Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 Books

Book SynopsisThis light-hearted but deeply researched book offers interest and guidance to walkers, social historians and lovers of the Bronte family; their lives and works. Set in and around the town of Haworth it gives a dual introduction to walkers and lovers of literature who can explore this unique area of Yorkshire and walk in the footsteps of those who knew and loved this town and its moorlands two hundred years ago. With guided tours around special buildings as well as outdoor walks and the history of people and places who lived and worked in Haworth over centuries, it offers an insight into life and death in the melee of the Industrial Revolution. Its joint authors have combined their lifelong interests in Victorian literature and social history with writing, walking, photography and cartography and have included quotes from Bronte poetry and novels.

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Book SynopsisThis new edition of ""Notable American Novelists"" presents biographical sketches and analytical overviews of 145 of the best-known American and Canadian writers of long fiction from the 19th and 20th centuries, arranged alphabetically by name. The set's three volumes survey the novelists, whose works are included in core curricula of high school and undergraduate literature studies. Essays on living authors and all the bibliographies in the articles are updated. About two-thirds of the essays are illustrated with portraits of the writers. ""Notable American Novelists"" features often-studied writers ranging from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Jack London to Joan Didion and J. D. Salinger. Other important nineteenth century figures include Herman Melville, James Fenimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and George Washington Cable. Among the other major twentieth century writers featured are Sinclair Lewis, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, John Irving, E. L. Doctorow, Joseph Heller, Toni Morrison, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, John Steinbeck, Kurt Vonnegut, and John Updike. One can also find essays on such widely read and popular authors as Stephen King, James Michener, Louisa May Alcott, Larry McMurtry, and Anne Rice. A major addition to this new edition is the inclusion of Canadian novelists: Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, Frederick Philip Grove, Margaret Laurence, Mordecai Richler, and Sinclair Ross. Each essay begins with a presentation of reference information: the novelist's birth and death dates and a list of the writer's principal works of long fiction, with publication dates. ""Other literary forms"" then briefly describes genres other than long fiction in which the writer has worked, and an ""Achievements"" section encapsulates the author's central contribution and notes major honors and awards. The major sections of the text follow: ""Biography"" provides a sketch of the author's life, and ""Analysis"" looks at the novelist's work in detail; this section examines central and well-known works in the author's canon and illuminates the themes and techniques of primary interest to the novelist. The longest section in the article, ""Analysis"" is divided into subsections on the writer's major individual works. Following ""Analysis"" is a categorized list, ""Other major works,"" that provides titles and dates of works the author has written in genres other than long fiction, including plays, poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction. Each essay concludes with an updated, annotated bibliography. All articles are signed by the principal writer and, where applicable, by the updating contributor. Three helpful reference features are included at the end of volume 3: a glossary entitled ""Terms and Techniques,"" a time line of the writers' birthdates, and an index.

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Book SynopsisIn the 1880s and 1890s, Walter Besant was one of Britain’s most lionized living novelists. Like many popular writers of the period, Besant suffered from years of critical neglect. Yet his centrality to Victorian society and culture all but ensured a revival of interest. While literary critics are now rediscovering the more than forty works of fiction that he penned or co-wrote, as part of a more general revaluation of Victorian popular literature, legal scholars have argued that Besant, by advocating for copyright reform, played a crucial role in consolidating a notion of literary property as the exclusive possession of the individuated intellect. For their part, historians have recently shown how Besant – as a prominent philanthropist who campaigned for the cultural vitalization of impoverished areas in east and south London – galvanized late Victorian social reform activities. The expanding corpus of work on Besant, however, has largely kept the domains of authorship and activism, which he perceived as interrelated, conceptually distinct. Analysing the mutually constitutive interplay in Besant’s career between philanthropy and the professionalization of authorship, Walter Besant: The Business of Literature and the Pleasures of Reform highlights their fundamental interconnectedness in this Victorian intellectual polymath’s life and work.Trade Review'This dedication to the complex network of ideas and lived practice makes Walter Besant more than a mere love letter to a forgotten Victorian. Rather, it provides an integral contribution to the history of publishing and of literary production, and to studies of libralism and reform as they appeared at the end of the century.' Peter Katz, Victorians Institute Journal‘Kevin A. Morrison’s recent volume of essays, Walter Besant: The Business of Literature and the Pleasures of Reform, offers a timely and important meditation on the restoration of authors who have fallen out of favor or slipped into obscurity… The essays in this volume offer nuanced reflections on Besant’s marginal status, thoughtful speculations about his fall from popularity, and compelling arguments for bringing him back into the Victorian studies.’ Heidi Kaufman, Victorian StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction1. Walter Besant Now Kevin A. Morrison Part One: Literary Collaborations 2. Besant and Collaboration Kirsty Bunting 3. ‘Another like me’: The Literary Partnership of Walter Besant and James Rice Richard Storer 4. ‘I have altered nothing’: Walter Besant’s Completion of Blind Love Maria K. Bachman and Don Richard Cox Part Two: Reforming Authorship 5. Walter Besant and Copyright Reform Mary Ann Gillies 6. The Author Function in Walter Besant’s Fiction: the Notion of Artistic Value in the Wake of Copyright Law and the Nationalist Restructuring of the Trade Alberto Gabriele 7. Besant, Chatto and Watt: a Literary Income in the 1890s Simon Eliot 8. Workers as Artists: From Copyright to the Palace of Delight in Besant’s Writings Ayşe Çelikkol Part Three: Authoring Reforms 9. Altruism and The Monks of Thelema: Ideals and Realities Geoffrey A.C. Ginn 10. The Ethics of Perception and the Politics of Recognition: Walter Besant’s All Sorts and Conditions of Men Kevin Swafford 11. From Happy Individuals to Universal Sisterhood: Affective Reforms in All Sorts and Conditions of Men and Children of Gibeon Vicky Cheng and Haejoo Kim Part Four: Literary Relations 12. Moral Perfectionism, Optatives, and the Inky Line in Besant’s All in a Garden Fair and Gissing’s New Grub Street Tom Ue 13. Walter Besant: A Latter-Day Dickens? Andrzej Diniejko

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Book SynopsisOne of Europe’s greatest living philosophers, Giorgio Agamben, analyzes the life and work of one of Europe’s greatest poets, Friedrich Hölderlin. What does it mean to inhabit a place or a self? What is a habit? And, for human beings, doesn’t living mean—first and foremost—inhabiting? Pairing a detailed chronology of German poet Friedrich Hölderlin’s years of purported madness with a new examination of texts often considered unreadable, Giorgio Agamben's new book aims to describe and comprehend a life that the poet himself called habitual and inhabited. Hölderlin’s life was split neatly in two: his first 36 years, from 1770 to 1806; and the 36 years from 1807 to 1843, which he spent as a madman holed up in the home of Ernst Zimmer, a carpenter. The poet lived the first half of his existence out and about in the broader world, relatively engaged with current events, only to then spend the second half entirely cut off from the outside world. Despite occasional visitors, it was as if a wall separated him from all external events and relationships. For reasons that may well eventually become clear, Hölderlin chose to expunge all character—historical, social, or otherwise—from the actions and gestures of his daily life. According to his earliest biographer, he often stubbornly repeated, “nothing happens to me.” Such a life can only be the subject of a chronology—not a biography, much less a clinical or psychological analysis. Nevertheless, this book suggests that this is precisely how Hölderlin offers humanity an entirely other notion of what it means to live. Although we have yet to grasp the political significance of his unprecedented way of life, it now clearly speaks directly to our own. Trade Review"A work of retrieval. . . Agamben's main project is to uncover the political implications for the difference between the chronological life and the biographical life. This book is both creative and profound." * Choice *

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Book SynopsisThe story of how a group of precocious young artists shook up the British art establishment, told through their works, letters and diaries. An illustrated history of the linked lives and loves of a group of supremely talented artists of late Victorian Britain through their passionate writings. It features the painters, poets, critics and designers: Ford Madox Brown, Edward Burne-Jones, Fanny Cornforth, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, William and Janey Morris, Christina, Dante Gabriel, and William Rossetti, John Ruskin, William Bell Scott and Lizzie Siddal. The artistic aspirations and achievements of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood are revealed alongside the interwoven dramas of their personal lives, in letters, diaries and reminiscences, while their genius is displayed in vivid paintings, drawings, designs and poems. The Pre-Raphaelites was a charmed circles of love, friendship and art. Within an ever-changing flow of affections, and intimacies as richly patterned as a tapestry, they worked together as companions, lovers and partners. They shared tragedy as well as happiness, critical hostility as well as success, even the griefs of infidelity and discord. These creative partnerships, which also created the firm William Morris and Co, revitalised Victorian art and design. The new edition publishes in time for the start of the Burne Jones Exhibition at Tate Britain, starting in October 18. It is a vital book in understanding the Pre-Raphaelite art, which remains as popular and moving as ever.

