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Bread and circuses were what the Romans demanded of their emperors, and for more than 500 years spectacular events in amphitheaters, circuses, and theaters were the most important leisure activities...

Essential reading and reference for all mystery writers and fans of the genre.

Frank Hardy is perhaps Australia's most famous Communist writer. In his literary biography on Frank Hardy, author Paul Adams traces the relationship between Hardy's writings, his political activism and the...

'At last I read her books, reminding myself to breathe, wondering if her characters could extricate themselves from her finely spun web of psychological torment. I seized my chance to...

These tales have been adapted for the young reader as an introduction to the study of Shakespeare. Most of Shakespeare's classics are found here including MacBeth, Othello, King Lear, Romeo...

For over seventy years, Enid Blyton's books have delighted her readers. Enid Blyton wrote more than 700 books. Fully revised edition of this comprehensive and light-hearted A-Z of Enid Blyton...

'Literary criticism, as I attempt to practice it', writes Harold Bloom in "The Anatomy of Influence", 'is in the first place literary, that is to say, personal and passionate'. For...

The Oxford Shakespeare General Editor Stanley Wells The Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative texts from leading scholars in editions designed to interpret and illuminate the works for modern readers - a...

First published in 1980, Isherwood's overlooked last book is central to an understanding of his life and work. WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SIMON CALLOW In 1939, as Europe approaches...

A detailed, illustrated examination of Edith Wharton's life provides a look at the social and political atmosphere in which she lived, offering insights into how her personal history affected her...

After Aboriginal author Alexis Wright's novel, Carpentaria , won the Miles Franklin Award in 2007, it rapidly achieved the status of a classic. The novel is widely read and studied...

In Tolkien's Gown, a book based loosely on that hugely successful radio series, Rick Gekoski discusses twenty great works of modern literature as both texts and objects. At once erudite...

Michael Dirda has been hailed as "the best-read person in America" (The Paris Review) and "the best book critic in America" (The New York Observer). In addition to the Pulitzer...

Examines the departure from meter and rhyme in modern poetry and the increased use of free verse

In 1954 one of the most seminal books in English literature was published and caused barely a ripple. It wasn't until the 'flower-power' generation of the 1960's that LORD OF...

A fascinating collection of memorial addresses on celebrated lives including WH Auden by Stephen Spender, Peter Cook by Alan Bennett, Kingsley Amis by Martin Amis, Stanley Matthews by Jimmy Armfield,...

Describes James's childhood in New York in the mid-nineteenth century, his illnesses, sexual encounters, and early loves, and follows his development as a writer culminating with his masterpiece The Portrait...

In this major collection of his essays, Alberto Manguel, whom George Steiner has called 'the Casanova of reading', argues that the activity of reading, in its broadest sense, defines our...

A reference book to the writers and genres of French literature from about 400 AD until the Second World War. It also ranges beyond the strictly literary sphere to cover...

In this ambitious study, Richard Wendorf establishes the grounds of comparison between two arts that have often been linked in a casual way but whose historical interrelations remain almost completely...

James Boswell died a disappointed man, considered by his contemporaries to be a "foolish failure". Yet today his "Life of Johnson" is esteemed as the template for modern biography and...

'Mischief, gossip, acuity and admiration - not to be missed' Sunday Times The life of Rosamond Lehmann was as romantic and harrowing as that of any of her fictional heroines....

A brilliant, highly spirited memoir of Sidney Sheldon's early life that provides as compulsively readable and racy a narrative as any of his bestselling novels. Growing up in 1930s America,...

The first book to explore the extraordinary story of the legendary friendship - and quarrel - between Wordsworth and Coleridge, two giants of English Romanticism. Wordsworth and Coleridge's passionate intimacy,...

"The doctor suddenly appeared beside Will, startling him. Though he smiled reassuringly, the poet noticed that he kept a safe distance. In a soothing, urbane voice, he explained the treatment:...

The 30th anniversary edition of Tobias Wolff's "extraordinary memoir" (SF Chronicle), now with a new introduction by the author

The Worlds of Jane Austen invites readers to see one of Britain's most beloved authors in a completely new light. Far from the quiet world of country houses and tea...

In a series of readings of Sophocles, Holderlin, Baudelaire, Nietzsche and Benjamin, Rainer Nagele investigates the extraordinary territory that lies not merely between texts but also between languages - in...

This Student Edition of Brecht's anti-war masterpiece features an extensive introduction and commentary that includes a plot summary, discussion of the context, themes, characters, style and language as well as...

Includes the plays No, Jeppe of the Hill and The Scatterbrain Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1791-1860) and Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754) were two of the very few dramatists for whom Henrik Ibsen...

A Companion to Shakespeare and Performance provides a state-of-the-art engagement with the rapidly developing field of Shakespeare performance studies. Redraws the boundaries of Shakespeare performance studies. Considers performance in a...

Addressing the history of the production and reception of the great medieval poem, Piers Plowman, Lawrence Warner reveals the many ways in which scholars, editors and critics over the centuries...

This book tells the stories of some of Australia's largely forgotten playwrights -- women who wrote drama that was performed on the nation's stages and broadcast across the airwaves from...

In 1991, Nadine Gordimer was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Infused with the intensity of political conscience and commitment, her writings are invaluable illuminations of life in South Africa,...

This broadly conceived and enlightening look at how Homer's Odyssey has resonated in the West offers a thematic analysis of the poem's impact on social and political ideas, institutions, and...

This study investigates the importance of theatre in the works of Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, William Dean Howells, Louisa May Alcott and Henry James. Whether as critics, playwrights, actors or...

While Carlo Collodi's internationally revered Pinocchio may not have been the single source of the modernist fascination with puppets and marionettes, the book's appearance on the threshold of the modernist...

Beginning with Aristotle and the Greeks and ending with semiotics and post-structuralism, Theories of the Theatre is the first comprehensive survey of Western dramatic theory. In this expanded edition the...