Literary Criticism

He is one of the inventors of rock criticism. His first book, The Aesthetics of Rock (acclaimed by Greil Marcus as "a disemboweling of rock's soft white underbelly"), became an instant cult classic when published in 1970. And for the next thirty years...

From the author of 'Stuart: A Life Backwards'; a warm and witty portrait of a harmless, eccentric, bona fide genius. Alexander Master's landlord, Simon, lives in the basement of their Cambridge house. Between teetering towers of outdated maps...

Test your knowledge with over 100 holiday-themed crosswords, covering everything from camping and cities to tropical islands and famous landmarks. The crosswords gradually get harder throughout the book, and are perfect for popping in a suitcase, for...

Shakespeare and Dickens, first published in 1996, traces Dickens' own interest in Shakespeare from childhood, not only through his own reading and performance but also through numerous theatrical, literary and artistic sources. The book proceeds to...

'To be taught to write or to speak - but what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think - nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought at...

Ferdinand forbids his widowed sister to marry again. When he discovers that she is not only married but had a child he is driven mad with fury. The Duchess of Malfi is a study in strong characters, dark deeds and dreadful revenge. This edition includes...

This book is about Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) for people who have intellectual disabilities (ID). The provision of health and social care services is becoming more trauma informed, including in services for people with ID, where the experience of trauma...

The classic study of alienation, creativity and the modern mind'Excitingly written, with a sense of revelation' GUARDIANTHE OUTSIDER was an instant literary sensation when it was first published in 1956, thrusting its youthful author into the front rank...

The Discarded Image paints a lucid picture of the medieval world view, providing the historical and cultural background to the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It describes the 'image' discarded by later years as 'the medieval synthesis...

In Burning Questions Atwood aims her constant curiosity and impish humour at our world and reports back to us on what she finds.In it she seeks answers to Burning Questions such as:Why do people everywhere, in all cultures, tell stories?How can we live...

Robert Bernasconi explores in the context of Heidegger's thought a number of questions of far-reaching concern: what is the role of literary examples within philosophy? Is art dead? What is the relation of art to nature? Is there a place for the idea of...

Richard Holmes's great work of biographical exploration, published alongside its sister volume 'Sidetracks'. In 1985, Richard Holmes published a small book of essays called Footsteps and the writing of biography was changed forever. A daring...

What was the Enlightenment? Though many scholars have attempted to solve this riddle, none has made as much use of contemporary answers as Dan Edelstein does here. In seeking to recover where, when, and how the concept of 'the Enlightenment' first...

This wide-ranging book argues that criticism emerged in early bourgeois society as a central feature of a "public sphere" in which political, ethical, and literary judgements could mingle under the benign rule of reason. The disintegration of this...

This study extends beyond the scope of literature into the psychology of much of our contemporary scene, including fashion, advertising, and propaganda techniques. In considering such aspects, the author goes beyond the domain of pure aesthetics and...

Tomcat Murr is a loveable, self-taught animal who has written his own autobiography. But a printer's error causes his story to be accidentally mixed and spliced with a book about the composer Johannes Kreisler. As the two versions break off and alternate...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781555404277Author Sarah Iles JohnstonFormat PaperbackPage Count 200Imprint Scholars PressPublisher Scholars PressWeight(grams) 341gDimensions(mm) 228mm *...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The 1674 text of Paradise Lost, with emendations and adoptions from the first edition and from the scribal manuscript. Spelling and punctuation have been modernised for student readers.An illuminating introduction...

Masques of difference presents an annotated edition of four seventeenth-century entertainments written by Ben Jonson for the court of James I. These masques reflect both the confidence and the anxieties of the English aristocracy at a time when notions...

This collection of short stories, including many new translations, is the first to span the whole of Japan's modern era from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day. Beginning with the first writings to assimilate and rework Western literary...

Winner of the 1989 Whitbread Prize for Book of the Year, this is the first volume of Holmes's seminal two-part examination of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of Britain's greatest poets. 'Coleridge: Early Visions' is the first part of Holmes's...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781789897203Author Rosie NeaveImprint Miles Kelly Publishing LtdPublisher Miles Kelly Publishing Ltd

World first publication of the collected poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, spanning almost seven decades of the author's life and presented in an elegant three-volume hardback boxed set. J.R.R. Tolkien aspired to be a poet in the first instance, and...

This authoritative edition was formerly published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Johnson's poetry and prose - all the major poems, complemented by essays,...

Never has contemporary fiction been more widely discussed and passionately analysed; recent years have seen a huge growth in the number of reading groups and in the interest of a non-academic readership in the discussion of how novels work. Drawing on...

This book constitutes the most detailed and wide-ranging comparative study to date of how European literatures written in less well known languages try, through translation, to reach the wider world. Through case studies of over thirteen different...

What does contemporary China's diverse and exciting fiction tell us about its culture, and the relationship between art and politics? The Subplot takes us on a lively journey through a literary landscape like you've never seen before: a vast...

Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon, The Dream of the Rood, The Wanderer, and The Seafarer are among the greatest surviving Anglo-Saxon poems. They, and many other treasures, are included in The Anglo-Saxon World: chronicles, laws and letters, charters and...

Once a neglected area, African American history is now the subject of extensive scholarly research. The Debate on Black Civil Rights in America is the first full-length study to examine the changing academic debate on developments in African American...

Demystify and appreciate the pleasures of poetrySometimes it seems like there are as many definitions of poetry as there are poems. Coleridge defined poetry as "the best words in the best order." St. Augustine called it "the Devil's wine." For Shelley,...

Born in England in 1857, Agnes Mary Frances Robinson contributed to cultural and literary currents from nineteenth-century Victorianism to twentieth-century modernism; she was equally at home in London and Paris and prolific in both English and French...

'It is singular, that my having spent a winter with one of the most dissipated women in England should have sobered my mind so completely.' Maria Edgeworth's 1801 novel, Belinda, is an absorbing, sometimes provocative, tale of social and domestic life...

Now available in paperback, Winters in the World is a beautifully observed journey through the cycle of the year in Anglo-Saxon England, exploring the festivals, customs and traditions linked to the different seasons. Drawing on a wide variety of source...

A marvellous book, lovingly edited, beautifully produced. . . and brimming with literary insights, much laughter, a sprinkle of gossip and the poet's insuppressible joie de vivre, even in adversity. Buy it, read it, and keep it to hand on to your...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The first British edition of the novel, published in 1886 by Longmans, Green, and Co., the only edition set directly from Stevenson's manuscript and for which he read and corrected proofs.Deborah Lutz's thorough...

As the Amazon burns, Fabio Zuker shares stories of resistance, self-determination, and kinship with the land. In 2007, a seven-ton minke whale was found stranded on the banks of the Tapajos River, hundreds of miles into the Amazon rainforest. For...

The "Father of History."Herodotus the great Greek historian was born about 484 BC, at Halicarnassus in Caria, Asia Minor, when it was subject to the Persians. He traveled widely in most of Asia Minor, Egypt (as far as Aswan), North Africa, Syria, the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.AwardsWinner of National Book Critics Circle Awards.Book InformationISBN 9780375726217Author Nicholson BakerFormat PaperbackPage Count 400Imprint Vintage BooksPublisher Random...

Delve into a legendary literary love affair'I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone. I just miss you...'At a dinner party in 1922, Virginia Woolf...

Rebellion, revolution, experimental living, feminist communes, street theatre, radical magazines, love affairs - gay and straight - sex, drugs and rock and roll.Michele Roberts, one of Britain's most talented and highly acclaimed novelists, now considers...