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Book SynopsisEveryone has heard of Zola, but not many people have read him. This book is quite simply designed to get you to want to, by taking a look at what is on offer, with so much more to discover.Zola made it his aim to write novels exploring the many compartments and classes of modern French life in the later nineteenth century--and he went on to carry it out, with novels that look at the longings and troubles and everyday lives of just about every kind of person in their specific social settings. Travelling through the varieties of Zola''s styles and subjects, realistic, comic, tragic, and critical, from shopping to mining to the fertility industry, the book is a guide to the different pleasures and modes of thinking to be found in reading Zola today.It also considers the many kinds of story involved in the final years of Zola''s own life, and in the wake of his untimely death in 1902 from asphyxiation. It follows him to England--to Upper Norwood, in south London, where he was in exile for

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Book SynopsisCris Miller’s volume of Emily Dickinson's complete poems is the only edition to distinguish in easy visual form the poems Dickinson took pains to copy carefully onto folded sheets in fair hand—arguably to preserve them for posterity—from the poems she retained in rougher form or did not retain.Trade ReviewThis book brings us as close as we can get to how [Dickinson] presented her work… Sparing us the task of deciphering the poet’s sometimes challenging handwriting and presenting intriguing variants, this edition demonstrates why generations of writers have been galvanized by Dickinson… This edition brings us that much nearer to what this exceedingly decisive and willful writer wanted. It sweeps away distractions caused by posthumous fame, leaving us with the poems themselves… Closer than previous editions to Dickinson’s wishes, priorities and personality, Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them calls for no redundant plays, films, novels or warbling. What remains is lightning bolts of language akin to the trouvailles of Arthur Rimbaud and other powerful magicians of verse. -- Benjamin Ivry * Literary Review *[Dickinson’s] ‘fluid’ approach to poetic composition [is] clarified in Cristanne Miller’s painstaking new edition of Dickinson’s poems. -- Christopher Benfey * New York Review of Books *Miller chooses rightly not to number Dickinson’s poems, as previous editors have done, and allows them instead to name themselves in their first lines. More importantly, though, she does make a convincing case for Dickinson’s having wanted to preserve and organize her works as poems, to decide, for the most part, on their finished forms. -- Fiona Green * Times Literary Supplement *Miller’s approach works well, not only to give readers agency, but also to show Dickinson’s thought process… Miller crafts an edition that artfully accommodates Dickinson’s process of continuously reworking poems. -- Meg Schoerke * Hudson Review *Cristanne Miller’s edition of Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them is surely the best poetry book of all this past year. Who’d have expected such a surprising, new and fruitful way to read the great poet? -- Don Share * Irish Times *Reading the volume straight through, it’s a pleasure to discover and re-discover Dickinson’s odd metaphors and strange sounds in poems that oscillate between whimsical riddle and hard-nosed philosophical meditation… Emily Dickinson’s Poems delivers. -- Micah Mattix * Washington Free Beacon *This new edition of Dickinson’s poems attempts nothing less than to shift the center of gravity and value in present-day Dickinson studies back to the fascicles, the poet’s own ‘manuscript books.’ Miller has done the community of general readers as well as scholars a huge service in compiling this edition. -- Mary Loeffelholz, Northeastern UniversityA remarkable new resource in a wonderfully accessible format. This edition offers readers a print version of the manuscript poems Dickinson retained and that, Miller argues, Dickinson preserved for posterity. -- Paul Crumbley, Utah State UniversityMiller’s edition gives us something like the Collected Poems Dickinson might have published in different circumstances. An invaluable book for Dickinson scholars and general readers alike. -- Bonnie Costello, Boston University

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Book SynopsisToibin's remarkable insights provide scholars, students, and general readers a fresh encounter with James's well-known texts.Trade ReviewThe book does not disappoint. The essays may be incidental-reviews, introductions, lectures-but each conveys a sense of Toibin's deep engagement with his subject and his writer's way with words. Irish Times 2010 Anyone interested in Toibin's process of transforming the life of James into a novel of immense subtlety should look carefully at a recent volume of essays. -- Jay Parini Chronicle of Higher EducationTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction by Susan M. GriffinChapter 1. Henry James in Ireland: A FootnoteChapter 2. The Haunting of Lamb HouseChapter 3. A More Elaborate Web: Becoming Henry JamesChapter 4. Pure Evil: "The Turn of the Screw"Chapter 5. The Lessons of the MasterChapter 6. Henry James's New YorkChapter 7. A Death, a Book, an Apartment: The Portrait of a LadyChapter 8. Reflective BiographyChapter 9. A Bundle of LettersChapter 10. All a Novelist NeedsChapter 11. The Later JamesesAfterword: SilenceIndex

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Book SynopsisA central character in legends and histories of the Old West, Billy the Kid rivals such western icons as Jesse James and General George Armstrong Custer for the number of books and movies his brief, violent life inspired. This volume introduces readers to the most significant of these written and filmed works.

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Book SynopsisA group biography of five women who played path-breaking roles in the transcendentalist movementIn November 1839, a group of young women in Boston formed a conversation society to answer the great questions of special importance to women: What are we born to do? How shall we do it? The lives and works of the five women who discussed these questions are at the center of Bright Circle, a group biography of remarkable thinkers and artists who played pathbreaking roles in the transcendentalist movement. Transcendentalism remains the most important literary and philosophical movement to have originated in the United States. Most accounts of it, however, trace its emergence to a group of young intellectuals (primarily Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau) dissatisfied with their religious, literary, and social culture. Yet there is a forgotten history of transcendentalism--a submerged counternarrative--that features a network of fiercely intelligent women who were central to the development of the movement even as they found themselves silenced by their culturally-assigned roles as women. Bright Circle is intended to reorient our understanding of transcendentalism: to help us see the movement as a far more collaborative and interactive project between women and men than is commonly understood. It recounts the lives of Mary Moody Emerson, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, Lydia Jackson Emerson, and Margaret Fuller as they developed crucial ideas about the self, nature, and feeling even as they pushed their male counterparts to consider the rights of enslaved people of color and women. Many ideas once considered original to Emerson and Thoreau are shown to have originated with women who had little opportunity of publicly expressing them. Together, the five women of Bright Circle helped form the foundations of American feminism.

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Book SynopsisHarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics.''It was the best of times, it was the worst of times''Set in Paris and London against the backdrop of the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities tells the story of Lucie Manette and her father Alexandre, held captive in Paris's notorious Bastille prison for eighteen years. When Alexandre is finally released, the Manettes find themselves caught up in the lives of a French aristocrat and an English lawyer who compete for the love of Lucie. The ensuing tale of violence and revenge depicts the plight of the peasantry, the brutality of the early revolutionaries, and the menacing shadow of the guillotine.Serialised in Dickens's own literary periodical in 1859, A Tale of Two Cities is one of the best-known works of literature set during the French Revolution.

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Book Synopsis''The men of culture are the true apostles of equality.''Matthew Arnold''s famous series of essays, which were first published in book form under the title Culture and Anarchy in 1869, debate important questions about the nature of culture and society that are as relevant now as they have ever been. Arnold seeks to find out ''what culture really is, what good it can do, what is our own special need of it'' in an age of rapid social change and increasing mechanization. He contrasts culture, ''the study of perfection'', with anarchy, the mood of unrest and uncertainty that pervaded mid-Victorian England. How can individuals be educated, not indoctrinated, and what is the role of the state in disseminating ''sweetness and light''? This edition reproduces the original book version and enables readers to appreciate its immediate historical context as well as the reasons for its continued importance today, in the face of the challenges of multi-culturalism and post-modernism. ABOUT THE SERIE

