Literary Theory

World Literature is a vital part of twentieth-first century critical and comparative literary studies. As a field that engages seriously with function of literary studies in our global era, the...

How did a single genre of text have the power to standardise the English language across time and region, rival the Bible in notions of authority, and challenge our understanding...

This innovative study investigates the reception of medieval manuscripts over a long century, 1470-1585, spanning the reigns of Edward IV to Elizabeth I. Members of the Tudor gentry family who...

Geoffrey Chaucer is the best-known and most widely read of all medieval British writers, famous for his scurrilous humour and biting satire against the vices and absurdities of his age....

For this updated critical edition of King Lear, Lois Potter has written a completely new introduction, taking account of recent productions and reinterpretations of the play, with particular emphasis on...

This is the first ever complete critical edition of the writings of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720), including work printed in her lifetime and material left in manuscript form...

This is the first ever complete critical edition of the writings of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720), including work printed in her lifetime and material left in manuscript form...

Shakespeare Survey is a yearbook of Shakespeare studies and production. Since 1948, Survey has published the best international scholarship in English and many of its essays have become classics of...

Studying English Literature is a unique guide for undergraduates beginning to study the discipline of literature and those who are thinking of doing so. Unlike books that provide a survey...

This edition presents Medea, the most famous play of the Athenian tragedian Euripides, in ancient Greek, with commentary designed for university Greek classes, from second-year Greek upward. It helps students...

As consul in 63 BC Cicero faced a conspiracy to overthrow the Roman state launched by the frustrated consular candidate Lucius Sergius Catilina. Cicero's handling of this crisis would shape...

Conrad's great novel is a rich study not only of a typical South American country, but of the politics of any underdeveloped country, and for this reason it is permanently...

A groundbreaking work of Romantic biography; David Crane's book is an astonishingly original examination of Byron, and a radical approach to biography. Crane focuses on the lifelong feud between Augusta...

In his classic autobiography A. A. Milne, with his characteristic self-deprecating humour, recalls a blissfully happy childhood in the company of his brothers, and writes with touching affection about the...

This is a new edition of the first volume of the biography of the poet Robert Graves, giving an account of his early development. The author - the poet's nephew,...

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...

A glorious treasury of literary curiosities for every night of the year, Bedside Companion for Book Lovers contains an eclectic mix of fact and fiction, letters, diaries, essays and dedications,...

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...

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...

'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...

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...

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...

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...