Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 Books
Oxford University Press The Great Gatsby
Book Synopsis''Can''t repeat the past? ... Why of course you can!''Often called ''the great American novel'', F. Scott Fitzgerald''s The Great Gatsby is a story of adulterous love, dreams, and betrayal among the super-rich in 1920s New York. The mysterious and wealthy Jay Gatsby throws extravagant parties while trying to reclaim a lost love. Capturing the excitement and glamour of the era Fitzgerald himself named ''the Jazz Age,'' Fitzgerald''s incandescent prose brings to life a shimmering world of hot jazz, flowing gin, and brute power, as Gatsby''s dreams explode into tragedy. A biting satire of America''s illusions about itself, this definitive chronicle of the 1920s is also a timeless exploration of the allure of our own ideals and romantic imaginationand what happens when we fail to live up to them.This authoritative edition is fully annotated with an introduction from Sarah Churchwell, offering new interpretations and fresh ways of thinking about this much-loved masterpiece.ABOUT THE SERIES:
£6.99
HarperCollins Publishers Tender is the Night
Book SynopsisFrom Collins Classics and the author of The Great Gatsby' a marriage unravels in this autobiographical tale.Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.'Set on the French Riviera in the 1920s, American Dick Diver and his wife Nicole are the epitome of chic, living a glamorous lifestyle and entertaining friends at their villa. Young film star Rosemary Hoyt arrives in France and becomes entranced by the couple. It is not long before she is attracted to the enigmatic Dick, but he and his wife hold dark secrets and as their marriage becomes more fractured, Fitzgerald laments the failure of idealism and the carefully constructed trappings of high society in the Roaring Twenties.
£5.62
Vintage Publishing Patrimony
Book SynopsisPatrimony is a true story about the relationship between a father and a son.Philip Roth watches as his eight-six-year-old father, famous for his vigour, his charm and his skill as a raconteur - lovingly called 'the Bard of Newark' - battles with the brain tumour that will kill him.Trade ReviewNobody writes about the American family with more tenderness and honesty * New Statesman *A simple, moving, generous work * Independent on Sunday *The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away - with words. But the Lord giveth back, miraculously, in the form of this book and this family history * Guardian *A true story, told with all the powerful authority and cunning narrative order of a major writer * Sunday Times *His best work since The Counterlife * Observer *
£9.99
Penguin Books Ltd The Best Minds of My Generation
Book SynopsisA unique history of the Beats, in the words of the movement''s most central member, Allen Ginsberg, based on a seminal series of his lecturesIn 1977, twenty years after the publication of his landmark poem ''Howl'', Allen Ginsberg decided it was time to teach a course on the literary history of the Beat Generation - partly to preserve his own memories of those years. The Best Minds of My Generation presents the best of these candid, intimate and illuminating lectures, revealing Kerouac, Burroughs and the rest of the Beats as Ginsberg knew them: friends, confidantes, literary mentors and fellow visionaries in a group who started a revolution.''Marvellous ... spellbinding ... preserving intact the story of the literary movement Ginsberg led, promoted and never ceased to embody'' The New York Times Book Review''An awesome exhaustive feat ... fascinatingly readable'' Sunday Times''Astonishingly intimate ... Full of penetrating insight and fascinating literary gossip, the book is a major contribution to the core Beat canon ... situates the Beats in cultural history in a way that no other exploration of their work does'' San Francisco Chronicle
£11.39
Penguin Books Ltd The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem From
Book SynopsisAn essential anthology that puts contemporary geniuses Eileen Myles and Margaret Atwood in conversation with literary classics Charles Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde about the liberating and unique combination of poetry and proseA Penguin Classic The prose poem has proven one of the most innovative and versatile poetic forms of recent years. In the century-and-a-half since Charles Baudelaire, Emma Lazarus, Oscar Wilde and Ivan Turgenev spread the notion of a new kind of poetry, this genre with an oxymoron for a name has attracted many of our most beloved writers. Yet, even now, this peculiarly rich and expansive form is still misunderstood and overlooked. Here, Jeremy Noel-Tod reconstructs the history of the prose poem for us by selecting the essential pieces of writing, covering a greater chronological sweep and international range than any previous anthology of its kind. Noel-Tod even calls it an alternative history of modern poetry. In The Penguin Book o
£11.69
Oxford University Press The Enchanted April
Book Synopsis''To Those who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine. Small medieval castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to be let For the month of April, above a bay on the Italian Riviera.''Four very different women--the dishevelled and downtrodden Mrs Wilkins, the sad, sweet-faced Mrs Arbuthnot, the formidable widow Mrs Fisher, and the ravishing socialite Lady Caroline Dester--are drawn to the shores of the Mediterranean that April. As each, in turn, blossoms in the warmth of the Italian spring and finds their spirits stirring, quite unexpected changes occur.The Enchanted April (1922) is a deceptive and timely novel immured in a post-war context, a period noted for its wistful and sometimes satiric writings. Von Arnim''s novel is part of this oeuvre and portrays an escape to a carefully described pastoral enclave away from encroaching urbanisation and the spread of new technologies, in an era when the Great War had left many emotionally and physically starved. The journey to San Salvatore by fourTrade ReviewAnchored within the lives of four very different women, this overtly potent novel is endemic of the era in which it was written, whilst simultaneously timeless and all transcending. * David Marx: Book Reviews *Table of ContentsIntroduction Note on the Text Select Bibliography Chronology THE ENCHANTED APRIL Explanatory Notes
