Literary studies: fiction Books

Book SynopsisAltrive Tales was carefully prepared by Hogg in 1832 as the opening volume in a planned twelve-volume collected prose fiction series, intended as the culmination of his career as a storyteller.Trade ReviewThis is a fascinating volume, full of surprises, challenges and confirmations ! Gillian Hughes' editorial activities are exemplary: the textual decisions and apparatus inspire confidence and assent, and the genesis of the Tales is pieced together in an introduction which is a serious piece of scholarly detecitve work in its own right!she offers finely-observed, stimulating exegiesis which will encourage further readings, and the explanatory notes offer some wonderfully suggestive analogies. Alltogether, the volume is a revelation. There is a very strong case for its reissue in a paperback accessible to students. This is a fascinating volume, full of surprises, challenges and confirmations ! Gillian Hughes' editorial activities are exemplary: the textual decisions and apparatus inspire confidence and assent, and the genesis of the Tales is pieced together in an introduction which is a serious piece of scholarly detecitve work in its own right!she offers finely-observed, stimulating exegiesis which will encourage further readings, and the explanatory notes offer some wonderfully suggestive analogies. Alltogether, the volume is a revelation. There is a very strong case for its reissue in a paperback accessible to students.

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Book SynopsisThis book argues that Woolf's preoccupation with the literary past had a profound impact on the content and structure of her novels.Trade ReviewA number of interesting and powerful themes emerge in this study of Virginia Woolf's relation to the literary past! The strong account of Woolf's relation to tradition in Virginia Woolf's Novels and the Literary Past will surely facilitate further study of the gender politics of Modernism. An important intervention at a time in which there is particular interest in Woolf's relationship to the past. -- Professor Laura Marcus, University of Sussex Essential and intellectually provocative reading for Woolf scholars and for common readers alike. -- Vara Neverow, President of the International Virginia Woolf Society A number of interesting and powerful themes emerge in this study of Virginia Woolf's relation to the literary past! The strong account of Woolf's relation to tradition in Virginia Woolf's Novels and the Literary Past will surely facilitate further study of the gender politics of Modernism. An important intervention at a time in which there is particular interest in Woolf's relationship to the past. Essential and intellectually provocative reading for Woolf scholars and for common readers alike.Table of ContentsContents; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Introduction; Chapter 1. From Woman Reader to Woman Writer: The Voyage Out; Chapter 2. Tradition and Exploration in Night and Day; Chapter 3. Literature and Survival: Jacob's Room and Mrs Dalloway; Chapter 4. To the Lighthouse and the Ghost of Leslie Stephen; Chapter 5. Rewriting Literary History in Orlando; Chapter 6. 'Lives Together': Literary and Spiritual Autobiographies; in The Waves; Chapter 7. Bringing the Literary Past to Life in Between the Acts; Conclusion; Select Bibliography.

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Book Synopsis`Simple congratulations are in order at the outset, to the editors and publisher [...] of the projected Collected Works of James Hogg. It has taken a long time for Hogg to be recognised as one of the most notable Scottish writers, and it can fairly be said that the process of getting him into full and clear focus is still far from complete. That process is immeasurably helped by the provision of proper and unbowdlerised texts (in many eases for the first time), and in this the ongoing Collected Works will be a milestone [...] we have an author of unique interest, force, and originality.'' Edwin Morgan, Scottish Literary Journal`Edinburgh University Press are also to be praised for the elegant presentation of the books. It is wonderful that at last we are going to have a collected edition of this important author without bowdlerisation or linguistic interference [...]. These books of Hogg''s have been wonderfully presented and edited. Hogg''s own idiosyncratic style has been left untouched.'' Ian Gridiron Smith, Studies in Scottish Literature`It may take some time, hut when the current Collected Works reaches its culmination, Hogg''s great novel should seem a little less oddly unique, and some other astounding books [...] may receive their share of belated glory.'' Liam McIlvanney, London Review of Books`[T]he Stirling/Smith Carolina edition of Horn''s works is proving one of the major scholarly publishing events of the decade.'' Penny Fielding, Studies in Hogg''s and his World`A quiet revolution in Scottish literary studies has been going on over the past 10 years. The Stirling/South Carolina research edition of the collected works of James Hogg has been steadily forcing a reassessment of one of our best-known but least-read authors.'' James Rohertson, The HeraldHogg played a significant role in the success and notoriety of Blackwood''s Edinburgh Magazine, which was founded in 1817 by the Edinburgh publisher and bookseller, William Blackwood. Hogg''s relationships with Blackwood, the magazine, and the major contributors were central to both his literary and personal life. From 1817 until his death in 1835 he published more than one hundred works in `Maga'', as the magazine came to be known among the contributors, and wrote perhaps another forty for the magazine that were not published there. His contributions showcase the diversity of his talent and his achievement as a writer; his published works include a great variety of songs and lyric poetry, narrative and dramatic poetry, sketches of rural and farming life, review essays, ballads, short stories, satirical pieces, and even a `screed'' on politics.This edition for the first time collects Hogg''s `Maga'' publications, as well as provides a comprehensive introduction to Hogg''s connection with Blackwood''s and full explanatory and textual notes to the works. The volume also includes works Hogg intended for Blackwood''s and which have now been edited from extant manuscripts

