Literary Theory

Eudora Welty's works are treasures of American literature. When her first short-story collection was published in 1941, it heralded the arrival of a genuinely original writer who over the decades...

Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923-2014) wrote brilliant novels about what love can do to people, but in her own life the lasting relationship she sought so ardently always eluded her. She...

A collection of essays from some of today's hottest writers reflecting on how Judy Blume's novels affected their childhoods. From puberty to first loves to divorce, Everything I Needed to...

Autobiographical writing is redefining the meaning of narrative, as the recent explosion of memoirs by writers such as Frank McCourt, Mary Karr, Dave Eggers, and Kathryn Harrison suggests. But what's...

Loosely based on the life of Artemisia Gentileschi, A Rare and Curious Gift tells the story of Sofonisba, a brilliant painter gradually taking over her father's studio. Determined to avoid...

Like an elegantly chilling postscript to The Metamorphosis , this classic of postwar Japanese literature describes a bizarre physical transformation that exposes the duplicities of an entire world. The narrator...

Many years after the downfall of Oscar Wilde, Alfred Douglas, hoping to boost sales of his autobiography, asked Bernard Shaw to write the preface. An unlikely but enduring friendship developed...

This definitive handbook, written by one of the world's leading authorities on C.S. Lewis, is a meticulous, informative and enjoyable resource for study and general reference. It includes: A chronology...

Good writers make writing look easy - but is it? Anyone learning to write will be encouraged by Making Stories it shows that even our greatest novelists come to their...

'In The Drink' is the unflinching second poetry collection from Emily Crocker. Poems stream through ' In The Drink ', collecting hauntings of desire and futures lost. Visceral and at...

This comprehensive biography of the great 19th-century novelist combines extensive research and documentation, including much new speculation on the nature of his affair with Ellen Ternan, with imaginative reconstruction of...

Professor Evans helps the reader to visualise the stage action of Romeo and Juliet, a vital element in the play's significance and useful to students approaching it for the first...

Anthony Trollope was a giant of Victorian letters whose works are still read avidly today. Now, in what is surely the definitive biography, the world's leading expert on Trollope provides...

Somerville and Ross were two extraordinary Irish writers. Cousins and products of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy world, they reacted both with and against their environment to present in their books a...

Discover the true story behind the creation of the world's most beloved nanny, now appearing in Disney's Mary Poppins Returns . Mary Poppins flew into the lives of the Banks...

Michael Holroyd opens this volume with a startling attack on biography, which is answered by two essays on the ethics and values of non-fiction writing. The book then goes on...

This biography presents a richer and more comprehensive account of Thomas Hardy's life than has previously been available, as well as a more complex, balanced, and sympathetic view of Hardy...

Now revised and expanded for its first paperback publication, The Life of Crime was the winner of four major prizes for the best critical/biographical book related to crime fiction: the...

Roy Fuller combines three volumes of his memoirs - "Souvenirs", "Vamp Till Ready" and "Home and Dry" - which together span three decades of his life. They cover his childhood,...

Brook Thomas explores the new historicism and the challenges posed to it by a postmodern world that questions the very possibility of newness. He considers new historicism's engagement with poststructuralism...

John Bunyan was a major figure in seventeenth-century Puritan literature, and one deeply embroiled in the religious upheavals of his times. This Companion considers all his major texts, including The...

Images of Australian identity, and of Australian nationhood, are social and cultural constructs. There are several dominant themes and elements, one of the most pervasive being the Australian bushman confronting...

Tells the story, via the letters they wrote to each other, of the relationship between Evelyn Waugh, author of "Brideshead Revisited", and Lady Diana Cooper, actress and hostess. The two...

With this second volume of autobiography Penelope Mortimer covers the three decades, from the acceptance of her first novel in 1945 ("intended as an immense historical saga about the collapse...

This book, first full-length study of this often undervalued play, argues for a new appreciation of the power of its rhetoric, the subtlety of its characterization, and the beauty of...

Before you can fly, you have to be free. A new edition of the phenomenal international bestseller. From bitter poverty to the stardom of the West - this is the...

A New York Times Notable Book A San Francisco Chronicle , San Jose Mercury News , and Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year "A gripping and resonant novel....

Shakespeare's poems and plays are rich in reference to "measure, number, and weight," which were the key terms of an early modern empirical and quantitative imagination. Shakespeare's investigation of Renaissance...

Words and Pictures explores three fascinating examples of relationships between artists and writers: the illustrations of Paradise Lost and Pilgrim's Progress ; Hogarth and Fielding, a writer and artist dealing...

Buried in the Egyptian desert some four thousand years ago, the Pyramid Texts are among the world's oldest poetry. Yet ever since the discovery of these hieroglyphs in 1881, they...

A beautiful, thoughtful guide to finding your perfect next read, no matter what life's throwing at you, from the founder of Aphra a.k.a. 'your inclusive AF feminist book club' Through...

Insight Study Guides are written by experts and cover a range of popular literature, plays and films. Designed to provide insight and an overview about each text for students and...

Homer's great epic describes the many adventures of Odysseus, Greek warrior, as he strives over many years to return to his home island of Ithaca after the Trojan War. His...

During several months of cancer treatment, the writer decides to turn a necessary evil into an opportunity: the luxury of reading whatever takes her fancy. 'An Everywhere: A Little Book...