most rigorous standards of scholarship, with detailed notes and commentary on the same page. With a wealth of helpful and incisive commentary the Arden Shakespeare is the finest edition of Shakespeare you can find, giving a deeper understanding and appreciation of his work.Trade Review'There is much to admire about Siemon's labours here, and taken in its own edition is a fine resource for those wanting to read a well annotated text of the play or to go deeply into the performance and textual histories of the play...' Shakespeare Bookshop Newsletter (December 2009)
£9.99
HarperCollins Publishers Hardy Women
Book SynopsisA TOP BOOK FOR 2024 IN: THE OBSERVER, INDEPENDENT, SUNDAY TIMES AND BOOKSELLER''He understands only the women he invents the others not at all''Thomas Hardy is one of the most beloved and most-read British authors. His influence on literature and the minds of his readers is singular. But how is it that the novelist who created some of the most memorable and modern female characters in literature had such troubled relationships with real women?In this highly innovative book, acclaimed biographer Paula Byrne re-examines Hardy's life through the eyes of the women who made him mother, sisters, girlfriends, wives, muses. The story veers from shocking scenes such as his obsession with the sight of a woman hanged, to poignant vignettes of unfulfilled passion, to fascinating details of working women's lives in the nineteenth century.Hardy Women is the story of how the magnificent fictional women he invented would not have been possible without the hardship and hardiness of the real ones who Trade Review EARLY PRAISE FOR HARDY WOMEN ‘Absorbing… a treat for Hardy fans and unhappy wives’ The Times ‘Novelist and poet Thomas Hardy created some of literature’s most enduring female characters . . . but it is the real women who shaped the life of the tortured genius that a book vividly reanimates’ Independent 'By turns infuriating and inspiring, but always fascinating, this page-turner of a book offers a genuinely fresh perspective on one of Victorian Britain’s most famous writers' Gareth Russell, author of The Palace ‘A fascinating re-examination of the life of Thomas Hardy through the eyes of the women who profoundly influenced him-his mother, his sisters, girlfriends, wives and muses. Drawing on access to some neverbefore-seen passages in Hardy's journals, she shows that it is through these hardy women that we can truly appreciate his much-loved works’ The Bookseller, Editor’s Choice
£18.04
University of Wales Press Horror in Classical Literature
Book SynopsisNo in- or out-of-print book has the same goals, content, wide range, and scholarly approach as the present study. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, previously published books have neglected ancient Graeco-Roman texts that either cause horror or may be said to belong to the horror genre. This may partly be the result of the low esteem in which any text that did not fit neatly into one of the major and traditional literary genres was held by most scholars particularly apparent with regard to texts that dealt with the supernatural or the occult, which were often relegated to specialists in ancient religions, rituals or beliefs. This book reviews the concepts of horror (literary, psychological, and biophysical), examines the current definitions for horror fiction', evaluates the current interest in the darker side of the classical world, and suggests new ways of thinking about horror as a genre.
£54.00
Columbia University Press Powers of Horror
Book SynopsisJulia Kristeva offers an extensive and profound consideration of the nature of abjection. Drawing on Freud and Lacan, she analyzes the nature of attitudes toward repulsive subjects and examines the function of these topics in the writings of Celine, Proust, Joyce, and other authors.Trade ReviewDazzling. * SubStance *Julia Kristeva’s Powers of Horror, which theorizes the notion of the ‘abject’ in a series of blisteringly insightful analyses, is as relevant, as necessary, and as courageous today as it seemed in 1984. -- Peter Connor, Barnard CollegeCritics who seek an alternative to sexist and, in general, imperialist practices in psychoanalytic writing will want to read [this book]. * Discourse *Table of ContentsI. Approaching Abjection2. Something to Be Scared Of3. From Filth to Defilement4. Semiotics of Biblical Abomination5.... Qui Tollis Peccata Mundi6. Céline: Neither Actor nor Martyr7. Suffering and Horror8. Those Females Who Can Wreck the Infinite9. "Ours to Jew or Die"10. In the Beginning and Without End...11. Powers of Horror
£18.00
Not Stated The Wordhord
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£12.99
Batsford Ltd 100 Books that Changed the World
Book SynopsisA thought-provoking chronological timeline of the world's most influential books.
£16.00
Oxford University Press J.R.R. Tolkien
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£9.49
Princeton University Press The Activist Humanist Form and Method in the
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£18.00
Abrams Clive Barkers Dark Worlds
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£29.75
Anthem Press A Theory of Thrills Sublime and Epiphany in
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£23.75
Faber & Faber Sylvia Plaths Tomato Soup Cake
Book SynopsisDine with beloved writers in this ''utterly charming'' (Nina Stibbe) new anthology of their very own favourite recipes, introduced by Bee Wilson.Agatha Christie's hot bean salad.Jack Kerouac''s green pea soup.Allen Ginsberg's cold summer borscht.Daphne du Maurier''s sloe gin.Christopher Isherwood's brownies.Joan Didion''s Mexican chicken.George Orwell''s plum cake.Have you ever wondered what your favourite classic authors cooked - whether as an intimate snack for one or as their showstopping dinner party special? Here''s your chance to wine and dine with the world''s most famous writers in a gorgeous new collection of their most-loved recipes, curated from their archives, letters and diaries. Whet your appetite: there are culinary treats and eccentricities in store ...
