Literary Criticism

In the winter of 1922-23 archaeologist Howard Carter and his wealthy patron George Herbert, the Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, sensationally opened the tomb of Tutenkhamen. Six weeks later Herbert, the sponsor of the expedition, died in Egypt. The popular...

'Barthes' purpose is to tear away masks and demystify the signs, signals and symbols of the language of mass culture' The TimesIn this magnificent and often surprising collection of essays Barthes explores the myths of mass culture. Taking subjects as...

Eric Hoffer's The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements is one of the most widely read works of social psychology written in the 20th-century. It exemplifies the powers of creative thinking and critical analysis at their best, providing...

Critically acclaimed as one of Shakespeare's most complex and intriguing plays, Twelfth Night is a classic romantic comedy of mistaken identities. In recent years it has returned to the centre of critical debate surrounding gender and sexuality. The...

Sweeping across two millennia and every literary genre, acclaimed scholar and biographer Jonathan Bate provides a dazzling introduction to English Literature. The focus is wide, shifting from the birth of the novel and the brilliance of English comedy to...

Why biography? This collection of essays on the problems and functions of biography, and particularly the biography of writers, thinkers and artists, investigates a subject of enduring importance for those interested in culture and society. In the last...

Interdisciplinary Essays on Cannibalism: Bites Here and There brings together a range of works exploring the evolution of cannibalism, literally and metaphorically, diachronically and across disciplines. This edited collection aims to promote a...

This is the OCR-endorsed edition covering the Greek GCSE set text prescriptions examined from 2025 to 2026. The texts covered are: Homer Iliad VI, lines 370-413 and 429-502 Herodotus Sections XIa (First Capture of Babylon), XII (Rebuff to...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780345477644Author Daniel WallaceFormat PaperbackPage Count 256Imprint Random House IncPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 1168gDimensions(mm) 300mm...

How is a nation brought into being? In a detailed examination of crucial texts of 18th-century American literature, Christopher Looby argues that the United States was self-consciously enacted through the spoken word. Historical material informs and...

'sense too definite cancels your indistinct literature' Stephane Mallarme was the most radically innovative of nineteenth-century poets. His writings, with their richly sensuous texture and air of slyly intangible mystery, perplexed or outraged many...

Writing for art is a concise introduction to the subject of ekphrasis, and the first study to offer a useful general survey of the larger philosophical and theoretical questions arising from the encounter of literary texts and artworks. Stephen Cheeke...

The spellbinding novel from one of the world's best-loved authors, Paulo Coelho, recounting the story of Brida, and her pursuit of wisdom. This is the story of Brida, a young Irish girl, and her quest for knowledge...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781419670138Author Dr Edward C ChangFormat PaperbackPage Count 448Imprint Booksurge PublishingPublisher Booksurge PublishingWeight(grams) 653gDimensions(mm)...

Over the course of his short life, John Keats (1795-1821) honed a raw talent into a brilliant poetic maturity. By the end of his brief career, he had written poems of such beauty, imagination and generosity of spirit, that he had - unwittingly -...

This Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1985 corrected text and is accompanied by newly updated and expanded explanatory annotations and an introduction by Michael Gorra. "Backgrounds and Contexts" is divided into three sections, each of which...

Treating ancient plays as living drama. Classical Greek drama is brought vividly to life in this series of new translations. Students are encouraged to engage with the text through detailed commentaries, including suggestions for discussion and analysis...

The first biography of this great and tragic poet that takes advantage of a wealth of new material, this is an unusually balanced, comprehensive and definitive life of Sylvia Plath.'Surely the final, the definitive, biography of Sylvia Plath' Ali Smith ...

Michael Hattaway's Introduction to this bestselling edition of As You Like It accounts for what makes this popular play both innocent and dangerous. This third edition includes a new section on recent critical interpretations, including sections on...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781784614058Author David JandrellFormat PaperbackPage Count 112Imprint Y LolfaPublisher Y Lolfa

Composed during the fourteenth century in the English Midlands, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight describes the events that follow when a mysterious green-coloured knight rides into King Arthur's Camelot in deep mid-winter. The mighty knight presents a...

