Literary studies: fiction Books
Pearson Education The Odyssey York Notes Advanced everything you
Book SynopsisYork Notes Advanced offer a fresh and accessible approach to English Literature. This market-leading 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 intorduce students to more sophisticated analysis, a range of critical perspectives and wider contexts.
£7.99
Andrews UK Limited One Stop Notes for GCSE on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Book Synopsis
£11.69
The History Press Ltd J.R.R. Tolkien Inspiring Lives
Book SynopsisThe complete guide to the inspiration that is J.R.R. Tolkien
£9.49
University of Pittsburgh Press Imaginative Possibilities
Book Synopsis
£45.00
Association for Scottish Literary Studies William McIlvanneys Laidlaw
Book SynopsisWilliam McIlvanney''s fiction is drawn from the lives and circumstances of the people of the West of Scotland, and is characterised by detailed observation, an accurate ear for language, wit and thoughtful reflection on living and working conditions. Laidlaw is a crime novel: its eponymous detective is both thoughtful and fallible, and the book can be seen as a precursor to the ''Tartan Noir'' works of writers such as Ian Rankin. Beth Dickson''s SCOTNOTE study guide provides a thoughtful analysis of the novel Laidlaw by William McIlvanney, its characters and its settings, for senior school pupils and students at all levels.
£8.18
Association for Scottish Literary Studies Three Novels of Iain Banks Whit The Crow Road and
Book SynopsisIain Banks is one of the most inventive writers in the UK today, producing an extraordinary range of work, from family sagas set in present-day Scotland to science fiction spanning vast gulfs of space and time. He enjoys breaking the arbitrary boundaries of genre, and often creates narratives blending realistic storylines with fantastical elements. Alan MacGillivray''s Scotnote provides an overview of Iain Banks''s fiction, and focuses on three novels in particular: The Wasp Factory, a darkly comic piece of Scottish Gothic fiction; The Crow Road, a cross-generational family saga with elements of a detective story; and Whit, following the adventures of an innocent thrust into modern society. Suitable for senior school pupils and students at all levels.
£8.18
Cambridge University Press Fashionable Fictions and the Currency of the
Book SynopsisOffering a revisionist account of the history of the novel in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Lauren Gillingham contends that nineteenth-century novelists found in fashion a temporal model for articulating a heightened sense of the evanescence of modernity and the cycle of novelty and obsolescence that organizes contemporary life.
£21.84
Cambridge University Press Vulnerable Earth
Book SynopsisVulnerable Earth is a study of the literature of climate crisis. Building on the assumption that the crisis is planetary in scope even if differential and unequal in effects, it examines literary fiction, graphic novels, memoirs about toxic wastes and neo-slavery narratives, mostly from the contemporary decades, but touching upon select antecedents as well, and from all over the world. The study covers texts that fictionalize a ''hydrocrisis'', those that are concerned with species extinction and experimental solutions such as rewilding, fiction and memoirs that are interested in exploring the conversations between and across species in multispecies encounters and, finally, texts that show the linkage between social justice and environmental justice. Focusing on aesthetics, narrative modes and constructions of damaged, wasted and at-risk worlds, this book shows how the literature of climate crisis foregrounds a feature that humans and nonhumans, the living and the non-living share, differentially, with the planet: vulnerability.
£90.00
Cambridge University Press Modernism and Naturalism in British and Irish
Book SynopsisThis book argues that the history of literary modernism is inextricably connected with naturalism. Simon Joyce traces a complex response among aesthetes to the work of Ãmile Zola at the turn of the century, recovering naturalism's assumed compatibility with impressionism as a central cause of their ambivalence. Highlighting a little-studied strain of reflexive naturalism in which Zola's mode of analytical observation is turned upon the authors themselves, Joyce suggests that the confluence of naturalism and impressionism formed the precondition for so-called stream-of-consciousness writing. This style served to influence not only the work of canonical modernists such as Joyce and Woolf, but also that of lesser-known writers such as George Moore, Sarah Grand, and George Egerton.Table of Contents1. How Zola crossed (and didn't cross) the English Channel; 2. Portraits and artists: impressionism and naturalism; 3. A naturalism for Ireland; 4. Proto-sensitivity: naturalism, aestheticism, and the New Woman novel; 5. The voice of witlessness: Virginia Woolf and the poor.
£79.80
Cambridge University Press Insurgent Imaginations
£28.49
Cambridge University Press The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald
Book SynopsisThe Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 2nd edition, provides authoritative critical insight into Scott Fitzgerald's life and writings for both new readers and long-time fans. It features seven new essays and an updated list of suggested reading alongside updated versions of four essays from the first edition.Table of ContentsList of Figures; List of Contributors; Chronology; List of Abbreviations; Introduction: F. Scott Fitzgerald: 'A Writer Only' Michael Nowlin; 1. Youth, Maturation, and Adult Sexuality Kirk Curnutt; 2. The Beautiful and Damned and Literary Decadence Kirsten MacLeod; 3. The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald Bryant Mangum; 4. 'The Modern Old Master': Reading The Great Gatsby Again Sarah Churchwell; 5. 'I Was Gone Again': Disintegration, Fragmentation, and the Recovery of Nicole Warren Diver in Tender Is the Night Erin E. Templeton; 6. Fitzgerald's Expatriate Years and the European Stories J. Gerald Kennedy; 7. Legends of Zelda Anne Margaret Daniel; 8. Fitzgerald's Nonfiction Scott Donaldson; 9. Great Art, Small Art, and Modernist Cachet: Reading Himself and His Contemporaries Michael Nowlin; 10. Fitzgerald and Hollywood Tom Cerasulo; 11. Fitzgerald's Cultural and Critical Reputation in the Twenty-First Century Jackson R. Bryer; Select Bibliography; Index.