£11.69
Harvard University Press Sense and Sensibility
Book SynopsisPatricia Meyer Spacks guides readers to a deeper appreciation of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood as they experience love, romance, and heartbreak. Sense and Sensibility: An Annotated Edition includes numerous color reproductions that vividly recreate Jane Austen’s world. This will be an especially welcome addition to the library of any Janeite.Trade ReviewIf you haven’t yet seen the Harvard University Press’s annotated Jane Austen series, prepare yourself for a major treat. This year Sense and Sensibility joins the other novels—Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, Emma, and Northanger Abbey… The books are gorgeous. Notes and commentary in the broad margins enlighten and enrich the text and offer historic context without interfering with the narrative flow. Illustrations are plentiful and include everything from an old engraving of the Theatre Royal in London’s Drury Lane to a still from the Hugh Grant–Emma Thompson film version of the novel. Jane Austen lovers worldwide will cherish these books. * Christian Science Monitor *This series of annotated, illustrated classics from Harvard Press has become a lovely annual tradition. Over the years, the press has published annotated editions of The Wind in the Willows [and] The Picture of Dorian Gray (both annotated and uncensored!), and many others. Each one has been carefully and beautifully edited. The editors know what we like, though, and they have done more Jane Austen than they have anyone else; Sense and Sensibility: An Annotated Edition is the press’s fifth Austen book and is a worthy addition. It’s gorgeous to look at, with moire endpapers, illustrations from various editions of the book (as well as photographs of objects of the time, and paintings of contemporary well-known people), and, of course, the intelligent and abundant annotations, by scholar Patricia Meyer Spacks. -- Laurie Hertzel * Star Tribune *[Spacks] is particularly astute at contextualizing 19th century thought and ideas for a contemporary audience… For people returning to the novel, Spacks’ notes are quite illuminating, mostly serious, but occasionally fun… Spacks’ introduction and annotations indicate a person who has spent a considerable amount of time with the Dashwoods and their assorted friends and foes. This handsome edition is all the richer for it. -- Subashini Navaratnam * PopMatters *This annotated edition of Sense and Sensibility is a beautiful book, printed on acid-free, cream vellum paper with generous margins and woven bindings. It is an intelligent and enlightening literary companion, and an essential addition to any serious collection of Jane Austen’s works. -- Anna Creer * Sydney Morning Herald *The illustrations, literary commentary and definitions should be useful and interesting to any student of Jane Austen’s novels. -- Kathleen Elder * Austenprose *Harvard’s series of annotated Jane Austen works continues with this superb edition of Sense and Sensibility. What a boon to the student of Austen… Sense and Sensibility is my favorite Austen novel: this edition increased my enjoyment and understanding many times over. -- Joceline Bury * Jane Austen’s Regency World *With wit and wonderful attention to subtleties, and to often moving effect, Spacks guides the reader to a wider appreciation of this early Austen novel. -- Deidre Lynch, University of Toronto
£25.46
HarperCollins Publishers Speaking for IELTS With Answers and Audio
Book SynopsisIf your speaking is preventing you from getting the score you need in IELTS, Collins Speaking for IELTS can help.Don''t let one skill hold you back.If your speaking is preventing you from getting the score you need in IELTS, Collins Speaking for IELTS can help.Don''t let one skill hold you back.Contents consumer: Collins Speaking for IELTS has been specially created for learners of English who plan to take the IELTS exam to demonstrate that they have the required ability to communicate effectively in English, either at work or at university. It is ideal for learners with band score 5 5.5 who are aiming for band score 6 or higher on the IELTS test (CEF level B1 and above).This major new edition has been thoroughly updated and improved to make it even easier to use. Now in full colour, the book has a new layout and a series of brand new features to help students feel fully prepared for their IELTS exam: Enhanced answer keys with further explanations of why answers are right or wrong, or
£13.49
New York University Press Becoming Human
Book SynopsisWinner, 2021 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize, given by the National Women''s Studies AssociationWinner, 2021 Harry Levin Prize, given by the American Comparative Literature AssociationWinner, 2021 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ StudiesArgues that Blackness disrupts our essential ideas of race, gender, and, ultimately, the humanRewriting the pernicious, enduring relationship between Blackness and animality in the history of Western science and philosophy, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World breaks open the rancorous debate between Black critical theory and posthumanism. Through the cultural terrain of literature by Toni Morrison, Nalo Hopkinson, Audre Lorde, and Octavia Butler, the art of Wangechi Mutu and Ezrom Legae, and the oratory of Frederick Douglass, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson both critiques and displaces the racial logic that has dominated scientific thought since the EnlighteTrade ReviewThis is a demanding, complex, and highly significant contribution to the literature on the nature of the moral and philosophical distinctions between human and nonhuman creatures...The implications for theological anthropology are, undoubtedly, shattering. * Literature and Theology *Within Western philosophy, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson shows, Black people historically have been 'animalized.' In examining these limitations of Western philosophy, Becoming Human shows that the fundamental idea of 'humanity' that has gained widespread credence in the West is flawed … Jackson makes an intervention by firmly placing Black literary and visual culture into philosophy. * Public Books *Jackson’s scholarship has been critical to my recent curatorial work. This groundbreaking book considers how Blackness can coincide with notions of the nonhuman and animality through imaginative and emancipatory modes of being, invoking a future that breaches contemporary ideas of humanism through thoughtful research and cultural references that center Black women as a site of origin. * Artforum, "Best of 2021" *Rewriting the pernicious, enduring relationship between Blackness and animality in the history of Western science and philosophy, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World breaks open the rancorous debate between Black critical theory and posthumanism [...] What emerges is a radically unruly sense of a being, knowing, feeling existence: one that necessarily ruptures the foundations of 'the human. * Black Perspectives *Jackson states that real change will require “revolutionizing” the human body, and her prescription for freeing oneself from the limitations of gender and species requires the same “plasticity" by which Blackness and anti-Blackness continue to be defined. * CHOICE *The book presents a compelling argument and offers worthwhile suggestions. I will certainly have my undergraduates wrestle with some of this material in upcoming semesters. * Religions Journal *The sheer beauty, force, and ingenuity of Zakiyyah Iman Jackson's aesthetic strategies and gestures are on display as she performs the very risks and rewards she conjures. Offering a brilliant intervention into questions of the human, each of Jackson’s readings profoundly unsettle our presumed relations and prevailing ontologies. She reads western philosophy and science through African diasporic literatures, theories, and visual art to open us up to what is made—what might be made—in excess of the matrix of antiblackness and its constitutive forms of the human, animal, gender, and matter. In the book’s range of knowledges, reach, and scope, no field nor discipline would not benefit from a real and sustained engagement with the work that Jackson undertakes here. -- Christina Sharpe, author of In the WakeBrilliantly reframes the relation between blackened life and the category of the human, by shifting the terms of the debate. She maintains that neither dehumanization nor exclusion are sufficient to explain antiblackness and its descending scale of life. In so doing, Jackson's ‘ontological plasticity’ reveals the controlled depletion that produces the liquidity of life and fleshly existence, and enables blackened life to be anything, which is also to say nothing at all. Jackson’s rigorous and sustained meditation is relentless in exploring the possibilities for a generative disordering of being, inhabiting other senses of the world, and imagining the field of relation in ceaseless flux and directionless becoming. -- Saidiya Hartman, author of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments
