Literary Criticism

Ever since Robinson Crusoe in 1719, the novel has introduced British readers to truly unforgettable characters - people in whom we can find deeper understanding of our own lives. In this engaging and personal book, Sebastian Faulks examines and...

After a sleepless night spent longing for his absent wife Sita, Rama, god-prince and future king, surveyed his army camps on a clear autumn morning and spied a white goose playing in a pond of lotus flowers. Seeing this radiant creature who so resembled...

'The funniest book I've read in a long time: its deadpan, dry humour and its accumulation of absurdities will leave you rolling on your floor with laughter' The Times She thought she was a lover of the great classics of Russian literature - until she...

First published in 1968, Alastair Fowler's annotated edition of Paradise Lost is acknowledged as the most authoritative guide to this major work. It is the only recent edition of Paradise Lost to be based on the text of the first (1667) edition, now...

The Routledge Companion to Russian Literature is an engaging and accessible guide to Russian writing of the past thousand years. The volume covers the entire span of Russian literature, from the Middle Ages to the post-Soviet period, and explores all...

Ecology is the science of ecosystems, of habitats, of our world and its future. In the latest New Naturalist, ecologist David M. Wilkinson explains key ideas of this crucial branch of science, using Britain's ecosystems to illustrate each point. ...

Poetry and music have been associated with each other from the very beginning. The Penguin Book of English Song draws together a great variety of English poetry (including Irish, Scots and Welsh writers) that has reached a wider audience through the...

Poet, Thomas Carper, and scholar, Derek Attridge, join forces in Meter and Meaning to present an illuminating and user-friendly way to explore the rhythms of poetry in English. They begin by showing the value of performing any poem aloud, so that we can...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781800750524Author Rob DoyleFormat HardbackPage Count 256Imprint Swift PressPublisher Swift Press

At the age of seventeen, Rebecca Mead read Middlemarch for the first time, and has read it again every five years since, each time interpreting and discovering it anew. In The Road to Middlemarch she writes passionately about her relationship to this...

An elegant and accessible introduction to the life and works of one of England's greatest and most popular novelists"I want to salute Fiona Stafford's brilliant [book]. . . . It tells one all one needs to know about Jane Austen, and, best of all, leaves...

When an essay is due and dreaded exams loom, here's the lit-crit help students need to succeed! SparkNotes Literature Guides make studying smarter, better, and faster. They provide chapter-by-chapter analysis, explanations of key themes, motifs, and...

Purposefully imitating Voltaire's classic Candide, another dark comedy which derives its humour from life's tragedies, Habiby's The Secret of Saeed the Pessoptimist is a classic of Arab literature. The story of Saeed, a Palestinian who becomes a citizen...

The Origin of German Tragic Drama is Walter Benjamin's most sustained and original work. It begins with a general theoretical introduction on the nature of the baroque art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concentrating on the peculiar...

The Elizabethan age was a tumultuous time, when long-cherished certainties were crumbling and life was exhilaratingly uncertain. Shakespeare's Restless World uncovers the extraordinary stories behind twenty objects from the period to re-create an age...

'As soon as I began to read, I was filled with that kind of engrossed blossoming that happens somewhere inside of you when you start a really nourishing book.' - Pandora SykesA conversation-changing look at the social, familial, neurological, and...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780156027762Author Vladimir NabokovFormat PaperbackPage Count 352Imprint Houghton MifflinPublisher Houghton MifflinWeight(grams) 286gDimensions(mm) 204mm *...

The evolution of the concept of subjectivity in the works of Jacques Lacan. Countering the call by some "pro-Lacanians" for an end to the exegesis of Lacan's work-and the dismissal by "anti-Lacanians" of Lacan as impossibly...

Written in vivid, colourful detail, these rich, compelling stories recreate with sensitivity and wit a whole range of emotions, from childhood hope to brooding melancholy.Book InformationISBN 9780582786271Author Olive SeniorFormat PaperbackPage Count...

