Search results for ""author jonathan bate""
Oxford University Press English Literature: A Very Short Introduction
Sweeping across two millennia and every literary genre, acclaimed scholar and biographer Jonathan Bate provides a dazzling introduction to English Literature. The focus is wide, shifting from the birth of the novel and the brilliance of English comedy to the deep Englishness of landscape poetry and the ethnic diversity of Britain's Nobel literature laureates. It goes on to provide a more in-depth analysis, with close readings from an extraordinary scene in King Lear to a war poem by Carol Ann Duffy, and a series of striking examples of how literary texts change as they are transmitted from writer to reader. The narrative embraces not only the major literary movements such as Romanticism and Modernism, together with the most influential authors including Chaucer, Donne, Johnson, Wordsworth, Austen, Dickens and Woolf, but also little-known stories such as the identity of the first English woman poet to be honoured with a collected edition of her works. Written with the flair and passion for which Jonathan Bate has become renowned, this book is the perfect Very Short Introduction for all readers and students of the incomparable literary heritage of these islands. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
£9.04
HarperCollins Publishers Bright Star Green Light
A dazzling biography of two interwoven, tragic lives: John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald. 'Highly engaging ... Go now, read this book' THE TIMES
£25.00
HarperCollins Publishers Mad about Shakespeare: Life Lessons from the Bard
‘Enlightening, moving’ SIR IAN MCKELLEN From the acclaimed and bestselling biographer Jonathan Bate, a luminous new exploration of Shakespeare and how his themes can untangle comedy and tragedy, learning and loving in our modern lives. ‘The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.’ How does one survive the death of a loved one, the mess of war, the experience of being schooled, of falling in love, of growing old, of losing your mind? Shakespeare’s world is never too far different from our own ‘permeated with the same tragedies, the same existential questions and domestic worries. In this extraordinary book, Jonathan Bate brings then and now together. He investigates moments of his own life – losses and challenges – and asks whether, if you persevere with Shakespeare, he can offer a word of wisdom or a human insight for any time or any crisis. Along the way we meet actors such as Judi Dench and Simon Callow, and writers such as Dr Johnson, John Keats, Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath, who turned to Shakespeare in their own dark times. This is a personal story about loss, the black dog of depression, unexpected journeys and the very human things that echo through time, resonating with us all at one point or another.
£10.99
Pan Macmillan Song of the Earth
The most important critical work for decades' Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times In the brilliantly engaging style that characterised The Genius of Shakespeare, Jonathan Bate has written a series of compelling pieces on the link between literature and the environment and why poetry matters in the new millennium. In fascinating detail, Bate explains how words like 'culture' and 'environment' have evolved since the writing of Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and the Romantics to the present day. 'Bate presents his case with an emotional conviction which is almost impossible to resist' The Times 'Anyone familiar with Bate's The Genius of Shakespeare will know how winningly he marries erudition to liveliness' John Coldstream, Daily Telegraph 'I came away from the book deeply grateful for its impassioned song' Adam Thorpe, Sunday Telegraph
£12.99
Pan Macmillan The Genius of Shakespeare
With an introduction by Simon CallowJudgements about the quality of works of art begin in opinion. But for the last two hundred years only the wilfully perverse (and Tolstoy) have denied the validity of the opinion that Shakespeare was a genius.Who was Shakespeare? Why has his writing endured? And what makes it so endlessly adaptable to different times and cultures? Exploring Shakespeare's life, including questions of authorship and autobiography, and charting how his legacy has grown over the centuries, this extraordinary book asks how Shakespeare has come to be such a powerful symbol of genius.Written with lively passion and wit, The Genius of Shakespeare is a fascinating biography of the life - and afterlife - of our greatest poet. Jonathan Bate, one of the world's leading Shakespearean scholars, has shown how the legend of Shakespeare's genius was created and sustained, and how the man himself became a truly global phenomenon.'The best modern book on Shakespeare' Sir Peter Hall
£11.99
Pan Macmillan John Clare
‘What distinguished Clare is an unspectacular joy and a love for the inexorable one-thing-after-anotherness of the world’ Seamus Heaney John Clare (1793-1864) was a great Romantic poet, with a name to rival that of Blake, Byron, Wordsworth or Shelley – and a life to match. The ‘poet’s poet’, he has a place in the national pantheon and, more tangibly, a plaque in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner, unveiled in 1989. Here at last is Clare’s full story, from his birth in poverty and employment as an agricultural labourer, via his burgeoning promise as a writer – cultivated under the gaze of rival patrons – and moment of fame, in the company of John Keats, as the toast of literary London, to his final decline into mental illness and the last years of his life, confined in asylums. Clare’s ringing voice – quick-witted, passionate, vulnerable, courageous – emerges through extracts from his letters, journals, autobiographical writings and poems, as Jonathan Bate brings this complex man, his revered work and his ribald world, vividly to life.
£18.00
HarperCollins Publishers Stressed, Unstressed: Classic Poems to Ease the Mind
Can you be re-lit by poetry? This little book offers everyone one of the oldest of all remedies for stress: the reading of poetry. Intended to help you endure some of your stressful moments and painful experiences, these poems tell us we are not alone. Returned again and again over the centuries by great imaginations are love and death and memory – remembrance of childhood joy, of happy days and beautiful places, of loved ones we have lost or feeling at peace and at one with the natural world. ‘Stressed Unstressed’ harvests an array of poems on such themes in the hope that they will speak to you when you are processing your worries or when you simply want to fill your mind with different, more positive thoughts. Words can act as drugs, and on the bedside or in a waiting-room this little volume of poetry can help in all sorts of difficult circumstances. So here is a selection of new poems and old, enduring classics and forgotten gems. Next time you are feeling stressed or anxious, worried or sleepless, panicky or unable to cope, ‘Stressed Unstressed’ invites you to read a poem and join the thousands of others who have read and remembered and loved these poems – to form a very special community. This is bibliotherapy.
£9.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC All's Well that Ends Well
From the Royal Shakespeare Company – a modern, definitive edition of Shakespeare's ambiguous, bittersweet fairy tale. With an expert introduction by Sir Jonathan Bate, this unique edition presents a historical overview of All’s Well that Ends Well in performance, takes a detailed look at specific productions, and recommends film versions. Included in this edition are interviews with important directors Gregory Doran, Stephen Fried and the actor Guy Henry – providing an illuminating insight into the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible. This edition also includes an essay on Shakespeare’s career and Elizabethan theatre, and enables the reader to understand the play as it was originally intended – as living theatre to be enjoyed and performed. Ideal for students, theatre-goers, actors and general readers, the RSC Shakespeare editions offer a fresh, accessible and contemporary approach to reading and rediscovering Shakespeare’s works for the twenty-first century.
£10.45
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC William Shakespeare and Others: Collaborative Plays
Developed in partnership with The Royal Shakespeare Company, this is the first edition for over a hundred years of the fascinatingly varied body of plays that has become known as ‘The Shakespeare Apocrypha’. As a companion to their award-winning The RSC Shakespeare: Complete Works, renowned scholars Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, supported by a dynamic team of co-editors, now provide a fascinating insight into ten plays in which Shakespeare may have had a hand. A magisterial essay by Will Sharpe provides a comprehensive account of the Authorship and Attribution of each play. Combining outstanding textual scholarship with elegant writing and design, this unique collection allows us to revisit the question of what is Shakespearean. It is an indispensable book for students, teachers, performers, scholars and lovers of Shakespeare everywhere.
£40.00