£21.59
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Volpone Or The Fox
Book SynopsisVolpone, Or, The Fox is Ben Jonson's great parable of greed, self-interest and inheritance. Using animal fable to satirize the wealthy and the greedy, it remains one of his most distinctive and compelling dramatic works.Jonson wrote the play for performance in 1606, and orchestrated its publication the following year. In it, the wealthy Venetian Volpone pretends to be on his deathbed, encouraging Voltore, Corbaccio and Corvinothe vulture, raven and crowto compete for his fortune. With unflinching harshness and biting humour, Jonson portrays a society damningly hollowed out by over-monetization.This edition has been prepared by leading textual expert, John Jowett. With incisive scholarship, he explores the play's craftsmanship and examines how theatre practitioners and critics engage with it. Detailed notes explicate an authoritative text and breathe new life into it for readers today.Arden Early Modern Drama editions offer the best in contempora
£16.14
Oxford University Press The Idiot
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£9.49
HarperCollins Publishers Inc Rumi The Big Red Book
Book Synopsis“Really, what other book would anyone ever need?” —Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Honeybee“Elegant and exquisite.” —Deepak Chopra, author of Muhammad, Jesus, and BuddhaThe Big Red Book is a poetic masterpiece from Jalaluddin Rumi, the medieval Sufi mystic whom Time magazine calls “the most popular poet in America.” Readers continue to be awed and inspired by Rumi’s masterfully lyrical, deeply expressive poems, collected in volumes such as The Illustrated Rumi, The Soul of Rumi, and the bestselling The Essential Rumi. With The Big Red Book, acclaimed poet and Rumi interpreter Coleman Barks offers a never-before-published translation of a crucial anthology of poems widely considered to be one of Persian literature’s greatest treasures. Trade Review"Coleman Barks is a pioneer and renown scholar on Rumi, the great Sufi. In his elegant and exquisite way, Coleman has made Rumi as popular as Shakespeare to the world and continues to inspire us with the Rumi's ecstatic poetry." -- Deepak Chopra, author of The Shadow Effect and Jesus "Really, what other book would anyone ever need?" -- Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Honeybee "Coleman Barks found Rumi floating in some Georgia lake and brought him back to life. What a blessing! Rumi says, 'Some nights stay up until dawn, as the moon sometimes does for the sun.' Coleman has stayed up all night, and every reader is grateful." -- Robert Bly, National Book Award-winning poet and translator "Rumi's Big Red Book tells us: 'Compassion builds a door, Restlessness cuts a key.' I am forever grateful to Coleman Barks, restless, yearning to find the bridge from Rumi and Shams to the world we presently inhabit. He is truly to Be Loved for making this 'transaction with beauty'..." -- Debra Winger, Actress "Without question, we can credit Coleman Barks with making Rumi accessible to American readers through his modernized renditions of the best-known poems of the great Islamic mystic... Richly sensual yet never flowery, Barks' language emphasizes Rumi's embodied spirituality in a book to savor." -- Booklist (starred review) "An emeritus English professor at the University of Georgia, Barks has spent 34 years working on Rumi's poetry - you could even say that Rumi has been the secret companion musician Barks has danced to." -- Los Angeles Times "Barks has become internationally renowned for his translations... Rumi: The Big Red Book is the culmination of his work." -- Shambhala Sun
£11.39
Harvard University Press Fragments
Book SynopsisAeschylus (ca. 525–456 BC) is the dramatist who made Athenian tragedy one of the world’s great art forms. Seven of his eighty or so plays survive complete, including the Oresteia trilogy and the Persians, the only extant Greek historical drama. Fragments of his lost plays also survive.Trade ReviewAlan Sommerstein’s three-volume Aeschylus…is in many respects the best critical edition of this playwright available in any format. Sommerstein’s authority as a linguist and expert in Aeschylean drama is second to none… Particularly welcome is the well-documented and clearly presented volume of Fragments—for of course the seven plays we happen to possess are by no means all that Aeschylus wrote, and not necessarily even the seven best: the trilogies dealing with Achilles at Troy, or with Pentheus and the Bacchants, for example, seem to have been especially daring and influential. The facing English translation is a trustworthy guide for all who want help in figuring out what Aeschylus (probably) wrote and meant. -- Mark Griffith * Times Literary Supplement *
£23.70
Oxford University Press The Moonstone
Book SynopsisA fabulous yellow diamond disappears, the case looks simple, but in mid-Victorian England no one is what they seem, and nothing can be taken for granted.Table of ContentsIntroduction Note on the Text Select Bibliography A Chronology of Wilkie Collins The Moonstone Explanatory notes Index
£8.54
Fordham University Press Sexistence
Book SynopsisSexistence develops a new philosophical account of sexuality that troubles our conceptions of existence.Table of ContentsPreliminaries | 1 A. Fatality? | 1 B. Liberation? | 5 C. Philosophy? | 10 D. Drive? | 17 E. Unsayable? | 21 1. Lifting | 26 2. Transmission | 28 3. Appropriation | 30 4. Fiction | 32 5. Real | 35 6. History | 38 7. Technics and Transcendence | 41 8. Excessive Nature | 45 9. Desire | 50 10. Continuous, Discontinuous | 53 11. Devouring | 57 12. Ass in Air | 61 13. Penetration | 66 14. Too Much, Too Little | 70 15. Sex Singular Plural | 74 16. not a word / I lacked | 79 17. Joy | 84 18. Troubles | 89 19. Love Unto Death | 97 20. Love Unto Life | 101 21. Erotic Novel | 108 Postlude | 119 Superfluous Supplement | 120 Notes | 123
£21.59
Columbia University Press The Dark Delight of Being Strange Black Stories
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£19.80
Liberty Fund Inc My Thoughts Mes Pensees
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£12.84
Penguin Books Ltd The Penguin Modern Classics Book
Book SynopsisThe essential guide to twentieth-century literature around the worldFor six decades the Penguin Modern Classics series has been an era-defining, ever-evolving series of books, encompassing works by modernist pioneers, avant-garde iconoclasts, radical visionaries and timeless storytellers.This reader''s companion showcases every title published in the series so far, with more than 1,800 books and 600 authors, from Achebe and Adonis to Zamyatin and Zweig.It is the essential guide to twentieth-century literature around the world, and the companion volume to The Penguin Classics Book.Bursting with lively descriptions, surprising reading lists, key literary movements and over two thousand cover images, The Penguin Modern Classics Book is an invitation to dive in and explore the greatest literature of the last hundred years.Trade ReviewA heavyweight - but never burdensome - history of the publishing house... A must for quiz-hounds -- Alex Diggins * Telegraph *As close to pornography as you can get as a bibliophile. From one angle it is a testament to book design over nigh on a century. On another, it is a work of publishing history -- Stuart Kelly * Scotsman *
£27.00
Harvard University Press Posthomerica
Book SynopsisQuintus Smyrnaeus' Posthomerica, composed between the late second and mid-fourth centuries AD, boldly adapts Homeric diction and style to fill in the story of the Trojan expedition between the end of the Iliad and the beginning of the Odyssey. This edition replaces the earlier Loeb Classical Library edition by A. S. Way (1913).
