Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 Books
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The Dark Side of Alice in Wonderland
Book SynopsisAfter reading The Dark Side of Alice in Wonderland, you'll never see the original in quite the same light as before. Unique drawings created for this book.
£13.49
University of California Press Autobiography of Mark Twain Volume 1
Book Synopsis"I've struck it!" Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. "And I will give it away - to you. You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography." This title tells his story.Trade Review"Sometimes the autobiography seems Twain's letter to posterity. At other times, reading it feels like eavesdropping on a conversation he is having with himself... This first installment of Twain's autobiography brings us closer to all of him than we have ever come before." New York Review Of Books "This is a book to treasure for all friends of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn." Acadiana Lifestyle Magazine "Dip into the first enormous volume of Twain's autobiography that he had decreed should not appear until 100 years after his death. And Twain will begin to seem strange again, alluring and still astonishing, but less sure-footed, and at times both puzzled and puzzling in ways that still resonate with us, though not the ways we might expect." New York Times "This is a book for dipping, not plunging. Read, as Twain might put it, until interest pales, and then jump. It feels like a form of time travel." New York Times/The Opinion Pages "Twain generously provides the 21st century aficionado a marvelous read. His crystalline humor and expansive range are a continuous source of delight and awe... [He] has given us 'an astonishment' in his autobiography with his final, beautifully unorganized genius and intemperate thoughts. Pull up a chair and revel." Los Angeles Times Book Review "Mission accomplished, Mr. Clemens." -- Roger Boylan Boston Review "His "whole frank mind,' sharp and funny, is seared onto every page. A" Entertainment Weekly "Brimming with Twain's humor, ideas and opinions, this is a book for anyone interested in the writer's work and life." Curledup.com "Pure Twain at his typically discursive, rambling, and droll... The bard of Hannibal still has much to say." American Heritage "The bestseller chart is awash with memoirs -- but none offer the extreme reading of the Autobiography of Mark Twain." -- Debra Craine The Times "Twain's autobiography, finally available after a century, is a garrulous outpouring-and every word beguiles." Wall Street Journal "Promises a no-holds barred perspective on Twain's life, and will be rich with rambunctious, uncompromising opinions." Herald Scotland "Twain would approve!" Bookideas.com "Twain's writing here is electric, alternately moving and hilarious. He couldn't write a ho-hum sentence." Library Journal "A major achevement." Choice "Twian's 'Final Plan' has been released in a truly spectacular first volume of his posthumous 'Autobiography'." -- Vitali Vitaliev Engineering & Technology "With the uncensored Twain finally here, we're the furthest thing from indifferent." Time MagazineTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN An Early Attempt My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It] The Latest Attempt The Final (and Right) Plan Preface. As from the Grave The Florentine Dictations Autobiographical Dictations, January–March 1906 Appendix: Preliminary Manuscripts and Dictations Samuel L. Clemens: A Brief Chronology Family Biographies References Excerpt from Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2
£34.20
Princeton University Press Fearful Symmetry
Book SynopsisShows how William Blake arrived at a theory of knowledge that was also, for him, a theory of religion, of human life and of art, and how this rigorously defined system of ideas found expression in the complicated but consistent symbolism of his poetry.Trade Review"A magnificent, extraordinary book... Several great poets have written of Blake, but this book is the first to show the full magnitude of Blake's mind."--The SpectatorTable of ContentsPART ONE - THE ARGUMENT 1. The Case against Locke 3 2. The Rising God 30 3. Beyond Good and Evil 55 4. A Literalist of the Imagination 85 5. The Word Within the Word 108 PART TWO - THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SYMBOLISM 6. Tradition and Experiment 147 7. The Theif of Fire 187 8. The Refiner in Fire 227 9. The Nightmare with Her Ninefold 269 PART THREE - THE FINAL SYNTHESIS 10. Comus agonists 313 11. The City of God 356 12. The Burden of the Valley of Vision 404 GENERAL NOTE: BLAKE'S MYSTICISM 431 NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS 433 NOTES TO THE TEST 435 INDEX 451
£28.80
Cambridge University Press Animal Fables after Darwin
Book SynopsisThe ancient form of the animal fable, in which the characteristics of humans and animals are playfully and educationally intertwined, took on a wholly new meaning after Darwin''s theory of evolution changed forever the relationship between humans and animals. In this original study, Chris Danta provides an important and original account of how the fable was adopted and re-adapted by nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors to challenge traditional views of species hierarchy. The rise of the biological sciences in the second half of the nineteenth century provided literary writers such as Robert Louis Stevenson, H. G. Wells, Franz Kafka, Angela Carter and J. M. Coetzee with new material for the fable. By interrogating the form of the fable, and through it the idea of human exceptionalism, writers asked new questions about the place of the human in relation to its biological milieu.Trade Review'Chris Danta's engaging study of post-Darwinian fables represents the culmination of over a decade's research into the relationship between human and nonhuman animals. It synthesises and develops ideas put forward in some of his earlier published works, and overall his book comes across as cohesive, persuasive, and refreshingly original.' Janette Leaf, The British Society for Literature and Science'Chris Danta brilliantly demonstrates that attention to animal lives in the post-Darwinian fable has the potential to generate strong new readings, not only of a ubiquitous yet neglected genre in Anglo-American literary criticism, but also of an ensemble of texts that for too long have been read primarily as ciphers for purely human concerns.' Jennifer McDonell, Social AlternativesTable of ContentsPrologue: uplifting animals; 1. Looking up, looking down: orientations of the human; 2. The grotesque mouth; 3. 'The highest civilisation among ants': Stevenson and the fable; 4. 'An animal among the animals': Wells and the thought of the future; 5. Animal bachelors and animal brides: Kafka, Carter, Garnett; 6. Scapegoats and scapegraces: becoming sacrificial animal in Kafka and Coetzee; Coda: 'Diogenes of the zoo'.
£90.00
Harvard University Press The Gardens of Emily Dickinson
Book SynopsisIn this first substantial study of Emily Dickinson's devotion to flowers and gardening, Farr seeks to join both poet and gardener in one creative personality, casting new light on Dickinson's temperament, aesthetic sensibility, and vision of the relationship between art and nature.Trade ReviewIn this first major study of our beloved poet Dickinson's devotion to gardening, Farr shows us that like poetry, gardening was her daily passion, her spiritual sustenance, and her literary inspiration...Rather than speaking generally about Dickinson's gardening habits, as other articles on the subject have done, Farr immerses the reader in a stimulating and detailed discussion of the flowers Dickinson grew, collected, and eulogized...The result is an intimate study of Dickinson that invites readers to imagine the floral landscapes that she saw, both in and out of doors, and to re-create those landscapes by growing the same flowers (the final chapter is chock-full of practical gardening tips). -- Maria Kochis * Library Journal *This is a beautiful book on heavy white paper with rich reproductions of Emily Dickinson's favorite flowers, including sheets from the herbarium she kept as a young girl. But which came first, the flowers or the poems? So intertwined are Dickinson's verses with her life in flowers that they seem to be the lens through which she saw the world. In her day (1830-86), many people spoke 'the language of flowers.' Judith Farr shows how closely the poet linked certain flowers with her few and beloved friends: jasmine with editor Samuel Bowles, Crown Imperial with Susan Gilbert, heliotrope with Judge Otis Lord and day lilies with her image of herself. The Belle of Amherst, Mass., spent most of her life on 14 acres behind her father's house on Main Street. Her gardens were full of scented flowers and blossoming trees. She sent notes with nosegays and bouquets to neighbors instead of appearing in the flesh. Flowers were her messengers. Resisting digressions into the world of Dickinson scholarship, Farr stays true to her purpose, even offering a guide to the flowers the poet grew and how to replicate her gardens. -- Susan Salter Reynolds * Los Angeles Times *If you want poetry and gardening of equal merit, turn to Emily Dickinson, whose gardens--poetic and herbaceous--are the subject of an attractive new book, The Gardens of Emily Dickinson, by Judith Farr. It includes a chapter on 'Gardening with Emily Dickinson' by Louise Carter. This book catches a constant tension in Dickinson's life. An interesting, skillful gardener, she had a strong literal regard for the immediate world in which she gardened. And yet the garden in her poems is never just her garden. Nature serves her visionary passion. A dandelion demonstrates how 'Winter instantly becomes/An infinite Alas.' I suspect that as she passed among her flowers in Amherst they evaporated into the symbolic ether behind her. And yet, as Farr notes, Emily Dickinson had strong gardener's hands. -- Verlyn Klinkenborg * New York Times Book Review *Farr...shows that Dickinson's use of flower imagery drew on first-hand experience in the garden and conservatory. She was a passionate gardener, 'able to envision every season and flower at will,' Farr writes, her gardening, like her poetry, 'the manifestation of profound and even occasionally rebellious desire.'