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Book SynopsisThe work of Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Carlyle and Mathew Arnold are explored in relation to ideas about fiction, journalism, drama, poetry, new women, gothic, horror and the Victorian sage.Table of ContentsChronology; Introduction to Victorian literature: Perspectives, Relationships, Contexts; Generic Traffic in Strangely Modern Places: Locating the Victorians (again); Observing 'Public Culture' in mid-Victorian Britain: an Ant colony, Ivy and Two Poets named 'Alfred'; 'Civilization and its Discontents': Productivity, Power and Governance in Dickens's Hard Times; Concluding Summary; 1: Novel Sensations in Early and Mid-Victorian Fiction: from 'Boz' to Middlemarch; Dickens the Novelist, Dickens the Journalist: Modes of Publication, Sketches, and the Making of The Old Curiosity Shop; Moving Sensations: Performing The Old Curiosity Shop; The Novel at mid-Century: Forming a Victorian Canon; Variable Sensations of the Real: Middlemarch; Concluding Summary; 2: Theatrical Exchanges: Gendered Subjectivity and Identity Trials in the Dramatic Imagination; Locating, Regulating and Expanding the Effects of 'Theatricality' in Victorian Culture; Melodrama and Public History: the Sexualized Conflicts of Empire in Boucicault's Jessie Brown; Masculinity, Melodrama and Mind: The Frozen Deep; Earnest Laughter, Queer Laughter: Fictive, Multiple identities in Farcical Dramas by Dickens and Wilde; Concluding Summary 3: Poetry: Dramatic Monologues and Critical Dialogues; Voicing Sensation in Tennyson and Browning: the Dramatic Monologue and Cultural Debate; Controversies of Faith: Doubt, Evolution and Love in a Modern Age; Making Women's Voices: Fairy Tales, Christian Tales, Old Wives' Tales; Concluding Summary 4: Victorians in Critical Time: Fin de Siecle and Sage-culture; Victorians at the end of Time: Thomas Hardy, New Women and Gothic; Horrors at the fin de siecle; Victorian Sages in Critical Time: Carlyle and Arnold; Concluding Summary; Conclusion: Neo-Victorianism, Postmodernism and Underground Cultures; Student Resources; Electronic sources and reference sources; Glossary; Guide to further reading; Index.

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Book SynopsisWalter Scott and Modernity argues that, far from turning away from modernity to indulge a nostalgic vision of the past, Scott uses the past as means of exploring key problems in the modern world.This study includes critical introductions to some of the most widely read poems published in nineteenth-century Britain (which are also the most scandalously neglected), and insights into the narrative strategies and ideological interests of some of Scott''s greatest novels. It explores the impact of the French revolution on attitudes to tradition, national heritage, historical change and modernity in the romantic period, considers how the experience of empire influenced ideas about civilized identity, and how ideas of progress could be used both to rationalise the violence of empire and to counteract demands for political reform. It also shows how current issues of debate - from relations between Western and Islamic cultures, to the political significance of the private conscience in a liberal society - areTrade ReviewThis is a major, sophisticated book which looks at Scott in relation to that 'modernity' which is usually claimed to have its roots in the Enlightenment and whose possible supersession by way of the 'postmodern' dominates contemporarry cultural debate. -- Claire Lamont, University of Newcastle Scott is becoming more widely recognized as a figure of central importance in British Romanticism as well as in the history of the novel and as a generative figure in the development of Scottish literature. Lincoln's persuasive and incisive book clarifies the political and philosophical as well as literary terms of that achievement. -- Ian Duncan, University of California, Berkeley a solid and significant contribution to Scott criticism -- Evan Gottlieb European Romantic Review [Lincoln's] treatment of The Heart of Mid-Lothian should be singled out for its skilful framing of the novel within the history of Anglo-Scottish relations. Walter Scott and Modernity extends the practice of creating a "useable past" to literary history. This is a major, sophisticated book which looks at Scott in relation to that 'modernity' which is usually claimed to have its roots in the Enlightenment and whose possible supersession by way of the 'postmodern' dominates contemporarry cultural debate. Scott is becoming more widely recognized as a figure of central importance in British Romanticism as well as in the history of the novel and as a generative figure in the development of Scottish literature. Lincoln's persuasive and incisive book clarifies the political and philosophical as well as literary terms of that achievement. a solid and significant contribution to Scott criticismTable of ContentsPreface; Chapter One. Introduction; Chapter Two. Towards the Modern Nation: The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley; Chapter Three. The Condition of England: Ivanhoe and Kenilworth; Chapter Four. Western Identities and the Orient: Guy Mannering, The Talisman; Chapter Five. Commerce, civilization, war and the Highlands: Rob Roy, A Legend of the Wars of Montrose; Chapter Six. Liberal Dilemmas. Scott and Covenanting Tradition: The Tale of Old Mortality, The Heart of Mid-Lothian; Chapter Seven. Liberal Dilemmas. Liberty or alienation? The Bride of Lammermoor, Redgauntlet; Chapter Eight. Postscript; Bibliography.

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Book SynopsisThis new general introduction emphasises the importance of the short story to an understanding of modern fiction.In twenty succinct chapters, the study paints a complete portrait of the short story - its history, culture, aesthetics and economics. European innovators such as Chekhov, Flaubert and Kafka are compared to Irish, New Zealand and British practitioners such as Joyce, Mansfield and Carter as well as writers in the American tradition, from Hawthorne and Poe to Barthelme and Carver.Fresh attention is paid to experimental, postcolonial and popular fiction alongside developments in Anglo-American, Hispanic and European literature. Critical approaches to the short story are debated and reassessed, while discussion of the short story is related to contemporary critical theory. In what promises to be essential reading for students and academics, the study sets out to prove that the short story remains vital to the emerging culture of the twenty-first century.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; List of Illustrations; Preface; 1: Origins: From Folk-Tale to Art-Tale; 2: Riddles, Hoaxes and Conundrums; 3: Memory, Modernity and Orality; 4: Poe, O. Henry and the Well-Made Story; 5: Economies of Scale: The Short Story in England; 6: Brought to Book: The Anthology and Its Uses; 7: Between the Lines: Dissidence and the Short Story; 8: Enclosed Readings: The Short Story and the Academy; 9: Modernism and the Short Story; 10: The Short Story Cycle; 11: Character Parts: Identity in the Short Story; 12: Localities: Centres and Margins; 13: Tales of the City; 14: Romance and the Fragment; 15: Ghost Stories and Other Hauntings; 16: Popular Short Fictions; 17: The Experimental Text; 18: Postmodernism and the Short Story; 19: Minimalism/Dirty Realism/Hyperrealism; 20: Voyages Out: The Postcolonial Short Story; Bibliography; Index.