£23.70
Oxford University Press The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories
Book SynopsisArthur Machen is a significant figure in supernatural and horror literature, in the genre of 'weird fiction'. This collection brings together his best horror tales with a full contextual introduction and which helps to illuminate Machen's place in the literary and cultural milieu of 1890s Britain.Trade ReviewThis is a must-have collection of landmark tales of horror. * Publisher's Weekly *Table of ContentsIntroductionThe Lost Club (1890)The Great God Pan (1894)The Inmost Light (1894)The Three Impostors; or, the Transmutations (1895)The Shining Pyramid (1895)The Red Hand (1895)From Ornaments in Jade (1897, 1924)Psychology, or, Fragments of PaperThe Rose GardenThe CeremonyThe TuraniansThe White People (1899)The Bowmen (1914)Out of the Earth (1915)The Coming of the Terror (1917)The Islington Mystery (1927)N (1935)The Children of the Pool (1936)Ritual (1937)ReferencesFurther Reading
£9.49
Cinder House Writing the Uncanny
Book SynopsisFrom M.R. James to Shirley Jackson, the Uncanny has long provided fertile ground for writers – and recent years have seen a notable resurgence in both literature and film. But how does the Uncanny work? What can a writer do to ensure their fiction haunts the reader’s imagination? Writing the Uncanny sees some of the best contemporary authors explain what drew them to horror, ghost stories, folklore and beyond, and reveal how to craft unsettling fiction which resonates. Authors such as Jeremy Dyson, Alison Moore, Jenn Ashworth and Catriona Ward share their insights on psychogeography, fairy tales, cultural tradition and the supernatural, and offer practical advice on their different approaches to the genre. Writing the Uncanny is an essential guide for both the casual reader and the aspiring writer of strange tales.Table of ContentsIntroduction – Richard V. Hirst & Dan Coxon Negative Spaces and Ambiguity: A Toolkit for Writing Uncanny Fiction – Lucie McKnight Hardy A Many-Storied House – Michèle Roberts Finding the Comedy in the Blatantly Unfunny: A Personal Journey Through Three and a Half Tales of Unease – Robert Shearman Spotlight on… Shirley Jackson: Personal Experience in the Uncanny – Alison Moore Half-Concealed Places, or a Particularly Humdrum Uncanny – Gary Budden Beach Reading – Nicholas Royle Potluck: Making the Most of Your Little Horrors – Chikodili Emelumadu In the Forest, Stories Grow: Writing Uncanny Fiction with Fairy Tales – Claire Dean Spotlight on… Robert Aickman: Seeing by the Moonlight: Thoughts on ‘The Hospice’ and Robert Aickman – Jeremy Dyson Seeing Things and Saying Things: Writing the Ghost – Jenn Ashworth Haunting the Text: Housing Ghosts in Fiction – Catriona Ward All You Have to do is Die – Rowan Hisayo Buchanan Spotlight on… Sigmund Freud: ‘You Must All be Very Worried’: Freud’s Uncanny and Hoffman’s ‘The Sandman’ – Timothy J. Jarvis
£9.49
HarperCollins Publishers Inc Cassandra Speaks
Book SynopsisWith her trademark gifts of both humor and insight, she offers a vision that transcends the either/or ideologies on both sides of the gender debate. Brilliantly structured into three distinct parts, Part One explores how history is carried forward through the stories a culture tells and values, and what we can do to balance the scales.Trade Review“Every chapter of this blazingly wonderful book hit home. It gave me strength, comfort and hope." — Sally Field, Academy-award winning actor, bestselling author of In Pieces “When did we as women start trying so desperately to tame our feelings, our bodies, our ambition? In this powerful and beautiful book, Elizabeth Lesser brings us back to the earliest stories that convinced us to silence our voices, and then forward to a place where we trust ourselves to lead our lives—and the world.” — Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed and founder of Together Rising “Cassandra Speaks is about the power of love instead of the love of power. Elizabeth Lesser speaks to the value of finding your voice in the wilderness of these times and, of taking a new kind of hero’s journey—one that replaces violence and domination with deep feeling and courageous communication. What a blessing!” — Iyanla Vanzant, author and host of Iyanla: Fix My Life (OWN) “Blessed are the truthtellers, and Elizabeth Lesser is one of them. Cassandra Speaks is astute and witty, tender and soulful. It’s a tapestry of memoir, cultural commentary, and spiritual fuel that inspires women—and all people left out of history’s storytelling—to reclaim our lineage, to become prophetic alchemists in a world in grave need of healing.” — Jamia Wilson, executive director and publisher of the Feminist Press “Cassandra Speaks is a nod to the power of storytelling in our journey to build a truly equitable society. It lays bare the relationship between gender and power, and makes a compelling case for deepening our connections and embracing our collective humanity.” — Tony Porter, CEO of A Call to Men “Elizabeth is a wise and powerful storyteller. Cassandra Speaks helps us understand the roots of women’s shame and guilt and offers a path forward—by changing our stories, we change our lives." — Eileen Fisher, founder of Eileen Fisher, Inc. "A book that will change women’s lives—and therefore, everyone’s lives—by calling out the stories that have held us back for millennia. Cassandra Speaks delivers an urgent message to women to listen within, follow their instincts, and do power differently." — Alyssa Milano, actor and activist
£11.69
Columbia University Press The Membranes
Book SynopsisFirst published in Taiwan in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese. Chi Ta-wei weaves dystopian tropes—heirloom animals, radiation-proof combat drones, sinister surveillance technologies—into a sensitive portrait of one young woman’s quest for self-understanding.Trade ReviewNamed a Reviewer's Choice Best Book of 2021 * Tor.com *A Books of the Year 2021 selection * The White Review *Chosen as a Best Translated Book of 2021 * Words Without Borders *Books are all time-capsules, of course, but Chi’s novel offers an exquisite dual experience—because while The Membranes is a modern classic, it hasn’t lost an ounce of its provocative significance. As a gently incisive puzzle-box it works to pry at the readers’ own emotions about the nature of stories and how we’re made of them; as a novel of queer attachment, it explores how we attempt to connect to one another through endless membranes—and often fail to do so. * Tor.com *There’s something very timely about [The Membranes'] play with gender fluidity and the social construction of identity. There’s also something timeless about Chi’s future, because of how it bends and defies time itself. The novel is about how identity is a story we tell ourselves through time — or back through time. And that story, for Chi, is queer . . . English readers who finish it now, 25 years after it was first published, may regret finding it so late, and missing out on all the stories and selves we could have been, even as it seems like it’s been here the whole time. * Los Angeles Times *This rather astonishing science fiction novel is a powerful story about consciousness and connection with other people. It cuts right to the heart of our current moment by way of metaphor, but in a manner that is entirely Chi’s, and thus a new thing for English-language readers. What a surprising and exciting addition to science fiction and world literature. -- Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Red MarsWhat a breath of retro-fresh air! This wicked-smart cyberpunk throwback from the early days of networked digital culture presciently foregrounds issues of gender, embodiment, identity, and technology that have become all the more relevant over the quarter-century since its original publication. -- Susan Stryker, executive editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies QuarterlyReaders will notice prescient echoes of modern life in Chi’s depictions of all-absorbing media consumption and loneliness in the midst of hyper-connection . . . [T]his captivating novel is rich and rewarding. * Publishers Weekly *A fascinating new book. * MIT Technology Review *A mind-blowing book . . . I have NEVER read anything like it. * Literary Infatuation *The Membranes speaks as much to hard-core sci-fi fans seeking an exhilarating read as to regular readers who desire a moment of introspection. -- Stella Jiayue Zhu * Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing Book Review Network *The Membranes is a welcome addition to the small but growing ranks of international science fiction available in English translation, and is an excellent early example of climate fiction. * Booklist *A plunging submersible disguised as a novel—filled with incisive, inventive