£21.84
John Murray Press How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water
'Cruz once again offers a fresh glimpse of immigration, womanhood, aspiration and gentrification . . . told in Cara's unfailingly frank, sometimes hilarious, voice' Washington PostWrite this down: Cara Romero wants to work.When Cara left the Dominican Republic for America, she thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when the Great Recession hits, she is left unemployed and struggling with the rising rent. To survive, Cara must start again. Set up with a job counsellor, Cara's future is to be determined through forms and questionnaires. But answer boxes can't contain her indomitable personality and tempestuous past, and over the course of twelve sessions we learn of her scandals and struggles, hopes and heartbreaks, why she came to America and what really happened to her son. When everything is lost, sometimes the only way forward is to go back to the start.
£15.29
Pearson Education The Bloody Chamber York Notes Advanced
Book SynopsisFull of analysis and interpretation, historical background, discussions and commentaries, York Notes will help you get right to the heart of the text you’re studying, whether it’s poetry, a play or a novel.
£7.99
Pearson Education York Notes Companions Victorian Literature
Book SynopsisDr Beth Palmer is lecturer in English Literature at the University of Surrey (from September 2010). Her teaching interests are wide-ranging and she has taught British and American literature from the 18th to 21st centuries with particular interests in Victorian fiction, women's writing, and the Bronte sisters. Her research interests have centred around Victorian fiction, print culture and the press, readership and women's writing. Forthcoming publications are Women's Authorship and Editorship in Victorian Culture: Sensational Strategies (Oxford University Press, 2011) and A Return to the Common Reader: Print Culture and the Novel, 1850-1900, eds Beth Palmer and Adelene Buckland (Ashgate, 2011). She is currently developing a new research project on the relationship between the popular theatre and the Victorian novel and is also interested in neo-Victorian fiction. Trade Review"The book was well written and flowed neatly, linking ideas and works by different authors, and as ever quotations help to outline different points... The book was very useful, particularly its extended commentary on Dorian Gray" - Kimberley Simpson, English Student Warwick UniversityTable of Contents Part One – Introduction Part Two – A Cultural Overview Part Three – Texts, Writers and Contexts Victorian Poetry – Memory and Mourning: The Brownings, Swinburne and Alfred, Lord Tennyson Extended commentary: Tennyson, In Memoriam The Social Problem Novel: Charles Dickens, Charles Kingsley and Elizabeth Gaskell Extended Commentary: Gaskell, North and South (1855) The Provincial or Regional Novel: Anthony Trollope, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy Extended Commentary: Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd Sensation Fiction: Wilkie Collins, Ellen Wood and Mary Elizabeth Braddon Extended Commentary: Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) Victorian Drama: Henrik Ibsen, Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw Extended Commentary: Shaw, Mrs Warren’s Profession (1893) Aesthetes and Decadents: Walter Pater, Arthur Symonds, J. K. Huysmans and Oscar Wilde Extended Commentary: Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) Part Four: Critical theories and Debates Reader Reception and the popular author New women, New Readers The Literature of Empire and National Identity Science, Eugenics and Evolution Part Five – References and resources Timeline Further reading Index
£10.44
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC The Man with the Golden Typewriter
Book Synopsis''Constantly entertaining ... So much here to amuse and inform'' Observer''These friendly, knockabout letters are a treat'' Sunday Telegraph''Irresistible'' New York Times________________________Before the world-famous Bond films came the world-famous novels. This book tells the story of the man who wrote them and how he created spy fiction''s most compelling hero.In August 1952, Ian Fleming bought a gold-plated typewriter as a present to himself for finishing his first novel, Casino Royale. It marked in glamorous style the arrival of James Bond, agent 007, and the start of a career that saw Fleming become one of the world's most celebrated thriller writers. Before his death in 1964 he produced fourteen bestselling Bond books, two works of non-fiction and the famous children's story Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. Fleming's output was matched by an equally energetic flow of letters. He wrote constantly, to his wife, Trade ReviewIan Fleming writes with a kind of pushing, bloodcurdling elegance. His thrillers are models of fastidious murder * New York Times *Fleming is splendid; he stops at nothing * New Statesman *Entertaining and revealing * The Times *Constantly entertaining … still so much here to amuse and inform … But it is Fleming’s replies to his picky readers that supply the most fun … The most sobering and self-effacing appraisal of Fleming’s achievements emerges from his correspondence with Raymond Chandler, to which Fergus Fleming devotes a brilliant chapter * Observer *It has great appeal … These friendly, knockabout letters are a treat, although the steely eyed attention of the editors makes it difficult to go back to the Bond books with a straight face … Writing to fans and friends, Fleming is modest, quick-witted and able to stand at substantial ironic distance from the books he refers to as “opuscula” * Sunday Telegraph *To anyone who has ever worked on a book — writing one, editing one, marketing one, publishing one — or, heck, even just read one, this volume is a giant stalk of catnip ... Irresistible ... Fergus Fleming, Ian’s nephew and an author in his own right, writes the introduction and serves as the collection’s Jeeves throughout, providing his services when droll and illuminating context is required but otherwise quietly stepping out of the way * New York Times *A revelation … The letters are full of good jokes … Interesting and entertaining -- Nicholas Lezard * Guardian *If Bond was Fleming's carbon copy, then this book is the photographic negative of the novels ... Edited and elaborated upon by his nephew Fergus, this book collates those letters, painting a fascinating portrait of Bond's creator, revealing a man of keen wit and charm ... they progress in tandem with the Bond saga, offering insight into his bestselling series * Gentleman's Journal *
£15.29
Amberley Publishing At Home with the Brontes
Book SynopsisThe story of the world-famous home of the Bronte sisters. Explores the impact of the Brontes' home on their writing and what it was like for their successors living in a literary shrine. New exhibition focusing on the building starts at the Bronte Parsonage Museum in April 2013.