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Book SynopsisFrom the 1940s until the 1960s, Elizabeth Bowen wrote essays for radio broadcast, improvised interviews on the air, and gave public lectures. These public appearances were a trial for her because she had a pronounced stammer. She thought her recorded voice sounded alien, like the voice of a stranger. She complained that reading her own work on the air gave her lockjaw. Nevertheless, she was a spellbinding talker, as her many friends commented. Invited to university campuses in the US and the UK, she delivered important speeches on language, the fear of pleasure, character in fiction, the idea of American homes, and other topics. Inveterately curious, Bowen wrote about media as a personal and social force.Without fuss or pretension, she documents her love of cinema in the 1930s and the making of Lawrence of Arabia in the 1960s. Her first efforts for radio were adaptations of her own short stories and dramatizations of literary subjects. She quickly turned to commentary on culture, such as the beginning of the BBC Third Programme and the atmosphere in postwar Czechoslovakia. In this regard, the radio and the speech shape Bowen''s persona as a public intellectual capable of talking on numerous subjects with wit and general insight.During her lifetime, Bowen published a few of her broadcasts in collections of non-fiction. Listening In brings together a substantial number of her ungathered and unknown works for the first time.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments; Introduction; Plays for the Air: The Confidant; New Judgement: Elizabeth Bowen on Jane Austen; London Revisited: As Seen by Fanny Burney; A Year I Remember - 1918; Broadcasts: Book Talk - New and Recent Fiction; The Next Book; Impressions of Czechoslovakia; Mechanics of Writing; Books that Grow up with One; The Cult of Nostalgia; Coronation; On Not Rising to the Occasion; Writing about Rome; Ireland Today; The Daughters of Erin by Elizabeth Coxhead; An Essay in French; Panorama of the Novel; Speeches: Subject and the Time; The Poetic Element in Fiction; The Idea of Home; Language; The Fear of Pleasure; A Novelist and His Characters; Film and Radio: Things to Come; Why I Go to the Cinema; Third Programme; Lawrence of Arabia; Appreciations: Downe House Scrapbook 1907-1957; Alfred Knopf; Blanche Knopf; Questions: Confessions; The Cost of Letters; Portrait of a Woman Reading; Interviews and Conversations: The Living Image - 1; The Living Image - 2; How I Write: A Discussion with Glyn Jones; A Conversation between Elizabeth Bowen and Jocelyn Brooke; Do Women Think Like Men?; Do Conventions Matter?; Conversation on Traitors; Frankly Speaking: Interview, 1959; Notes; Works Cited;

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Book SynopsisCentred on the relationship between the personal lives of the writers John Middleton Murry, Katherine Mansfield, and D. H. Lawrence and the works they produced this intriguing study develops a portrait of a circle of writers who significantly influenced the development of modernism in Britain.Trade ReviewA significant contribution to modernist studies, Professor Kaplan's timely investigation of the Mansfield-Murry-Lawrence triangle illuminates their previously under-researched creative relationships. Her ability to convey the humour and drama of her subject and her fine scholarship are equally engaging. -- Delia da Sousa Correa, Editor, Katherine Mansfield Studies We may have thought that pretty much everything had been garnered about that tangled triangle of D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, and Middleton Murry. Not so. After Kaplan, one is looking freshly, more deeply, at how these extraordinary personalities circled and feinted, landed their punches and reconciled. Most surprisingly, she makes her case for restoring Murry to his rightful place in that trio, free from the condescension that has obscured him for generations. Mansfield and Lawrence too emerge in an engagingly new light. What Kaplan does is to present a key moment in British Modernism as a vivid, living, personal exchange. This is good storytelling, as much as fine scholarship. -- Vincent O'Sullivan, Victoria University, Wellington, co-editor 'The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield' A significant contribution to modernist studies, Professor Kaplan's timely investigation of the Mansfield-Murry-Lawrence triangle illuminates their previously under-researched creative relationships. Her ability to convey the humour and drama of her subject and her fine scholarship are equally engaging. We may have thought that pretty much everything had been garnered about that tangled triangle of D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, and Middleton Murry. Not so. After Kaplan, one is looking freshly, more deeply, at how these extraordinary personalities circled and feinted, landed their punches and reconciled. Most surprisingly, she makes her case for restoring Murry to his rightful place in that trio, free from the condescension that has obscured him for generations. Mansfield and Lawrence too emerge in an engagingly new light. What Kaplan does is to present a key moment in British Modernism as a vivid, living, personal exchange. This is good storytelling, as much as fine scholarship.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. 'My Blundering Way of Learning': Murry's Still Life; 2. Still Life and Women in Love; 3. From Still Life to 'Bliss'; 4. 'A Furious Bliss'; 5. 'With Cannonballs for Eyes'; 6. 'The Coming Man and Woman'; 7. The Things We Are; 8. Circulating Mansfield; 9. Circulating Lawrence; 10.Circulating Murry; Bibliography; Index.