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Book SynopsisElizabeth Bennet is Austen’s most liberated and appealing heroine, and Pride and Prejudice has remained over most of the past two centuries Austen’s most popular novel. The story turns on the marriage prospects of the five daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, and especially on Elizabeth’s prejudice against the proud and distant Fitzwilliam Darcy. Pride and Prejudice is a romantic comedy that has been read as conservative and feminist, reactionary and revolutionary, rooted in the time of its composition and deliberately timeless. Robert Irvine’s introduction sets the novel in the context of the literary and intellectual history of the period, dealing with such crucial background issues as class relations in Britain, female exclusion from property and power, and the impact of the French Revolution. The introduction and annotations have been expanded and updated for the new edition, and a new appendix of Austen’s juvenilia has been added.Trade Review“Robert P. Irvine’s new edition of Pride and Prejudice is a superb version of Austen’s most frequently taught novel. Broadview’s Austen editions have always been my go-to for the classroom due to their rich introductions and expansive critical apparatuses, and this edition is no exception. Irvine’s cogent and insightful introduction clarifies the novel’s contexts and intertexts for both students and scholars, but what really set this and Broadview’s other Austen editions apart are the excellence and depth of their appendices; this one includes contemporary reviews and judiciously chosen excerpts from conduct books and texts on domestic tourism, on the French Revolution, and on militia regiments, as well as selections from Austen’s letters and juvenilia, all of which richly contextualize Pride and Prejudice for twenty-first-century readers. This edition will be a valuable resource for Austen scholars at all levels, perhaps especially for students who approach the novel with limited knowledge of the period.” — Suzanne L. Barnett, Manhattan College“This is my new go-to edition of Pride and Prejudice. Robert Irvine’s introduction usefully elucidates the social, political, and literary contexts of the novel, and his illuminating explanatory notes are indispensable for today’s student. As with all Broadview Editions, a range of supplementary materials offers productive frameworks for teaching the novel and will benefit both new and veteran readers of Austen.” — Mary-Catherine Harrison, University of Detroit MercyTable of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Jane Austen and Her Time: A Brief Chronology A Note on the Text Map Pride and Prejudice Appendix A: From the Juvenilia (1792–93) 1. From Volume the First: “The Three Sisters” 2. From Volume the Second: “From a young Lady in distress’d Circumstances to her freind” Appendix B: From Austen’s Letters to Her Sister Cassandra 1. To Cassandra Austen, 8–9 January 1799 2. To Cassandra Austen, 11 June 1799 3. To Cassandra Austen, 29 January 1813 4. To Cassandra Austen, 4 February 1813 Appendix C: Contemporary Periodical Reviews of Pride and Prejudice 1. British Critic (February 1813) 2. From Critical Review (March 1813) Appendix D: From the Conduct Books 1. From James Fordyce, Sermons to Young Women (1766) 2. From Dr. John Gregory, A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters (1774) Appendix E: Domestic Tourism 1. From William Watts, The Seats of the Nobility and Gentry (1779) 2. From William Bray, Sketch of a Tour into Derbyshire and Yorkshire (1777) Appendix F: Burke on the French Revolution1. From Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)Appendix G: Discussion of Women’s Role after the French Revolution 1. From Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 2. From Hannah More, Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education (1799) Appendix H: The Militia Regiments on the South Coast of England in 1793–95 1. Women at the Brighton Camp, from The Sussex Weekly Advertiser (1793, 1795) 2. The Mutiny of the Oxfordshire Militia, from The Sussex Weekly Advertiser (1795) Works Cited and Select Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThe Duke's Children is a novel about sorrow and loss, and about a parent s pained discovery that our children inevitably grow to love us less than we love them.Trade Review[The Duke's Children], edited by the American scholar Steven Amarnick, now appears in paperback, as an Oxford World's Classic. At long last, all the children of The Duke's Children are fully born. [...] Entombed for more than a century, the extended, original "Duke's Children" arrives as a stroke of good fortune. The inclusion of 65,000 additional words allows for a statelier pace, a suitable spaciousness wherein a headstrong Plantagenet can reconcile himself to the invincible unreason of young love. * Brad Leithauser, Wall Street Journal *Table of ContentsIntroduction Select Bibliography Note on the Text Chronology The Duke's Children Explanatory Notes Name Index

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Book SynopsisCompleting Juliette Wells' groundbreaking trio of books on Austen's readers, this latest volume revolutionizes our understanding of how Austen came to be viewed as the world's greatest novelist. Wells shows that Austen's global reputation was established not by British scholars, as is commonly believed, but by visionary American writers and collectors, working largely outside academia.Drawing on extensive research, Wells weaves together colorful, compelling case studies of men and women who, from the 1880s to the 1980s, helped readers appreciate Austen's novels, persuasively advocated for her place in the literary canon, and preserved artifacts vital to her legacy.Engagingly written and abundantly illustrated, A New Jane Austen will inform and delight scholars and Austen fans alike.Trade ReviewWells's recovery and championship of these American enthusiasts is descriptive, laudatory and accessible in style ... She gives space and a second hearing to voices and approaches whose love for all things Austen, she believes, has much to teach us. * Times Literary Supplement *If you thought you knew how Jane Austen came to be viewed as the world’s greatest novelist, think again. Wells’s meticulously researched and beautifully written book introduces a fascinating group of individuals whose contributions to Austen studies have long been obscure. After reading this book, I came to care as much about Alberta Burke and Oscar Fay Adams as I do about many of Austen’s characters. -- Professor Jennie Batchelor, University of Kent, UKAn insightful, illuminating and meticulously researched book. Wells animates her subjects with skill, energy and affection in a study that significantly deepens our understanding of early Austen experts and enthusiasts and their contribution to the field. * Lizzie Dunford, Director, Jane Austen's House, UK *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1: Austen for Americans, and for the world: Oscar Fay Adams, critical editor and biographer Chapter 2: Canonizing “the giant Jane”: William Dean Howells, interpreter and advocate Chapter 3: Topaz crosses plus treasures of another kind: Charles Beecher Hogan, collector and keeper of reading journals Chapter 4: A labor of love and friendship: Alberta H. Burke, Averil G. Hassall, and the building of a transatlantic Austen archive Afterword: Jane Austen Anew Bibliography