peculiarities. * Du Mois Archival Institute, 2021 Reading List Selection *It is almost unfathomable that, in 1995, Chi could have imagined a world so full of the terrors that technological rises inevitably bring, but he does and mostly to devastating effect. Chi’s project is large, as is his vision . . . it imagines the future like the best of our dystopian meditations. * South China Morning Post Magazine *Mind-blowing . . . This 1995 Taiwanese sci-fi with casual queer characters is a short read, but it kept me on the edge of my seat throughout. Way after finishing the story, the questions it posed still linger, surely to haunt me for a long time to come. * Hsinju’s Lit Log *Chi is an excellent novelist and Momo’s story, with the unanswered questions, her mental state and the climate change issues and consequences, all help make this a first-class novel. * The Modern Novel *One of the most profound LGBTQ books of our time. * Books & Bao *An exploration of the contact zones between human and non-human consciousness, corporality, and identity. Reading it feels like peeling off the skin of a fruit, except that when it seems you are getting to the juicy flesh, it turns out to be only another veil—a membrane—and you’ve got to keep going. * Cha: An Asian Literary Journal *Effectively a modern fable, The Membranes creates a punk, dystopian novella set in the near future. It is ideal for anyone who wishes to immerse themselves in a queer future which interrogates the very nature of authentic humanism. * Saoirse Edits *The Membranes is a fascinating and beautifully conceived novel, deceptively simple and alluringly deep, smoothly mediated by the membrane of Heinrich’s excellent translation. -- Astrid Møller-Olsen * Xiaoshuo Blog *[The Membranes] lives up to its reputation as a classic of the genre . . . Compact enough to be read in an afternoon, the novella contains a plot so expansive that it will preoccupy the mind far longer. * Asian Review of Books *A slim, intelligent novella that ambitiously projects a militarised and corporate new world order in the rubble of environmental collapse, Chi’s brand of world-building is equally invested in envisioning new global formations as it is in attesting to emerging sexual subjectivities. It bristles with the emancipatory energy that characterises the novels coming out of post-martial-law Taiwan . . . Beneath its troubling view of a world plunged into crisis, there is still a hint of humanism in the novel’s belief that if selfhood is not an eternal truth but a queer fiction, then we must keep reading, writing, translating, pirating, photocopying, citing, and sharing ourselves into existence. * Asymptote *Whether as time capsule or prophecy, this novel holds up. -- Adam Wescott * Politics & Prose Staff Picks *Originally published in Chinese in 1995, this sci-fi novel is still able to sweep you off your feet . . . Boundaries are softened in this narrative in more than one sense and even 25 years after its debut in Taiwan, this classic of queer speculative fiction still gives us plenty of food for thought. * 24stories *The Membranes is an exceptionally well-conceived and turned science fiction story. Deceptively simple-looking on the surface, it is a truly impressive piece of work. * Complete Review *[This book] is so deliciously weird . . . The plot twist at the end is one of the best I’ve read. * Biblio Obscura *The Membranes rewards repeated reading, growing increasingly poignant as it builds toward its startling – and haunting – conclusion. * ABC News (Australia) *It’s the astonishing intimacy of Chi’s Wachowski-worthy plot twist (and for those who go on to read the book, note that The Membranes predates any Keanu Reeves-helmed cyberpunk by at least three years) that has me still mulling over this book. It’s not a twist that relies on shock and bombast. Chi’s modus here relies on gentleness, on familial love against all odds. Ari Larissa Heinrich does an excellent job translating these complicated plot elements into English, obscuring the truth while making us think we have everything plainly. -- Spencer Ruchti * Du Mois Monthly Newsletter *[I]t’s only when you see later on how all these ideas, old and new, gender-concerned and not, merge together, that the sheer power of this piece comes to the fore. The rug-pulling has been so subtle no seismometer would ever have sensed it, but by the end we’re upended by it all in quite dramatic fashion. * NB Magazine *In Ari Larissa Heinrich’s adept translation, the prose of this Taiwanese 1995 novella arrives direct and declarative, like the semi-confessional writing that internet users committed to sites like LiveJournal around that time. It’s short, propulsive, and deceptively approachable . . . The queer liberation we can read in The Membranes is that we each contain the freedom to define ourselves, using scraps of experience, story, and fantasy in and around us. Recognizing how malleable we are, we can reimagine ourselves as needed. It can be terrifying and vulnerable to let one’s certainties crumble, but in a world that limits or rejects you, it’s the only way to survive. * The World of Chinese *The world of The Membranes is one where consequential new freedoms cohabitate with climate destruction, hyper-corporatization, and militarization, encouraging the reader to dream big while staying vigilant. * Necessary Fiction *A classic that appeared far ahead of the current new wave science fiction in the Sinophone world, The Membranes remains a unique alterity in terms of genre-crossing and gender reflexivity. Chi’s beautiful, mesmerizing, provocative narrative creates a splendid labyrinth of metaphors and significances that leads to a revelation about the (post)human changeability in a matrix of monotonous inhumanity. -- Mingwei Song, coeditor of The Reincarnated Giant: An Anthology of Twenty-First-Century Chinese Science FictionAn extraordinary novella . . . at last available in English in a brilliant translation by Ari Larissa Heinrich. At just 134 pages, its scope is dazzling. Now, from the vantage point of the future, its playful and unsettling insights into digital saturation, the traps of consciousness and labor, and the fugitive fabulations of identity and the self, have only grown more profound. -- Chris Littlewood * The Paris Review Daily *The Membranes presents a future where possibility is not defined only by technologies and economics, where gender is fluid, families are chosen, and the narratives we construct for ourselves are part of what makes us human. -- Ruth Joffre * The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide *Trust me on this — if you have even the tiniest interest in storytelling, you want to read The Membranes. -- Deepanjana Pal * Dear Reader *A pitch-perfect meditation on medical advances, transplantation, advanced technology, loneliness, memory, and love. -- Rachel Cordasco * Strange Horizons *Chi’s rendering of certain surveillance and communications technologies is strikingly accurate. The novel offers a fin de siècle vision of a bleak future, while distilling kaleidoscopic influences into the textured intimacy of a mother-daughter tale that alternately reads as a quest for one’s origins. -- Mike Fu * Public Books *The Membranes (膜) is more than original. It’s extraordinary. -- Bradley Winterton * Taipei Times *The Membranes is not the novel that will teach readers how to deal with climate change. But it does, in its intimate way, show readers how we might live with it . . . [The book] is a climate novel not because it contends with catastrophe, but because it shows that everydayness has a way of proceeding alongside disaster. -- Ariel Chu * The Rumpus *An amazing, wild experience . . . It completely made me rethink the human experience and my grasp on reality. -- Chloe Gong * Viva Magazine NZ *It offers an original, entertaining, and fast-paced vision, translated from Chinese with perfect pitch, and can be pleasantly devoured in a single sitting. -- Josh Stenberg * Australian Book Review *The Membranes is a treasure in that it offers readers something new in each subsequent reading, and it is certain to increase in relevance as we move into our own future. -- Eleanor Keisman * Litro Magazine *The reading experience is like peeling back thin layers of truth, as each chapter reveals the darker and twisted realities that Momo inhabits. Like nesting dolls, or a dream inside a dream, each layer takes hold onto a sublimated anxiety of our collective consciousness. This book is a diamond, it’s a double edged sword, and it’s a bubble ripe to pop. -- Iris Tobin of A Room of One’s Own Bookstore * Literary Hub *An excellent, moving novel. -- Scott Manley Hadley * Triumph of the Now *Table of ContentsThe MembranesPromiscuous Literacy: Taipei Punk and the Queer Future of The Membranes, by Ari Larissa HeinrichAcknowledgments
£13.29