...For bringing us so close to Emily Dickinson--one can almost hear her breathing--The Gardens of Emily Dickinson deserves wide readership. -- Tom D'Evelyn * Providence Journal *The reclusive poet's garden, conservatory and the nearby woods were intimate theaters, entwined with her identity, requisite to her survival and her primary inspiration. Plants and flowers had souls and spoke to her; their lives and deaths were mystical events. In them, she found metaphors for beauty, truth, heaven and earth, and she wove them into poems she called 'blossoms of the Brain.' Dickinson scholar Judith Farr unravels the symbolism in Dickinson's spare sensuous poetry and explores the influences of family, friends and Victorian culture on her work. The final chapter, by horticulturalist Louise Carter, describes plants surely and most likely grown by Dickinson, along with their care. (She loved heavily scented flowers and described herself as a 'Lunatic on Bulbs.') An engrossing read, illustrated with paintings, photographs and other images from the era. -- Lili Singer * Los Angeles Times *Farr claims Dickinson was better known in her lifetime as a skilled gardener than as a poet. She grew native plants and more exotic imports, and she botanised in the woodlands and pastures surrounding her home. This is, of course, no news to Dickinson scholars, but the point cannot be stressed too often. Farr makes it emphatically by bringing together a wealth of material about Dickinson's engagement with flowers. Her book, which is full of close readings, is likely to become the standard work on the subject. As Farr shows, Dickinson's gardening and writing were intertwined enterprises, which both required a great deal of care. -- Madeleine Minson * Times Higher Education Supplement *For the serious Dickinson lover, get The Gardens of Emily Dickinson by Judith Farr, an engrossing and serious biography with deep analysis of the floral themes in the poems. -- Carol Stocker * Boston Globe *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Gardening in Eden 2. The Woodland Garden 3. The Enclosed Garden 4. The "Garden in the Brain" 5. Gardening with Emily Dickinson Louise Carter Epilogue: The Gardener in Her Seasons Appendix: Flowers and Plants Grown by Emily Dickinson Abbreviations Notes Acknowledgments Index of Poems Cited Index
£24.26
Random House USA Inc Mansfield Park
Book SynopsisMansfield Park is the complex and controversial novel starring Fanny Price, the heroine through which the world-renowned author of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility views the social mores of her day and contemplates human nature itself.Never did any novelist make more use of an impeccable sense of human values.—Virginia WoolfMansfield Park encompasses not only Jane Austen’s great comedic gifts and her genius as a historian of the human animal, but her personal credo as well—her faith in a social order that combats chaos through civil grace, decency, and wit. At the novel’s center is Fanny Price, the classic “poor cousin,” brought as a child to Mansfield Park by the rich Sir Thomas Bertram and his wife as an act of charity. Over time, Fanny comes to demonstrate forcibly those virtues Austen most admired: modesty, firm principles, and a loving heart. As Fanny watches her cousi
£10.44
The University of Chicago Press Jane Austens Names
Book Synopsis
£21.00
Penguin Books Ltd A Life in Letters
Book SynopsisFrom the teenager in provincial Russia in 1875 to his premature death in Germany in 1904, Chekhov wrote over 4,500 letters to a range of correspondents, including family and friends, his publisher and fellow writers - not to mention actresses. These letters tell the story of Chekhov''s life as a man and a writer and he emerges from them as a tough, generous, life-enhancing, and enigmatic character.
£16.14
Cambridge University Press China and the Victorian Imagination
Book SynopsisStudies of the literature of the British imperialism too often focus on India to the exclusion of other areas. This book redresses the balance by demonstrating how integral China and the Chinese were to the British imagination and to globalization, literature, aesthetics and popular culture from the 1840s to 1911.Trade Review'… an immensely valuable and rewarding piece of scholarship.' Mia Chen, Review 19'Ross Forman's China and the Victorian Imagination compellingly exposes China's critical role in Britain's imperial self-fashioning … What Forman does exceptionally well - and what is perhaps the most important work of his book - is his careful but firm revision of a concept of Orientalism that has proven increasingly outdated and faulty.' Shanyn Fiske, Journal of British StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction: topsy-turvy Britain and China; 1. The manners and customs of the modern Chinese: narrating China through the treaty ports; 2. Projecting from Possession Point: James Dalziel's chronicles of Hong Kong; 3. Peking plots: representing the Boxer Rebellion of 1900; 4. Britain 'knit and nationalised': Asian invasion novels in Britain, 1898–1914; 5. Staging the celestial; 6. A cockney Chinatown: the literature of Limehouse, London; Conclusion: no rest for the West.
£31.90
The University of Chicago Press Victorian Sensation
Book SynopsisWhen Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation was published anonymously in 1844, it sparked one of the greatest sensations of the Victorian era. The author uses the story of Vestiges to create a panoramic portrait of life in the early industrial era from the view of its readers.
£28.00
Oxford University Press Writing with Scissors
Book SynopsisMen and women 150 years ago grappled with information overload by making scrapbooksthe ancestors of Google and blogging. From Abraham Lincoln to Susan B. Anthony, African American janitors to farmwomen, abolitionists to Confederates, people cut out and pasted down their reading. Writing with Scissors opens a new window into the feelings and thoughts of ordinary and extraordinary Americans. Like us, nineteenth-century readers spoke back to the media, and treasured what mattered to them. In this groundbreaking book, Ellen Gruber Garvey reveals a previously unexplored layer of American popular culture, where the proliferating cheap press touched the lives of activists and mourning parents, and all who yearned for a place in history. Scrapbook makers documented their feelings about momentous public events such as living through the Civil War, mediated through the newspapers. African Americans and women''s rights activists collected, concentrated, and critiqued accounts from a press that they did not control to create unwritten histories in books they wrote with scissors. Whether scrapbook makers pasted their clippings into blank books, sermon collections, or the pre-gummed scrapbook that Mark Twain invented, they claimed ownership of their reading. They created their own democratic archives. Writing with Scissors argues that people have long had a strong personal relationship to media. Like newspaper editors who enthusiastically scissorized and reprinted attractive items from other newspapers, scrapbook makers passed their reading along to family and community. This book explains how their scrapbooks underlie our present-day ways of thinking about information, news, and what we do with it.Trade ReviewEminently readable and endlessly fascinating. * Libby Bischof, University of Southern Maine *Table of ContentsIntroduction ; Chapter 1: Reuse, Recycle, Recirculate: Scrapbooks Remake Value ; Chapter 2: Mark Twain's Scrapbook Innovations ; Chapter 3: Civil War Scrapbooks: Newspaper and Nation ; Chapter 4 Alternative Histories in African American Scrapbooks ; Chapter 5: Strategic Scrapbooks: Activist Women's Clipping and Self-Creation ; Chapter 6: Scrapbook as Archive, Scrapbooks in Archives ; Chapter 7: The Afterlife of the Nineteenth-Century Scrapbook ; Index
£40.84
Penguin Publishing Group Mary and Maria Matilda
Book SynopsisThese three works of fiction - two by Mary Wollstonecraft, the radical author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and one by her daughter Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein - are powerfully emotive stories that combine passion with forceful feminist argument. In Mary Wollstonecraft''s Mary, the heroine flees her young husband in order to nurse her dearest friend, Ann, and finds genuine love, while Maria tells of a desperate young woman who seeks consolation in the arms of another man after the loss of her child. And Mary Shelley''s Matilda - suppressed for over a century - tells the story of a woman alienated from society by the incestuous passion of her father. Humane, compassionate and highly controversial, these stories demonstrate the strongly original genius of their authors.