£14.39
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Orwell
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewFascinating book. * The Times *A brilliant biography of Orwell, reminding us that his work is as relevant as ever. * Irish Independent *Excellent. ***** * The Telegraph *Bradford gives a compelling analysis … pleasing idiosyncrasy, odd surprises and well-landed punches. * The Oldie *This authoritative and informative study is a fascinating examination of his life and ideas * Choice Magazine *Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgements Introduction 1. The Misfit and the Pure Hell of St Cyprian’s 2. Eton 3. Burma 4. Slumming it 5. Was Orwell an Antisemite? 6. Hopeless 7. Books, Marriage, and the Journey North 8. Spain and Serious Politics 9. Between Wars 10. War 11. Explosive Journalism 12. Changes 13. Animal Farm 14. Jura 15. Nineteen Eighty-Four Epilogue Bibliography Index
£15.00
Canongate Books The Shadow of the Empire
Book Synopsis''Brilliant'' -Publishers Weekly Starred ReviewThe legendary Judge Dee Renjie investigates a high-profile murder case in this intriguing companion novel to Inspector Chen and the Private Kitchen Murder set in seventh-century China.Judge Dee Renjie, Empress Wu''s newly appointed Imperial Circuit Supervisor for the Tang Empire, is visiting provinces surrounding the grand capital of Chang''an. One night a knife is thrown through his window with a cryptic note attached: ''A high-flying dragon will have something to regret!''Minutes after the ominous warning appears, Judge Dee is approached by an emissary of Internal Minister Wu, Empress Wu''s nephew. Minister Wu wants Judge Dee to investigate a high-profile murder supposedly committed by the well-known poetess and courtesan, Xuanji, who locals believe is possessed by the spirit of a black fox.Why is Minister Wu interested in Xuanji? Despite Xuanji confessing to th
£22.79
Little, Brown Book Group Backing into the Spotlight
Book Synopsis''Backing into the Spotlight is a hilarious and an unashamedly non-PC memoir . . . Now in his eighth decade, Whitehall is a fine raconteur, gloriously unreconstructed and still deeply suspicious of modernity'' Daily MailStanding in front of a full-length mirror in my dressing room at ITV studios, waiting to go on to the set of Backchat, I had a brief conversation with my reflection.''Michael, what the f*** do you think you''re doing?''Theatrical agent Michael Whitehall spent a career pushing others into the spotlight. He had been involved behind the scenes with the careers of many prominent actors, including Colin Firth, Richard Griffiths, Daniel Day-Lewis, Tom Courtenay, Ian Ogilvy, Judi Dench, Edward Fox, Michael Fassbender, Angela Thorne and Nigel Havers.But then, much to his surprise, his son Jack becomes a successful comedian and actor and decides that his new comedy partner should be his father. WhitehaTrade ReviewBacking into the Spotlight is a hilarious and an unashamedly non-PC memoir . . . Now in his eighth decade, Whitehall is a fine raconteur, gloriously unreconstructed and still deeply suspicious of modernity * Daily Mail *Hugely entertaining -- Neil Armstrong * Mail on Sunday *This excellent memoir stands on its own merits, full of great stories told with Michael's dry wit * Choice *
£10.44
Little, Brown Book Group Orwell
Book SynopsisOver seventy years since his premature death, George Orwell (1903-50) has become one of the most significant figures in western literature. His two dystopian masterpieces, Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) have together sold over 40 million copies. Even now, he continues to exert a decisive influence on our understanding of international power-politics. D.J. Taylor''s new biography, the first full-length study for 20 years, draws on a wide range of previously unseen material - newly-discovered letters to old girlfriends and professional colleagues, the recollections of the dwindling band of people who remember him, new information about his life in the early 1930s - to produce a definitive portrait of this complex, driven and self-mythologising man.Trade ReviewIf you want to know how [Orwell] became a great writer, and a tormented figure, and a national treasure, David Taylor's New Life is the doubleplusgood place to start * New Statesman *An astonishing verdict on George Orwell's virtues - and his vices . . . [The book] adds fresh material to give a fuller portrait of the real Eric Blair . . . it is hard to imagine him portrayed more sensitively or judiciously than he is here * Telegraph *Incisive * The Times *Mr. Taylor's Orwell: The New Life is a new text that completes the picture by fleshing out Orwell's emotional life with recently discovered letters and interviews with the last living people to have known him. Expertly told and subtle in judgment, The New Life will not be the last word in the ever-growing field of Orwelliana, but it will become its central monument * Wall Street Journal *Fluent, careful, nuanced and revealing . . . Taylor is excellent on how Orwell's childhood nourished and shaped his life . . . Taylor presents Orwell's deficiencies unstintingly while at the same time managing not to toxify the subject . . . illuminating, fair-minded work * Irish Independent *A full, richly detailed, admiring, illuminating account that nevertheless retains a sprightly, sometimes ironic pithiness . . . With a wealth of contextual information and access to extensive archival material, Mr Taylor assuredly traces his subject's picaresque progress * Country Life *Taylor is not only a compelling writer, but is also able to distil the essence of a notoriously elusive man . . . his prose [is] brisk and entertaining without skimping on detail . . . Orwell: the New Life comes as close to recreating the man as can be expected, and at a time when his insights are most needed * Critic *Taylor presents Orwell's deficiencies unstintingly while at the same time managing not to toxify the subject . . . [an] illuminating, fair-minded work * Irish Independent *A tour de force . . . if you read this definitive book, you'll almost feel you've been George Orwell himself * Daily Mail *This is a book which tells the story of how and why George Orwell became George Orwell, what it means and why it matters * Spectator *Orwell's voice comes alive again in a biography drawing on newly discovered letters * Guardian *[A] rich, vivid and comprehensive profile . . . DJ Taylor's landmark biography feels like the closest we will ever get to the truth behind [Orwell] * Business Post *Taylor keeps man and myth in play, always countering our idea of Orwell with Orwell's idea of himself and rendering his odd, infuriating, delightful character from the various shadows he threw * Tablet *An astonishing verdict on George Orwell's virtues - and his vices . . . [The book] adds fresh material to give a fuller portrait of the real Eric Blair . . . it is hard to imagine him portrayed more sensitively or judiciously than he is here * Telegraph *
£24.00
Edinburgh University Press Us Modernism at Continents End
Book SynopsisThis book is first to historicise and theorise the significance of the early twentieth-century little art colony as a uniquely modern social formation within a global network of modernist activity and production.
£81.00
Edinburgh University Press The Edinburgh Companion to D. H. Lawrence and the
Book SynopsisThis book includes twenty-eight innovative chapters by specialists from across the arts, reassessing Lawrence's relationship to aesthetic categories and specific art forms in their historical and critical contexts.
£153.00
Manchester University Press Ecogothic
Book SynopsisThis book will provide the first study of how the Gothic engages with ecocritical ideas. Ecocriticism has frequently explored images of environmental catastrophe, the wilderness, the idea of home, constructions of 'nature', and images of the post-apocalypse – images which are also central to a certain type of Gothic literature. By exploring the relationship between the ecocritical aspects of the Gothic and the Gothic elements of the ecocritical, this book provides a new way of looking at both the Gothic and ecocriticism. Writers discussed include Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood, Margaret Atwood, Cormac McCarthy, Dan Simmons and Rana Dasgupta. The volume thus explores writing and film across various national contexts including Britain, America and Canada, as well as giving due consideration to how such issues might be discussed within a global context.Trade Review‘As a platform for the development of a distinct ecoGothic theoretical framework, this volume certainly provides some tantalizing ideas, but equally, it invites further academic study surrounding ‘dark ecology’ as a convention to explore contemporary socio-political anxieties.’Teresa Fitzpatrick, The Dark Arts Journal Volume 3.1 April 2017 -- .Table of Contents1. Introduction: defining the ecoGothic - Andrew Smith and William Hughes 2. Panic, paranoia, and pathos: ecocriticism in the eighteenth-century Gothic novel - Lisa Kröger 3. Monsters on the Ice and global warming: From Mary Shelley and Sir John Franklin to Margaret Atwood and Dan Simmons - Catherine Lanone 4. Algernon Blackwood: nature and spirit - David Punter 5. 'A strange kind of evil': superficial paganism and false ecology in The Wicker Man - William Hughes 6. Bodies on earth: exploring sites of the Canadian ecoGothic - Alanna F. Bondar 7. Margaret Atwood's monsters in the Canadian ecoGothic - Shoshannah Ganz 8. From Salem Witch to Blair Witch: the Puritan Influence on American Gothic nature -Tom J. Hillard 9. 'The Blank Darkness Outside': Ambrose Bierce and wilderness Gothic at the end of the frontier - Kevin Corstorphine 10. Locating subjectivity in the post-apocalypse: the American Gothic journeys of Jack Kerouac, Cormac McCarthy, and Jim Crace - Andrew Smith 11. A Gothic apocalypse: encountering the monstrous in American cinema - Susan J. Tyburski 12. The riddle was the angel in the house: towards an American ecofeminist Gothic - Emily Carr 13. 'Uncanny States': global ecoGothic and the world-ecology in Rana Dasgupta's Tokyo Cancelled - Sharae Deckard Index
£19.70
Manchester University Press Kazuo Ishiguro
Book SynopsisThis is the first work of criticism to reappraise all of this leading transnational author’s film, television, short fiction and novel writing following his award of the Nobel Prize in 2017. Comprising contributions from world-leading Ishiguro scholars as well as new voices, the collection offers chapters devoted to each of the major works, each of which draws out thematic and stylistic connections with his body of work, both literary and filmic. This timely study, following the critical and popular success of his most recent fiction and his recognition by the Nobel committee, is the only comprehensive study of an author at the forefront of world literature.Table of ContentsIntroduction: ‘This is the way it feels to me’: the writings of Kazuo Ishiguro – Kristian Shaw and Peter Sloane1 Diaspora, trauma, spectrality and world literary writing in A Pale View of Hills – Emily Horton2 Eloquence and empathy in A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World – Cynthia F. Wong3 Ishiguro's tempered presentational realism and practice – Rebecca Karni4 ‘An inevitable course’: political responsibility in The Remains of the Day – Sara Upstone5 Klara in the junkyard: on loneliness in The Unconsoled – Bruce Robbins6 Novel dysfunction in When We Were Orphans – Andrew Bennett7 Empathy and the ethics of posthuman reading in Never Let Me Go – Peter Sloane8 Nocturnes, hope, and ‘that croony nostalgia music’ – Yugin Teo9 Disinterring the English sublime: haunted atmospherics in The Buried Giant – Kristian Shaw10 Klara and the humans: agency, Hannah Arendt and forgiveness – Robert Eaglestone11 Kazuo Ishiguro’s film and TV scriptwriting – Anni ShenAfterword – Sebastian GroesIndex