Random House USA Inc A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four
Book Synopsis
£14.72
Dorling Kindersley Ltd Great Novels
Book SynopsisDiscover everything you ever wanted to know about the world''s greatest novels.From medieval romances and tales of chivalry found in the realist novels of the 19th century, to experimental modernist works and today''s explorations of the self, Great Novels explores the finest novels from around the world and through time.Tilt at windmills with Don Quixote, experience heartbreak with Tolstoy, discover the society in which Jane Austen lived, and delve into the complex rites of passage experienced by characters in modern novels. Find out what inspired writers to create their masterpieces, what their aims were, and how they set about writing them.Dive deep into the pages of this inspiring book to discover:- Paintings, photographs, and artefacts that tell the story of each novel and what inspired their authors- Superb images of first editions and manuscripts- The flavour of each novel through quotations and extended extracts - Ch
£22.50
Verso Books Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism
Book SynopsisContemporary cultural style boosts transparency and instantaneity. These are values absorbed from our current economic conditions of "disintermediation": cutting out the middleman. Like Uber, but for art. Immediacy names this style to make sense of what we lose when the contradictions of twenty-first-century capitalism demand that aesthetics negate mediation. Surging realness as an aesthetic program synchs with the economic imperative to intensify circulation when production stagnates. "Flow" is the ultimate twenty-first-century buzzword, but speedy circulation grinds art down to the nub. And the bad news is that political turmoil and social challenges require more mediation. Collective will, inspiring ideas, and deliberate construction are the only way out, but our dominant style forgoes them. Considering original streaming TV, popular literature, artworld trends, and academic theories, Immediacy explains the recent obsession with immersion and today's intolerance of representation, and points to alternative forms in photography, TV, novels, and constructive theory that prioritize distance, impersonality, and big ideas instead.Trade ReviewThis brilliantly written, wild ride of a book is an enthralling, gloves-off critical intervention urgently needed in this moment. -- Jonathan Crary, author of 24/7 and Scorched EarthKornbluh offers a swift -- and much needed -- kick to one of the most insidious symptoms of our time: the demand for the now, the immediately felt, the one-off. Armed with a strong imperative: "Think!" which she reiterates in an uncommonly rich vocabulary and from a variety of perspectives, she succeeds at the very least in holding up this runaway trend. Together with her previous critiques of capitalism, Immediacy establishes Kornbluh as one of the most inventive new voices in the field. -- Joan Copjec, Brown University, author of Read My DesireAnna Kornbluh brilliantly reinvigorates critique for an age drowning under the deluge of self-presentation. Embracing structure over style, representation over personalization, and collectivity over narcissism, she creates a space for thinking -- the necessary space for politics. -- Jodi Dean, author of The Communist HorizonThe sensation of reading Anna Kornbluh's Immediacy is of someone turning on the light in a dark room. Suddenly one beholds a world one had only been stumbling through and can begin, with Kornbluh's help, to trace a whole new set of relations between the disparate phenomena that define contemporary culture. The shocking conceptual clarity and rightness of its dialectical reversal of everything we thought we knew about life lived under conditions of postmodern hyper-mediation should make this book the starting point of future discussions of the nature of the present. -- Mark McGurl, Stanford University, author of Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of AmazonTo the things themselves! Fuck no, that's precisely the problem. In this book on the poetics of social forms, Kornbluh has expertly diagnosed the contemporary yen for immediacy and immanence, presence and reality, the indistinct blurs and liquid flows of seemingly authentic experience. Taking it all as a kind of social pathology, she reads contemporary style through the deterritorializations of hyper capitalism, and the crushing lateness of an economic logic that insists on no alternative for society and no future for the planet. What results is a plea for the labor of mediation, and an insistence on dialectics as the central mechanism of art and culture. -- Alexander R. Galloway, author of Uncomputable: Play and Politics in the Long Digital AgeImmediacy masterfully exposes the common core of many different problems and phenomena that we do not necessarily think of as related. The imperative of immediacy and its suffocating logic are the hallmarks of what Kornbluh calls "too late capitalism". Drawing on philosophy, psychoanalysis and art she makes a vivid, passionate, and most compelling case for mediation that creates the much-needed capacity to imaginatively break with the merely given. An extremely precious book that goes far beyond purely academic concerns. -- Alenka Zupancic, author of Let Them RotAnna Kornbluh simply nails it in this fearless, witty, and conceptually powerful indictment of contemporary capitalist culture's desire to annihilate negation-while also "negating the negation" by showing how things might be otherwise. A stunning and unignorable book. -- Sianne Ngai, author of Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form
£16.19
Rowman & Littlefield One Man's Meat
Book SynopsisToo personal for an almanac, too sophisticated for a domestic history, and too funny and self-doubting for a literary journal, One Man's Meat can best be described as a primer of a countryman's lessons a timeless recounting of experience that will never go out of style.
£13.49
Saraband Orwell's Island: George, Jura and 1984
Book SynopsisRevered across the globe as an author of compelling novels, journalism and essays that came to define the twentieth century, George Orwell was an unmatched political visionary, shining a light on the insidious nature of propaganda. Yet this chronicler of war, social injustices and urban poverty spent his later years living in a rustic and remote farmhouse, miles from the nearest neighbour. His rural escape was on the Hebridean island of Jura – another paradox, given that he harboured a deep-seated prejudice against Scotland for much of his life. In 1946, Orwell arrived at his isolated home of Barnhill as a grieving widower living in the shadow of war and the nuclear threat. It was there he wrote his masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Beyond the writing desk, he was transformed: his new life was one of natural beauty and tight-knit community - and he grew to love a corner of the world he had once dismissed. Orwell’s Island casts important new light on a great modern thinker and author. No previous biography has revealed so much about Orwell’s later years or his time on Jura, despite this being where he created Big Brother, the Thought Police and Room 101—creations still in common currency today. Trade Review'As compelling and concise as Orwell himself, nothing escapes Wilson’s forensic pursuit. I felt as though I was a mere couple of steps behind the man … a dutiful and beautiful homage to one of our most enduring writers.' -- Cathy Macdonald
£9.49
Oxford University Press From Tudor to Stuart
Book SynopsisFrom Tudor to Stuart: The Regime Change from Elizabeth I to James I tells the story of the troubled accession of England''s first Scottish king and the transition from the age of the Tudors to the age of the Stuarts at the dawn of the seventeenth century.From Tudor to Stuart: The Regime Change from Elizabeth I to James I tells the story of the dramatic accession and first decade of the reign of James I and the transition from the Elizabethan to the Jacobean era, using a huge range of sources, from state papers and letters to drama, masques, poetry, and a host of material objects.The Virgin Queen was a hard act to follow for a Scottish newcomer who faced a host of problems in his first years as king: not only the ghost of his predecessor and her legacy but also unrest in Ireland, serious questions about his legitimacy on the English throne, and even plots to remove him (most famously the Gunpowder Plot of 1605). Contrary to traditional assumptions, James''s accession was by no means a s
£24.00
MIT Press Ltd Other Influences
Book SynopsisA compelling collection of original essays on influence that restore a feminist avant-garde that includes women of colour, queer, and trans women.