£12.23
Taylor & Francis Pinocchio Goes Postmodern Perils of a Puppet in the United States Childrens Literature and Culture
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£51.29
Random House USA Inc Silas Marner Everymans Library Classics
Book SynopsisWhen Silas Marner is wrongly accused of crime and expelled from his community, he vows to turn his back upon the world. He moves to the village of Raveloe, where he remains an outsider and an object of suspicion until an extraordinary sequence of events, including the theft of his gold and the appearance of a tiny, golden-haired child in his cottage, transforms his life. Part beautifully realized rural portraiture and part fairy tale, the story of Marner’s redemption and restoration to humanity has long been George Eliot’s most beloved and widely read work.The isolated, misanthropic, miserly weaver Silas Marner is one of George Eliot’s greatest creations, and his presence casts a strange, otherworldly glow over the moral dramas, both large and small, that take place in the pastoral landscape that surrounds him.Introduction by Rosemary Ashton
£20.80
University of Minnesota Press The Age of Lovecraft
Book SynopsisTrade Review"The scholarship throughout is sharp, current, and often makes use of one of the greatest strengths of Lovecraft study: his abundant published correspondence."—Publishers Weekly"An excellent read for the committed Lovecraft scholar."—Fortean Times"[An] excellent collection of scholarly essays."—PopMatters"Lovecraft’s many and deep flaws are almost beside the point – he was a writer who achieved importance by saying one or two things memorably and very clearly. This is why Lovecraft is an important figure not only in popular culture but in other disciplines as well."—Times Literary Supplement"Highly recommended."—CHOICE"Sederholm and Weistock perform an exemplary balancing act in neither dodging the controversies surrounding Lovecraft’s grotesque racism nor granting that the issue diminishes the legitimacy of scholarly interest in the author or his work. Lovecraft scholars will find much of interest here, but so too will anyone wanting further insight into the ongoing cultural resonances of various (and often noxious) early twentieth-century neuroses."—Paradoxa"A welcome addition to the growing body of scholarship focused on Lovecraft."—Los Angeles Review of Books"A total success."—Journal of Popular CultureTable of ContentsContentsForeword: Lovecraft AppreciatedRamsey CampbellAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Lovecraft Rising Carl H. Sederholm and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock1. “Ghoulish Dialogues”: H. P. Lovecraft’s Weird Geographies James Kneale2. Lovecraft’s Things: Sinister Souvenirs from Other WorldsJeffrey Andrew Weinstock3. Hyper-Cacophony: Lovecraft, Speculative Realism, and Sonic Materialism Isabella van Elferen4. Prehistories of Posthumanism: Cosmic Indifferentism, Alien Genesis, and Ecology from H. P. Lovecraft to Ridley Scott Brian Johnson5. Race, Species, and Others: H. P. Lovecraft and the Animal Jed Mayer6. H. P. Lovecraft’s Reluctant Sexuality: Abjection and the Monstrous Feminine in "The Dunwich Horror"Carl H. Sederholm7. H. P. Lovecraft and Real Person Fiction: The Pulp Author as Subcultural Avatar David Simmons8. A Polychrome Study: Neil Gaiman’s “A Study in Emerald” and Lovecraft’s Literary AfterlivesJessica George9. Lovecraft: Suspicion, Pattern Recognition, Paranoia David Punter10. Lovecraft’s Cosmic Ethics Patricia MacCormack11. Lovecraft, Witch Cults, and Philosophers W. Scott PooleInterview with China Miéville Jeffrey Andrew WeinstockContributorsIndex
£17.99
Broadview Press Ltd The Garies and Their Friends (1857)
Book SynopsisUnjustly overlooked in its own time, Frank J. Webb’s novel of pre-Civil War Philadelphia weaves together action, humor, and social commentary. The Garies and Their Friends tells the story of two families struggling for di¦ erent sorts of respectability: the Garies, a well-to-do interracial couple who relocate to Philadelphia from the plantation South in order to legalize their marriage, and their friends the Ellises, free black Philadelphians hoping to make the move from the working class into the bourgeoisie. Along the way the families confront racialized violence, melodramatic villainy, and sentimental reversals. Entertaining and fastmoving, the novel has a Dickensian mix of uncanny coincidence and interwoven personal experiences.The historical documents accompanying this Broadview Edition provide reviews of the novel along with extensive materials on slavery, the color line, and contemporary Philadelphia.Trade Review“This is an outstanding edition of Webb’s powerful (and still relatively neglected) novel about the struggles of the free black community in pre-Civil War Philadelphia. The editors make the bold decision to use as their source text the ‘Cheap Series’ paperback edition widely circulating in London, where The Garies and Their Friends was published in 1857. They provide reviews, new information about Webb, and compelling contextual materials that help us to better understand the novel in relation to key legal and social contexts. Webb has been wonderfully served by Howell and Walsh. I couldn’t imagine teaching any other edition, and the excellence of this edition should help to bring new readers to Garies.” — Robert S. Levine, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland, and author of The Lives of Frederick Douglass“The Garies and Their Friends is one of the most interesting American novels of the mid-nineteenth century; the new Broadview edition finally gives it the editorial treatment it deserves. William Huntting Howell and Megan Walsh share supplemental documents essential to reading or teaching the novel, and they frame this work in a rich set of transatlantic contexts.” — Eric Gardner, author of Black Print Unbound: The Christian Recorder, African American Literature, and Periodical Culture“Frank Webb’s stunning novel comes alive in this accessible and informative edition edited by Howell and Walsh. The annotations are well crafted and will introduce readers to the broad racial, social, and literary contexts of Garies. The appendices are likewise well formulated to illuminate both the novel’s reception and its key geographic and legal coordinates. This wonderful edition is a boon for new readers and also for those who are already familiar with Webb’s novel.” — Jeffory Clymer, University of Kentucky, author of Family Money: Property, Race, and Literature in the Nineteenth CenturyTable of ContentsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroductionFrank J. Webb: A Brief ChronologyA Note on the TextThe Garies and Their FriendsAppendix A: Contemporary Responses From The Observer (London) (20 September 1857) From the Literary Gazette (London) (26 September 1857) From The Morning Post (London) (6 October 1857) The Standard (London) (7 October 1857) From The Daily News (London) (9 October 1857) From the Athenaeum (London) (24 October 1857) Appendix B: Law, Culture, and the Color Line From William Goodell, The American Slave Code in Theory and Practice (1853) From George M. Stroud, A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery (1827) From John F. Denny, An Enquiry into the Political Grade of the Free Colored Population (1834) From Benjamin C. Howard, Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford (1857) From Frederick Douglass, “The Dred Scott Decision,” delivered before the American Anti-Slavery Society, NY (14 May 1857) Edward Williams Clay, Life in Philadelphia, Plate IV (1829) Appendix C: Black Philadelphia in the Antebellum Era Map of Philadelphia (1848) From A Statistical Inquiry into the Condition of the People of Colour, of the City and Districts of Philadelphia (1842) From Robert Purvis, Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens, Threatened with Disenfranchisement, to the People of Pennsylvania (1838) From Joseph Willson, Sketches of the Higher Classes of Colored Society in Philadelphia (1841) Letter from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Lady Hatherton (24 May 1856) Appendix D: Racism in Philadelphia From “The Philadelphia Riots,” the Philadelphia U. S. Gazette (2 August 1842) From History of Pennsylvania Hall (1838) John Sartain, The Burning of Pennsylvania Hall (1838) Works Cited and Select Bibliography
£22.75
Cambridge University Press The Works of Walter Pater
Book SynopsisThis collection of essays, first published in 1889, was Pater's only literary-critical work until the posthumous publication of his reviews from The Guardian (the ninth volume in this edition). His well-known essay 'Style' opens the volume, which also includes readings of Thomas Browne, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shakespeare and Rossetti.Table of ContentsStyle; Wordsworth; Coleridge; Charles Lamb; Sir Thomas Browne; Love's Labours Lost; Measure for Measure; Shakespeare's English kings; Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Feuillet's La Morte; Postscript.