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Book SynopsisJames Kuzner's original new study of writing by Spenser, Shakespeare, Marvell and Milton is the first to present a genealogy for the modern self in which its republican origins can be understood far more radically.Trade ReviewWhere studies of early modern subject formation have causally linked republican political thought and the evolution of a bounded subject, Kuzner's Open Subjects argues for rethinking social formations of both past and present and reopens questions of the subject as represented in Spenser, Shakespeare, Marvell, and Milton. In finely nuanced readings, Kuzner argues convincingly that these major figures foreground the vulnerability of key characters: open subjects. In his thoughtful engagements with major literary and political criticism, he connects the open subject to a rarely acknowledged radical republicanism that speaks eloquently in drama, poetry, and epic. He pries open perennially challenging texts to reveal his authors' investments in human vulnerability as a central thematic element and as a political resource, even as a constitutive social requirement. Kuzner's theoretically informed readings reach back to Cicero, converse closely with early modern writers, and connect to the contemporary theory of Bataille, Butler and Agamben. This is revelatory and illuminating work that will change the way that we think about the early modern subject and social-political formations in a past that speaks in the present. -- Barbara Correll, Cornell University In this brave and powerful book, James Kuzner looks to the republican experiments of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England for experimental forms of social organization and subjective experience. The vulnus in "vulnerability" is an opening, a mouth, a sore, a rim: both an entry and an exit point for words and fluids alike, and hence a place where history passes. Kuzner's open subjects find themselves adrift in an unguarded existence where immune defenses and security systems have been turned off. Sensitive to ambient changes in social life, these heroes of vulnerability hatch scripts for "world elsewhere," alternative modernities founded on pleasure, enjoyment, and the forms of openness they incite and sustain. -- Julia Reinhard Lupton, author of Thinking with Shakespeare: Essays on Politics and Life Where studies of early modern subject formation have causally linked republican political thought and the evolution of a bounded subject, Kuzner's Open Subjects argues for rethinking social formations of both past and present and reopens questions of the subject as represented in Spenser, Shakespeare, Marvell, and Milton. In finely nuanced readings, Kuzner argues convincingly that these major figures foreground the vulnerability of key characters: open subjects. In his thoughtful engagements with major literary and political criticism, he connects the open subject to a rarely acknowledged radical republicanism that speaks eloquently in drama, poetry, and epic. He pries open perennially challenging texts to reveal his authors' investments in human vulnerability as a central thematic element and as a political resource, even as a constitutive social requirement. Kuzner's theoretically informed readings reach back to Cicero, converse closely with early modern writers, and connect to the contemporary theory of Bataille, Butler and Agamben. This is revelatory and illuminating work that will change the way that we think about the early modern subject and social-political formations in a past that speaks in the present. In this brave and powerful book, James Kuzner looks to the republican experiments of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England for experimental forms of social organization and subjective experience. The vulnus in "vulnerability" is an opening, a mouth, a sore, a rim: both an entry and an exit point for words and fluids alike, and hence a place where history passes. Kuzner's open subjects find themselves adrift in an unguarded existence where immune defenses and security systems have been turned off. Sensitive to ambient changes in social life, these heroes of vulnerability hatch scripts for "world elsewhere," alternative modernities founded on pleasure, enjoyment, and the forms of openness they incite and sustain.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; Preface: Vulnerable Crests of Renaissance Selves; 1: Legacies of Republicanism, Histories of the Self; 2: 'Without Respect of Utility': Precarious Life and the Politics of Edmund Spenser's Legend of Friendship; 3: Unbuilding the City: Coriolanus, Titus, and the Forms of Openness; 4: 'That Transubstantiall solacisme': Andrew Marvell, Linguistic Vulnerability, and the Space of the Subject; 5: Habermas Goes to Hell: Pleasure, Public Reason, and the Republicanism of Paradise Lost; Epilogue: The Futures of Open Subjects; Index.

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Book SynopsisNewly available in paperback, this study places Woolf's writing in the context of sartorial practice from the Victorian period to the 1930sTrade ReviewKoppen's work sets out an elegant and complex argument ! Highly innovative, wide-ranging, meticulously written and carefully argued. Routledge ABES Koppen's work sets out an elegant and complex argument ! Highly innovative, wide-ranging, meticulously written and carefully argued.Table of ContentsList of illustrations; Abbreviations; Acknowledgements; Preface; 1. Modern Clothes-Consciousness; 2. From Symbolism in Loose Robes to the Figure of the Androgyne; 3. Fashion and Literary Modernity; 4. Modernism Against Fashion; 5. Civilised Minds, Fashioned Bodies, and the Nude Future; 6. Hats and Veils: Texere in the Age of Rupture; Bibliography; Index.