£8.54
Oxford University Press Specimen Days
Book SynopsisThough well-known to many Whitman scholars, Specimen Days is an underrated 'late' prose work which chronicles the life of one of the world's best loved and most influential poets.Table of ContentsIntroduction Note on the Text Select Bibliography A Chronology of Walt Whitman SPECIMEN DAYS Appendix A: "Preface. To the Reader in the British Islands" Appendix B: "Additional Note. Written 1887 for the English Edition" Explanatory Notes Glossary of Persons Mentioned
£8.54
Oxford University Press How Novels Work
Book SynopsisNever has contemporary fiction been more widely discussed and passionately analysed; recent years have seen a huge growth in the number of reading groups and in the interest of a non-academic readership in the discussion of how novels work. Drawing on his weekly Guardian column, ''Elements of Fiction'', John Mullan examines novels mostly of the last ten years, many of which have become firm favourites with reading groups. He reveals the rich resources of novelistic technique, setting recent fiction alongside classics of the past. Nick Hornby''s adoption of a female narrator is compared to Daniel Defoe''s; Ian McEwan''s use of weather is set against Austen''s and Hardy''s; Carole Shield''s chapter divisions are likened to Fanny Burney''s. Each section shows how some basic element of fiction is used. Some topics (like plot, dialogue, or location) will appear familiar to most novel readers; others (metanarrative, prolepsis, amplification) will open readers'' eyes to new ways of understanding and appreciating the writer''s craft. How Novels Work explains how the pleasures of novel reading often come from the formal ingenuity of the novelist. It is an entertaining and stimulating exploration of that ingenuity. Addressed to anyone who is interested in the close reading of fiction, it makes visible techniques and effects we are often only half-aware of as we read. It shows that literary criticism is something that all fiction enthusiasts can do. Contemporary novels discussed include: Monica Ali''s Brick Lane; Martin Amis''s Money; Margaret Atwood''s The Blind Assassin; A.S. Byatt''s Possession; Jonathan Coe''s The Rotters'' Club; J.M. Coetzee''s Disgrace; Michael Cunningham''s The Hours; Don DeLillo''s Underworld; Michel Faber''s The Crimson Petal and the White; Ian Fleming''s From Russia with Love; Jonathan Franzen''s The Corrections; Mark Haddon''s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time; Patricia Highsmith''s Ripley under Ground; Alan Hollinghurst''s The Spell; Nick Hornby''s How to Be Good; Ian McEwan''s Atonement; John le Carré''s The Constant Gardener; Andrea Levy''s Small Island; David Mitchell''s Cloud Atlas; Andrew O''Hagan''s Personality; Orhan Pamuk''s My Name Is Red; Ann Patchett''s Bel Canto; Ruth Rendell''s Adam and Eve and Pinch Me; Philip Roth''s The Human Stain; Jonathan Safran Foer''s Everything Is Illuminated; Carol Shields''s Unless; Zadie Smith''s White Teeth; Muriel Spark''s Aiding and Abetting; Graham Swift''s Last Orders; Donna Tartt''s The Secret History; William Trevor''s The Hill Bachelors; and Richard Yates''s Revolutionary Road .Trade ReviewIt strikes me that none of our readers can afford to be without this book! I'm an admirer of John Mullan's 'Guardian' columns, and this is definitely something that we should be reviewing. * Edward Fenton. 'The Oxford Writer *A brilliant crash course in contemporary fiction * Waterstones Books Quarterly *Table of ContentsIntroduction ; 1. Beginning ; 2. Narrating ; 3. People ; 4. Genre ; 5. Voices ; 6. Structure ; 7. Detail ; 8. Style ; 9. Devices ; 10. Literariness ; 11. Ending
£9.02
Oxford University Press The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays
Book SynopsisJ M Synge was one of the key dramatists in the flourishing world of Irish literature at the turn of the century. This volume offers all of Synge''s plays, which range from racy comedy to stark tragedy, all sharing a memorable lyricism. The introduction sets Synge''s work in the context of the Irish literary movement, with special attention to his role as one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre and his work alongside W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory. Includes: Riders to the Sea; The Shadow of the Glen; The Tinker''s Wedding; The Well of the Saints; The Play of the Western World; Deirdre of the Sorrows 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.Table of ContentsRiders to the Sea ; The Shadow of the Glen ; The Tinker's Wedding ; The Well of the Saints ; The Playboy of the Western World ; Deirdre of the Sorrows
£7.59
WW Norton & Co Selected Poems
Book Synopsis"No one else has ever made avant-garde, experimental poems so attractive to both the general and the special reader."—Randall Jarrell
£12.34
The New York Review of Books, Inc Memoirs Of An Anti-Semite
Book Synopsis
£11.69
Lexington Books Teaching Nabokov's Lolita in the #MeToo Era