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Book Synopsis A Sunday Times Book of the Year'This magnificent, highly readable double biography...brings these two driven, complicated women vividly to life' The Financial Times'A gripping saga of a double-biography' Daily Mail'A masterful portrait' The Times'Vastly enjoyable' Literary Review'Deeply absorbing and meticulously researched' The Oldie In 1815, the clever, courted and cherished Annabella Milbanke married the notorious and brilliant Lord Byron. Just one year later, she fled, taking with her their baby daughter, the future Ada Lovelace. Byron himself escaped into exile and died as a revolutionary hero in 1824, aged 36. The one thing he had asked his wife to do was to make sure that their daughter never became a poet. Ada didn't. Brought up by aTrade Review‘A masterful portrait…Miranda Seymour is a marvellous storyteller…it is composed to a considerable extent of scandal, gossip and bad blood, Seymour’s book is hugely entertaining as well as formidably researched, and should not be missed’ -- John Carey * The Sunday Times *‘It was…her brilliance as a scientific and mathematical pioneer that defined Ada…Struggling against her mother’s domineering influence and the sexism of 19th Century England…she also found herself in competition for Annabella’s attention with Medora, Augusta’s daughter and rumoured Byronic bastard.’ -- Alexander Larman * The Times *‘Vastly enjoyable…it is one of the many pleasures of this book that Seymour makes the reader warm to their inconsistencies, to all the inexplicable oppositions of character and action that make them so familiar and human…Brilliant, ebullient, eccentric, vivacious, egocentric and oddly dressed, Ada had her mother’s discipline and her father’s volatility.’ -- Lucy Lethbridge * Literary Review *'As Miranda Seymour writes in this gripping saga of a double-biography…the pretty 20-year-old Annabella Milbanke… [who] fell head over heels in love with mad, bad and dangerous Lord Byron…a serial womaniser who referred to sexual encounters as "hot luncheons"…"her heart was obstinately set upon the reformation of a rake".' -- Ysenda Maxtone Graham * Daily Mail, Book of the Week *'Miranda Seymour is…subtle, astute and experienced an historian…and her zestful prose keeps the reader engaged throughout…in this deeply absorbing and meticulously researched biography of Byron’s wife and daughter.' -- Rupert Christiansen * The Oldie *'It’s more than 160 years since the death of the computer pioneer Ada Lovelace…credited with everything from the invention of the CD to the foundation of Silicon Valley. Miranda Seymour agrees that it is not Ada Lovelace’s skills as a mathematician that matter, but rather her visionary words, 100 years before the birth of electronic computers, about "a new, a vast and a powerful language". In her ambitious...dual biography of Ada and her mother Lady Byron, the power of Lovelace’s imagination and her belief in a "poetry of mathematics" is seen as a direct inheritance from Ada’s father Lord Byron.' -- Mark Bostridge * The Spectator *'There are difficult men, and then there is Lord Byron…the aim of Miranda Seymour’s new book is to put Byron’s wife, Annabella Milbanke, and their increasingly famous daughter, Ada Lovelace, centre stage… Not only were his wife and child still dealing with the rumours of cruelty, incest and sodomy – a then illegal activity which, Seymour…a wonderful writer… speculates, his young wife may have enjoyed – long after his death in 1824; they remained, in emotionally complex ways, in his thrall all their lives.' -- Rachel Cooke * The Observer, Book of the Day *'On BBC4 she was celebrated as "Calculating Ada, the Countess of Computing"…writing about Babbage’s Analytical Engine, whose potential she was the only one to realise…in her extraordinarily prophetic "Notes"…As for Ada’s mother… Annabella Milbanke was married only a year before she left Byron, and he left the country…Miranda Seymour puts everything straight in this magnificent, highly readable double biography, which brings these two driven, complicated women vividly to life…In Seymour’s hands, Annabella’s pioneering work…at last assumes the status it deserves. Her humanity shines through…Ada’s own short life was colourful, chaotic and bedevilled by illness…This is a very fine book. Written with warmth, panache and conviction, its formidable research is lightly worn.' -- Sue Gaisford * The Financial Times *‘The story of this unhappy trio has been told before, but seldom with as much brio as it is here. Miranda Seymour’s particular aim is to rescue Annabella from over a century’s worth of bad press… Only now, in Seymour’s careful hands, is she finally allowed to emerge as a figure who was neither saint nor sinner but somewhere in between.’ -- Kathryn Hughes * The Guardian *‘A seasoned biographer, [Miranda Seymour] brings her considerable powers to the lives of the human jetsam…left to sink or swim in Byron’s wake.' * Weekend Australian *‘A nuanced account, attuned to contemporary preoccupations...Goethe thought the spectacle of the Byrons’ marriage "so poetical that if Lord Byron had invented it, he would hardly have had a more fortunate subject for his genius." Seymour’s account...shows that it has lost none of its power to enthrall.’ * Daily Telegraph *‘Deft and compelling… The late Georgians invented the cult of celebrity and Byron was its first and finest creation. His wife and daughter could not escape fame, they could hope only to avoid notoriety. Annabella’s attempts to preserve her reputation and other people’s attempts to salvage Byron’s have left a pall of smoke from burning letters and diaries, further obscuring the facts that remain. Seymour carries off a delicate balancing act, combining the historian’s proper caution with acute judgements and a dashing narrative pace.’ -- Rosemary Hill * London Review of Books *‘Seymour manages to offer a supremely even-handed and well-evidenced account of the relationship without losing any of the juicier details (Byron’s affair and possible daughter with his half-sister; his predilection for sodomy; his seeming derangement in the face of wedlock)…one of the many strengths of Seymour’s study is its illustration of these accomplished women’s lives apart from the man who deserted them. Seymour is a master of character, and here she gives us two ferociously intelligent women who were deeply ambivalent about motherhood and their place in the male-dominated fields they inhabited.’ -- Corin Throsby * TLS *‘Meticulously researched…A skilled and experienced biographer, Seymour weaves her way through cobwebby curtains of rumor and gossip…The combination of pure mathematics and agonized personal passions gives Seymour’s book an arresting power’ -- Jenny Uglow * New York Review of Books *‘Miranda Seymour joins the dots with a wonderful account of the life of Ada’s mother, Annabella Milbanke, a society heiress and education reformer who outlived both husband and daughter. This double biography…is a scholarly treatment of sensational material, and it’s often as gripping as a soap opera’ * Sunday Times Books of the Year *‘A skilful account of Lord Byron’s disastrous marriage to the heiress Annabella Milbanke…and then on their daughter, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, computing pioneer, who descended into drugs and debt’ * Daily Telegraph *

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Book Synopsis''I hated the office. I hated my work...the only career in life within my reach was that of an author.''The only autobiography by a major Victorian novelist, Trollope''s account offers a fascinating insight into his literary life and opinions. After a miserable childhood and misspent youth, Trollope turned his life around at the age of twenty-six. By 1860 the ''hobbledehoy'' had become both a senior civil servant and a best-selling novelist. He worked for the Post Office for many years and stood unsuccessfully for Parliament. Best-known for the two series of novels grouped loosely around the clerical and political professions, the Barsetshire and Palliser series, in his Autobiography Trollope frankly describes his writing habits. His apparent preoccupation with contracts, deadlines, and earnings, and his account of the remorseless regularity with which he produced his daily quota of words, has divided opinion ever since. This edition reassesses the work''s distinctive qualities and incTrade ReviewTrollope is one of my favourite authors & his autobiography is a portrait of a lovable man who survived a miserable childhood & created a happy life for himself, both personally & professionally as a novelist. * I Prefer Reading *Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION; NOTE ON THE TEXT; CHRONOLOGY; AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY; TROLLOPE ON JANE AUSTEN; 'ON ENGLISH PROSE FICTION AS A RATIONAL AMUSEMENT'; FROM THACKERAY; FROM 'THE GENIUS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE; FROM 'A WALK IN THE WOOD'; APPENDIX: PASSAGES OMITTED FROM THE MANUSCRIPT; EXPLANATORY NOTES; INDEX

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Book SynopsisThomas Hardy (1840-1928) remains one of the best loved of the great English poets. Hardy thought of himself as a poet all his life, although his poetic career only flowered after he had retired from novel-writing in his mid-fifties. Over the next thirty years he wrote the poems that have established him as one of the great and most enduringly popular English poets of the twentieth century. His verse touches all the common themes of human existence: birth, childhood, love, marriage, ageing, death. If Hardy''s age brings anything to them, it is an old man''s ironic and elegiac sense that in life hopes are likely to be defeated and losses sustained, and that the world was not designed for human happiness. This collection is prepared by Samuel Hynes, editor of the Oxford English Texts edition of The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Hardy, and selected from the Oxford Authors critical edition. The introduction and notes illuminate Hardy''s central place in the tradition of English poetry. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.Trade Review'There is no more trusted name when it comes to the work of the great British poets than that of Oxford University Press. If you want the collected works, fully annotated and with scholarly editing then it's OUP you look to ... a series of elegant paperback volumes, each dedicated to a single poet, and with an introduction by an acknowledged expert.' David Thomas, Oxford Times'the selections are excellent, and the books real value for money' Robert Nye, The TimesTable of ContentsWessex Poems ; Poems of the Past and the Present ; Time's Laughingstocks ; Satires of Circumstance ; Moments of Vision ; Late Lyrics and Earlier ; Human Shows ; Winter Words ; Uncollected Poems

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Book SynopsisMorrison brings her genius to this personal inquiry into the significance of African-Americans in the American literary imagination. Through her investigation of black characters, narrative strategies, and idiom in the fiction of white American writers, Morrison provides a perspective sure to alter conventional notions about American literature.Trade ReviewThis is a major work by a major American author… It is an exuberant exercise, conducted by a writer in her prime who knows that her own work makes steady inroads on the unspeakable. -- Diane Middlebrook * Los Angeles Times *In Playing in the Dark, Morrison explores how the temptation to enslave others instead of embracing freedom has shaded our national literature, and how an acceptance of this truth will enable us to see that literature’s struggles and fears, and so better understand its exuberance… Her wisdom is to locate strength in what appears to be weakness. -- Jane Mendelsohn * Voice Literary Supplement *In this beautifully written, immensely quotable study, Morrison attempts to overturn pervasive critical agendas that ignore racial representations in white texts and thus impoverish literary studies… Morrison’s interest is not to designate texts as ‘racist’ but to read the ways that the ‘racial’ operates. -- Linda Krumholz * Signs *Morrison’s delivery of the distinguished Massey lectures at Harvard in 1990 showed off her prowess as critic, for she brings the indomitable spirit of her fiction to her feelings about literature. In Playing in the Dark, the published lectures, Morrison argues that a black, or Africanist, presence exists throughout the history of American literature, and its understanding is essential to any body of criticism. Identifying what she calls ‘the rhetoric of dread and desire,’ then tracing its manifestations through works by Poe, Cather and Hemingway, Morrison believes that to ignore the presence of race in literature is to rob fiction of its power… But the most telling test of any critical argument, at least for those of us who prefer passion to theory, is whether such speculation will send you back to primary sources. By the time I’d finished Playing in the Dark, the floor around me was littered with Huck Finn and James Baldwin and Faulkner. -- Gail Caldwell * Boston Globe *In three compact and skillful essays, Morrison explores and illumines the gaggle of literary devices—conceits, tropes, metaphors—that have been mostly unconsciously deployed by white writers to refract the rays of blackness through the prism of literary silence, repression or avoidance. Morrison ably applies her therapeutic textual intervention to make these rays visible and to imaginatively envision how an Africanist presence was essential in forming and extending an American national literature… [This is her] impressive debut as a critical intellectual. -- Michael Eric Dyson * Chicago Tribune *A brief and compelling dissection of U.S. fiction. -- Paul Skenazy * San Francisco Chronicle *[Her] thesis is an engaging one, and it becomes more so in a sequence of a few compressed but inspired readings of American works, Cather’s Sapphira and the Slave Girl, Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not, and Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. -- Mark Edmundson * Washington Post Book World *Table of Contents1. black matters 2. romancing the shadow 3. disturbing nurses and the kindness of sharks

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Book SynopsisThis new annotated edition inlcudes "Live Oak, with Moss" and prose selections from "Democratic Vistas" and "Specimen Days". The text also presents a collection of Whitman's statements about his role as a poet taken from his notebooks, letters, conversations and newspaper articles.

