Literature: history and criticism

The follow-up to the bestselling Wanderers, Kerri Andrews' Way Makers is the first anthology of women's writing about walking. Moving from the eighteenth century to the present day, and across poetry, letters, diaries, novels and more,...

An introduction to one hundred great Jewish books, arranged as a concise and thought-provoking guide to the Jewish conversation across many centuries. Each of the entries features one work in its historical and cultural context, provides a summary of...

This new collection of essays on American poetry by Donald Davie (1922-1995) displays again 'the scale and range' of one of the great 'understanders' of poetry of our century, here fulfilling his chosen role as bridge-builder between poets, poetries and...

A plain, blank stationer's notebook from the 1780s in the Bodleian Library contains some of the most famous juvenilia in all of English literature. Copied out in Jane Austen's youthful hand, Volume the First, which takes its name from the inscription on...

When Isaac Bashevis Singer emigrated to America in 1935, he left behind his wife and five-year-old son, Israel, with the promise to send for them as soon as he settled. He never did. In 1955, twenty years after their separation, Zamir came to New York to...

"Jeet Heer more thoroughly and widely understands comics history and the perplexing binomial life of the cartoonist better than anyone who's not one. As well-versed in literature as he is in comics, he always gets at the peculiar, poetical texture of his...

This book will provide the first study of how the Gothic engages with ecocritical ideas. Ecocriticism has frequently explored images of environmental catastrophe, the wilderness, the idea of home, constructions of 'nature', and images of the...

This gifty book journal offers the perfect place to indulge your passion for reading and to record your literary explorations. This beautifully refreshed edition of our popular My Book Journal provides space to record reviews and thoughts on 100 books,...

Pier Paolo Pasolini (19221975) was a major cultural figure in post-WWII Italy, well-known as a poet, novelist, communist intellectual, and filmmaker. In Danger is the first anthology in English devoted to his political and literary essays, with a...

Rochester and the pursuit of pleasure provides a reading of Rochester's poems, dramatic works, and letters in a biographical context. In doing so, it sheds light on a central vexed issue in Rochester criticism, the relationship of the poet to his speaker...

Relics, Dreams, Voyages is a closely focused sequence of studies of worldwide connections in all the arts in the baroque period. Drawing on original research in libraries, collections, and archives in five countries, and in as many languages, this book...

Beckett's Childrenis a lyrical blend of personal memoir, fatherson dialogue, and literary investigation that probes the works of Irish writer Samuel Beckett and American poet Susan Howe in search of traces of their long-rumored status as father and...

What is it about Elena Ferrante's writing, especially her masterwork Neapolitan Novels, that resonates so deeply with millions of readers, making this Italian author who writes under a pseudonym with absolutely no "platform" an international...

A superbly rich and engrossing exploration of C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Paths in the Snow traces the literary allusions and echoes to be found in this beloved novel, drawing the reader deeper into the magic and meaning of Narnia.

The fantastical fictional land of Narnia, famously reached via a magical wardrobe, has many connections to the world in which its creator C. S. Lewis lived. The influence of Oxford can be seen not only in medieval buildings and towers but also in the...

How does an immortal deal with death?What can an ancient Time Lord teach us about real human nature?Why does the Doctor say he and Freud "got on very well"?How do the Daleks and Cybermen reflect concerns about losing our humanity?And what new challenges...

If my hatred of my belly was a person, she would be old enough to have completed a lengthy education and given me grandchildren.An unflinching and feminist portrait of one woman's obsession with her belly and the cultural and social norms that feed that...

Peter Hainsworth's sparkling, eminently readable new English translation ofThe Book of the Courtier, Baldesar Castiglione's (14781529) literary and philosophical masterpiece, captures all the nuance, stylistic flair, and humor of this...

Collecting the best of the underground blog Weird Sister, these unapologetic and insightful essays link contemporary feminism to literature and pop culture.Launched in 2014, Weird Sister proudly staked out a corner of the internet where feminist writers...

A new edition of this extensive visual analysis of horror tropes and their architectural analoguesHorror in Architecture presents an unflinching look at how horror genre tropes manifest in the built environment. Spanning the realms of art, design,...