Book SynopsisTeaching Nabokov’s Lolita in the #MeToo Era and Online seeks to critique Nabokov’s Lolita from the standpoint of its teachability to undergraduate and graduate students in the twenty first century. The #MeToo Movement has spurred a reassessment of what constitutes appropriate professional and sexual relations, a reassessment that has challenged how we teach our students, especially when we are studying controversial works. The time has come to ask ─ in the #MeToo Era and beyond, how do we approach Nabokov’s inflammatory masterpiece, Lolita? How do we read a novel that describes an unpardonable crime? How do we balance analysis of Lolita’s brilliant language and aesthetic complexity with due attention to its troubling content? This volume offers practical and specific answers to this question and includes suggestions for teaching the novel in conventional and online modalities. Essays by distinguished Nabokov scholars explore the multilayered nature of Nabokov’s Lolita by sharing innovative assignments and creative-writing exercises, teaching approaches to especially challenging parts of the text, methodologies of teaching the novel through different mediums from film to theatre, and new critical analyses and interpretations.Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION: The Anxiety of Teaching Nabokov’s Tale of Non-Consent, Elena Rakhimova-SommersPART I: ASKING THE QUESTION: WHY TEACH LOLITA?Chapter 1: (How) Should a Feminist Teach Lolita in the Wake of #MeToo? Marylin EdelsteinChapter 2: Why I Teach Lolita, Anne DwyerPART II: OFFERING SUGGESTIONS: HOW TO TEACH LOLITAChapter 3: Not for the Faint of Heart: My Students’ Lolita Jury Duty, Elena Rakhimova-SommersChapter 4: A Requiem for Dolores: Teaching Lolita in a Russian Prison Literature Course, José VergaraChapter 5: Teaching Lolita in the Department of Drama, Alisa ZhulinaChapter 6: Three Lolitas: The Evolution of a Cultural Icon in Fiction and Film, Julian W. ConnollyChapter 7: Author- Dolores Haze, Charles ByrdChapter 8: Nabokov and #MeToo: Consent, Close Reading, and the Sexualized Workplace, Eric NaimanChapter 9: Resisting Humbert’s Rhetorical Appeals: A Reevaluation of Lolita’s Ethics, Lisa Ryoko WakamiyaChapter 10: Reading Lolita as a Teenage Girl, Francesca Capossela
£57.75
Bloomsbury Reading for Pleasure
Book SynopsisLise Shapiro Sanders is Professor of English Literature and Cultural Studies at Hampshire College, USA. College, USA. Her books include Embodied Utopias: Gender, Social Change, and the Modern Metropolis (2002), Consuming Fantasies: Labor, Leisure, and the London Shopgirl, 1880-1920 (2006), Bodies and Lives in Victorian England: Science, Sexuality, and the Affliction of Being Female (2020), and Temples of Luxury (2024).
£19.79
Penguin Books Ltd Kafkas Other Trial
Book SynopsisIn July 1914, Franz Kafka''s fiancée Felice broke off their engagement in a humiliating public tribunal, surrounded by her friends and family, and the other woman with whom Kafka had recently fallen in love. Broken and bereft, Kafka - at the height of his writing powers - turned the experience into his masterpiece, The Trial, where his lovers became the faceless prosecutors of Josef K. In Kafka''s Other Trial, Canetti explores each letter that Kafka wrote to his fiancée, from their first tender moments together to his final letter and his refusal to reconcile. In this affecting book, he offers moving insights into the creativity of Franz Kafka and the torment he suffered as a man, a lover, and a writer.Trade ReviewPerhaps the most revealing essay on Kafka ever published. At last Kafka is matched in thought and prose * Times Literary Supplement *
£9.49
Oxford University Press Jacobs Room Oxford Worlds Classics
Book Synopsis''What do we seek through millions of pages? Still hopefully turning the pages -- oh, here is Jacob''s room.''Who is Jacob Flanders? Virginia Woolf''s third novel, published in 1922 alongside James Joyce''s Ulysses and T.S. Eliot''s The Waste Land, follows this elusive title character from a sunlit childhood on the Cornwall coast to adventures in Cambridge, London, and Athens. Women fall in love with Jacob; young men desire his company and conversation. But Woolf keeps her scornful, charming protagonist at a distance, enveloping Jacob in mystery as he enters adulthood and the Great War thunders across Europe. A daring work that reimagines every element of the traditional novel, Jacob''s Room tells a new story for a new century.In 1922, Lytton Strachey pronounced Jacob''s Room ''a most wonderful achievementmore like poetry, it seems to me, than anything else, and as such I prophesy immortal.'' One hundred years after its publication, Woolf''s first full-length work of experimental fiction pulls us into the inexhaustible mysteries of intimacy and mortality.Table of ContentsIntroduction Note on the Text Select Bibliography A Chronology of Virginia Woolf Maps Jacob's Room Explanatory Notes
£7.99
Oxford University Press The Well of Loneliness
Book Synopsis''If our love is a sin, then heaven must be full of such tender and selfless sinning as ours.''The Well of Loneliness is among the most famous banned books in history. A pioneering work of literature, Radclyffe Hall''s novel charts the development of a ''female sexual invert'', Stephen Gordon, who from childhood feels an innate sense of masculinity and desire for women. After relocating from Malvern to London and then to Paris, Stephen encounters fellow queer characters from all walks of life, from the sapphic salon hostess Valérie Seymour to the ''miserable army'' of outcasts that frequents the ''merciless, drug-dealing, death-dealing'' bars of Montmartre. Although Stephen and her acquaintances, allies, and antagonists are of their time, Hall''s novel has offered support and solidarity to generations of LGBTQ+ readers, and it continues to shape debates about gender and sexuality today.This edition highlights previously overlooked points of influence, inspiration, and connections with other texts as well as situating the novel in historical contexts. In addition, the editors provide vital insights into Hall''s engagement with religion, sexology, literary history, and popular culture.