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Book Synopsis`Why should I not publish my diary? I have often seen reminiscences of people I have never even heard of, and I fail to see - because I do not happen to be a `Somebody'' - why my diary should not be interesting.''The Diary of a Nobody (1892) created a cultural icon, an English archetype. Anxious, accident-prone, occasionally waspish, Charles Pooter has come to be seen as the epitome of English suburban life. His diary chronicles encounters with difficult tradesmen, the delights of home improvements, small parties, minor embarrassments, and problems with his troublesome son. The suburban world he inhabits is hilariously and painfully familiar in its small-mindedness and its essential decency. Both celebration and critique, The Diary of a Nobody has often been imitated, but never bettered. This edition features Weedon Grossmith''s hilarious illustrations and is complemented by an enjoyable introduction discussing the book''s social background and suburban fiction as a genre. ABOUT THE SE

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Book SynopsisTimely reissue of the second volume of Holmes's classic biographies of one of the greatest Romantic poets.Richard Holmes's biography of Coleridge transforms our view of the poet of Kubla Khan' forever. Holmes's Coleridge leaps out of these pages as the brilliant, animated and endlessly provoking poet of genius that he was.This second volume covers the last 30 years of Coleridge's career (1804-1834) during which he travelled restlessly through the Mediterranean, returned to his old haunts in the Lake District and the West Country, and finally settled in Highgate. It was a period of domestic and professional turmoil. His marriage broke up, his opium addiction increased, he quarrelled with Wordsworth, his own son Hartley Coleridge (a gifted poet himself) became an alcoholic. And after a desperate time of transition, Coleridge re-emerged on the literary scene as a new kind of philosophical and meditative author.Trade Review’One of the greatest biographies of the century. Pure joy to read, it is a shimmering portrait of the mature artist veering between brilliance and despair’ Financial Times ’This – and I can’t remember ever thinking this before so strongly – is a biography to grow old with’ Independent

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

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Book SynopsisWhen Tessa de Loo saw Albania for the first time, no foreigners were allowed to enter. Filled with a great curiosity, longing, and a sense of wonderment by this isolated land, de Loo gazed toward the mountains that stood like 'the backs of patiently waiting elephants' across the water from Corfu. Inspired by the famous Thomas Phillips portrait of Lord Byron in Albanian national costume, and enthralled by the image of Lord Byron since her teenage years, she sets about exploring not only his physical journey, but attempts to understand his inner one as well. de Loo stole her way in and found a country suffering the hardships of post-communist reality and the constant and sometimes fractious clash between tradition and modernity. In the tradition of Bruce Chatwin, de Loo, the award-winning author of "The Twins," has written a fascinating travelogue and a very personal reassessment of the a formative chapter in Lord Byron's short life.Trade Review'[One notes] the seriousness and humour with which De Loo laces her contribution to superior travel literature... She gives her report in the form of letters to Byron (My dear friend, My dearest George) alternated with chapters where she recounts Byron's journey. However euphoric De Loo's report is not too affected, it stays lively and informative... is a book of contrasts, surprises and disappointments, written cheerfully and with eye for details.' Vrij Nederland

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Book SynopsisAlongside Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, and Oscar Wilde, Lord Byron possesses a star-quality unlike other classic British authors. His life as poet, philanderer, homosexual, and freedom fighter is legendary, and this new selection from his powerful letters and journals tells the story from the inside, in Byron''s own racy and passionate style. Though Byron is chiefly known as a poet, his letters and journals are one of the glories of English prose literature, and one of the greatest British acts of autobiography, alongside Pepys'' Diary and Boswell''s Journal. This new selection, taken from the authoritative and unbowdlerized edition prepared by Leslie Marchand in the 1970s, not only provides the cream of his informal prose; it amounts to a biography in Byron''s own words. No other English writer lived so remarkable an existence, from rented rooms in Aberdeen to a Nottinghamshire peerage, from European fame to English infamy, and notorious Italian exile to a glorious death in the GrTrade Review... a much-needed new collection of Byron's incomparable letters and journals... Lansdown is... a generous and sensitive appreciator of Byron's literary genius The volume as a whole presents an appropriately engrossing, moving, hilarious, and sometimes heartbreaking sampler of the coruscating brilliance of one of the greater letter writers in the English language. * Jeffery Vail, Keats-Shelley Journal *This selection, which reads like a biography in his own words, is a dramatic and volatile portrait which takes the reader from England to Greece, from fame to infamy. * Robert Tanitch, Mature Times *It is time to talk about Lord Byron again. It is also time to read him again, and I recommend Lansdowns Selected Letters and Journals as an excellent place to start. * Amit Majmuder, Able Muse *Richard Landsdown's book is a selection from Marchand's 12, with copious biographical notes. It is hard to reduce twelve to one, but Lansdown has done well, giving readers a lively sense of "this singularly magnetic individual". * Denis Donoghue, Irish Times *Lansdown does a valiant job of representing the thought processes and publishing dilemmas behind the major works * Corin Throsby, Times Literary Supplement *... it is well-judged, gives good coverage to different periods of Byron's life, and feels substantially representative ... * Keats-Shelley Review *informed, sympathetic and well-researched... deeply interesting and well-chosen selection * Tablet, Robert Carver *This new selection of Byron's proseis arranged chronologically and linked by so much informed, sympathetic and well-researched explanatory material that it amounts to a sort of biography. * The Tablet *This is a deeply interesting and well-chosen selection, unusually clearly printed on the highest-quality pure, white, thick paper, with superb binding: it resembles more a quality production from a private press than a trade publication, and it will certainly last several lifetimes. * The Tablet *splendid volume * Open Letters Monthly *The 500-odd footnoted pages Lansdown has selected are aimed not at scholars and students but at intelligent readers of literary prose. * Independent *This is Byron in the raw and can only add to his legend * Northern Echo *when you line Bryon's letters up like this, one after the other, you can't help but notice the growth of something like art...his prose is extraordinary * Sunday Telegraph, Benjamin Markovitz *Table of ContentsIntroduction Note on the Text and Short Titles A Biographical Bibliography 1: Childhood, Boyhood, Youth: January 1788-June 1809 2: The Grand Tour: June 1809-July 1811 3: Childe Harold and Caroline Lamb: July 1811-June 1813 4: The Giaour and Augusta Leigh: June 1813-July 1814 5: Marriage and Separation: August 1814-April 1816 6: Exile: April-November 1816 7: Venice and Rome: November 1816-June 1818 8: Don Juan and Teresa Guiccioli: July 1818-December 1819 9: Ravenna: December 1819-October 1821 10: Pisa: October 1821-September 1822 11: Genoa: October 1822-July 1823 12: Greece: August 1823-April 1824 Afterword Index