£72.00
Manchester University Press The Clockwork Testament or: Enderby's End: By
Book SynopsisFirst published in 1974, this novel is a semi-autobiographical reflection on the author’s experience of having been the subject of Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange in 1971. This is the end of Enderby, Anthony Burgess’s finest comic creation. Dyspeptic and obese, this is the account of his last day as a visiting professor in New York, and his last day on Earth. The Irwell Edition of The Clockwork Testament will provide new information about the genesis of the novel, gleaned from a series of drafts and typescripts recently discovered in the archive of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation (IABF) in Manchester, as well as printing a deleted chapter for the first time in English.Table of ContentsGeneral Editors’ foreword Acknowledgements Introduction THE CLOCKWORK TESTAMENT Appendices 1. French Overture 2. ‘American Policies in Vietnam’ 3. Outlines of three novels 4. Reader’s report on The Clockwork Testament 5. ‘The Nature of Violence’ Notes
£72.00
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The Bronte Sisters: Life, Loss and Literature
Book SynopsisJane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall...these fictional masterpieces are all recognised as landmarks of English Literature. Still inspirational and challenging to readers today, upon release in the mid-nineteenth century they caused a veritable sensation, chiefly due to their subject matter and unconventional styles. But the greatest sensation of all came when these books were revealed to be the creations of women. This is the story of those women and of the forces that shaped them into trailblazing writers. From early childhood, literature and the world of books held the attention and sparked the fertile imaginations of the emotionally intense and fascinating Bronte siblings. Beset by tragedy, three outlets existed for their grief and their creative talents; they escaped into books, into the wild moorlands surrounding their home and into their own rich inner lives and an intricate play-world born out of their collective imaginations. In this new study, Catherine Rayner offers a full and fascinating exploration of the formative years of these bright children, taking us on a journey from their earliest years to their tragically early deaths. The Bronte girls grew into women who were unafraid to write themselves into territories previously only visited by male authors. In addition, they tackled all the taboo subjects of their time; divorce, child abuse, bigamy, domestic violence, class, female depression and mental illness. Nothing was beyond their scope and it is especially for this ability and determination to speak for women, the marginalised and the disadvantaged that they are remembered and celebrated today, two hundred years after their births in the quiet Yorkshire village of Haworth. This timely release offers a fresh perspective on a fascinating family and a unique trio of talented and trailblazing sisters whose books will doubtless continue to haunt and inspire for generations to come.
£13.49
John Murray Press What to Read Next: How to Make Books Part of Your
Book SynopsisFor a whole year on his train to work, Stig Abell read books from across genres and time periods. Then he wrote about them, and their impact on our culture and his own life.The result is a work of many things: a brisk guide to the canon of Western literature; an intimate engagement with writers from Shakespeare to JK Rowling, Marcel Proust to Zora Neale Hurston; a wise and funny celebration of the power of words; and a meditation on mental unrest and how to tackle it. It will help you discover new books to love, give you the confidence to give up on those that you don't, and remind you of ones that you already do.What to Read Next has been written for the reader in all of us.Trade ReviewBeyond splendid . . . a brilliant idea, beautifully realised * Bill Bryson *Far more than a guide, this is a book lover's companion, a wise friend's recommendations, an answer to the question "what to read next" and why. I wish I knew half as much about books as Stig Abell * Kit de Waal *A witty, warm and wonderfully wise celebration of the written word. A huge treat * Lucy Foley *It's like being a member of the best book club ever * Frank Skinner *Stig's books are must-haves. He educates, informs and entertains in equal measure * Dermot O'Leary *This is Abell at his best - frank, funny and fascinating. Did Clive James and Bill Bryson have a secret love child? * Lee Child *A thoroughly enjoyable saunter through some great, and not so great, works of literature * Times Literary Supplement *A book for Christmas and the fireside, but a book also for all days and weathers, even for a chilly morning commuter train - once commuting is back in fashion -- Allan Massie * Scotsman *It is always interesting when an intelligent reader comes fresh to books you have known for a long time . . . the whole book is a lucky dip: put in your thumb, pull out a plum, and relish it. * Yorkshire Post *
£10.44
Salem Press Inc Notable American Novelists
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.