£22.95
Regnery Publishing Inc J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding
Book SynopsisWith a new introduction by the authorPeter Jackson's film version of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy - and the accompanying Rings-related paraphernalia and publicity - has played a unique role in the disemmination of Tolkien's imaginative creation to the masses. Yet, for most readers and viewers, the underlying meaning of Middle-earth has remained obscure. Bradley Birzer has remedied that with this fresh study. In J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth, Birzer reveals the surprisingly specific religious symbolism that permeates Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. He also explores the social and political views that motivated the Oxford don, ultimately situating Tolkien within the Christian humanist tradition represented by Thomas More and T.S. Eliot, Dante and C.S. Lewis. Birzer argues that through the genre of myth Tolkien created a world that is essentially truer than the one we think we see around us everyday, a world that transcends the colorless disenchantment of our postmodern age.
£16.83
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Conquered
Book SynopsisOutstanding. - The Sunday TimesBeautifully written. The TimesSuperbly adroit. The SpectatorExcellent. BBC History MagazineThe Battle of Hastings and its aftermath nearly wiped out the leading families of Anglo-Saxon England so what happened to the children this conflict left behind?Conquered offers a fresh take on the Norman Conquest by exploring the lives of those children, who found themselves uprooted by the dramatic events of 1066. Among them were the children of Harold Godwineson and his brothers, survivors of a family shattered by violence who were led by their courageous grandmother Gytha to start again elsewhere. Then there were the last remaining heirs of the Anglo-Saxon royal line Edgar Ætheling, Margaret, and Christina who sought refuge in Scotland, where Margaret became a beloved queen and saint. Other survivors, such as Waltheof of Northumbria and Fenland hero Hereward, became Trade ReviewConquered is beautifully produced and written with flair and great scholarly acumen. Parker teaches medieval English literature at the University of Oxford and she dedicates her book to her students. Because of the pandemic these young people, she points out, like the young people in her book, have had to cope with upheaval, loss and a sudden change in the expected course of their lives. They have faced it with courage and determination, but, she writes, “it is no doubt an experience that will remain with them”. -- John Carey * The Sunday Times *In her superbly adroit new history, Eleanor Parker examines how memories of Edgar and his like – the generation that straddled the Conquest – survived, or were melded to meet the needs of the time…. It is much to the credit of Parker’s sensitivity as a scholar that, almost 1,000 years later, she has been able to resurrect, often from silence, the pathos of those decades and the plight of those who endured them. -- Alex Burghart * The Spectator *This outstanding, beautifully written history follows the young Anglo-Saxons whose lives were shattered by the Norman conquest. -- Andrew Holgate and Robbie Millen * The Times, Best Books of 2022 *This excellent book offers an original premise: that there is much to learn by considering the children whose lives were upended by the Conquest… Parker insightfully shows how the experiences of these children of Anglo-Saxons (among others) illustrate the accommodations being made in England as conquered and conquerors adjusted to the new reality, and reframed the 1066 narrative for future generations. -- Dave Musgrove * BBC History Magazine *A child grasps a woman’s hand as they flee a house being torched by two men seemingly unconcerned for their plight. This image, embroidered onto the Bayeux Tapestry several years after 1066, is a hauntingly timeless reminder of the devastation warfare and conquest can wreak on individuals, families and communities... Conquered narrates their stories vividly and knowledgably in a refreshing departure from popular narratives of the Norman Conquest, which concentrate on the political and military concerns of adult men. -- Emily J. Ward * Times Literary Supplement *Fascinating and accessible. -- Sarah Foot * The Church Times *This book is a revelation. What it demonstrates is the international inter-connectedness of the pre-Norman secular and ecclesiastical aristocracy. -- Duncan Bowie * The Charist *Eleanor Parker has written an innovative book in clear and evocative language. She invites the reader to engage with an idea we do not often consider—that many of the European historical sources from the late-11th century were written by people whose childhoods were defined by the Norman Conquest. Parker’s use of Icelandic Sagas and other non-English texts shows us the world in which these “conquered” children lived and worked, exploring how their stories continued past 1066 and its aftermath. * Dr Janet Kay, Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, USA *Eleanor Parker brings to life what the upheaval of the Norman Conquest meant for men and women in England. Following the personal experiences of individuals, she eloquently evokes the loss and uncertainty of the age. This is a book of rich stories of misfortune, perseverance and adaptability, told in an accessible yet authoritative voice. * Dr Rory Naismith, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic and Fellow of Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, UK *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements Genealogical Tables Introduction 1. Hero of the English: Hereward 2. A Sparrow in the Snare: Margaret of Scotland 3. A Lost Generation: The Grandchildren of Gytha and Godwine 4. Warrior, Traitor, and Martyr: Waltheof 5. Child of Memory: Eadmer of Canterbury Epilogue: New Englands Bibliography Index
£11.69
HarperCollins Publishers The Common Reader
Book SynopsisHarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.In her second volume of essays, Virginia Woolf delves deeper into the delights of reading. Here, she explores the novels of Thomas Hardy and Daniel Defoe, and recounts the fascinating lives of Christina Rossetti and Mary Wollstonecraft. In How Should One Read a Book?' she offers sage advice for the common reader, and sheds light on the lessons and pleasures literature can provide.Published in 1932, The Common Reader: Second Series is a wise and illuminating companion collection to her 1925 First Series. Woolf's enduring appeal and ideas continue to resonate with readers in the twenty-first century.
£5.68
NeWest Press My Beloved Wager: Essays from a Writing Practice
Book SynopsisMy Beloved Wager gathers essays by noted poet and translator Erín Moure, and records a quarter century of writing practice emerging from a city of exhilarating poetic and translatory possibility: Montreal. In her essays and linguistic-sculptural interventions on what poetry makes possible, Moure reveals why she has placed her bets on poetry as a way of life. In these works, the richness of poetry is laid bare as Moure challenges us to think more deeply about who we are as speakers, readers, writers, and citizens of the world.