£24.99
Open Book Publishers The Life of August Wilhelm Schlegel
£28.45
University of California Press Autobiography of Mark Twain Volume 2
Book SynopsisBrimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, this title delves into Mark Twain's life, uncovering the many roles he played in his private and public worlds.Trade Review"The great American author, aided by his scholarly editors, continues to spin out a great yarn covering his long life... Twain admirers will find this volume indispensable and wil eagerly await the third volume." STARRED REVIEW Kirkus Reviews "Meticulously edited... A treasure deserving shelf space next to Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer." STARRED REVIEW -- Bryce Christensen Booklist "Twain is incapable of going more than a few paragraphs without making you laugh or think hard... Don't loan this book out: you'll never see it again." Bloomberg Pursuits "Another delightful round of humor and candor, reminiscence and insider sketches of the people and politics of Twain's day." The Sacramento Bee "Contains more of Twain's ranging, astute, and unfailingly candid portrayals of his private and public lives. Excoriations of politicians appear next to affectionate family stories and bemused observations on the absurdities of life, helping to fill out our understanding of America's greatest humorist." The New Yorker, Page-Turner "Set aside all ideas of starting at the beginning and reading through to the end. This is a book to keep on your bedside table, or in the kitchen, or the garage, or anyplace else you might want to pick it up. Follow Clemens' own advice in reading it, as he did in writing it: Start reading at no particular point; wander at your free will all over it; read only about the thing that interests you for the moment; drop it the moment its interest threatens to pale; and turn your eye upon the new and more interesting thing that has intruded itself into your gaze meantime. Believe me, there are plenty of these in this wonderful volume." The Hartford Courant "One sees a mind bubbling and hears a uniquely American voice." Literary Review "Twain traveled extensively and befriended many luminaries, and his colorful experiences give the book the same Dickensian scope as the first volume, and presents a vivid picture of America in the 19th century and Twain's indelible mark on it." Publishers Weekly "This is vintage Twain-timeless, and still germane." BookPage "Twain is frequently sad and cynical in these late-in-life writings (just a few years before his death) but his devastating wit and sharp-eyed commentary are on full display as well." Christian Science Monitor "The publishing sensation of the year." -- Jonah Raskin San Francisco Chronicle "What we've inherited is no ordinary book. You may begin at the beginning and read to its end; you may reach into it like a grab bag and enjoy whatever you pull out. It doesn't matter." Dallas Morning News "Twain ambles through eternal truths and trivia, telling of world events and personal piques. Witticisms appear at random intervals, and the ensuing laughter can be dangerous to the lower extremities if one doesn't have a vicelike grip on this weighty tome." The Christian Science Monitor "In case you had any doubt about it, the new book demonstrates that Twain dictated as well as he wrote." The Washington Post "One of the more marvelous literary projects of our time." The Buffalo News "As much a sensitive and articulate historical work as an autobiography, the book is almost inexhaustible in its content... What seems like a mountain of anecdotal scraps and opinions results in a clear picture of Clemens as Twain." Library Journal "If you surrender yourself to the sound of his voice, the pleasure of Twain's company proves pretty hard to resist. His narrative may be loose, but at least it never loses sight of its subject." The New Yorker, Page-TurnerTable of ContentsList of Dictations Acknowledgments AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN Explanatory Notes Appendixes Samuel L. Clemens: A Brief Chronology Family Biographies Previous Publication Note on the Text Word Division in This Volume References Index Photographs
£34.20
Taylor & Francis Charles Dickens The Critical Heritage The Critical Heritage Series
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£43.69
Random House USA Inc Barchester Towers Everymans Library Classics
Book Synopsis Anthony Trollope was well aware that the seemingly parochial power struggles that determine the action of Barchester Towers -- struggles whose comic possibilities he exploits to hilarious effect -- actually went to the heart of mid-Victorian English society, and had, in other times and other guises, led to civil war and constitutional upheaval. Thai awareness heightens the comedy and intensifies the drama in this magnificent novel and it transforms the story of a fight for ascendency among the clergy and dependants of a great English cathedral into something fundamental and universal. This is the second novel in Trollope's Barsetshire series.(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
£24.00
New Directions Publishing Corporation My Emily Dickinson
Book Synopsis"Starts off as a manifesto but becomes richer and more suggestive as it develops."-The New York SunTrade Review"One of our seminal works of creative scholarship." -- Michael Palmer"In the non-conformist tradition of William Carlos Williams's In the American Grain and Charles Olson's Call Me Ishmael, Susan Howe's My Emily Dickinson reclaims the primacy of the poet's voice in American literary criticism even as it redresses the troubling absence of women within those antecedents. In this groundbreaking and influential work, Howe explores Dickinson's poems in all their radical indeterminacy and acoustical complexity, brilliantly revealing their explosive, modern power. My Emily Dickinson is visionary criticism at its best." -- Elizabeth Willis"As a poet and a critic she articulates precisely those soundings of uncertainty, those zones of failed or impaired utterance that constitute the literary history of America's uneasy commerce with the world." -- Richard Sieburth - Times Literary Supplement
£12.34
Edinburgh University Press Tales of the Wars of Montrose
Book SynopsisIn this collection of short stories Hogg focuses on the Scottish civil war of 1644-45, in which the Marquis of Montrose led his royalist forces in a series of stunning victories against the odds before his final defeat at Philiphaugh.Trade ReviewTales of the Wars of Montrose is a big book about a big historical period, and it positions Hogg strongly in the line of historical writers who require to be taken seriously. -- Ian Campbell Tales of the Wars of Montrose, too, though held together by internal connections and the common historical context, displays a similar delight in literary form, beginning with the conscious imitation of Defoe, 'Some Remarkable Passages in the Life of an Edinburgh Baillie Written by himself'. The dates and details of the opening narrative (admirably glossed by Gillian Hughes) enable Hogg to follow Defoe in exploring the relationship between literature and history, truth and fiction, while also creating a foundation for the subsequent tales of romantic intrigue, Ossianic tragedy, adventure and vendetta all over Scotland. It is hard to imagine a tale less like the Edinburgh Baillie's memoirs than that of 'Sir Simon Brodie', whose quixotic adventures include being thrown overboard in the Firth of Forth by the Duke of Argyll and rescued from his predicament by an amorous seal -- Fiona Stafford These attractive editions of Hogg's work are set directly from the original texts, and in the case of the Perils of Woman and The Shepherd's Calendar, actually represent the first ever republications of the originals... these paperback reprints further aid the dissemination of Hogg's best works, creating affordable and accessible editions. Texts previously available only to those with the golden keys of academia can now be bought and enjoyed by a wider readership. The superb apparatus included with this series ensures James Hogg's works are accessible to readers of any level. Tales of the Wars of Montrose is no exception. Gillian Hughes provides meticulous annotation, a comprehensive publication history, an introductory bibliography, an extensive glossary, and a historical note that provides essential background information on seventeenth-century Scotland, the locus of the tales. The supporting material is complemented by a multifaceted introduction which opens a number of opportunities for further research. Tales of the Wars of Montrose is a big book about a big historical period, and it positions Hogg strongly in the line of historical writers who require to be taken seriously. Tales of the Wars of Montrose, too, though held together by internal connections and the common historical context, displays a similar delight in literary form, beginning with the conscious imitation of Defoe, 'Some Remarkable Passages in the Life of an Edinburgh Baillie Written by himself'. The dates and details of the opening narrative (admirably glossed by Gillian Hughes) enable Hogg to follow Defoe in exploring the relationship between literature and history, truth and fiction, while also creating a foundation for the subsequent tales of romantic intrigue, Ossianic tragedy, adventure and vendetta all over Scotland. It is hard to imagine a tale less like the Edinburgh Baillie's memoirs than that of 'Sir Simon Brodie', whose quixotic adventures include being thrown overboard in the Firth of Forth by the Duke of Argyll and rescued from his predicament by an amorous seal These attractive editions of Hogg's work are set directly from the original texts, and in the case of the Perils of Woman and The Shepherd's Calendar, actually represent the first ever republications of the originals... these paperback reprints further aid the dissemination of Hogg's best works, creating affordable and accessible editions. Texts previously available only to those with the golden keys of academia can now be bought and enjoyed by a wider readership. The superb apparatus included with this series ensures James Hogg's works are accessible to readers of any level. Tales of the Wars of Montrose is no exception. Gillian Hughes provides meticulous annotation, a comprehensive publication history, an introductory bibliography, an extensive glossary, and a historical note that provides essential background information on seventeenth-century Scotland, the locus of the tales. The supporting material is complemented by a multifaceted introduction which opens a number of opportunities for further research.
£18.99
Edinburgh University Press Coastal Cultures of the Long Nineteenth Century
Book SynopsisThis volume examines the cultural importance of the coastline in Britain during a time of vast change.
£21.84
Edinburgh University Press The Case of Sherlock Holmes
Book SynopsisThe Case of Sherlock Holmes uncovers what is untold, partly told, wrongly told, or deliberately concealed in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes saga.