£193.50
Amazon Publishing Before I Go
Book SynopsisKnown for the wit of her writing, Catherine Cookson was the UK’s most widely read novelist during her lifetime. When her Estate discovered this never-before-published memoir in the attic of her home, it was an astonishing find. Before I Go is the definitive story of her life, in the author’s own candid words. While Cookson had authored previous autobiographies, none have truly touched upon the tragedy and personal anguish she experienced until now. For the first time, she reveals the worst years of her life—her constant battles with illness and a series of devastating miscarriages, the damaging jealousy of her friend and her struggle to be taken seriously as a writer. But what shines through most is her strength in the face of adversity, her deep love for her husband, Tom, the solace she found in her art and her unmistakable character. Before I Go is an inspiring story of resilience and a must for any Cookson fan.
£8.54
Melville House Publishing Ernest Hemingway: The Last Interview: And Other
Book Synopsis
£12.59
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Imaginaries of Domesticity and Women’s Work in
Book SynopsisExamines a variety of texts from late Enlightenment Germany to provide a nuanced rethinking of women's roles as wives, mothers, and housekeepers, creators of the cultural spaces of the home. Domesticity, a set of practices, emotions, and values culminating in a nourishing emotional and physical ambience - the "feel" of being at home and belonging - connects one's subjective experience to the material environment. In late Enlightenment Germany, writers from Joachim Heinrich Campe and Theodor von Hippel to Sophie La Roche imagined the home as a space where true "humanity" would be realized. The high-stakes cultural formation of domesticity was part of a complex discourse on the pursuit of happiness as a life well lived. As domesticity became a surrogate for the lost religious certainties of the vanishing pre-modern world, an obsessive anxiety concerning its delineation in discourse suggested its importance but also its fragility and the consequences of its failure. Karin A. Wurst examines didactic novels by female authors, autobiographical texts, popular philosophy, advice literature, periodicals, pedagogical tracts, and household manuals in pursuit of a nuanced rethinking of the relationship between women's roles as wives, mothers, and housekeepers and as creators of the cultural spaces of the home. She finds that the high-value imaginary of domesticity encouraged women's agency insofar as they were tasked with turning theoretical ideals into everyday practice. At the same time, her book shows the under-illuminated contribution of women's work to social and political change from within the patriarchal structures of eighteenth-century Germany.Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1: Intimacies of Domestic Life: Love and Marriage Chapter 2: Labor of Love: Mothering as a Dimension of Domesticity Chapter 3: Feeling at Home: The Eloquence of Material Culture in the Home Chapter 4: With Head, Heart, and Hand: Domesticity and Women's Labor Conclusion Bibliography Index
£76.50
Catapult Best Debut Short Stories 2025
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£14.39
University of Wales Press Introducing the Medieval Fox
Book SynopsisThis book is an entertaining, informative and enchanting introduction to its subject – just as those medieval banes of the farmyard, the Fox and the Vixen, were enchanting in escapades from fables and funny tales, from beastly epic poems and bestiaries, and from medieval material culture (in Danish wall-paintings and Dutch manuscript illustrations and statues, stained-glass and Italian mosaics). There exist books on medieval fox stories and on the animal’s iconography, which are important themes in this study, but this book is the first holistic approach to all types of manifestations of foxes in medieval culture – from medical recipes and fur trade, to Bible commentaries and hunting manuals.Table of ContentsPreface List of Illustrations Introduction The Fox and Medieval Religion The Fox and Medieval Scholarship The Fox and Medieval Literature Postscript Appendix Endnotes Further Reading Select Bibliography Index
£12.34
Liverpool University Press Walter Besant: The Business of Literature and the
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
£98.55
Canongate Books The Underground Sea
Book SynopsisThe Underground Sea is a succinct, urgent collection of writing from John Berger''s archive. It brings together for the first time his work on mineworkers and the miners'' strikes and has been edited as a set of actions for today. Publication of The Underground Sea marks the 40th Anniversary of the 1984-5 Strike, at a time when people are rediscovering the necessity, power and possibilities of collective action.Including transcripts and image-essay of his rarely-seen BBC programme, Germinal; interviews and his essay ''Miners'', it places itself in the heart of a Derbyshire mining village, with reflections on the everyday life of a typical pit community. Berger grapples with the politics of witness as he studies the miners'' labour and the wider community shaped in service to this work. Reflecting on their precarity, he goes back to Zola''s novel for hope that ''a new world is germinating underneath the ground. And when it arrives, it will crack open the
£15.29
Canongate Books The Underground Sea
Book SynopsisA succinct, urgent and never-before seen collection of Berger's writing on mineworkers and miners' strikes celebrating both his acclaimed writing and deep-rooted politics
£10.44
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Great Books of China
Book SynopsisDiscover – or rediscover – the major achievements of Chinese culture and civilization. Great Books of China offers concise introductions – each of them accompanied by generous quotation (in English) from the book in question – to sixty-six works in the canon of Chinese literature. The books chosen reflect the chronological and thematic breadth of Chinese literary tradition, ranging from such classics as The Book of Songs and the Confucian Analects, through popular dramas and novels (The Romance of the Western Chamber; The Water Margin), twentieth-century political and biographical works (Quotations from Chairman Mao, the autobiography of the last emperor) and modern novels that are little known in the West (Memories of South Peking, Six Chapters from a Cadre School Life). Frances Wood presents a comprehensive, accessible and richly informative primer for the uninitiated; a box of delights that opens up an entire literary culture to the inquisitive reader.Trade ReviewPRAISE FOR FRANCES WOOD'S CHINA'S FIRST EMPEROR AND HIS TERRACOTTA WARRIORS: 'Fascinating book' Mail on Sunday. 'Wry, concise and authoritative' Times Literary Supplement. '[Wood's] close reading of these sources offers fresh insight' Publishers Weekly. '[An] interesting and informative work' Booklist. 'Wonderfully descriptive' * Library Journal *