£9.49
Oxford University Press Poetry of the Second World War An Anthology
£8.54
Oxford University Press Spanish Literature
Book SynopsisSpanish literature has given the world the figures of Don Quixote and Don Juan, and is responsible for the ''invention'' of the novel in the 16th century. The medieval period produced literature in Castilian, Catalan, Galician, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew, and today there is a flourishing literature in Catalan, Galician, and Basque as well as in Castilian-the language that has became known as ''Spanish''. A multilayered history of exile has produced a transnational literary production, while writers in Spain have engaged with European cultural trends. This Very Short Introduction explores this rich literary history, which resonates with contemporary debates on transnationalism and cultural diversity. The book introduces a general readership to the ways in which Spanish literature has been read, in and outside Spain, explaining misconceptions, outlining the insights of recent scholarship and suggesting new readings. It highlights the precocious modernity of much early modern Spanish literature, and shows how the gap between modern ideas and social reality stimulated creative literary responses in subsequent periods; as well as how contemporary writers have adjusted to Spain''s recent accelerated modernization.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.Table of ContentsIntroduction ; 1. Multilingualism and porous boundaries ; 2. Spanish literature and modernity ; 3. Gender and sexuality ; 4. Cultural patrimony ; Further reading
£9.49
Oxford University Press Ethan Frome
Book Synopsis`It was not so much his great height that marked him ... it was the careless powerful look that he had, in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain.'' Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome tells the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zeena, and her cousin, the enchanting Mattie Silver. In the playing out of this short novel''s powerful and engrossing drama, Edith Wharton constructed her least characteristic and most celebrated book. In its unyielding and shocking pessimism, its bleak demonstration of tragic waste, it is a masterpiece of psychological and emotional realism. In her introduction the distinguished critic Elaine Showalter discusses the background to the novel''s composition and the reasons for its enduring success. 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 Reviewwith each volume having an introduction by an acknowledged expert, and exhaustive notes, the World's Classics are surely the most desirable series and, all-round, the best value for money * Oxford Times *This love story has an emotional intensity made all the more poignant by the inarticulate reticence of Wharton's characters - a ménage à trois consisting of Frome, his querulous wife and her young girl cousin. With quiet assurance, Wharton conveys passion, malaise and tragedy with memorable impact. * Sophia Sackville-West, Evening Standard (London) *Ethan Frome is one of Edith Wharton's most famous novels and rightly so. It is exquisitely written by an author with remarkable observation and imagination. Ethan Frome is a novel which extinguishes hope and blows away happiness but it is so powerful as an analysis of waste that it is nothing short of a masterpiece. * Madeleine Burton, Herts Advertiser *
£6.99
The University of Chicago Press Zionism in Translation
£22.80
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group The Journals of Sylvia Plath
Book SynopsisThe electrifying diaries that are essential reading for anyone moved and fascinated by the life and work of one of America''s most acclaimed poets. Sylvia Plath began keeping a diary as a young child. By the time she was at Smith College, when this book begins, she had settled into a nearly daily routine with her journal, which was also a sourcebook for her writing. Plath once called her journal her “Sargasso,” her repository of imagination, “a litany of dreams, directives, and imperatives,” and in fact these pages contain the germs of most of her work. Plath’s ambitions as a writer were urgent and ultimately all-consuming, requiring of her a heat, a fantastic chaos, even a violence that burned straight through her. The intensity of this struggle is rendered in her journal with an unsparing clarity, revealing both the frequent desperation of her situation and the bravery with which she faced down her demons.
£13.49
Thomas Nelson Publishers A Hobbit a Wardrobe and a Great War
Book SynopsisThe untold story of how the First World War shaped the lives, faith, and writings of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. Giving an unabashedly Christian vision of hope in a world tortured by doubt and disillusionment, the two writers created works that changed the course of literature and shaped the faith of millions---now in paperback.
£13.49
New York Review Books My Father And Myself
Book SynopsisThis heartfelt gay memoir about an adult son uncovering his father’s secrets is “a cross between Dickens’s David Copperfield, Rousseau’s Confessions, and the new pornography” (Donald Windham). When his father died, J. R. Ackerley was shocked to discover that he had led a secret life. And after Ackerley himself died, he left a surprise of his own—this coolly considered, unsparingly honest account of his quest to find out the whole truth about the man who had always eluded him in life. But Ackerley’s pursuit of his father is also an exploration of the self—making My Father and Myself a pioneering record, at once sexually explicit and emotionally charged, of life as a gay man. This witty, sorrowful, and beautiful book is a classic of twentieth-century memoir.
£15.29
Hodder Education Study and Revise for ASAlevel A Streetcar Named
Book SynopsisExam Board: AQA A, AQA B, Edexcel, WJEC, WJEC EduqasLevel: AS/A-levelSubject: English literatureFirst teaching: September 2015First exams: Summer 2016Enable students to achieve their best grade in AS/A-level English Literature with this year-round course companion; designed to instil in-depth textual understanding as students read, analyse and revise A Streetcar Named Desire throughout the course.This Study and Revise guide:- Increases students'' knowledge of A Streetcar Named Desire as they progress through the detailed commentary and contextual information written by experienced teachers and examiners- Develops understanding of characterisation, themes, form, structure and language, equipping students with a rich bank of textual examples to enhance their coursework and exam responses- Builds critical and analytical skills through challenging, thought-provoking que
£15.84
Penguin Books Ltd Africas Tarnished Name
Book SynopsisHe needed to hear Africa speak for itself after a lifetime of hearing Africa spoken about by othersElectrifying essays on the history, complexity, diversity of a continent, from the father of modern African literature.Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York''s underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.