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

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Book SynopsisA revelatory portrait of Chekhov during the most extraordinary artistic surge of his life.In 1886, a twenty-six-year-old Anton Chekhov was publishing short stories, humor pieces, and articles at an astonishing rate, and was still a practicing physician. Yet as he honed his craft and continued to draw inspiration from the vivid characters in his own life, he found himself—to his surprise and occasional embarrassment—admired by a growing legion of fans, including Tolstoy himself. He had not yet succumbed to the ravages of tuberculosis. He was a lively, frank, and funny correspondent and a dedicated mentor. And as Bob Blaisdell discovers, his vivid articles, stories, and plays from this period—when read in conjunction with his correspondence—become a psychological and emotional secret diary. When Chekhov struggled with his increasingly fraught engagement, young couples are continually making their raucous way in and out of relationships on the page. When he was overtaxed by his medical duties, his doctor characters explode or implode. Chekhov’s talented but drunken older brothers and Chekhov’s domineering father became transmuted into characters, yet their emergence from their family's serfdom is roiling beneath the surface. Chekhov could crystalize the human foibles of the people he knew into some of the most memorable figures in literature and drama. In Chekhov Becomes Chekhov, Blaisdell astutely examines the psychological portraits of Chekhov's distinct, carefully observed characters and how they reflect back on their creator during a period when there seemed to be nothing between his imagination and the paper he was writing upon. Trade Review"[Chekhov Becomes Chekhov] captures the turn in Chekhov’s life. Blaisdell’s entertaining book traces this change in Chekhov’s self-perception and allows us to trace the emergence of a literary genius." * The New York Review of Books *"Absorbing, pleasurable, and as unaffected as its subject. [Blaisdell] doesn’t simply (as the title promises) explain how Chekhov came to be Chekhov but rather how impossible it was for him to become anybody else. It’s the sort of book that dedicated readers rarely find, one that doesn’t presume to teach us about Chekhov so much as simply enjoy him. It is like reading along with a fellow lover of Chekhov, attentive to the nuances of the life behind the work." -- Scott Bradfield * The New Republic *“A celebration of the enduring power of literary creativity. The mystery of Chekhov’s genius is thrown into even sharper relief, a rare accomplishment in a genre that’s often the playground of know-it-alls. Blaisdell’s reading reaps handsome rewards. The author’s overflowing enthusiasm never distracts from the main performance––Anton Chekhov’s miraculous transformation from paid humorist to profound commentator on the human condition. As we turn the pages of Chekhov Becomes Chekhov, the author’s delight is ours, too.” * The Wall Street Journal *"A work of love...Blaisdell’s incredibly researched work is a treasure trove of insight and information for scholars and fans of Russian literature. For generations to come, it will be a staple for Chekhov studies." * Library Journal, starred review *“Two years in the life and work of the Russian master, where Blaisdell draws from Chekhov’s personal correspondence and references several previous biographies in conjunction with close readings of his numerous stories. Blaisdell offers meaningful insights into Chekhov’s life and writing.” * Kirkus Reviews *"A penetrating take on Anton Chekhov's development as a writer. Blaisdell seamlessly blends biography and critical analysis to offer a bracing look at a formative period in the life of a literary legend. The result is a stirring portrait of an artist coming into his own." * Publishers Weekly *Praise for Creating Anna Karenina: "That Creating Anna Karenina is a major contribution to Tolstoy scholarship makes it no less of a delight to read. Blaisdell's passion for the subject, and his always-surprising discoveries about the great man and his creation, kept me turning the pages unstoppably. This is a wonderful book." -- Ian Frazier, author of Travels in Siberia, staff writer at The New Yorker“Captivating. How did Anna Karenina evolve from a trivial high-society adulteress, whom Tolstoy despised, into one of the deepest, most sensitive tragic heroines in all of literature? What happened inside Tolstoy to condition this metamorphosis? Creating Anna Karenina is a worthy companion to the novel." -- Janet Fitch * Los Angeles Review of Books *"In its study of the comings and goings of the Tolstoy household at the time of the novel’s composition, Creating Anna Karenina asks if one of the world’s greatest novels was in fact just as much a product of everyday minutia—like who stops by for a visit with what kind of gossip to tell—as it was the culmination of long-simmering ideas about morality and desire." * The New Republic *"A fuller understanding of any work—and especially of its creation—requires the resurrection of its creator and his milieu. Blaisdell manages to do precisely that." -- Boris Dralyuk, Executive Editor, Los Angeles Review of Books, from the Foreword

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Book Synopsis''Clennam rose softly, opened and closed the door without a sound, and passed from the prison, carrying the quiet with him into the turbulent streets.''Introspective and dreamy, Arthur Clennam returns to England from many years abroad to find a people gripped in their self-made social and mental prisons. Against a background of government incompetence and financial scandal, he searches for the key to the affairs of the Dorrit family, prisoners for debt in the Marshalsea. He discovers through the seamstress Amy Dorrit the fulfilment of which he dreams, but only after he learns to understand his own heart. Revelation and redemption haunt Dickens''s portrayal of human relations as fundamentally distorted by class and money. The swindling financier Merdle, the bureaucratic nightmare of the Circumlocution Office, and a teeming cast of characters display the inadequacy of secular morality in the face of contemporary social and political confusion. Mixing humour and pathos, irony and satire, Dickens''s eleventh novel reveals a master of fiction in top form.This new edition, based on the definitive Clarendon text, includes all of Phiz''s original illustrations and a wide-ranging introduction highlighting Dickens''s move to more personal and spiritual concerns. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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Book SynopsisIn the most famous gothic horror story ever told, Shelley confronts the limitations of science, the nature of human cruelty and the pathway to forgiveness.The rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open'Victor Frankenstein's monster is stitched together from the limbs of the dead, taken from the dissecting room and the slaughter-house'. The result is a grotesque being who, rejected by his maker and starved of human companionship, sets out on a journey to seek his revenge. In the most famous gothic horror story ever told, Shelley confronts the limitations of science, the nature of human cruelty and the pathway to forgiveness.Begun when Mary Shelley was only eighteen years old and published two years later, this chilling tale of a young scientist's desire to create life and the consequences of that creation still resonates today.

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Book SynopsisHarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.Written in 1876, this is a novel about a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River.

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Book SynopsisHarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.Why, sometimes I''ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'?When Alice follows the White Rabbit down a?magical?tunnel, her world is changed forever.??In Wonderland, a place where nothing is quite as it seems, Alice meets the Cheshire Cat,?who can disappear at will; the Mad Hatter, who has a fondness for riddles;?and the terrifying Queen?of Hearts, who enjoys nothing more than chopping off people's heads.?Introducing some of the most iconic characters in literature, mad tea parties and games of?flamingo?croquet, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass have captured the hearts and imaginations of readers for over 150 years.?

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Book SynopsisJackie Wullschlager is Deputy Literary Editor of the FT, and one of their principal reviewers. Her last book was INVENTING WONDERLAND: THE LIVES AND FANTASIES OF LEWIS CARROLL, EDWARD LEAR, JM BARRIE.Table of ContentsIntroduction: life stories. The country, 1805-12; master comedy-player, 1812-19; the city, 1819-22; Aladdin at school, 1822-7; fantasies, 1827-31; my time belongs to the heart, 1831-3; Italy, 1833-5; first fairy tale, 1835; walking on knives, 1836-7; le Poete, c'est moi! 1837-40; I belong to the world, 1840-43; Jenny, 1843-4; Winter's Tales, 1844-6; the princess'poet, 1845-6; the shadow, 1846-7; lion of London, 1847; between the wars, 1848-51; Weimar revisited, 1851-6; Dickens, 1856-7; experiments, 1858-9; kiss of the muse, 1860-65; Aladdin's palace of the present, 1865-9; so great a love of life, 1869-75.

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Book SynopsisGerard de Nerval (1805-55) was an inveterate traveller, and made many contributions of travel literature to various periodicals. He was also a prolific poet and wrote many tales including 'Sylvie' (1853), his most read work.Richard Sieburth is Professor of French at New York University. He has translated Walter Benjamin's 'Moscow Diary' and Michel Leiris' 'Nights as Day/Days as Night'.

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Book SynopsisThe Story of Hong Gildong is arguably the single most important work of classic Korean fiction. Like its English counterpart, Robin Hood, it has been adapted into countless movies, television shows, novels and comics. Its memorable lines are known to virtually every Korean by heart. Until now, this incredible 19th century fable has been all but inaccessible to English readers.Hong Gildong, the brilliant but illegitimate son of a government minister, cannot advance in society due to his secondary status, so he leaves home to become the leader of a band of outlaws who rob the rich to give to the poor. On the way to building his own empire and gaining acceptance from his family, Hong Gildong vanquishes assassins, battles monsters, and conquers kingdoms. Minsoo Kang''s expressive and animated new translation finally makes the original text of this classic available in English, re-introducing a noble and righteous outlaw and sharing a beloved hallmark of Korean culture.Trade ReviewHalf fairy tale, half social protest novel, The Story of Hong Gildong is nothing less than the story of modern Korea itself * Washington Post *

