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Maria Plaza sets out to analyse the function of humour in the Roman satirists Horace, Persius, and Juvenal. Her starting point is that satire is driven by two motives, which...

On a Knife-Edge represents the first book-length study in English solely devoted to the work of Joao Cabral de Melo Neto (1920-1999), one of Brazil's foremost poets of the twentieth...

This book examines the oevre of Anna Maria Ortese (1914-1998) from her first literary writings in the Thirties to her great novels in the Nineties. The analysis focusses on two...

This study examines how the ancient Greeks decided questions of justice as a key to understanding the intersection of our moral and political lives. Combining contemporary political philosophy with historical,...

This seminal study addresses one of the most beautifully decorated 15th-century copies of the New Statutes of England, uncovering how the manuscript's unique interweaving of legal, religious, and literary discourses...

Since the beginnings of Italian vernacular literature, the nature of the relationship between Francesco Petrarch and his predecessor Dante Alighieri has remained an open and endlessly fascinating question of both...

In this book, Bill Gladhill studies one of the most versatile concepts in Roman society, the ritual event that concluded an alliance, a foedus (ritual alliance). Foedus signifies the bonds...

To what extent is it possible to know the past or to know other cultures? Can one describe the past without imposing one's own cultural, political, social, or personal preconceptions?...

The sea is omnipresent in Greek life. Visible from nearly everywhere, the sea represents the life and livelihood of many who dwell on the islands and coastal areas of the...

In Medieval Autographies, A. C. Spearing develops a new engagement of narrative theory with medieval English first-person writing, focusing on the roles and functions of the "I" as a shifting...

In Whores of Babylon, Frances E. Dolan offers a perceptive study of the central role that Catholics and Catholicism played in early modern English law, literature, and politics. She contends...

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...

In 1986, Susan Campbell made the chance discovery of a hitherto unknown garden diary. She spent the next 35 years researching its background before writing this book. The diary was...

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was the greatest writer in a Britain that ruled the largest empire the world has known, yet he was always a controversial figure, as deeply hated as...

For nearly half a century, feminist scholars, writers, and fans have successfully challenged the notion that science fiction is all about "boys and their toys," pointing to authors such as...

Focusing on major authors and problems from the Italian fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, from Petrarch and Boccaccio to Machiavelli, Ariosto and Tasso, A Local Habitation and a Name examines the...

As a geometric term, parabola suggests a narrative trajectory or story arc. In science fiction, parabolas take us from the known to the unknown. More concrete than themes, more complex...

Jack London cut a mythic figure across the American landscape of the early twentieth century. But throughout his colorful life-from his teenage years as an oyster pirate to his various...

James Lees-Milne (1908-97) made his name as the country house expert of the National Trust and for being a versatile author. But he is now best known for the remarkable...

The Poetry Exchange is an award-winning podcast and project that celebrates the role poetry plays in people's lives. In their first anthology, Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer draw on ten...

Organized as a field guide, a literary anthology filled with classic and contemporary poems and essays inspired by wildflowers-perfect for writers, artists, and botanists alikeAmerican Wildflowers: A Literary Field Guide...

A remarkable insight into the birth of a writer, and the moving discovery of family secrets.When Hanif Kureishi discovers an abandoned manuscript of his father's his understanding of the family...

To celebrate the centenary of the publication of Ulysses, the most important literary work of the twentieth century, eighteen artists, writers and thinkers respond to an episode each of the...

'I WILL BE COMPLETE is the best memoir I've read in years. It's likely the best memoir published in years.' Darin Strauss, author of HALF A LIFE and CHANG AND...

Books; reading, collecting and the physical housing of them has brought the book-lover joy - and stress - for centuries. Fascinated writers have tried to capture the particular relationships we...

This book commemorates the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's death on 23 April 1616.Everyone knows that the only book we buy more often than a work of Shakespeare is the...

The ground-breaking memoir by acclaimed rapper and podcast host, George the PoetBorn to Ugandan parents on the St Raphael's Estate in Neasden, north-west London, George has always been an ambitious...

Tim Rayborn has written a large number of books and magazine articles, especially in subjects such as music, the arts, general knowledge, and history. He lived in England for many...

This collection of essays argues that any valid theory of the modern should-indeed must-reckon with the medieval. Offering a much-needed correction to theorists such as Hans Blumenberg, who in his...

The issue of a woman's place-and the possibility that she might stray from it-was one of early modern Italy's most persistent social concerns. Ladies Errant takes as its starting point...

Bill Bryson's biography of William Shakespeare unravels the superstitions, academic discoveries and myths surrounding the life of our greatest poet and playwright. Ever since he took the theatre of Elizabethan...

'A hugely entertaining and well-written tour of the links between math and literature. Hart's lightness of touch and passion for both subjects make this book a delight to read. Bookworms...

A Waterstones Best Memoir of 2024An Independent and Stylist Best Non-Fiction Book for 2024The captivating true story of an underdog business - a feminist bookshop founded in Thatcher's Britain -...

A Book of the Year in The Times, Guardian, Independent, New Statesman, Bookseller and at Waterstones'He understands only the women he invents - the others not at all' Thomas Hardy...

Tim Rayborn has written a large number of books and magazine articles, especially in subjects such as music, the arts, general knowledge, and history. He lived in England for many...

What if Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare . . . but someone else wrote him first? Acclaimed author of The Map Thief, Michael Blanding presents the twinning narratives of renegade scholar Dennis...

From the highly controversial Leaves of Grass, with its overt sexual imagery and delight of sensual pleasures, to the iconic Captain, oh my captain immortalised in the film Dead Poets...

'Fascinating, hugely entertaining, instructive in the best sense. I always thought that writing could not be taught, only reading, but this book made me reconsider. I read it in one...

Virgina Woolf's collection of writings on visual arts offer a whole new perspective on the revolutionary author.Despite wide interest in Woolf's writings, her circle, and her relationship with the visual...

The extraordinary tale of Oskar Schindler, the Aryan who saved hundreds of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland, is now legendary, but as Tom Keneally reveals in this absorbing memoir, luck and...

Edited by Alan Jenkins, this authoritative Collected Poems contains all of the poetry that Ian Hamilton chose to publish, together with a small number of uncollected and unpublished poems; it...

'Fascinating, hugely entertaining, instructive in the best sense. I always thought that writing could not be taught, only reading, but this book made me reconsider. I read it in one...

The Poetry Exchange is an award-winning podcast and project that celebrates the role poetry plays in people's lives. In their first anthology, Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer draw on ten...

In times of trouble, worry or strife, a fiction prescription is just what the doctor ordered. Discover over 200 reading recommendations for great literature to soothe your soul and offer...

'In the first decade of the twentieth century, it was not a good time to be born black, or woman, in America.' So begins this stunning portrait of Vivian Baxter...

In times of trouble, worry or strife, a fiction prescription is just what the doctor ordered. Discover over 200 reading recommendations for great literature to soothe your soul and offer...

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their selection of verses and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their...

Is it ever possible to know 'the truth' about Sylvia Plath and her marriage to Ted Hughes, which ended with her suicide? In The Silent Woman, Janet Malcolm (author of...