£5.63
Hachette Children's Group A Childs Christmas in Wales
Book SynopsisDylan Thomas''s classic account of his childhood Christmases, with full colour illustrations by Peter Bailey. The special gift edition for Thomas''s centenary now in paperback, with a beautiful gold-foiled cover.All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street...Dylan Thomas''s lyrical account of his childhood Christmases in a small Welsh town, featuring wolves, bears, hippos and Mrs Prothero''s cat, has become deservedly famous. This re-designed edition celebrates the centenary of his birth, and features full colour artwork from illustrator Peter Bailey. A beautiful gift edition of a classic work from one of Britain''s best-loved writers, this is the perfect Christmas present for young readers building their own childhood Christmas memories.Trade ReviewDylan Thomas's classic recollections of his own childhood, A Child's Christmas in Wales, has been republished with beautiful illustrations to mark the centenary of his birth. Perfect for reading aloud -- Sunday Express * Sunday Express *It is one of those books that a child will cling on to as they grow up and cherish for a lifetime to one day pass on to their own children. * THE BOOKBAG *It is one of those books that a child will cling on to as they grow up and cherish for a lifetime to one day pass on to their own children. * THE BOOKBAG *
£7.59
Quarto Publishing PLC The Last Englishman: The Life of J.L. Carr
Book Synopsis'A fine biography...Rogers has done a wonderful job' Daily Telegraph J. L. Carr was the most English of Englishmen: headmaster of a Northamptonshire school, cricket enthusiast and campaigner for the conservation of country churches. But he was also the author of half a dozen utterly unique novels, including his masterpiece, A Month in the Country, and a publisher of some of the most eccentric - and smallest - books ever printed. Byron Roger's acclaimed biography reveals an elusive, quixotic and civic-minded individual with an unswerving sympathy for the underdog, who led his schoolchildren through the streets to hymn the beauty of the cherry trees and paved his garden path with the printing plates for his hand-drawn maps, and whose fiction is quite remarkably autobiographical. Much more than the life of a thoroughly decent man, The Last Englishman is a comic and touching anatomy of the best kind of Englishness. 'Conveying the significance of the author of Carr's Dictionary of Extraordinary Cricketers to anyone unfamiliar with his books, or what may now fairly be called his myth, was always going to be difficult. Somehow, Roger's has managed it' D. J. Taylor, Sunday Times 'A great success, and more life-affirming than F. R. Leavis's entire output' Independent on Sunday
£16.20
HarperCollins Publishers Slowly Down the Ganges
Book SynopsisSlowly Down the Ganges' is seen as a vintage Newby masterpiece, alongside A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush' and Love and War in the Apennines'. Told with Newby''s self-deprecating humour and wry attention to detail, this is a classic of the genre and a window into an enchanting piece of history.On his forty-forth birthday, Eric Newby sets out on an incredible journey: to travel the 1,200-mile length of India''s holy river. In a misguided attempt to keep him out of trouble, Wanda, his life-long travel companion and wife, is to be his fellow boatwoman. Their plan is to begin in the great plain of Hardwar and finish in the Bay of Bengal, but the journey almost immediately becomes markedly slower and more treacherous than either had imagined - running aground sixty-three times in the first six days.Travelling in a variety of unstable boats, as well as by rail, bus and bullock cart, and resting at sandbanks and remote villages, the Newbys encounter engaging characters and glorious mishaps, inTrade Review'All the dusty enchantment and the recurrent dottiness of India - its exasperating charm - are in these pages' Eric Linklater 'Any book by Eric Newby is an event' Len Deighton 'Impossible to describe adequately the flavour of this delicious story … vintage Newby delicately salted with “The Wind in the Willows” and “Three Men in a Boat”' Guardian 'No journey into an unmapped interior to carry the word or find a lost explorer was more obstinately seen through to its end than this do-it-yourself pleasure trip … Mr Newby has fine descriptive gifts and a deft touch in casual portraiture' Times Literary Supplement 'One of the finest and certainly the funniest of British travel writers' Sunday Times
£12.34
Penguin Books Ltd Modernism A Guide to European Literature 18901930
Book SynopsisAn exploration of the ideas, groupings and the social tensions that shaped the transformation of life caused by the changes of modernity in art, science, politics and philosophy
£15.29
Oxford University Press Kafka
Book Synopsis''When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect ...'' So begins Franz Kafka''s most famous story Metamorphosis.Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is among the most intriguing and influential writers of the twentieth century. During his lifetime he worked as a civil servant and published only a handful of short stories, the best known being The Transformation. All three of his novels, The Trial, The Castle, and The Man Who Disappeared [America], were published after his death and helped to found Kafka''s reputation as a uniquely perceptive interpreter of the twentieth century.Kafka''s fiction vividly evokes bizarre situations: a commercial traveller is turned into an insect, a banker is arrested by a mysterious court, a fasting artist starves to death in the name of art, a singing mouse becomes the heroine of her nation. Attending both to Kafka''s crisis-ridden life and to the subtleties of his art, Ritchie Robertson shows how his work explores such characteristically modern themes as the place of the body in culture, the power of institutions over people, and the possibility of religion after Nietzsche had proclaimed ''the death of God''. The result is an up-to-date and accessible portrait of a fascinating author which shows us ways to read and make sense of his perplexing and absorbing work.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.Table of Contents1. Life and Myth ; 2. Reading Kafka ; 3. Bodies ; 4. Institutions ; 5. The Last Things ; References and Further Reading
£9.49
Oxford University Press Colette
Book SynopsisThe power of Colette''s work comes from its modernist storytelling.Colette was a pioneering, ground-breaking modernist writer, but has not always had her originality and worth recognized in Britain. Her work provocatively uses unstable narratives, gaps, silences, fairytale, mythical tropes, and sensual evocations of childhood, sex, and landscapes. In this book, Michèle Roberts examines how Colette invents new forms to express her unsettling content on desire, perversion, ageing, and different forms of love. Delving into four keys texts, Roberts explores Colette''s willingness to break open taboos about older woman and desire, as well as hidden and forbidden aspects of human longings and pleasures.Through these re-readings, Roberts discovers that Colette''s work is even more entrancing, more disturbing, and more original than she first thought.