£22.79
Swan Isle Press To Love Is to Act Les Misérables and Victor
Book SynopsisTo love is to act Aimer, c'est agir. These words, which Victor Hugo wrote three days before he died, epitomize his life's philosophy. His love of freedom, democracy, and all peopleespecially the poor and wretcheddrove him not only to write his epic Les Misérables but also to follow his conscience. We have much to learn from Hugo, who battled for justice, lobbied against slavery and the death penalty, and fought for the rights of women and children. In a series of essays that interweave Hugo's life with Les Misérables and point to the novel's contemporary relevance, To Love Is to Act explores how Hugo reveals his guiding principles for life, including his belief in the redemptive power of love and forgiveness. Enriching the book are insights from artists who captured the novel's heart in the famed musical, Les Mis creators Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg, producer of the musical Les MisérablesCameron Mackintosh, film director Tom Hooper, and award-winning actors who have portrayed Jean Valjean: Colm Wilkinson and Hugh Jackman.
£22.80
Harvard University Press The Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde
Book SynopsisThough best known for his drama and fiction, Oscar Wilde was also a pioneering critic. He introduced the idea that criticism was an act of creation, not just appraisal. Wilde transformed the genre by extending its ambit beyond art to include society itself, all while injecting it with his trademark wit and style.Trade ReviewNo, it’s not poetry, but it’s the next best thing: prose that floats along on rhyme and rhythm…Rejoice in a book made up of what one essay calls ‘passages…[of]…pure and perfect beauty.’ * The Tablet *A remarkable collection…Students and scholars of literature will relish these witty, acerbic outings. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *This is an absorbing volume for which all Wilde fans should be grateful. -- D. J. Taylor * Washington Examiner *A lucid guide to the dissident thought of Oscar Wilde, who attacked the genteel gender norms and philanthropic pieties of imperial Britain. At this moment of cultural crisis in the dwindling humanities, Wilde's eloquent defense of individualism, as well as his celebration of the beauty and power of art, could not be more timely. -- Camille Paglia, author of Sexual PersonaeWilde was a first-rate critic and an essayist and a thoughtful provocateur years before he became a successful playwright, a scandalous novelist, or a queer icon: he’s still a terrific critic today, with a range wider than almost anyone knows. Here are essays you’ve read if you care about Wilde already (‘The Decay of Lying’) and essays even scholars may not have seen. Here is the impossible socialist, anti-populist radical, anti-Platonic creator of Platonic dialogues, infinitely insatiable individualist, and, of course, ‘The Critic as Artist.’ If you’re like me, you owe it to yourself to return to him and check him out. We shall not see his like again. -- Stephanie Burt, author of Don’t Read PoetryIt is refreshing to see Wilde the critic take center stage. This is an astute selection showing the full range of the essays, dialogues, and reviews that helped make Oscar's name, brought together expertly by Nicholas Frankel, whose characteristically insightful introduction is essential reading. -- Kate Hext, author of Walter Pater
£22.46
Fordham University Press Toy Stories: Analyzing the Child in
Book SynopsisToy Stories: Analyzing the Child in Nineteenth-Century Literature explores the stakes of recurrent depictions of children’s violent, damaging, and tenuously restorative play with objects within a long nineteenth century of fictional and educational writing. As Vanessa Smith shows us, these scenes of aggression and anxiety cannot be squared with the standard picture of domestic childhood across that period. Instead, they seem to attest to the kinds of enactments of infant distress we would normally associate with post-psychoanalytic modernity, creating a ripple effect in the literary texts that nest them: regressing developmental narratives, giving new value to wooden characters, exposing Realism’s solid objects to odd fracture, and troubling distinctions between artificial and authentic interiority. Toy Stories is the first study to take these scenes of anger and overwhelm seriously, challenging received ideas about both the nineteenth century and its literary forms. Radically re-conceiving nineteenth-century childhood and its literary depiction as anticipating the scenes, theories, and methodologies of early child analysis, Toy Stories proposes a shared literary and psychoanalytic discernment about child’s play that in turn provides a deep context for understanding both the “development” of the novel and the keen British uptake of Melanie Klein’s and Anna Freud’s interventions in child therapy. In doing so, the book provides a necessary reframing of the work of Klein and Freud and their fractious disagreement about the interior life of the child and its object-mediated manifestations.Table of ContentsPreface: A Toy Is Being Beaten | ix Introduction: Child’s Play | 1 1 Proper Objects | 27 2 Possible Persons | 54 3 Our Plays | 82 4 Bildung Blocks | 110 Conclusion: Toy Stories | 137 Acknowledgments | 147 Notes | 149 Works Cited | 189 Index | 205
£23.39
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi Queer Oz L. Frank Baums Trans Tales and Other
Book SynopsisShows how L. Frank Baum exploited the freedoms of children's literature, in its carnivalesque celebration of a world turned upside-down, to reimagine the meanings of gender and sexuality in early twentieth-century America and to re-envision them for the future.
£22.46
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Nietzsche’s Early Literary Writings and The Birth
Book SynopsisUnderstands Nietzsche in the light of his activity as a creative writer from his juvenilia through the publication of The Birth of Tragedy, providing the first extensive study in English of his early literary works. The name Friedrich Nietzsche resonates around the world. Although known primarily as a philosopher, Nietzsche began his writing career while still a boy with literary texts: poetry, prose, and dramas. The present book is the first extensive study in English of these early literary works. It understands Nietzsche in the light of his activity as a creative writer from his juvenilia through his first two years as professor of classical philology at the University of Basel, that is, through the 1872 publication of his first major work, The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music. Knowledge of Nietzsche's early literary writings further underscores the value of The Birth of Tragedy as a work of world literature. The present study makes available almost all of Nietzsche's early poetry and extensive excerpts from his early prose works and dramas - much of it in English for the first time - along with commentary. A final, extensive chapter on The Birth of Tragedy treats it as the culmination of the early literary works. The book contains many new insights into Nietzsche and his work and essential source material for future research. All quotations from Nietzsche are given in both the original German and in English.Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction: Early Nietzsche 1: The Early Poetry 2: The Early Prose Works 3: The Dramas and Drama Fragments 4: The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music 5: Conclusion Bibliography Index
£85.50
Bucknell University Press,U.S. Women and Music in the Age of Austen
Book SynopsisWomen and Music in the Age of Austen highlights the central role women played in musical performance, composition, reception, and representation, and analyzes its formative and lasting effect on Georgian culture. This interdisciplinary collection of essays from musicology, literary studies, and gender studies challenges the conventional historical categories that marginalize women’s experience from Austen’s time. Contesting the distinctions between professional and amateur musicians, public and domestic sites of musical production, and performers and composers of music, the contributors reveal how women’s widespread involvement in the Georgian musical scene allowed for self-expression, artistic influence, and access to communities that transcended the boundaries of gender, class, and nationality. This volume’s breadth of focus advances our understanding of a period that witnessed a musical flourishing, much of it animated by female hands and voices. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press. Trade Review“Women and Music in the Age of Austen offers an expansive, lively, colourful view of the gendered musical practices of the eighteenth century and the Romantic period. These essays enrich our knowledge of the musical world of Jane Austen and Frances Burney while shining a spotlight on little-known female performers, critics, composers, consumers, collectors, fans, and musical entrepreneurs of the preceding decades.” -- Angela Esterhammer * author of Print and Performance in the 1820s: Improvisation, Speculation, Identity *“Finding inspiration in a broad range of sources, the volume reflects on women and their musical activities in Georgian England. A focus on Jane Austen and her novels moves in and out of the picture, amplified and receding against historical figures known and unknown. Through these essays by musically-informed literary scholars and musicologists, readers get a sense of the possibilities and desires of women engaged with music over a historical period that brackets the life of our beloved Jane.” -- Maribeth Clark * coeditor of Musicology and Dance: Historical and Critical Perspectives *“Music was important to Jane Austen, as her novels and letters attest, and women played a hitherto undervalued part in the musical world of her time. This sparkling and substantial collection of interdisciplinary essays illuminates Austen’s fiction and her age in many original and surprising ways.” -- Peter Sabor * coeditor of Jane Austen's Manuscript Works *Table of ContentsIllustrations Table Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: “It was all in harmony”: Musical Women in Austen’s Culture Linda Zionkowski with Miriam F. Hart Part I: Representing the Female Performer Chapter 1: A Musical Room of Her Own: Musical Spaces in Jane Austen’s Novels Pierre Dubois Chapter 2: “Prima la musica”: Gentry Daughters at Play in Town, Country, and Continent, 1815-1825 Kelly M. McDonald Chapter 3: Stage Fright: Female Musicians Crossing Musical Borders in Thicknesse’s The School for Fashion and Burney’s The Wanderer Danielle Grover Part II: Women and the Market in Music Chapter 4: Women on the Title Page: Celebrity Endorsement of Musical Scores Penelope Cave Chapter 5: The Lady’s Choice: Women and the Purchase of Music through Subscription Simon D. I. Fleming Chapter 6: Female Musical Entrepreneurship in the Eighteenth Century Alison C. DeSimone Part III: Women as Critics and Fans Chapter 7: Women as Quiet Critics Jane Girdham Chapter 8: Femininity and Foreignness in George Colman’s Farce, The Musical Lady Leslie Ritchie Chapter 9: Georgian Fangirls: Women and Castrati in Eighteenth-Century London Jeffrey A. Nigro Part IV: Women and the Bardic Tradition Chapter 10: Anna Gordon and the Ballad Collectors Ruth Perry Chapter 11: Antiquaries, Female Harpists, and the Survival of the Bardic Tradition Devon R. Nelson Part V: Revisiting the Age of Austen Chapter 12: “That Ecstatic Delight”: Gender and Performance in Adaptations of Sense and Sensibility Gayle Magee Chapter 13: “Here’s harmony!”: Music and Gender in Kirke Mechem’s Pride & Prejudice (2019) and Jonathan Dove’s Mansfield Park (2011) Juliette Wells Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index
£39.95
Columbia University Press The Italian Invert
Book SynopsisIn the late nineteenth century, a young Italian aristocrat made an astonishing confession: In a series of revealing letters, he frankly described his sexual experiences with other men. This is the first complete, unexpurgated version in English of this remarkable queer autobiography.Trade ReviewA brilliant archival discovery, a triumph of careful scholarship, an unsuspected episode in modern literature, a moving testimony about sex and love, and a fascinating, previously censored chapter in the history of sexuality. Rosenfeld masterfully restores the context in which conscious writing about homosexuality emerged in Europe during the last decades of the nineteenth century. -- David Halperin, W. H. Auden Distinguished University Professor, University of MichiganThe contributors to this brilliantly edited and translated text make the queer past come alive. Readers will not only recognize a young man’s struggle with his gender and sexual identities, but also the difficulty he had in telling his own story in a homophobic society. -- Andrew Israel Ross, author of Public City/Public Sex: Homosexuality, Prostitution, and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century ParisWhether you persist in reading it as a proto-naturalist novel (despite the opinions of the editors of this volume) or treat it as a sociological document, The Italian Invert is a classic text of nineteenth-century sexology the interest of which is by no means limited to French (or Italian) studies. Richly enhanced here with critical notes, this volume makes a revised and expanded version of the primary documents available in English and also adds important essays that situate and enlarge their scope. The text reflects the latest archival discoveries, which include manuscripts and illustrations, as well as new information about the mysterious "Dr. Laupts." Whether one is interested in the history of (homo)sexuality or in literary questions (such as the "queerness" of Zola), this is an indispensable tool that belongs on every researcher's shelf. -- Melanie Hawthorne, Texas A&M UniversityThe 'Italian invert’s confessions' have long been known to historians of sexuality, yet this new edition lends them an authenticity never before enjoyed....The editors have included everything scholars might want to know: abundant annotations, prefaces, commentaries on each recension, and a full index. * European Legacy *Table of ContentsList of IllustrationsPrologue, by Cyrille Zola-PlaceForeword to the French Edition, by Alain PagèsForeword to the American Edition, by Vernon A. RosarioIntroduction: The Ménage-à-Trois of Zola, Saint-Paul, and the Italian “Invert,” by Michael Rosenfeld with Nancy ErberPart I: The Confessions of a Homosexual to Émile ZolaPreface by Émile ZolaThe Novel of an InvertThe Sequel to the Novel of an InvertOther ParticularitiesThe Italian Man’s Family Tree, by Michael RosenfeldPart II: Selected Works by Dr. Georges Saint-PaulDr. Georges Saint-Paul, Man of Science, by Clive ThomsonFirst Edition (1896)In Memoriam: Émile ZolaSecond Edition (1910)Third Edition (1930)AcknowledgmentsBibliographyList of ContributorsIndex
£22.50
New Directions Publishing Corporation The Flowers of Evil
Book SynopsisIn the annals of literature, few single volumes of poetry have achieved the influence and notoriety of The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du Mal) by Charles Baudelaire.
£16.14
The University of Chicago Press Ahabs Rolling Sea
Book SynopsisKing lays bare the background to Moby-Dick by moving through the voyage of the Pequod, exploring topics in marine biology, oceanography, and the science of navigation as Ishmael raises them in the novel.Trade Review"Tired of binge-watching those mind-numbing programs and movies? During this pandemic, we've been warned to exercise regularly and that includes our brain. With extra time for nonessential activities, it's an opportunity to read a few good books--especially venturing into unfamiliar territory. . . . This book is excellent. Even if you haven't read Melville's classic of sea literature, you will be amazed at his command of the environmental world that is its setting. . . . What King says will entertain, inform, amuse and sadden you."--JoAnne Fuerst "The Ellsworth American" (1/17/2020 12:00:00 AM) "A unique take on Melville...The book is unquestionably well researched: King blends library research with personal experience and draws on interviews with contemporary 'oceanic' professionals, including maritime-historian colleagues, ocean scientists, and sailors. He also provides scores of photographs and other pertinent illustrations. Anyone interested in Melville will find this rich and insightful study fascinating--but those readers curious enough to see Moby-Dick as an oceanographic encyclopedia will benefit most."--J. W. Miller, Gonzaga University "Choice" (1/17/2020 12:00:00 AM) "An exquisitely detailed and gorgeously written book that reminds us of the wonder of Melville's novel and of the natural world in which it takes place. Fascinating accounts and descriptions of whales, swordfish, sharks, giant squid, ambergris, etc., and of the sea itself: then and now. And informed by a writer who has spent years at sea, is now a professor of maritime literature and history at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. King gives an original, loving rereading of Melville's novel. He is himself a master storyteller whose handsomely illustrated book is deeply informed and full of delightful surprises."--Jay Neugeboren "Ploughshares" (1/17/2020 12:00:00 AM) "King gives us natural history done Melville-style, looking over a ship's rail, and this ingenious focus neatly weds field science and literary history, yielding a study that is fresh, provocative, and welcome."--William Howarth "American Scholar" "Ultimately, answering these questions involves poetry more than science. Melville has combined the rational, objective, Darwinian perspective with the emotional, poetic, Emersonian perspective, pushing the reader to see nature as both dangerous and damaged. Here is King's main point: that Melville's novel can now be read as an introduction to environmental issues of the twenty-first century."--John P. Loonam "Washington Independent Review of Books" "King uses modern sources and historical texts to take a fresh look at Melville's book--published in the same decade as Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species--with the well-defined brief of assessing its natural history content. The result is a lighthearted and incredibly enjoyable read that manages somehow, at the right moments, to be both broad and narrow in scope. It should be required reading for anyone attempting Moby-Dick. . . . No captive of the library, King is an experienced seaman and an open-minded and intrepid guide. A visiting associate professor of maritime literature and history at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, he is willing to pull on his old Sou'wester and sail into the watery part of the world. . . . King writes ably and in scholarly detail about albatrosses, ambergris, baleen, barnacles, seals, sharks, sperm whale behavior and language, swordfish, typhoons, and all sorts of marine and cetological marginalia. . . . [A] talented and clear-eyed . . . writer."