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Book SynopsisThe compelling and intimate story of one of the world''s foremost short story writers''I read it with huge enjoyment - I think it''s by far the best Katherine Mansfield biography yet - giving a truthful but still sympathetic portrait.'' - Jacqueline Wilson, novelist & patron of the Katherine Mansfield Society''Jones writes with insight and verve, and an intelligent sympathy as her story is set out against those overlapping literary and social worlds the writer passes through.'' - Vincent O''Sullivan, co-editor of The Collected Letters of Katherine MansfieldWeaving together intimate details from Katherine Mansfield''s letters and journals with the writings of her friends and acquaintances, Kathleen Jones creates a captivating drama of this fragile yet feisty author: her life, loves and passion for writing.The story takes us beyond Mansfield''s death in 1923 to explore the life of her husband, John Middleton Murry - and his relationship with three further wives - as he manipulated the posthumous publication of Mansfield''s unpublished work. In this vivid portrayal of one of the world''s foremost short story writers, the first new biography for a quarter of a century, Kathleen Jones crafts an intriguing narrative of Katherine Mansfield''s relationships, illnesses and creativity.Trade ReviewA compelling narrative of a writer's passion for her work, her growth to maturity and the extraordinary trajectory which took a plump, awkward, rebellious little girl from a rigidly conventional family halfway across the world and into a culture of artistic, social and sexual experimentation. -- Helen Dunmore, novelist I read it with huge enjoyment -- I think it's by far the best Katherine Mansfield biography yet -- giving a truthful but still sympathetic portrait. -- Jacqueline Wilson, novelist & patron of the Katherine Mansfield Society Jones has brought to the work a scholar's regard for fact, a novelist's regard for form, and a poet's regard for cadence. The test of a good literary biography is whether it makes you want to reacquaint yourself with the author's writing. This biography does just that. -- Sarah Sandley, Honorary Chair of the Katherine Mansfield Society Jones ! writes with insight and verve, and an intelligent sympathy as her story is set out against those overlapping literary and social worlds the writer passes through ! A mass of new material unavailable to earlier biographers makes this new telling richly detailed and compelling. -- Vincent O'Sullivan, co-editor of The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield Kathleen Jones conveys the living presence of Katherine Mansfield in the present tense, so that one feels, along with her all-time words, her continued presence. She conveys the full complexity of Mansfield's character with understanding and without bias - what a feat given how manifold it is. What Middleton Murry made of her has a parallelled fascination; the contrasts of the living reality and the purified legend, an ephemeral construct appropriately narrated in the past tense, were striking. A marvellous, innovative biography. -- Lyndall Gordon, Biographer What [emerges] with indisputable clarity from Jones's skilful use of her sources is a portrait of Mansfield, stylish and febrile, cigarette in one hand, pen in the other, relishing life, scrutinising it with her keen intelligence, and recording her perceptions in a voice that continues to unsettle and surprise. -- Pamela Norris Literary Review A compelling narrative of a writer's passion for her work, her growth to maturity and the extraordinary trajectory which took a plump, awkward, rebellious little girl from a rigidly conventional family halfway across the world and into a culture of artistic, social and sexual experimentation. I read it with huge enjoyment -- I think it's by far the best Katherine Mansfield biography yet -- giving a truthful but still sympathetic portrait. Jones has brought to the work a scholar's regard for fact, a novelist's regard for form, and a poet's regard for cadence. The test of a good literary biography is whether it makes you want to reacquaint yourself with the author's writing. This biography does just that. Jones ! writes with insight and verve, and an intelligent sympathy as her story is set out against those overlapping literary and social worlds the writer passes through ! A mass of new material unavailable to earlier biographers makes this new telling richly detailed and compelling. Kathleen Jones conveys the living presence of Katherine Mansfield in the present tense, so that one feels, along with her all-time words, her continued presence. She conveys the full complexity of Mansfield's character with understanding and without bias - what a feat given how manifold it is. What Middleton Murry made of her has a parallelled fascination; the contrasts of the living reality and the purified legend, an ephemeral construct appropriately narrated in the past tense, were striking. A marvellous, innovative biography. What [emerges] with indisputable clarity from Jones's skilful use of her sources is a portrait of Mansfield, stylish and febrile, cigarette in one hand, pen in the other, relishing life, scrutinising it with her keen intelligence, and recording her perceptions in a voice that continues to unsettle and surprise.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; Introduction; Part I-Leaving All Fair, 1 Fontainebleau, 2 The Husband's Story, 3 Ida's Story; Part II-Wanted: A New World, 4 'The Wizard London', 5 Freedom and Experience, 6 The Lost Child, 7 Coming of Age in Bavaria, 8 In Search of Katherine Mansfield, 9 'The Model Boys-will-be-boys Pseudo Intellectual Magazine'; Part III-The Two Katherines, 10 Violet, 11 The Failure of Love; Part IV, 12 Tig and Wig, 13 Rananim, 14 Prelude, 15 The 'Blooms Berries'; Part V-Betty, 16 In Limbo, 17 'The Last Hell'; Part IV-The Dark Katherine, 18 Facing Oblivion, 19 At the Bottom of the Sea, 20 The Perfect Friend, 21 'A Writer First and a Woman After'; Part VII-A Religion of Love, 22 Keeping Faith; Part VIII-'The Levantine Psychic Shark', 23 The Soul's Desperate Choice, 24 'A Child of the Sun'; Endnotes; Bibliography; Index.

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Book SynopsisThe first student guide to American Autobiography

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Book SynopsisIntroduction to the major forms of autobiographical writing in America and important current developments in autobiography studies discusses both ''canonised'' texts and those from contemporary writers. Taking a broadly chronological approach, the historyof American autobiography is explored including the social and cultural factors that might account for the importance of autobiography in American culture. Then post-1970 autobiographies are examined, taking into account the development in poststructuralism from this time that affected notions of the subject who could write, and conceptions of truth, identity and reference.--Publisher''s website.

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Book SynopsisModernism, Internationalism and the Russian Revolution' examines responses to the Russian Revolution and the formation of League of Nations in literature and journalism in the years following 1917.