From a master biographer and leading scholar of eighteenth-century literature comes an award-winning new portrait of the greatest satirist in the English language Jonathan Swift is best remembered today as the author of Gulliver's Travels, the satiric...

'Restlessly curious, insightful, and quirky, David Damrosch is the perfect guide to a round-the-world adventure in reading' Stephen GreenblattA transporting and illuminating voyage around the globe, told through eighty classic and modern books'It is...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781621386230Author S K HeningerFormat HardbackPage Count 470Imprint Angelico PressPublisher Angelico PressWeight(grams) 898gDimensions(mm) 234mm * 156mm *...

Since The Paris Review was founded in 1953, it has given us invaluable conversations with the greatest writers of our age, vivid self-portraits that are themselves works of finely-crafted literature. The magazine has spoken with most of the world's...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780143128618Author William ShakespeareFormat PaperbackPage Count 208Imprint PlumePublisher Penguin Putnam Inc

Evening Standard's the Best Comedy Books of the Year, 2018Skinny's Book of the Year, 2018 'Joyfully entertaining. Full of warmth, wisdom and affectionate delight in the wonder and absurdity of being human.' Observer'Funny, honest and heart-warming.' Matt...

Before etching Jerusalem William Blake wrote about creating 'the grandest poem that this world contains.' Blake's avowed intention in constructing the work was to move readers from a solely rational way of being (called Ulro) to one that is highly...

A deep dive into the science behind the creative ways Shakespeare killed off his characters. William Shakespeare found dozens of different ways to kill off his characters, and audiences today still enjoy the same reactions - shock, sadness, fear -...

In the newly revised version of The Sourcebook of Magic you will discover afresh the basic 77 NLP patterns for transformational magic. What's new? A change from merely describing the patterns to presenting the key questions that allow you to guide a...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780714530611Author Hjalmar SoderbergFormat PaperbackPage Count 240Imprint Marion Boyars Publishers LtdPublisher Marion Boyars Publishers LtdWeight(grams)...

The poet in exile.Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 BC-AD 17), born at Sulmo, studied rhetoric and law at Rome. Later he did considerable public service there, and otherwise devoted himself to poetry and to society. Famous at first, he offended the emperor...

This is an exciting and entirely new synthesis, combining anthropology, political and social history, and the close reading of central Greek texts, to account for two the most significant hallmarks in Homeric epic and Athenian tragedy: the representation...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781950922130Author Captivating HistoryFormat PaperbackPage Count 374Imprint Ch PublicationsPublisher Ch PublicationsWeight(grams) 549gDimensions(mm) 229mm *...

Also known as the Lettres anglaises ou philosophiques, Voltaire's response to his exile in England offered the French public of 1734 a panoramic view of British culture. Perceiving them as a veiled attack against the ancien regime, however, the French...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781910691175Author Dave McKeanFormat PaperbackPage Count 208Imprint Tangerine PressPublisher Tangerine Press

Meditative missives.Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, born at Corduba (Cordova) ca. 4 BC, of a prominent and wealthy family, spent an ailing childhood and youth at Rome in an aunt's care. He became famous in rhetoric, philosophy, money-making, and imperial service...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780395850862Author Mary OliverFormat PaperbackPage Count 192Imprint Houghton Mifflin (Trade)Publisher Houghton MifflinWeight(grams) 560g

A Theory of Adaptation explores the continuous development of creative adaptation, and argues that the practice of adapting is central to the story-telling imagination. Linda Hutcheon develops a theory of adaptation through a range of media, from film...

As the annual flood of published novels grows ever greater, it's a hard a job to keep up, let alone sort the wheat from the chaff. Fortunately, literary sleuth and academic John Sutherland is on hand to do precisely that. In the course of over 500...

"Three Kingdoms" tells the story of the fateful last reign of the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), when the Chinese empire was divided into three warring kingdoms. This decisive period in Chinese history became a subject of intense and continuing...

'In the beginning, everything was alive. The smallest objects were endowed with beating hearts . . .' Having recalled his life through the story of his physical self in Winter Journal, internationally best-selling novelist Paul Auster now remembers the...