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Book SynopsisA reception history of William Blake's 'Jerusalem' that traces the hymn's increasing associations with national identity and explores how different social and political factions, both left and right, have sought to impose their own meaning on building Jerusalem.Trade ReviewThis book is fascinating ... Blake the revolutionary was never more relevant * Michael Church *Jerusalem is a wonderfully researched, enjoyable work about a cultural phenomenon of the utmost familiarity, and it performs its task very successfully...Whittaker proves an excellent, lucid guide to realms of almost unimagined obscurity. * Philip Hensher, The Spectator *Whittaker produces fascinating and surprising insights. His analysis of the different ways that "Jerusalem" has been decontextualized and recontextualized serves as a comprehensive case study in reception history and highlights the complexities of national identity. * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Arrows of Desire 1: And Did Those Feet? Blake and Milton, 1800-1827 2: Our Clouded Hills: Before 'Jerusalem', 1827-1915 3: Mental Fight: Parry, the Great War and its Aftermath, 1916-1922 4: Dark Satanic Mills: Peace and War, 1923-1945 5: Bring Me My Bow: Empire's End, 1945-1976 6: Chariot of Fire: Thatcher's Britain and the End of the Cold War, 1977-1996 7: Green and Pleasant Land: From Blair to Brexit, 1997-2016 Epilogue: Albion

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Book SynopsisA book on the experience of reading Honoré de Balzac's La Comédie humaine which recounts the process of Peter Brooks's own discovery of Balzac.Trade ReviewBrooks never ceases to intrigue readers by his deeply probing work of literary and critical scholarship. * Dana Vuckovic, French Studies *Table of Contents1: Balzac: Reading for More 2: Fangs and Kisses 3: Making Books, Devouring Presses 4: The Shape of Time 5: To Say Everything

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Book SynopsisThis volume in the 21st-Century Oxford Authors series offers students an authoritative, comprehensive selection of the work of Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859). The edition presents De Quincey's work in all of its rich variety, and offers the most thorough and accurate annotation of De Quincey's major works ever compiled.Trade ReviewOne of the themes that emerges in Robert Morrison's impressive edition of De Quincey's selected works, in Oxford University Press's '21st Century Oxford Authors' series, is the extent to which the author was awed by the sheer quantity of print, the mass of books and magazines, circulating among readers in Britain and abroad, on a scale never before known...Although these are not the themes that Robert Morrison chooses to highlight in this elegant and beautifully produced volume, they are nonetheless evident throughout the selection of works that he presents. With his surefooted editorial stance, Morrison leads us through a rich selection of De Quincey's greatest hits. * Josephine McDonagh, Romanticism *Robert Morrison's new edition is a good place to start exploring De Quincey. * Jane Darcy, King's College London, Time Literary Supplement *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction Note on the Text Chronology Part I 1: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater 2: Manuscript and Other Material related to Confessions of an English Opium-Eater 3: From Letters to a Young Man Whose Education has been Neglected [The Literature of Knowledge and The Literature of Power] 4: On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth 5: On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts 6: From Elements of Rhetoric 7: From Samuel Taylor Coleridge 8: From Lake Reminiscences, from 1807 to 1830 9: Second Paper On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts 10: From Style 11: Suspiria de Profundis Part II 12: Manuscript Material related to Suspiria de Profundis 13: From The Works of Alexander Pope 14: The English Mail-Coach 15: Manuscript Material related to The English Mail-Coach 16: From the Preface to Selections Grave and Gay 17: Explanatory Notices of The English Mail-Coach 18: Postscript to On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts 19: Letter to Emily De Quincey 20: From Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 1856 Notes Index

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Book SynopsisWritten in the form of a back-and-forth dialogue between the two authors, this book is about the relationship between feeling and thinking in Dickens''s novels. It presents Dickens as a psychological thinker, whose generative thought may be conscious, unconscious, half-conscious, or in transit between one state and another. This Dickens is always in live process, improvizing from one monthly number to the next, subtly revizing as he goes, shifting moods, tenses, and tones from one paragraph or sentence to the next, as what he writes sparks off what he suddenly, newly, thinks. The chapters approach this inquiry through close readings of chosen passages, including studies of telling revisions in Dickens''s manuscripts that reveal the power of his deepened second thoughts. They also draw on selected moments from his personal letters and prefaces when these more casual writings prove to be sketches or rehearsals for thoughts and feelings that achieve new life when they are transformed into

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Book SynopsisWoman Much Missed is the first book-length study of the many poems that Thomas Hardy composed in the wake of the death of his first wife Emma. It shows how Emma's writings and experiences were fundamental to Hardy's evolution into both a best-selling novelist and into one of the greatest poets of the twentieth centuryTrade ReviewFord's close reading of Hardy's poetry and his analysis of many of his influences and sources is impressive. There's a wealth of fascinating material in this book. * Harriet, Shiny New Books *[O]utstanding: admirably concise but rich in the meticulous close reading at which Ford excels...Mark Ford sets it all out - the necromantic poet, his much-missed wife, and her "shy, pliant, star-struck" but no less ghost-ridden understudy - without ever passing judgement, except on the poetry. Compassionate, intelligent and supremely tactful, this is the deeply humane book all three deserve. * TLS *Table of ContentsNote on Texts Abbreviations Preface Prologue: She Opened the Door What Poetry Meant to Hardy 1: Votary of the Muse 2: The Other Side of Common Emotions Lyonnesse 3: Emma's Devon and Cornwall 4: Courtship The Rift 5: A Preface Without Any Book 6: Divisions Dire and Wry Afterwards 7: Dear Ghost 8: Two Bright-Souled Women Selected Bibliography Acknowledgements

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Book SynopsisThe Romantic myth of Bohemia originated in the early nineteenth century as a way of describing the new conditions faced by artists and writers when the previous system of aristocratic patronage collapsed in the wake of the Age of Revolution. Without the patron system, the artist was free to move around, to seek an audience wherever fortune beckoned. This marketing model likening the artist''s vagabond career to the gypsy life helps to explain part of the bohemian myth, but not all of it. Most bohemians have scant interest in commercial gain and are not so itinerant after all, confining their movements to down-market urban neighbourhoods where the rent is cheap and the morals are loose.This Very Short Introduction traces the myth of Bohemia through its various fictional manifestations, from Henry Murger''s novel Scenes of Bohemian Life (1851) and Giacomo Puccini''s opera La Bohème (1896) to Aki Kaurismäki''s film La vie de Bohème (1992), and Jonathan Larson''s musical Rent (1996). It goes on to examine the history of different bohemian communities, including those in the Latin Quarter of Paris, the Schwabing section of Munich, and the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York. David Weir also considers the politics of Bohemia and traces the careers of the artists Gustave Courbet and Pablo Picasso and the great chanteuses Yvette Guilbert, Fréhel, and Edith Piaf in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris, where a rich tradition of popular culture indebted to Bohemia also developed. Weir concludes with a discussion of the legacy of Bohemia today as something outworn and dying, an exhausted tradition that somehow continues.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Introduction Chapter 1: Fictional Bohemias Chapter 2: Historical Bohemias Chapter 3: Political Bohemias Chapter 4: Artistic Bohemias Conclusion References Further reading Index

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Book SynopsisOxford Student Texts offer an accessible route into the study of texts for A Level including line-by-line notes, and detailed sections covering key themes, issues and contexts. This edition focuses on The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde.

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Book SynopsisVery Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring The Victorian period may have come to an end over 120 years ago, but the Victorians continue to be a vital presence in the modern world. Contemporary Britain is still in large part Victorian in its transport networks, sewage systems, streets, and houses. Victorian cultural legacies, especially in art, science, and literature, are still celebrated. The first to have to grapple with many of the challenges of modern urban society, we continue to look to the Victorians for inspiration and solace. And we are increasingly aware of the ways their global actions shaped, often for ill, the world around us. Much mythologised, inexhaustibly controversial, the Victorians are an inescapable reference point for understanding the modern histories not just of Britain and its empire, but of the world.In The Victorians: A Very Short Introduction Martin Hewitt offers a guide through the thickets of judgement and debate which have grown arounTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction 1: The Victorians in retrospect 2: The Victorian as period 3: Victorianism 4: Victorian configurations 5: Eminent Victorians 6: The Victorian world Further Reading References