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Book SynopsisWeaving together intimate details from Katherine Mansfield's letters and journals with the writings of her friends and acquaintances, Kathleen Jones creates a captivating drama of this fragile yet feisty author: her life, loves and passion for writing.Trade ReviewKathleen Jones conveys the living presence of Katherine Mansfield in the present tense, so that one feels, along with her all-time words, her continued presence. She conveys the full complexity of Mansfield's character with understanding and without bias - what a feat given how manifold it is. What Middleton Murry made of her has a parallelled fascination; the contrasts of the living reality and the purified legend, an ephemeral construct appropriately narrated in the past tense, were striking. A marvellous, innovative biography. -- Lyndall Gordon, Biographer A compelling narrative of a writer's passion for her work, her growth to maturity and the extraordinary trajectory which took a plump, awkward, rebellious little girl from a rigidly conventional family halfway across the world and into a culture of artistic, social and sexual experimentation. -- Helen Dunmore, novelist I read it with huge enjoyment - I think it's by far the best Katherine Mansfield biography yet - giving a truthful but still sympathetic portrait. -- Jacqueline Wilson, novelist & patron of the Katherine Mansfield Society Jones has brought to the work a scholar's regard for fact, a novelist's regard for form, and a poet's regard for cadence. The test of a good literary biography is whether it makes you want to reacquaint yourself with the author's writing. This biography does just that. -- Sarah Sandley, Honorary Chair of the Katherine Mansfield Society Jones ! writes with insight and verve, and an intelligent sympathy as her story is set out against those overlapping literary and social worlds the writer passes through ! A mass of new material unavailable to earlier biographers makes this new telling richly detailed and compelling. -- Vincent O'Sullivan, co-editor of The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield What [emerges] with indisputable clarity from Jones's skilful use of her sources is a portrait of Mansfield, stylish and febrile, cigarette in one hand, pen in the other, relishing life, scrutinising it with her keen intelligence, and recording her perceptions in a voice that continues to unsettle and surprise. -- Pamela Norris, Literary ReviewTable of ContentsAcknowledgements; Introduction; Part I-Leaving All Fair, 1 Fontainebleau, 2 The Husband's Story, 3 Ida's Story; Part II-Wanted: A New World, 4 'The Wizard London', 5 Freedom and Experience, 6 The Lost Child, 7 Coming of Age in Bavaria, 8 In Search of Katherine Mansfield, 9 'The Model Boys-will-be-boys Pseudo Intellectual Magazine'; Part III-The Two Katherines, 10 Violet, 11 The Failure of Love; Part IV, 12 Tig and Wig, 13 Rananim, 14 Prelude, 15 The 'Blooms Berries'; Part V-Betty, 16 In Limbo, 17 'The Last Hell'; Part IV-The Dark Katherine, 18 Facing Oblivion, 19 At the Bottom of the Sea, 20 The Perfect Friend, 21 'A Writer First and a Woman After'; Part VII-A Religion of Love, 22 Keeping Faith; Part VIII-'The Levantine Psychic Shark', 23 The Soul's Desperate Choice, 24 'A Child of the Sun'; Endnotes; Bibliography; Index.

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Book SynopsisSome of James Hogg's best stories appeared in The Shepherd's Calendar, a work of the 1820s in which he sets out to re-create on paper the manner and the content of the traditional oral storytelling of Ettrick Forest.Trade ReviewThe stories are about storms, sheep, lairds, about farmers with designs on their servant girls, as in one of the most memorable, 'Tibby Hyslop's Dream', where a pious, winsome lass, prophesied over by a second-sighted, 'unco parabolical' great-aunt, copes with such designs - and the farmer in this case comes to one of Hogg's suicidal ends. -- Karl Miller The reader is not being treated to a quaint display of an outmoded lifestyle, but privileged with glimpses of a community possessed of special knowledge and internal laws. Hogg's shepherds are far removed from those of Virgil or Spenser, while even Wordsworth's Michael seems remote from the narrator who can describe the destruction of '12 scores of excellent ewes' with such calmness and compassion: 'when the snow went away they were discovered all lying dead with their heads one way as if a flock of sheep had dropped dead going from the washing. -- Fiona Stafford An important and addictively readable addition to the Scottish canon. -- Christopher Harvie Gin e'er ye wantit 'infinite riches' in a wee buik, James Hogg's 'The Shepherd's Calendar' certes cums gey near the merk. These attractive editions of Hogg's work are set directly from the original texts, and in the case of the Perils of Woman and The Shepherd's Calendar, actually represent the first ever republications of the originals... these paperback reprints further aid the dissemination of Hogg's best works, creating affordable and accessible editions. Texts previously available only to those with the golden keys of academia can now be bought and enjoyed by a wider readership... the infectiously enthusiastic introduction by Douglas Mack relates the very relevant publication history of this piece, which originally appeared as a series of articles in Blackwood's Magazine![this] edition represents the first to be set directly from the magazine articles! Now that it has been brought together unbowdlerised for the first time in paperback, we can now see this collection's coherence as a single work, celebrating the vivacity of Hogg's home community. The stories are about storms, sheep, lairds, about farmers with designs on their servant girls, as in one of the most memorable, 'Tibby Hyslop's Dream', where a pious, winsome lass, prophesied over by a second-sighted, 'unco parabolical' great-aunt, copes with such designs - and the farmer in this case comes to one of Hogg's suicidal ends. The reader is not being treated to a quaint display of an outmoded lifestyle, but privileged with glimpses of a community possessed of special knowledge and internal laws. Hogg's shepherds are far removed from those of Virgil or Spenser, while even Wordsworth's Michael seems remote from the narrator who can describe the destruction of '12 scores of excellent ewes' with such calmness and compassion: 'when the snow went away they were discovered all lying dead with their heads one way as if a flock of sheep had dropped dead going from the washing. An important and addictively readable addition to the Scottish canon. Gin e'er ye wantit 'infinite riches' in a wee buik, James Hogg's 'The Shepherd's Calendar' certes cums gey near the merk. These attractive editions of Hogg's work are set directly from the original texts, and in the case of the Perils of Woman and The Shepherd's Calendar, actually represent the first ever republications of the originals... these paperback reprints further aid the dissemination of Hogg's best works, creating affordable and accessible editions. Texts previously available only to those with the golden keys of academia can now be bought and enjoyed by a wider readership... the infectiously enthusiastic introduction by Douglas Mack relates the very relevant publication history of this piece, which originally appeared as a series of articles in Blackwood's Magazine![this] edition represents the first to be set directly from the magazine articles! Now that it has been brought together unbowdlerised for the first time in paperback, we can now see this collection's coherence as a single work, celebrating the vivacity of Hogg's home community.