£18.99
Oxford University Press From Man to Man or Perhaps Only
£10.44
Oxford University Press Sylvia Plath
Book SynopsisSylvia Plath is one of the most influential and iconic American writers of the twentieth century, popular with academic and general audiences alike. Plath, who died at age 30, left behind a body of work that changed the direction of modern poetry, and buttressed second-wave feminism. Her poetry and fiction have been especially important to generations of women readers who have found a powerful reflection of their own emotions and experiences in Plath''s art. In this incisive introduction, leading Plath scholar Heather Clark explores the intersections between Plath''s life and work while discussing key themes in Plath''s poetry collections The Colossus and Ariel, her novel The Bell Jar, and short stories Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, The Wishing Box, and Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom. Clark summarizes the ways in which Plath has been pathologized, and reframes her work within the broader context of poetic confessionalism, biography, feminism, politics, and mental illness.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Black Box
Book SynopsisA foundational reckoning with how Black Americans have used the written word to define and redefine themselves over the course of the country''s history.Distilled over many years from Henry Louis Gates Jr''s legendary Harvard course in African American Studies, The Black Box: Writing the Race is the story of Black self-definition in America through the prism of the writers who have led the way. From Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, to Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison, these writers used words to create a liveable world a home for Black people destined to live in a bitterly racist society.This is a community that defined and transformed itself in defiance of oppression and lies; a collective act of resistance and transcendence that is at the heart of its self-definition. Out of that contested ground has flowered a resilient, creative, powerful, diverse culture formed b
£21.25
Faber & Faber The Waste Land
Book Synopsis** Chosen as a New Statesman, Financial Times, Observer and Sunday Times Book of the Year **A riveting account of the making of T. S. Eliot's celebrated poem The Waste Land on its centenary.A rattling good story' Sunday TelegraphA work of art' Times Literary SupplementThe Waste Land has been called the World's Greatest Poem'. It has been labelled the most truthful poem of its time; it has been branded a masterful fake. More than a century after its publication in 1922, T. S. Eliot's enigmatic masterpiece remains one of the most influential works ever written.In a remarkable feat of biography, Matthew Hollis reconstructs the creation of the poem and brings the material reality of its charged times vividly to life. He reveals the cultural and personal trauma that forged The Waste Land through the lives of its protagonists Ezra Pound, who edited it; Viv
£11.69
Johns Hopkins University Press Annotations to Finnegans Wake
Book SynopsisHe expands his examination of possible textual corruption and adds hundreds of new glosses to help scholars, students, and general readers untangle the dense thicket of allusions that crowds every sentence of Joyce's nearly inscrutable masterpiece.Table of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsConventions and AbbreviationsAnnotations to Finnegans WakeBook IBook IIBook IIIBook IV
£35.10
Pan Macmillan How Proust Can Change Your Life
Book SynopsisWith an introduction by comedian and novelist David BaddielA novel in seven volumes, Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is considered a major literary work of the twentieth century. And even more crucially, one that you should have read by now. However, as one of its most distinguishing features is its staggering length, many of us feel intimidated and perhaps, even, fatigued at the thought of diving in. Alain de Botton’s hilarious and unexpected Proustian manual, is then, the perfect antidote to this problem.In How Proust Can Change Your Life, de Botton masterfully distils what Proust says about friendship, reading, being alive and taking your time, and mixes it with his own, no less nourishing commentary. As de Botton rereads Proust for our collective benefit, we see the continued relevance of his work and the rich and varied insights he can offer us, from how to reinvigorate your relationship to being a good host. This is Proust as you’ve never seen him before. He may even change your life.Trade ReviewIt contains more human interest and play of fancy than most fiction . . . de Botton, in emphasizing Proust's healing, advisory aspects, does us the service of rereading him on our behalf, providing of that vast sacred lake a sweet and lucid distillation -- John Updike * New Yorker *
£10.44
Granta Books And When Did You Last See Your Father?