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Book SynopsisNow adapted for ITV by Julian Fellowes, Doctor Thorne is the compelling story in which rank, wealth, and personal feeling are pitted against one another. The squire of Greshamsbury has fallen on hard times, and it is incumbent on his son Frank to make a good marriage. But Frank loves the doctor''s niece, Mary Thorne, a girl with no money and mysterious parentage. He faces a terrible dilemma: should he save the estate, or marry the girl he loves? Mary, too, has to battle her feelings, knowing that marrying Frank would ruin his family and fly in the face of his mother''s opposition. Her pride is matched by that of her uncle, Dr Thorne, who has to decide whether to reveal a secret that would resolve Frank''s difficulty, or to uphold the innate merits of his own family heritage.The character of Dr Thorne reflects Trollope''s own contradictory feelings about the value of tradition and the need for change. His subtle portrayal, and the comic skill and gentle satire with which the story is developed, are among the many pleasures of this delightful novel.Trade ReviewReading it made me laugh out loud and admire Trollope's wit, literary wizardry and hilarious digs at the debt-riden gentry's snobbish obsession with pedigree, money and the marriage market. * Val Hennessy, Daily Mail *I read it over Easter & was glued to my chair for hours at a time. * Lyn Baines, I Prefer Reading *Within this descriptive and compelling tale we encounter envy, avarice, brutality and arrogance, but essentially, Doctor Thorne is a beautifully written, nineteenth century tale of loyal, unfailing love. Excellent stuff; I just loved it! * Carrie King, The Writer's Drawer *There is wonderful comedy in Doctor Thorne...The book is a testament to Trollope's belief in decency as a guide to living, and I think we are made all the better for it. * Julian Fellowes, from his Foreword to the Oxford World's Classics edition. *

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Book SynopsisThe Ordnance Survey and Modern Irish Literature offers a fresh new look at the origins of literary modernism in Ireland, tracing a history of Irish writing through James Clarence Mangan, J.M. Synge, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett. Beginning with the archives of the Ordnance Survey, which mapped Ireland between 1824 and 1846, the book argues that one of the sources of Irish modernism lies in the attempt by the Survey to produce a comprehensive archive of a land emerging rapidly into modernity. The Ordnance Survey instituted a practice of depicting the country as modern, fragmented, alienated, and troubled, both diagnosing and representing a landscape burdened with the paradoxes of colonial modernity. Subsequent literature returns in varying ways, both imitative and combative, to the complex representational challenge that the Survey confronts and seeks to surmount. From a colonial mapping project to an engine of nationalist imagining, and finally a framework by which to evade the claims of the postcolonial nation, the Ordnance Survey was a central imaginative source of what makes Irish modernist writing both formally innovative and politically challenging. Drawing on literary theory, studies of space, the history of cartography, postcolonial theory, archive theory, and the field Irish Studies, The Ordnance Survey and Modern Irish Literature paints a picture of Irish writing deeply engaged in the representation of a multi-layered landscape.Trade Reviewan important new study ... startlingly original schema * Sinéad Sturgeon, Times Literary Supplement *... convincingly describes a uniquely Irish modernist aesthetic which is grounded in one of the islands most intense moments of cultural and material cartography, and should prove useful for a wide range of scholars interested in the intersections of history, geography, and literature. * Sinéad Sturgeon, Stephen O'Neill, Irish Studies Review *The Ordnance Survey and Modern Irish Literature opens fertile new ground and will surely encourage scholars with nicely polished looking glasses to further scrutinize the relationship between the British Empire's cartographic project and Ireland's modernist literary projects. * Vivian Valvano Lynch, Léirmheasanna: Reviews *The Survey, for Parsons, is one of the "many possible and actual starting points of a history of Irish modernity and modernism," and what emerges in the book is a brilliant and fresh analysis of the ways in which James Clarence Mangan, John Millington Synge, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett engage with such a cartographical heritage and postcolonial imperative. * Malcolm Sen, Breac: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Maps, Modernity, Modernism I. Archives 1: Archive: The Ordnance Survey Letters 2: Anarchive: James Clarence Mangan among the Ruins II. Scales 3: The Scales of Modernity I: The Aran Islands 4: The Scales of Modernity II: Ulysses' Encyclopedic Narrative Epilogue 5: "Accursed Progenitor!": Beckett's Abstract Landscapes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe forty-two chapters in this book consider Yeats''s early toil, his practical and esoteric concerns as his career developed, his friends and enemies, and how he was and is understood. This Handbook brings together critics and writers who have considered what Yeats wrote and how he wrote, moving between texts and their contexts in ways that will lead the reader through Yeats''s multiple selves as poet, playwright, public figure, and mystic. It assembles a variety of views and adds to a sense of dialogue, the antinomian or deliberately-divided way of thinking that Yeats relished and encouraged. This volume puts that sense of a living dialogue in tune both with the history of criticism on Yeats and also with contemporary critical and ethical debates, not shirking the complexities of Yeats''s more uncomfortable political positions or personal life. It provides one basis from which future Yeats scholarship can continue to participate in the fascination of all the contributors here in the satisfying difficulty of this great writer.Table of ContentsPreface Part 1. Such Friends: Predecessors and Collaborators 1: Claire Lynch: Self-Making 2: Seán Hewitt: Fairy and Folk Tales of Bedford Park 3: Peter McDonald: 'Never to leave that valley': Sligo 4: Francis O'Gorman: Among the Victorians 5: Nicholas Grene: Lady Gregory: Patronage, Collaboration, Mythopoeia 6: Joseph Hassett: John Quinn and the Literary Marketplace 7: Margaret Mills Harper: George Yeats 8: Nicholas Allen: The Writings of Jack Yeats Part 2. In and Through History 9: Geraldine Parsons: Ancient Ireland 10: R.F. Foster: The Ghost of Parnell 11: Edna Longley: Renaissance Italy: 'courtly images' 12: Hugh Haughton: Tradition and Phantasmagoria: Dante and Shakespeare 13: Geraldine Higgins: Talking back to history: From 'September 1913' to 'Easter, 1916' 14: Fran Brearton: 'Knights of the Air': Flight and Modernity 15: David Dwan: Revolution and Counter-Revolution 16: Lauren Arrington: Fascist Italy 17: Alan Gillis: The Thirties: 'The day brings round the night' 18: Adam Hanna: The Senate and the Stage 19: Adam Piette: 'Cast a cold eye': Death in Wartime Part 3. From the Global to the Interplanetary 20: Justin Quinn: Tagore, Pound and World English 21: Nathan Suhr-Sytsma: Africa 22: Jahan Ramazani: Asias 23: Katherine Ebury: 'The Scientific Revolution' 24: Cóilín Parsons: Planets 25: Neil Mann: Visionary Poetics Part 4. Genres and Medias 26: Charles Armstrong: Romanticism and Aestheticism 27: Claire Nally: Rites and Rhymes 28: Tom Walker: The most characteristic poet of modern Europe': Modernist Accommodations 29: Jack Quin: Illustrating 30: Elizabeth Bergmann Loizeaux: Family Business at Dun Emer and Cuala: Collaboration, Contention, and Creativity 31: Emilie Morin: In the Media Part 5. Playing Yeats 32: Susan Cannon Harris: Yeats's Early Plays: Gender, Genre, and Queer Collaboration 33: Akiko Manabe: 'A Country Over Wave': Japan, Noh, Kiogen 34: Zsuzsanna Balázs: Reading the Late Plays: Sexual Unorthodoxies 35: Patrick Lonergan: Playing in Ireland 36: Susan Jones: Dance Part 6. Reading Yeats 37: Stephanie Burt: Imperfect Forms 38: Matthew Campbell: Visionary Comedy 39: Lucy McDiarmid: Masculinities 40: Wayne K. Chapman: Late Style: Art v. Life 41: Warwick Gould: Editing Postscript 42: Vona Groarke: Yeats and Contemporary Poetry: Twelve Speculative Takes

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Book SynopsisThis book analyses Whitman's integrated life, writings, and government work in his urban context to reevaluate the writer and the nation's capital in a time of transformation.Trade ReviewThe virtue of Whitman in Washington is that it keeps tensions in place, and plumbs paradox, palpably wrestling with the legacy of Whitman in the moment and calling us to our own reckoning of him and his work for the future. * Tyler Hoffman, American Literary History *Price works to untangle Whitman's complex, often contradictory, racial attitudes, showing through close readings and rich culture and aesthetic contextualization how his views of African Americans during slavery changed once emancipation occurred... The virtue of Whitman in Washington is that it keeps tensions in place, and plumbs paradox, palpably wrestling with the legacy of Whitman in the moment and calling us to our own reckoning with him and his work for the future. * Tyler Hoffman, American Literary History *No other book has done so much to trace the contradictions inherent in the poet's work for the government and analyze the role it may have played in his poetry and politics. * Martin T. Buinicki, Valparaiso University *Written with clarity and impressively researched, this study offers a remarkable picture of a key period in Whitman's life. * J. W. Miller, CHOICE *Table of ContentsPreface 1: Whitman, Washington, and the Convulsiveness of Civil War 2: Whitman as a Paradoxical 'Missionary to the Wounded' 3: Strayed Cattle: Anti-Pastoralism in Whitman's War Writings 4: Social Calamity, Personal Perturbations, and Office Decorum: How Leaves of Grass Grew Pensive 5: Multi-racial Democracy and Black Democratic Vistas Works Cited

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