£10.44
Verso Books Balzacs Paris
Book SynopsisIn Balzac’s vast Human Comedy, a body of ninety-one completed novels and stories, he endeavoured to create a complete picture of contemporary French society and manners. Within this work is a loving ode to Paris and an incomparable introduction to the first capital of the modern world.To this ageless city he makes a declaration of love in an accumulation of finely observed detail - the cafés, landmarks, avenues, parks - and captures the populace in countless meticulously drawn portraits: its lawyers, grisettes, journalists, concierges, usurers, salesmen, speculators.Balzac gathered the elements of this Paris by sauntering through it. ‘To saunter is a science,’ he writes, ‘it is the gastronomy of the eye. To take a walk is to vegetate; to saunter is to live.’ Eric Hazan follows in Balzac’s footsteps, criss-crossing the city in the novelist’s outsize boots, running between printers, publishers, coffee merchants, mistre
£15.19
The Lilliput Press Ltd Yell, Sam, If You Still Can: Le Tiers Temps
Book SynopsisThis novel by Maylis Besserie, the first of her Irish trilogy, shows us Samuel Beckett at the end of his life in 1989, living in Le Tiers-Temps retirement home. It is as if Beckett has come to live in one of his own stage productions, peopled with strange, unhinged individuals, waiting for the end of days. Yell, Sam, If You Still Can is filled with voices. From diary notes to clinical reports to daily menus, cool medical voices provide a counterpoint to Beckett himself, who reflects on his increasingly fragile existence. He remains playful, rueful, and aware of the dramatic irony that has brought him to live in the room next door to Winnie, surrounded by grotesques like Hamm or Lucky, abandoned by his wife Suzanne who died before him. Besserie delights in Beckett’s bilingualism and plays back and forth between the francophone and anglophone properties of language, summoning James Joyce as Beckett reminisces about evenings the two spent together singing, talking and drinking. Largely written in the library of the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Besserie has kept the hum of Irish voices throughout this work. Yell, Sam, If You Still Can won the “Goncourt du premier roman”, the prestigious French literary prize for first time novelists, just before the country went into lockdown. Besserie is now planning a further two novels that will explore the links between Ireland and France and is touted as the new star of the French literary world. Financial Times Book of the Year 2022Trade Review‘Maylis Besserie and her translator Clíona Ní Ríordáin create Beckett's inner voice so convincingly in the novel that at times you think it might have been written by the man himself.’ Judge David Mills, Scott Moncrieff Prize Recounting the last days of a writer whose main subject was finitude is a challenge. Maylis Besserie pulls off the exercise with finesse. -- Virginie Block-Lainé * Elle *The last months of Samuel Beckett’s life are tested by the inner voice of the writer in the retirement home where he ended his life. Lunar and poignant. -- Antoine Perraud * La Croix *The author uses her radio-producing skills to create a polyphonic world with a collage of distinct and interweaving documents and voices. -- Kathleen Shields * Dublin Review of Books *remarkable ... [Besserie] carries it off so convincingly, with such elan and poetic force ... she evokes, subtly and with great skill, a fitting intensity, bleak lyricism and black humour ... Yell, Sam, If You Still Can is the work of a writer already in command of a resonant style and a broad artistic reach JOHN BANVILLE, THE GUARDIAN'imaginative, informed, magnificently written book about Samuel Beckett's last days in a Parisian nursing home ... full of Beckettian gallows humour' ANNE CUNNINGHAM, MEATH CHRONICLE'genuinely impressive ... heartfelt emotion and sincerity are alternated with bathetic absurdity to dizzying but wonderful effect ... experimental, bold, and polyphonic ... a thought-provoking and powerful achievement.' Eva Wall, Curiouser Books'Besserie generates a pleasing mixture of black humour and occasional lyrical intensity. Credit here must also go to Clíona Ní Ríordáin, for her adroit translation ... [a] provocative, intriguing, rewarding and audacious act of imagination' Eoghan Smith, Books IrelandFINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR‘Remarkable’ SUNDAY INDEPENDENT‘Seriously impressive … the action bounces between Paris and Ireland and is remarkably evocative … this exquisite, moving, and ambitious book would be a great present for any fiction reader in your life.’ SARAH HARTE, IRISH EXAMINERA captivating and emotionally charged narrative. MIDIA MOHAMMADI, IRISH INDEPENDENT
£12.35
Peepal Tree Press Ltd Equal to Mystery: In Search of Harold Sonny Ladoo
Book SynopsisWhen the Trinidadian novelist, Harold Sonny Ladoo was found dead soon after the publication of his classic novel, No Pain Like This Body, for Christopher Laird, it became an obsession to try to discover the writer behind the work and what had brought about his untimely end. Equal to Mystery – words written by Ladoo – is the record of that pursuit.When, as the editor of a Trinidadian literary journal in the radical years of the early 1970s, Christopher Laird was sent Harold Sonny Ladoo’s novel, No Pain Like This Body (1973) to review, he knew he was looking at something revolutionary in Caribbean fiction. It is a novel that has recently been republished as a Penguin Modern Classic. But the next news Laird heard of Ladoo was that he had returned to Trinidad from Canada and had been found dead – very probably murdered – in the canefields outside his family’s village of McBean. Laird follows in the path of Ladoo to Canada, where he went to make a name for himself as a writer, and tracks him as a student and young married man through conversations with his widow and other family members. He looks in detail at his relationships with two Canadian writers, Dennis Lee and Peter Such, who supported his work, and in Lee’s case published him. Here there is an acute account of their meetings across the line of race, of the mix of generous contact and elusive flight in their relationship. Above all, with access to Ladoo’s unpublished material -- short stories and fragments of the vast body of fiction he announced he was writing -- Laird offers acute analysis of what is there, honest bafflement about just what Ladoo was up to, with a tragic sense of the talent that was lost through his untimely death.