Book SynopsisADAPTED INTO A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, STARRING JIM BROADBENT "A painful, funny, frightening, moving, marvellous book ... everybody should read it" - Nick Hornby And when did you last see your father? Was it when they burnt the coffin? Put the lid on it? When he exhaled his last breath? When he last sat up and said something? When he last recognized me? When he last smiled? Blake Morrison's memoir is a candid, profoundly moving reflection on his relationship with his father, Arthur. Following Arthur's cancer diagnosis, Blake witnesses the slow erosion of the man he once knew. As his father's battle with the disease unfurls, Blake reflects on growing up with Arthur in Yorkshire and their relationship in the years since he left home. From Arthur's penchant for saving money - and the lengths he'd go to do so - to his wayward behavior on family holidays, Blake's fearless account resists an unwavering celebration of his father, showing him to be outlandish and recalcitrant, as well as capturing his humorous and caring qualities. The result is a rich, nuanced portrait of their relationship, capturing the accommodations and resentments that lie cloistered within familial love. And When Did You Last See Your Father? is a classic of the confessional memoir genre; a raw and shimmering interrogation of father-son relationships, masculinity, selfhood and pride. "This luminous tribute to a beloved dad made me laugh until I cried and cry till my nostrils were raw. A masterpiece - one of those books that you treasure forever" - Val HennessyTrade ReviewA painful, funny, frightening, moving, marvellous book ... everybody should read it -- Nick HornbyTender, honest, angry, loyal, this extraordinary book balances the life, illness and death of a forceful father with the feelings of his independent son * The Times *This luminous tribute to a beloved dad made me laugh until I cried and cry till my nostrils were raw. A masterpiece - one of those books that you treasure forever -- Val HennessyA marvellous piece of family literature. He says much about death and dying and more about life and living. Sometimes harrowing, sometimes funny, above all, unforgettably humane * Sydney Morning Herald *A splendid book ... it leaps with life * Irish Times *More than any novel could be, And when did you last see your father? is the once-only, all-or-nothing book of a poet: the life held up so close to one's face that one can smell it, touch it, marvel at the power of words to unlock and unravel, then pour helter-skelter over our heads this magical brainstorm of memories * Spectator *Joy and pain are both imminent and distant as the book rocks back and forth between life and death and, while it lasts, it is visceral and real * Observer *Wonderful, eternally moving... I don't think anyone has ever written better about the relationship between fathers and sons -- Tony Parsons * Mail on Sunday *
£9.50
Icon Books The Orwell Tour
Book SynopsisOrwell roamed widely, living in London, Southwold, Henley, Wallington, Hayes and Jura. It's this rootless, restless man that writer Oliver Lewis pursues in his innovative and thorough book, The Orwell Tour. A travelogue exploring the life and work of George Orwell through the places he lived, worked and wrote Following in the footsteps of his literary hero, researcher and historian Oliver Lewis set out to visit all the places to have inspired and been lived in by George Orwell. Over three years he travelled from Wigan to Catalonia, Paris to Motihari, Marrakesh to Eton, and in each location explored both how Orwell experienced the place, and how the place now remembers him as a literary icon. Beginning in Northern India, where Orwell was born in 1903, and ending in the Oxfordshire village of Sutton Courtenay, where he was laid to rest in 1950, The Orwell Tour offers an accessible and informative new biography of Orwell through the lens of place. AUTHOR: Oliver Lewis was born in Oxf
£10.44
Faber & Faber The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin
Book SynopsisThis entirely new edition brings together all of Philip Larkin''s poems. In addition to those in Collected Poems (1988), and in the Early Poems and Juvenilia (2005), some unpublished pieces from Larkin''s typescripts and workbooks are included, as well as verse (by turns scurrilous, satirical, affectionate, and sentimental) tucked away in his letters. The manuscript and printed sources have been scrutinized afresh; more detailed accounts than hitherto available of the sources of the text and of dates of composition are provided; and previous accounts of composition dates have been corrected. Variant wordings from Larkin''s typescripts and the early printings are recorded.For the first time, the poems are given a comprehensive commentary. This draws critically upon, and substantially extends, the accumulated scholarship on Larkin, and covers closely relevant historical contexts, persons and places, allusions and echoes, and linguistic usage. Due pro
£21.25
Faber & Faber North
Book SynopsisIn North Seamus Heaney found a myth which allowed him to articulate a vision of Ireland - its people, history and landscape. Here the Irish experience is refracted through images drawn from different parts of the Northern European experience, and the idea of the north allows the poet to contemplate the violence on his home ground in relation to memories of the Scandinavian and English invasions which have marked Irish history so indelibly.
£11.69
HarperCollins Publishers George MacDonald
Book SynopsisAn 365-day anthology of readings from one of the most influential writers of all time, George MacDonald, compiled by CS Lewis himself.MacDonald was a major Christian writer of the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries. He influenced nearly everyone who was a major twentieth century writer (including Lewis Carroll, WH Auden, JRR Tolkien, Walter de la Mare, and CS Lewis. Not only was he a pioneer in the fantasy fiction genre, laying the path for people like Tolkien to write Lord of the Rings, but also a major Christian thinker, which influenced Lewis profoundly.Lewis, in fact, wrote that MacDonald was his master', and said I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself.'These words will challenge and uplift you, and illuminate the faith which underpins all of CS Lewis's popular and enduring writing.Trade Review‘I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself.’- C.S. Lewis on George MacDonald
£9.49
HarperCollins Publishers The Great Gatsby Collins Classics
Book SynopsisHarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited they went there'Jay Gatsby's Long Island mansion throngs with the bright young things of the Roaring Twenties. But Gatsby himself, young, handsome and mysteriously rich, never appears. He stands apart, yearning for something just out of reach Daisy Buchanan, lost years before to another man. One fateful summer, when the pair finally reunite, their actions set in motion events that will unravel their lives, bringing tragedy to all who surround them.Widely considered F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, The Great Gatsby is a tale of excess and obsession, and a work of classic twentieth-century American literature.
