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Though he often wrote in matchless prose, Ruskin's thought developed slowly and sometimes repetitively. His ideas, if we come to them unprepared, can seem obscure, confused, and difficult to grasp....

Sean O' Casey's Irish plays, among them "Juno and the Paycock", arguably place him amongst the great playwrights of the 20th century. This book explores the myth of O'Casey's slum...

Here is a poetry collection sure to delight and inspire the adventurous traveler and the armchair dreamer alike. As pilgrims, missionaries and explorers, as soldiers, diplomats, merchants and tourists, the...

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...

'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...

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...

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

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...

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...

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 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:...

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 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...

This book examines the salient ideas and practices that have shaped Surrealism as a protean intellectual and cultural concept that fundamentally shifted our understanding of the nexus between art, culture,...

This comprehensive and authoritative edition of the correspondence of Daniel Defoe situates each letter in its biographical, literary, and historical contexts. A unique source for a turbulent period of British...

In the tradition of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress comes an earthy, wildly imaginative and tragi-comic love story set in a remote mountain village in northwestern China. Xiezi (meaning...

Written in defiance of Jeremy Collier and the budding fashion for sentimental drama, this late Restoration comedy exposes the reformed rake Loveless to the temptations of London and the charms...

This dazzling anthology, edited and introduced by Dermot Bolger, is a splendidly comprehensive and up-to-the-minute collection of the finest recent fiction from a nation of master storytellers. This collection of...

Nadine Gordimer began her writing life at a relatively young age. In 1991, that life received the ultimate recognition when she was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. In this...

Edward Lear's poems follow and break the rules. They abide by the logic of syntax, the linking of rhyme and the dance of rhythm, and these 'nonsenses' are full of...

This volume contains all of Beckett's less-than-full length works (or 'Dramaticules') for the stage, radio and television. Arranged in chronological order of composition, these shorter plays demonstrate the absurd humour,...

When you have been forcibly displaced from your home, the revolutionary dream of what should have happened ... stays alive as a utopian beacon of happiness that will (possibly) never...

Performing the American Frontier, 1870-1906 examines how the American frontier was presented in theatrical productions during the critical period from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of...

This is the first full production history of Long Day's Journey Into Night, by Eugene O'Neill, one of the most influential plays of the twentieth century. It provides a detailed...

This is an illustrated history of the performance and reception of Shakespeare's plays on the German stage from the English Comedians in the late sixteenth century to the First World...

This is a new edition of Andrew Gurr's classic account of the people for whom Shakespeare wrote his plays. Gurr assembles all the evidence from the writings of the time...

Arthur Miller is regarded as one of the most important playwrights of the twentieth century. His work is performed and studied around the world and this Companion provides an introduction...

Susan Glaspell in Context not only discusses the dramatic work of this key American author -- perhaps best known for her short story "A Jury of Her Peers" and its...