£15.29
Girls Gone By Publishers Encyclopaedia of Girls' School Stories: Volume
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£17.29
Bodleian Library Dickens The Funny Bits
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£15.29
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC The Poet Lucan: Studies in Rhetorical Epic
Book SynopsisLucan's epic on the Civil War has dodged in and out of fashion. Widely admired in the 17th and 18th centuries, it came in the 19th and 20th to be criticised by comparison with Virgil's Aeneid. The latter was established as the standard by which all other epic poets fail. Lucan's besetting "fault" was seen as his reliance on rhetoric. This work sets out to consider the rules of ancient rhetoric as learned by Lucan and applied in his epic. Four themes commmon to poetry and to the declamatory schools (tyranny, storms, the occult and dreams) are closely analyzed in relation to the poem, and the poem is itself set in the context of the Neronian age.
£18.74
CONNELL PUBLISHING LTD The Connell Guide To Charles Dickens's Hard Times
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£8.54
Association for Scottish Literary Studies The Crooked Dividend: Essays on Muriel Spark
Book SynopsisThis volume of fourteen essays offers fresh insight into the life and work of Muriel Spark (19182006), one of Scotland's most internationally celebrated writers. Known for her cultural cosmopolitanism and sharp wit, Spark was prolific as a novelist, poet, short story writer, dramatist, and literary critic. The Crooked Dividend provides a thorough overview of Spark's multifaceted work and examines the cultural, literary, and personal frameworks that shaped her writing. These essays contextualise Spark within post-war British culture, analyse the influence of longstanding Scottish literary traditions on her work, and explore the full range of her literary output through topics such as gender, religion, and politics. In a comprehensive examination of her publications, archive material, and colourful career, this volume celebrates and reaffirms Spark's international legacy.
£17.95
Persephone Books Ltd Expiation
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£16.00
Great Northern Books Ltd Priestley At Kissing Tree House: A Memoir
Book SynopsisA lost and now found memoir of J.B. Priestleywritten by someone who knew him better than most others: his own personal secretary. Written in the 1980s, though never published, the manuscript has only recently resurfaced. It provides a unique, warm and intimate portrait of the private, hidden life, of one of the twentieth century's most widely read authors and great public figures. The book reveals Priestley's daily routines, his writing habits, hobbies, weaknesses, eccentricities and his correspondence with a variety of organisations and people, including family, and other renowned authors and figures of the twentieth century; a warts and all portrait, truthful, revealing, moving. A book which in the end, displays great love for its subject. It is a memoir that also reveals the somewhat old-fashioned role of a live-in personal secretary / assistant to an author and the close relationship that develops with such a job. KISSING TREE HOUSE Kissing Tree House is the name of the house where Priestley and his wife, the archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes, lived from December 1959 until his death in 1984. The house is in the small village of Alveston about four miles from Stratford. Of historical interest, the house has been a listed property since 1972. Listing NGR: SP2344156412 Priestley had many guests and held many dinner parties at Kissing Tree; he was visited there by many famous figures. "One day I very much hope that Mrs. Batten will write a book about me because, as I have pointed out to her, she knows me better than anyone else who might want to write such a book" J.B. Priestley, 26th June, 1979
£9.49
Double 9 Books Stories From Le Morte D'Arthur And The Mabinogion
Book SynopsisStories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion, authored by Beatrice E. Clay, presents a captivating collection of Arthurian legends and Welsh myths. Drawing from two iconic medieval sources, the book weaves together tales of chivalry, magic, and also heroic quests. Le Morte D'Arthur, written by Sir Thomas Malory, forms the foundation of the Arthurian legends. Clay skillfully selects and retells key episodes from this vast work, recounting the adventures of King Arthur, his knights, and the legendary sword, Excalibur. The narrative delves into the complexities of Arthur's reign, his noble deeds, and the tragic downfall of the Round Table. The Mabinogion, a compilation of Welsh myths and other one legends, which adds another layer of enchantment to the book. Clay brings to life the mystical world of ancient Wales, featuring and captivating stories of gods, heroes, and also otherworldly beings. Readers are immersed in magical encounters, ancient prophecies, and other one dramatic battles, capturing the essence of Welsh folklore. Through her eloquent prose, Beatrice E. Clay breathes new life into these timeless tales, preserving their essence while making them accessible to modern readers.
£10.79