£7.59
Penguin Books Ltd The Bestseller Code
Book Synopsis''If you''re someone who dreams of penning a bestseller, read this book'' The Week''What if the success of E.L.James and Dan Brown was not so random? What if there were an algorithm that could pick out the bestseller DNA concealed within these books before they''re published? This is the audacious claim made by Jodie Archer and Matthew Jockers ... Smart, savvy and full of ideas'' Fiona Wilson, The TimesGirl on the Train. Fifty Shades. The Goldfinch. Why do some books capture the whole world''s attention? In The Bestseller Code, Archer and Jockers boldly claim that not only can mega-hits be explained and identified - but they''ve built the algorithm to prove it. Using cutting-edge text mining techniques, they have developed a model that analyses theme, plot, style and character to explain why some books resonate more than others with readers. Provocative, entertaining, and ground-breaking, The Bestseller Code explo
£10.44
Oxford University Press Exiles
Book SynopsisJames Joyce's only surviving play has divided Joyceans for a century. Illuminating the themes of performance that are so prominent throughout Joyce's fiction, Exiles sees Joyce staking his claim definitively within the European theatrical tradition.Trade ReviewThe book is complete with Walsh's useful notes and a well-established text and can safely be recommended to students. * Valérie Bénéjam, James Joyce Quarterly *Table of ContentsIntroduction Composition and Publication History Select Bibliography A Chronology of James Joyce EXILES Appendix A: 'Ibsen's New Drama' Appendix B: 'The Day of the Rabblement' Explanatory Notes
£8.54
Oxford University Press The Jungle Books Oxford Worlds Classics
Book SynopsisColección Oxford World s Classics
£8.65
Oxford University Press War Stories and Poems
Book SynopsisA unique anthology of Kipling''s war stories and poems, from the frontier wars of empire to the Boer War and the First World War. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.Trade ReviewAt the price, this book is a must for everyone interested in humour, war and fine literature. Buy it. * Friends of the Imperial War Museum Newsletter *Table of ContentsStories include: The Drums of the Fore and Aft; A Conference of the Powers; The Light that Failed; The Mutiny of the Mavericks; The Lost Legion; The Way that he Took; A Sahib's War; The Comprehension of Private Copper; The Captive; A Friend of the Family; A Madonna of the Trenches; The Gardener
£10.44
Penguin Books Ltd The Penguin Book of Oulipo
Book SynopsisA TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020''Lovers of word games and literary puzzles will relish this indispensable anthology'' The Guardian''At times, you simply have to stand back in amazement'' Daily Telegraph''An exhilarating feat, it takes its place as the definitive anthology in English for decades to come'' Marina WarnerBrought together for the first time, here are 100 pieces of ''Oulipo'' writing, celebrating the literary group who revelled in maths problems, puzzles, trickery, wordplay and conundrums.Featuring writers including Georges Perec, Raymond Queneau and Italo Calvino, it includes poems, short stories, word games and even recipes. Alongside these famous Oulipians, are ''anticipatory'' wordsmiths who crafted language with unusual constraints and literary tricks, from Jonathan Swift to Lewis Carroll. Philip Terry''s playful selection will appeal to lovers of word gTrade ReviewA superb selection ... Lovers of word games and literary puzzles will relish this indispensable anthology celebrating Perec, Calvino and many others ... Terry's anthology connects us to a wider world of Oulipian wordplay, and beyond. -- Tony White * The Guardian *There is real gold in Terry's selection ... the perfect illustration of the Oulipian balancing act of producing writing that is both wry and moving at the same time. -- Dennis Duncan * Literary Review *At times, you simply have to stand back in amazement ... Philip Terry - himself a fine formalist poet and a distinguished translator of Oulipo - has put together as good a tasting menu as any. The 100 examples of Oulipian and relatedly formalist work here maintain an almost uniform virtuosic ingenuity, and reward reading, even en masse. -- Tim Smith-Laing * Daily Telegraph *Magnificent ... Terry's introduction pays witty homage to Oulipians' obsession with order, for it offers an A-Z guide to the movement's major writers and formulae. -- Mark Ford * Times Literary Supplement *Philip Terry's collection is packed with fabulous, wide-ranging work thatdisplays the full ingenuity, brio and originality of Oulipian ideals in action. An exhilarating feat of in-depth reading, and translating, it takes its place as the definitive anthology in English for decades to come. -- Marina WarnerPhilip Terry's rich anthology of Oulipo writings from Rabelais to Perec [is] a salutary reminder that laughter and linguistic dexterity are as much part of what it means to be human as violence and greed. -- Gabriel Josipovici * Times Literary Supplement *A wonderful anthology. -- Michèle MétailIndispensible, informative and playful ... no two pages are alike, and every page is quite unlike anything else you've ever read. -- Andy Brown * Stride Magazine *
£999.99