--Christopher J. Kemp "Science" "I'm an easy mark for books like Ahab's Rolling Sea: A Natural History of 'Moby-Dick, ' which I've read a perhaps unhealthy number of times, in light of Annie Dillard's opinion that Melville's baggy masterpiece is the 'best book ever written about nature.' Focusing on nineteenth century oceanography, natural history, and, of course, the whalers' understanding of his prey's remarkable intelligence, King's book is a fascinating and rare thing: a vital addition to Melville studies."--Stephen Sparks "LitHub, 12 Books You Should Read This October" "A treasure trove. King situates Melville as a person of his time, writing amid a quickening pace of discoveries about the natural world but, pre-On the Origin of Species, inclined to couch them as further disclosures of God's design."--Stephen Phillips "Spectator" "A rather schematic structure--Ahab's Rolling Sea could be used as a reference book, a zoological concordance to Moby-Dick--is combined with a genuinely gripping retelling of the tale."--Brian Morton "Times Literary Supplement" (1/17/2020 12:00:00 AM) "Ahab's Rolling Sea highlights our destructiveness as it teases fact from fiction in Moby-Dick, the obsessive hunt for a great white whale. . . . Rigorous. . . . Original."--Chris Simms "New Scientist" "This is a superb work of popular scholarship that rivals the best books of maritime nonfiction currently in print. For any teacher, reader, or aficionado of Melville's magnum opus the present work will be a joy to read; for anyone curious about the current state of the marine environment, this book will be eye-opening."--Dan Brayton, Middlebury College, author of "Shakespeare's Ocean: An Ecocritical Exploration" "TA NEA (Greece)" (1/17/2020 12:00:00 AM) "This examination of Moby-Dick as nature writing could be a sneaky way to get the English majors on your shopping list to read about science."--John P. Loonam "American Scientist" (12/11/2019 12:00:00 AM) "King, a visiting associate professor of maritime literature and history (what a fascinating title this is!), runs after the Leviathan of literary semantics in the most imaginative way: testing what Melville and people of his era knew about their natural environment, maritime ecosystems, birds, cetaceans, and whales before he published Moby-Dick in 1851. . . . King does his best not to be another Ahab seeing his 'White Whale' escaping. And he actually makes it: from the detailed research of the marine fauna to the possible influences of Emerson, Thoreau, Darwin, Bowditch on Melville. This is the retelling of Moby-Dick from an imaginative point of view: from the Pequod towards the cosmos surrounding us in the era of new environmentalism."--Dimitris Doulgeridis "TA NEA (Greece)" (1/17/2020 12:00:00 AM) "King reflects on what we have learned and lost from the oceans since Melville's time. He answers questions many readers surely ponder. . . . Naturally, the book is full of spoilers. Read Moby-Dick, read this, then read Moby-Dick again."--John P. Loonam "BBC Wildlife" (12/11/2019 12:00:00 AM) "King decisively settles any lingering questions about Moby-Dick, nineteenth-century whales and whaling, and all lore and literature of the sea. More than establishing a factual basis for Ishmael's fiction-making, King writes passionately on climate change, economic pressures on sea creatures, and the future Melville confronts in his marvelous encounter with the 'wonder-world' of whaling. King's deep knowledge grounds lively storytelling, keen observations drawn from years of sailing, and an eye for details that will make Melville's book come alive. But even if you haven't read Moby-Dick, you will revel in this storehouse of fascinating tales and arcana, from Ambergris to Zeuglodon. A treasure for library, classroom, or bedside table."--Wyn Kelley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of Melville's City: Literary and Urban Form in Nineteenth-Century New York and Herman Melville: An Introduction "TA NEA (Greece)" (1/17/2020 12:00:00 AM) "It took me decades to appreciate that Melville's messy, uncontainable, surging Moby-Dick is perhaps the greatest book ever written about the sea, and about the human relationship with the living world, and perhaps the only book sufficiently un-jaded by mercantilism and modernity to be worthy of the actual ocean itself in all its raw, uncontrollable, surging majesty. But if you don't want to wait decades for Melville's magnificence to be revealed, you can cheat and read King's book. Ahab's Rolling Sea is a marvelous guide to the magic and mystery that was Melville's gift to us, for King reveals the deep, deep backstory of the making of Moby-Dick, the vast pots of experience and information that Melville simmered down, and even the missing ingredients of his age, that made Moby-Dick the richest bouillabaisse in all of literature. Oh, and about Melville's missing ingredients--they're here, in King's terrific book."--Carl Safina, author of Song for the Blue Ocean: Encounters Along the World's Coasts and Beneath the Seas and Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace "TA NEA (Greece)" (1/17/2020 12:00:00 AM) "Herman Melville's sprawling masterpiece Moby-Dick is a fictional feat studded with empirical evidence, reveals maritime historian King in this invigorating study. King traces references to ethology, meteorology, marine microbiota and the oceans to Melville's sailing experience in the Pacific and wranglings with the works of scientists William Scoresby, Louis Agassiz and others. Moby-Dick, King boldly avers, is a 'proto-Darwinian fable'--and its beleaguered narrator, Ishmael, an early environmentalist."--John P. Loonam "Nature" "Anyone who loves Moby-Dick should read this book."--Nathaniel Philbrick, author of the National Book Award-winning In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex and Why Read 'Moby-Dick'? "TA NEA (Greece)" (1/17/2020 12:00:00 AM) "Ahab's Rolling Sea is a wide-ranging, highly personal, richly eclectic, and extremely well-researched book whose style and humor, combined with its rigor, suggest the potential for popularity even beyond the fascinations of this self-confessed whalehead. Who could not warm to a chapter titled 'Gulls, Sea-Ravens, and Albatrosses' or 'Sword-Fish and Lively Grounds, ' or be intrigued by 'Phosphorescence'? There's a Melvillean romance here, and it sits especially well with King's love and empathy for human as well as natural history. A contemporary, witty, almost postmodern field guide."--Philip Hoare, author of RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR, The Sea Inside, The Whale, and Leviathan "TA NEA (Greece)" (1/17/2020 12:00:00 AM) "Depending on who you are, reading Moby-Dick, first published in 1851, could be a sleep-inducing slog or a stellar sea yarn of man versus whale. But the book has (sea) legs, and since its release has proved to be one of the most enduring books of American fiction. Its literary merits have been discussed and debated, but King, a professor of maritime literature and history, examines the book as a work of nature writing . . . He does extensive reporting, delving into everything from the rigging of whaleships to the diet of sperm whales."--J. W. Miller, Gonzaga University "Hakai Magazine" (1/17/2020 12:00:00 AM) "Are you? a Moby-Dickhead? If so, are you enough of a Moby-Dickhead to have visited the Phallological Museum in Iceland to inspect a sperm whale's penis? This is one of the many intrepid expeditions undertaken by King in the course of researching Ahab's Rolling Sea. His book, like Moby-Dick itself, tells you everything you ever wanted to know about whales but were too ashamed to ask. The fact that the sperm whale's penis, or 'grandissimus', is four and a half feet long is just one of its juicier details. . . . It turns out that, with due allowance for the state of knowledge in the 1850s, Melville got a surprising amount right about whales: their size, their bone structure, their mass, even their emotional lives. . . . Anyone who isn't completely turned off by sea creatures will enjoy surfing the waves of information that roll genially from this book. Ahab's Rolling Sea also has a big thesis. King argues that Moby-Dick offers a 'proto-Darwinian decentring of the human and the elevation of the whale.' . . . It would be hard to fault either the motives or the facts underlying King's ecological zeal."--JoAnne Fuerst "London Review of Books" (1/17/2020 12:00:00 AM) "Simply breathtaking, in that it takes one's breath away and refills the lungs with a gust of salty sea breeze...Ahab's Rolling Sea collects accounts from literary criticism, theory, climate activism, and natural history for a deep dive into one of the most popular maritime novels around--Herman Melville's Moby-Dick...The relatability and readability of Ahab's Rolling Sea, at a time when the sea has much receded from daily life, is a testament to King's pedagogical, sailorly, and descriptive mastery. King invites us to stand aloft with him and Ishmael, and look out toward the wonderful, ever-rolling sea. Maybe, if we look close enough, we will even get to see a whale."--Alison Maas "H-Environment" (1/17/2020 12:00:00 AM)
£27.85
Edinburgh University Press Victorian Liberalism and Material Culture
Book SynopsisVictorian Liberalism and Material Culture assesses the unexplored links between Victorian material culture and political theory.
£27.54
Taylor & Francis Romanticism
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£36.99
Taylor & Francis Ltd Orientalist Poetics The Islamic Middle East in NineteenthCentury English and French Poetry
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£39.99
Vintage Publishing L.E.L.