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Book SynopsisHogg's powerful novel combines two stories that hauntingly echo each other, one set in Edinburgh and the Scottish Borders in the early 1820s, and the other set in the Highlands in 1746, the time of Culloden and its devastating aftermath.Trade ReviewCommentators once dismissed Perils of Woman as a bad book because it trampled on the flowerbeds of early-nineteenth-century decorum; they now acclaim it a masterpiece for the very same reason, reading subversive craft in the place of oafishness. -- Ian Duncan Both stories [of The Three Perils of Woman] are generically diverse, self-consciously impure. Hogg described them as 'domestic tales', apparently soliciting a female readership whose delicacy he then assaults with speculations about promiscuity and prostitution, and with prayers so chattily informal that reviewers found them blasphemous. Both stories modulate suddenly from comedy to tragedy, though one - but which? - struggles through to what may be a happy ending. [...] What matters about The Three Perils of Woman is not the conclusions it has to offer about the issues it raises, but the fact that these are addressed with such painful urgency. They have become urgent once again, and will continue to be so; and if the book provides an especially useful way of thinking about them, it's because it offers an 'unflinching' account of a violent national past while acknowledging the temptation, the impulse, even the need, to flinch. -- John Barrell These attractive editions of Hogg's work are set directly from the original texts, and in the case of the Perils of Woman and The Shepherd's Calendar, actually represent the first ever republications of the originals... these paperback reprints further aid the dissemination of Hogg's best works, creating affordable and accessible editions. Texts previously available only to those with the golden keys of academia can now be bought and enjoyed by a wider readership. The Three Perils of Woman is a remarkable and disturbing book. This is truly a work of extremes but this excellent edition, particularly with the extra new material of the paperback edition, enables us to appreciate how all these extremes fit together and how they relate to the literary, social and historical context in which they were created. Commentators once dismissed Perils of Woman as a bad book because it trampled on the flowerbeds of early-nineteenth-century decorum; they now acclaim it a masterpiece for the very same reason, reading subversive craft in the place of oafishness. Both stories [of The Three Perils of Woman] are generically diverse, self-consciously impure. Hogg described them as 'domestic tales', apparently soliciting a female readership whose delicacy he then assaults with speculations about promiscuity and prostitution, and with prayers so chattily informal that reviewers found them blasphemous. Both stories modulate suddenly from comedy to tragedy, though one - but which? - struggles through to what may be a happy ending. [...] What matters about The Three Perils of Woman is not the conclusions it has to offer about the issues it raises, but the fact that these are addressed with such painful urgency. They have become urgent once again, and will continue to be so; and if the book provides an especially useful way of thinking about them, it's because it offers an 'unflinching' account of a violent national past while acknowledging the temptation, the impulse, even the need, to flinch. These attractive editions of Hogg's work are set directly from the original texts, and in the case of the Perils of Woman and The Shepherd's Calendar, actually represent the first ever republications of the originals... these paperback reprints further aid the dissemination of Hogg's best works, creating affordable and accessible editions. Texts previously available only to those with the golden keys of academia can now be bought and enjoyed by a wider readership. The Three Perils of Woman is a remarkable and disturbing book. This is truly a work of extremes but this excellent edition, particularly with the extra new material of the paperback edition, enables us to appreciate how all these extremes fit together and how they relate to the literary, social and historical context in which they were created.

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Book SynopsisStudies the relationship between the personal lives of writers and the works they produce. In particular, this book reconsiders the place of John Middleton Murry (1889-1957) in the development of literary modernism in Britain. It rewrites standard assumptions about John Middleton Murry's relationships with Katherine Mansfield and D H Lawrence.

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Book SynopsisThese original interpretations of Renaissance culture focus on the English Renaissance as well as attending to work in a range of vernacular languages and on tne reception and transformation of the Greco-Roman literary, political and intellectual heritage.

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Book SynopsisThis new study looks at the relationship of rhetoric and music in the era''s intellectual discourses, texts and performance cultures principally in Europe and North America. Catherine Jones begins by examining the attitudes to music and its performance by leading figures of the American Enlightenment and Revolution, notably Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. She also looks at the attempts of Francis Hopkinson, William Billings and others to harness the Orphean power of music so that it should become a progressive force in the creation of a new society. She argues that the association of rhetoric and music that reaches back to classical Antiquity acquired new relevance and underwent new theorisation and practical application in the American Enlightenment in light of revolutionary Atlantic conditions. Jones goes on to consider changes in the relationship of rhetoric and music in the nationalising milieu of the nineteenth century; the connections of literature, music and music theory to changing models of subjectivity; and Romantic appropriations of Enlightenment visions of the public ethical function of music.