Written in three weeks of creative inspiration, Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus (1923) is well known for its enigmatic power and lyrical intensity. The essays in this volume forge a new path in illuminating the philosophical significance of this...

The first official colouring book based on Frank Herbert's Dune - one of the bestselling science fiction novels of all time.Visit Arrakis in a whole new way as you colour in your favourite characters and scenes from Frank Herbert's enduring and beloved...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780385152136Author William BlakeFormat PaperbackPage Count 1024Imprint Random House USA IncPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 1032gDimensions(mm)...

This book offers an invaluable insight into the complex and various Gothic forms of the 19th century. The Edinburgh Companion to the Victorian Gothic is an essential resource for students and scholars working on the Gothic, Victorian literature and...

Black artists of the avant-garde have always defined the future. Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture is the culmination of six years of multidisciplinary research by trans poet and curator Anais Duplan about the aesthetic strategies used by...

In recent decades, much of the most vital literature written in English has come from the former colonies of Great Britain. But while post-colonial novelists such as Chinua Achebe, Salman Rushdie and V.S. Naipaul have been widely celebrated, the...

This entirely new edition brings together all of Philip Larkin's poems. In addition to those in Collected Poems (1988), and in the Early Poems and Juvenilia (2005), some unpublished pieces from Larkin's typescripts and workbooks are included, as well...

This is an ambitious and fascinating analysis of early twentieth-century English literature from Kipling, Conrad, Lawrence and Forster through figures like Joyce and Woolf to writers such as Evelyn Waugh. There are chapters on the younger writers of the...

Oxford Student Texts offer an accessible route into the study of texts for A Level including line-by-line notes, and detailed sections covering key themes, issues and contexts. This edition focuses on 'She Stoops to Conquer' by Oliver Goldsmith.Student...

`However one defines Man, the same definition applies to us all. This is sufficient proof that there is no essential difference within mankind.' (Laws l.29-30) Cicero's The Republic is an impassioned plea for responsible governement written just...

In 1932, two years after D. H. Lawrence's death, a young woman wrote a book about him and presented it to a Paris publisher. She recorded the event in her diary: "It will not be published and out by tomorrow, which is what a writer would like when the...

'Literary criticism is a distinctive activity of the civilised mind.' With Eliot's dictum in mind, Professor Kermode has selected from the whole range of his critical writings, some of them dating back to before 1918. There are essays of generalisation,...

This unique study of the cult of the Virgin Mary offers a way of thinking about the interrelations of Catholicism and ideas of ideal femininity over the longue duree. An ambitious history of the changing symbolism of the Mother of God, Alone of All Her...

It is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations. "Contexts" collects materials that influenced Swift's writing of the novel, as well as documents that suggest its initial reception, including Swift's correspondence, Alexander Pope's poems on...

**HOW TO WIN AN INFORMATION WAR: THE PROPAGANDIST WHO OUTWITTED HITLER AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW**WINNER OF THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2020A TIMES and GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR'Quietly frightening.' Guardian'Essential reading.' Irish Times'Consistently...

Explores the intricate hidden organisation of Shakespeare's Sonnets Discusses Shakespeare as a writer with career aspirations as a poet Analyses individual poems, especially anthology pieces and minor" sonnets, from new perspectives Explores...

WINNER OF THE 2020 PULITZER PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHYSelected as a Book of the Year 2019 by the SPECTATOR, TELEGRAPH, NEW STATESMAN and FINANCIAL TIMES 'Definitive and delightful' Stephen Fry 'There can be no doubting the brilliance - the sheer explanatory...

Dr. Faustus is one of the jewels of early modern English drama, and is still widely performed today. Interestingly, the play has come down to the contemporary audience in two distinct versions that have become known as the 'A' and the 'B' texts. David...

'A problem of space first of all, then a problem of order'One of the most singular and extravagant imaginations of the twentieth century, the novelist and essayist Georges Perec was a true original who delighted in wordplay, puzzles, taxonomies and...