Book SynopsisA famous poet, a mysterious death and a story stranger than fiction. - this is the lost life and mytserious death of the ''Female Byron'' On 15 October 1838, the body of a thirty-six-year-old woman was found in Cape Coast Castle, West Africa, a bottle of prussic acid in her hand. She was one of the most famous English poets of her day: Letitia Elizabeth Landon, known by her initials ''L.E.L.''What was she doing in Africa? Was her death an accident? Had she committed suicide, or even been murdered?To her contemporaries, she was an icon, hailed as the ''female Byron''. However, she was also a woman with secrets, the mother of three illegitimate children whose existence was subsequently wiped from the record. After her death, she became the subject of a cover-up which this book unravels, excavating with it a whole lost literary culture.FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE BRONTE MYTHTrade ReviewIn her biography of L.E.L., Lucasta Miller's stellar research blows two centuries of accumulated dust off a phenomenon worth unearthing... This book takes biography to a new level. * New Statesman *Lucasta Miller's fine literary detective work yields a riveting, tantalisingly ambiguous portrait of a poet whose confessional voice and savvy celebrity make her only more intriguing to modern readers. -- Hephzibah Anderson * Observer *Wonderfully entertaining... Spellbinding. * New York Times Book Review *A terrific book... A compelling life of the victim of a misogynist celebrity culture, a rich mix of literary criticism and impeccable research, which reads like a novel - you keep turning the pages to discover whatever will happen next to the unfortunate L.E.L.. * Daily Telegraph *Compelling as a detective story, Miller’s revelatory life of Landon is a masterpiece of eloquent scholarship... Miller's real genius lies in her forensic ability to disentangle reality from romance... splendid. * Literary Review *
£11.39
The University of Michigan Press Anonymous Connections
Book SynopsisAsks how the Victorians understood the ethical, epistemological, and biological implications of social belonging and participation. Specifically, Tina Choi considers the ways nineteenth-century journalists, novelists, medical writers, and social reformers took advantage of spatial frames-of-reference in a social landscape transforming due to intense urbanization and expansion.Trade Review“Choi’s work makes a unique and original point: complex, multi-plot Victorian narratives and notions of the social order fed and were fed by one another. . . . This book will be an important one for scholars of Victorian literature and culture.”—Laura Otis, Emory University“In this astute interdisciplinary study, Tina Choi examines new understandings of material connections between bodies—miasmas, microbes, body parts, waste—across geographical distances and social classes in the Victorian period. Anonymous Connections moves between literary and scientific texts to forcefully demonstrate that transformed conceptions of bodily intimacies also transformed conceptions of social relations. Surprisingly, such connections were not necessarily conceived of as threatening, but also inspired positive ideas of social cohesion. One of the great virtues of Choi’s study is that it persuasively shows that the scientific and medical theories she discusses have important implications for plot and narrative form in the nineteenth-century novel.”—Suzy Anger, University of British Columbia
£42.71
Cambridge University Press The Cambridge Companion to Rudyard Kipling
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£24.69
Cambridge University Press The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism Volume 6 The Nineteenth Century c18301914 The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism Series Number 6
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£133.95
Cambridge University Press Romantic Tragedies The Dark Employments of Wordsworth Coleridge and Shelley 87 Cambridge Studies in Romanticism Series Number 87
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£79.80
Cambridge University Press Pamela in Her Exalted Condition
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£151.05
Stanford University Press A Fallen Idol Is Still a God
Book SynopsisA Fallen Idol is Still a God demonstrates how the works of the seminal nineteenth-century Russian author Mikhail Lermontov reflect the cultural transition out of Romanticism and the dynamics of cultural transition itself.Trade Review"Allen's book is a fine addition to Golstein's and Powelstock's recent Lermontov scholarship, and one hopes that A Fallen Idol will find wide readership." -- Slavic and East European Journal"This is a most impressive and elegantly written book. A Fallen Idol Is Still a God is a wonderfully mature, insightful, and carefully thought-out study of Lermontov's texts and place in literary history. Specifically, it surpasses earlier studies in the precision and originality of its treatment of Lermontov's Romanticism." -- William Mills Todd III * Harvard University *"How does one describe a cultural period between two epochs without saying, anachronistically, that things were tending towards where they wound up going? Can one describe the sense that one has outlived one set of practices and visions but not yet arrived at an alternative? Developing her own model of transitional periods, Allen shows how to describe a prominent writer's creative efforts when his fallen idol is still a god. In the process, she offers a compelling portrait of Lermontov, brings his works to life in a new way, and demonstrates that some of them are even better than we thought." -- Gary Saul Morson * Northwestern University *Table of Contents@fmct:Contents @toc4:Preface iii Acknowledgments and Note on the Text iii @toc2:1. Introduction: Cultural Transition and Its Quandaries 1 2. Romanticism and Its Twilight in Western Europe and Russia 000 3. The Ambivalence of Influence: Lermontov's "Not- Byronism" 000 4. The Attenuation of Romantic Evil: A Demon Undone 000 5. Ideals to Ideology: Unmasking Masquerade 000 6. Post-Romantic Anomie I: A Hero of Our Time and Its Hero 000 7. Post-Romantic Anomie II: The "Post-" Scripts of A Hero of Our Time 000 8. Conclusion: Lermontov's Last Words 000 @toc4:Notes 000 Bibliography 000 Index 000
£49.60
Associated University Presses The Practice of Realism Change and Creativity in
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£47.70
The Swedenborg Society Gardens of Heaven and Earth An Essay on
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£11.74
Ariadne Press CoExistent Contradictions
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£31.49
Cambridge University Press Liberal Lives and Activist Repertoires
Book SynopsisExamining political performances' spatial arrangements, casting of roles, authorization of speech, oratorical techniques, styles of movement, behavioral conventions, and audience reactions, this book shows how nineteenth-century activists innovatively connected performative forms to critical content in order to make their activism more effective.Trade Review'With her distinctive form of precision historiography, Tracy Davis has given us a vital and necessary addendum to the long history and ongoing project of abolitionism. Focusing primarily on the lives and work of three Victorians, Davis elaborates a theory of performance that situates seemingly minor forms of activism - hosting dinners and attending meetings, letter-writing campaigns, journalistic reportage, and speechifying - as fundamental to the cultivation of solidarity and to the momentum of political engagement. This is a wonderful book: meticulously researched, compellingly argued, and beautifully narrated.' Patrick Anderson, University of California, San Diego'How was the work of social and political reform performed? And how did performance change the means and outcomes of that activism? In this remarkable, carefully-wrought book, Tracy Davis turns our attention to the importance of dramaturgy to the work of nineteenth-century reform movements, illuminating how one scholar can find performance in everything from petitioning to letter-writing and parades. A terrific feat of scholarship.' Carolyn Eastman, Virginia Commonwealth University'In her compelling new study, Tracy Davis challenges preconceptions about how early activists developed and shared their strategies, revealing networks of association and exchange that traversed the globe. This book invites readers to rethink what kinds of performances constitute activism and how historians can recover traces of those spectacles in even the most unlikely places.' Heather Nathans, Tufts University'Liberal Lives and Activist Repertoires explores the formation of the modern, liberal society through a broad variety of performative interactions. Political rhetoric, sermons, social conversations, and theatre are the foundation for this, made visible through Frederick Chesson's meticulously written diaries. Following the traces of women's and men's private lives and commitments to form public, political personae, Tracy C. Davis unfolds a broad and colourful panorama of the emergence of activism based in England but with connections to the United States, India under British rule, and a global network. Davis sets a new, inspiring standard in thinking about political performance.' Peter W. Marx, Institut für Medienkultur und Theater'Tracy Davis' timely and urgent study of the history of liberal campaigning in the Nineteenth Century insists on returning the question of performance to the history of activism. Drawing on the performance frames of mises en scene, repertoire and dramaturgy, Davis's excellent book reveals the performance tactics that activists deployed to make their case. This is Performance Studies at its best, revealing the theatre as a vital resource for the campaigning tactics underpinning Victorian repertoires of protest and persuasion that are still being used by activists today.' Aoife Monks, Queen Mary University of LondonTable of ContentsIntroduction: History as Performance History; 1. Forms and Increments of Performance; 2. Change Making: Incrementalism; 3. Bildung: Leveraging Critique to Propel the Precarious into Political Life; 4. Combative Pens; 5. Experiments in Becoming.
£28.50