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Book SynopsisExplores the relationship between touching and writing in contemporary literature. This title provides a timely intervention in the field, investigating the different ways that literary texts make contact with or 'touch' their readers. It explores literary touch in the work of often neglected contemporary thinkers and writers.

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Book SynopsisProvides fresh reflections on literary influence using Katherine Mansfield as a case study. This title helps in understanding this impetus for artistic production through an examination of authors wide net of literary associations.

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Book SynopsisAlthough Sufi characters - saints, dervishes, wanderers - occur regularly in modern Arabic literature, a select group of novelists seeks to interrogate Sufism as a system of thought and language. In the work of writers like Naguib Mahfouz, Gamal Al-Ghitany, Tahar Ouettar, Ibrahim Al-Koni, Mahmud Al-Mas''adi and Tayeb Salih we see a strong intertextual relationship with the Sufi masters of the past, including Al-Hallaj, Ibn Arabi, Al-Niffari and Al-Suhrawardi. This relationship becomes a means of interrogating the limits of the creative self, individuality, rationality and the manifold possibilities offered by literature, seeking in a dialogue with the mystical heritage a way of preserving a self under siege from the overwhelming forces of oppression and reaction that have characterized the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.Table of ContentsAbbreviations; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Ouverture; Chapter One: Naguib Mahfouz: (En)chanting Justice; Chapter Two: Tayeb Salih: The Returns of the Saint; Chapter Three: Al-Mas'adi: Witnessing Immortality; Chapter Four: The Survival of Gamal Al-Ghitany; Chapter Five: Ibrahim Al-Koni: Writing and Sacrifice; Chapter Six: Tahar Ouettar: The Saint and the Nightmare of History; Epilogue: Bahaa Taher, Solidarity and Idealism; Bibliography.

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Book SynopsisExamines the full stylistic range of the novels and biographies which Trollope explored in his final decade

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Book SynopsisThis fascinating volume reveals the real men and women behind some of the most infamous London villains ever to appear in fiction. Fagin, Professor Moriarty, Moll Cutpurse and the notorious ''cracksman'' A.J. Raffles were all rooted in the lives and deaths of a litany of real-life criminals, agitators and activists. With a special emphasis on the city that spawned them, this book brings together their stories for the first time, and shows how they were woven into fiction by some of Britain's greatest writers, including Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle. Containing prison escapes, sensational trials, daring art thefts, vicious attacks, roaring boys, black magicians and private detectives, Masters of Crime explores both the real underworld of British crime history, and its fictional counter-parts. It will delight fans of true crime and crime fiction alike.

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Book SynopsisAnalyzes major concepts in the travel literature of Mark Twain and notes how his ouvre revolves around travel as a central issue. This book focuses especially on his representations of time, place, and identity in works such as: ""Roughing It"", ""A Tramp Abroad"", ""The Innocents Abroad"", ""Life on The Mississippi"", and ""Following the Equator"".

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Book SynopsisBest Books of 2016 BOSTON GLOBE * THE ATLANTICFrom the acclaimed bestselling author of The Information and Chaos comes this enthralling history of time travel—a concept that has preoccupied physicists and storytellers over the course of the last century. James Gleick delivers a mind-bending exploration of time travel—from its origins in literature and science to its influence on our understanding of time itself. Gleick vividly explores physics, technology, philosophy, and art as each relates to time travel and tells the story of the concept's cultural evolutions—from H.G. Wells to Doctor Who, from Proust to Woody Allen. He takes a close look at the porous boundary between science fiction and modern physics, and, finally, delves into what it all means in our own moment in time—the world of the instantaneous, with its all-consuming present and vanishing future.

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Book SynopsisOnce upon a time all literature was fantasy, set in a mythical past when magic existed, animals talked, and the gods took an active hand in earthly affairs. As the mythical past was displaced in Western estimation by the historical past and novelists became increasingly preoccupied with the present, fantasy was temporarily marginalized until the late 20th century, when it enjoyed a spectacular resurgence in every stratum of the literary marketplace. Stableford provides an invaluable guide to this sequence of events and to the current state of the field. The chronology tracks the evolution of fantasy from the origins of literature to the 21st century. The introduction explains the nature of the impulses creating and shaping fantasy literature, the problems of its definition and the reasons for its changing historical fortunes. The dictionary includes cross-referenced entries on more than 700 authors, ranging across the entire historical spectrum, while more than 200 other entries descr

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Book SynopsisAlasdair Gray is the first American study of this important Scottish novelist's work, and the first comprehensive study of his novels to appear anywhere. It encompasses the full range of Gray's career, from Lanark to Mavis Belfrage.

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Book SynopsisA sequel to "The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse (Saqi)", this book investigates a number of crucial questions related to the genre's development such as: Why did the Arabic short story take certain trajectories and what determined its path? Can the study of this genre provide us with wider insights into the culture as a whole?

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisThe Life of Henry Brulard is the autobiography of one of France's greatest writers, Stendhal, author of The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma. Here, writing at white heat and with such ferocious honesty and indignation that his book was to remain unpublishable for more than a century after its composition, Stendhal revisits his unhappy childhood in a stuffy provincial town and bares his rebellious heart. His adored mother, who died when he was only seven; a father devoted only to his own social ambitions; the aunt whose daily cruelties passed for care: these are among the indelible portraits in a work that captures the sights, sounds, places, and characters of Stendhal's youth, its pleasures and sorrows, with preternatural clarity and immediacy. Full of dazzling images and burning emotions, The Life of Henry Brulard is a vivid memoir that is also an extraordinary work of the imagination.

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