£14.99
Spark A Midsummer Night's Dream (No Fear Shakespeare):
Book SynopsisRead Shakespeare’s plays in all their brilliance—and understand what every word means! Don’t be intimidated by Shakespeare! These popular guides make the Bard’s plays accessible and enjoyable.Each No Fear guide contains: The complete text of the original play A line-by-line translation that puts the words into everyday language A complete list of characters, with descriptions Plenty of helpful commentary
£7.59
Little, Brown Book Group Prairie Fires
Book SynopsisThe first comprehensive historical biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the beloved author of the Little House on the Prairie book seriesTrade Review[This new biography is] just as gripping as the original novels . . . As pacy and vivid as one of Wilder's own narratives, this surprising biography is immensely revealing both about Wilder and about America's founding myths -- Eleanor Mills * Sunday Times *Fraser's gripping account is much more than a biography. Hugely recommended, even if you haven't read Wilder -- Claire Lowdon * Sunday Times, Books of the Year *A fascinating tale, which spans an extraordinary period of American history . . . Whether you're a Wilder fan or have never picked up one of her books, this is compelling stuff - and as a history of the American dream, it's hard to beat * Telegraph *The sweep of the story is magnificent -- Laura Freeman * The Times *Memories can be both "treasures" and "consuming fires of torment", as Laura Ingalls Wilder knew. Caroline Fraser's rigorously researched biography shows how the author's life was so much more painful than it appears in her writings. Having combed through manuscripts, letters and other documents, Fraser has gained insight into the history that shaped her, including the dust bowl and the great depression. She explores the dreams that sustained the writer - and gets to the heart of a pioneer spirit. Here is an atmospheric portrait of places as much as of a person, too: the log cabin in which Wilder was born, the Great Plains, the dense forests and, of course, the prairies -- Anita Sethi * Observer *Tells a story that is far more intriguing than the myth * Oldie *Caroline Fraser's expert account of both Laura and her troubled daughter Rose Wilder Lane, who is widely thought to have over-influenced her mother's oeuvre, minutely dissects their related lives and careers to explain and illustrate modern America's inviolate founding myth . . . should stand as the last word on a long life...Her story is everything you never knew and, now more than ever, need to understand about a defining element of the national character and the great American dream * Country Life *An absorbing new biography [that] deserves recognition as an essential text.... For anyone who has drifted into thinking of Wilder's 'Little House' books as relics of a distant and irrelevant past, reading Prairie Fires will provide a lasting cure.... Meanwhile, 'Little House' devotees will appreciate the extraordinary care and energy Fraser devotes to uncovering the details of a life that has been expertly veiled by myth -- Patricia Nelson Limerick * New York Times Book Review *The definitive biography...Magisterial and eloquent...A rich, provocative portrait * Star Tribune *Fraser's meticulous, smart, historically informed biography shows where the books hew to - and diverge from - the facts of Wilder's long and eventful life...Fraser got a head start on her work for this biography when she edited the Library of America editions of Laura Ingalls Wilder's writing. Even readers who have already enjoyed those annotated volumes will find a trove of new material in Prairie Fires, which puts the books in a richer, more complicated context without undermining their value. Fraser concludes, "They are not, as Wilder and her daughter had claimed, true in every particular. Yet the truth about our history is in them. ...Anyone who would ask where we came from and why, must reckon with them * Sarah Harrison Smith, the Amazon Book Review, An Amazon Best Book of November 2017 *Unforgettable... A magisterial biography, which surely must be called definitive. Richly documented (it contains 85 pages of notes), it is a compelling, beautifully written story.... One of the more interesting aspects of this wonderfully insightful book is its delineation of the fraught relationship between Wilder and her deeply disturbed, often suicidal daughter. But it is its marriage of biography and history - the latter providing such a rich context for the life - that is one of the great strengths of this indispensable book * Booklist, starred review *Engrossing... Exhilarating... Lovers of the series will delight in learning about real-life counterparts to classic fictional episodes, but, as Fraser emphasizes, the true story was often much harsher. Meticulously tracing the Ingalls and Wilder families' experiences through public records and private documents, Fraser discovers failed farm ventures and constant money problems, as well as natural disasters even more terrifying and devastating in real life than in Wilder's writing * Publishers Weekly *In the twenty-first century, the tense and secret authorial partnership between Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane has emerged as the most complex and fascinating psychological saga of mother-daughter collaboration in American literary history. Caroline Fraser's deeply researched and stimulating biography analyzes their controversial relationship and places Wilder's influential fiction in the contexts of other myths of pioneer women and the frontier -- Elaine ShowalterA fantastic book. We've long understood the Little House series to be a great American story, but Caroline Fraser brings it unprecedented new context, as she masterfully chronicles the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family alongside the complicated history of our nation. Prairie Fires represents a significant milestone in our understanding of Wilder's life, work, and legacy -- Wendy McClure, author of The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie
£17.01
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC The Land of the Green Man
Book SynopsisBeyond its housing estates and identikit high streets there is another Britain. This is the Britain of mist-drenched forests and unpredictable sea-frets: of wraith-like fog banks, druidic mistletoe and peculiar creatures that lurk, half-unseen, in the undergrowth, tantalising and teasing just at the periphery of human vision. How have the remarkably persistent folkloric traditions of the British Isles formed and been formed by the identities and psyches of those who inhabit them? In her sparkling new history, Carolyne Larrington explores the diverse ways in which a myriad of imaginary and fantastical beings has moulded the cultural history of the nation. Fairies, elves and goblins here tread purposefully, sometimes malignly, over an eerie, preternatural landscape that also conceals brownies, selkies, trows, knockers, boggarts, land-wights, Jack o''Lanterns, Barguests, the sinister Nuckleavee, or water-horse, and even Black Shuck: terrifying hell-hound of the Norfolk coast with eyes
£14.24
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC The Comedy About a Bank Robbery Modern Plays
Book SynopsisI'm really looking forward to robbing this bank!Mischief's smash-and-grab hit The Comedy About A Bank Robbery is a fast, fabulous comedy caper and the funniest show in the West End! Summer 1958. Minneapolis City Bank has been entrusted with a priceless diamond. An escaped convict is dead set on pocketing the gem with the help of his screwball sidekick, trickster girlfriend and the maintenance man. With mistaken identities, love triangles and hidden agendas, even the most reputable can't be trusted. In a town where everyone's a crook, who will end up bagging the jewel?Written by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, the creators of the Olivier Award-winning Best New Comedy The Play That Goes Wrong and Peter Pan Goes Wrong, The Comedy About A Bank Robbery opened at the Criterion Theatre in London's West End in April 2016.The best new comedy to open straight into the West End in decades'Time OutThrilling and daringly inveTrade Review‘This is the funniest show in town’ * The Telegraph *Fast and fabulous comedy caper is a joyful night out * The Times *The team behind ‘The Play That Goes Wrong’ hit the funnybone again...The best new comedy to open straight into the West End in decades * Time Out *Thrilling and daringly inventive...This lung-bustingly funny play is just what the therapist ordered * The Guardian *
£10.99
Penguin Books Ltd The Penguin Classics Book
Book Synopsis**Shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year**The Penguin Classics Book is a reader''s companion to the largest library of classic literature in the world.Spanning 4,000 years from the legends of Ancient Mesopotamia to the poetry of the First World War, with Greek tragedies, Icelandic sagas, Japanese epics and much more in between, it encompasses 500 authors and 1,200 books, bringing these to life with lively descriptions, literary connections and beautiful cover designs.Trade ReviewBeautifully designed and lovingly compiled * The Spectator *Smartly illustrated with original cover artwork-ideal for glancing over dearly loved literary companions, as well as for discovering gaps to fill . . . This is a fascinating survey of how our nation's literary tastes have altered over the years and makes us wonder anew at what constitutes a 'classic'. -- Emily Rhodes * Country Life *The perfect gift for bibliophiles * The Arts Society UK *I can't imagine a better or more beautifully presented reference for a book-lover -- Waterstones.com review
£27.00
