English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

Few poetic forms have found more uses than the sonnet in English, and none is now more recognizable. It is one of the longest-lived of verse forms, and one of the briefest. A mere fourteen lines, fashioned by intricate rhymes, it is, as Dante Gabriel...

Does a novel focus on one life or many? Alex Woloch uses this simple question to develop a powerful new theory of the realist novel, based on how narratives distribute limited attention among a crowded field of characters. His argument has important...

In 1859, the historian Lord John Acton asserted: 'two great principles divide the world, and contend for the mastery, antiquity and the middle ages'. The influence on Victorian culture of the 'Middle Ages' (broadly understood then as the centuries...

'He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others'.So Virginia Woolf described the 'common reader' for whom she wrote her second series of essays. Here she turns her brilliant eye on novels and poetry from...

"We can begin with a kiss, though this will not turn out to be a love story, at least not a love story of anything like the usual kind." So begins A Very Queer Family Indeed, which introduces us to the extraordinary Benson family. Edward White Benson...

What was a book in early modern England? By combining book history, bibliography and literary criticism, Material Texts in Early Modern England explores how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century books were stranger, richer things than scholars have imagined...

A Clockwork Counterpoint is the first book to examine the musical side of Anthony Burgess, an astonishingly prolific, underrated and talented composer, revealing how his lifelong involvement in music is an essential key toward understanding his life and...

The Cambridge Companion to Frankenstein consists of sixteen original essays on Mary Shelley's novel by leading scholars, providing an invaluable introduction to Frankenstein and its various critical contexts. Theoretically informed but accessibly...

The classic study of the English-language writing of Wales in the first half of the twentieth century by Glyn Jones, drawing on his personal acquaintance with writers like Dylan Thomas, Idris Davies and Caradoc Evans. Tony Brown had the opportunity to...

To Evelyn Waugh he was simply "the Master." He wrote ninety novels and story collections, and among his immortal characters are Jeeves, Psmith, and the Empress of Blandings (who is, of course, a pig). Equally impressive is the range of his devotees:...

Mr. Eastman s book is to be welcomed on at least two counts. It makes for substantial and inviting reading on its own, and it serves as a guide to a fearfully bewildering subject. . . . The commentary in these pages is wide, learned, ingenious and full...

A major reassessment of the one of the greatest English novelist of the twentieth century, from celebrated critic Sir Frank Kermode.CONCERNING E.M. FORSTER is a rich, varied and original portrait of a literary great. When Sir Frank Kermode delivered the...

The first detailed account of Austen's characters' reading experience to date, this book explores both what her characters read and what their literary choices would have meant to Austen's own readership, both during her life and today. Jane Austen...

In eighteenth-century England, actresses were frequently dismissed as mere prostitutes trading on their sexual power rather than their talents. Yet they were, Felicity Nussbaum argues, central to the success of a newly commercial theater. Urban, recently...

Reading 'Piers Plowman' is an indispensable scholarly guide to a magnificent - and notoriously difficult - medieval poem. With 'Piers Plowman', the fourteenth-century poet William Langland proved that English verse could be at once spiritually...

Thomas Hardy and the Church traces the development of Hardy's attitude towards Christianity. Through an analysis, firmly rooted in documentary evidence, of his use of the motifs of church architecture, religious ritual, and the characters of clergymen,...

The Cambridge Companion to John Donne introduces students (undergraduate and graduate) to the range, brilliance, and complexity of John Donne. Sixteen essays, written by an international array of leading scholars and critics, cover Donne's poetry...

W. B. Yeats is usually seen as a great innovator who put his stamp so decisively on modern Irish literature that most of his successors worked in his shadow. R. F. Foster's eloquent and authoritative book weaves together literature and history to present...

The recent discovery that as a young man Charles Dickens lived only a few doors from a major London workhouse made headlines worldwide, and the campaign to save the workhouse from demolition caught the public imagination. Internationally, the media...

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) is widely recognised as one of the central and defining figures in Scottish literature and in European and American Romanticism. Fabled in his own lifetime as 'the Wizard of the North' and as the (long-anonymous) 'Author of...

Priestley's England is the first full-length academic study of J B Priestley - novelist, playwright, screen-writer, journalist and broadcaster, political activist, public intellectual and popular entertainer, one of the makers of twentieth-century...

"If one keeps on walking, everything will be alright." So said Danish writer Soren Kierkegaard, and so thought philosophy buff Gary Hayden as he set off on Britain's most challenging trek: to walk from John O'Groats to Land's End. But it wasn't all...

How well do you really know your favourite author? Ace literary detective turned quizmaster John Sutherland and Austen buff Deirdre Le Faye challenge the reader to find out. Starting with easy, factual questions that test how well you remember a novel...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781907776038Author John SutherlandFormat PaperbackPage Count 128Imprint CONNELL PUBLISHING LTDPublisher CONNELL PUBLISHING LTD

From the gothic fantasies of Walpole's Otranto to post-modern takes on the country house by Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan, Phyllis Richardson guides us on a tour through buildings real and imagined to examine how authors' personal experiences helped to...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780948877070Author Roderick WatsonFormat PaperbackPage Count 48Imprint Association for Scottish Literary StudiesPublisher Association for Scottish Literary...

Elizabethan English culture is saturated with tales and figures from Ovid s Metamorphoses. While most of these narratives interrogate metamorphosis and transformation, many tales - such as those of Philomela, Hecuba, or Orpheus - also highlight...

John Banville (b. 1945) is a distinguished novelist and winner of several prestigious awards, including the Man Booker Prize for his novel The Sea. As a teenager Banville hoped to be a painter, and although he ultimately decided he lacked the talent for...

The short story has become an increasingly important genre since the mid-nineteenth century. Complementing The Cambridge Introduction to the American Short Story, this book examines the development of the short story in Britain and other English-language...

Philip Larkin's Required Writing, a selection from his miscellaneous prose from 1953-82, was highly praised and enjoyed when it appeared in 1983. Further Requirements gathers together many other interviews, broadcasts, statements and reviews. Some of...

First published in 1985, Between Men was a decisive intervention in gender studies, a book that all but singlehandedly dislodged a tradition of literary critique that suppressed queer subjects and subjectivities. With stunning foresight and conceptual...

In the prevailing account of English empiricism, Locke conceived of self-understanding as a matter of mere observation, bound closely to the laws of physical perception. English Romantic poets and German critical philosophers challenged Locke's...

Rosamond Lehmann, one of the most distinguished British writers of this century, published eight acclaimed works of fiction. Her only autobiographical work, The Swan in the Evening, recreated first the child she was and the experiences that made her the...

Thomas Hardy's architectural career is not considered a success. Seen usually as a mere prelude to his literary output, it is most often summed up by reference to the 'shockingly' suburban home he built himself at Max Gate. But in this new work,...

"This book was crying out to be written." The Irish Times "Scandalously readable." Literary Review James Joyce's relationship with his homeland was a complicated and often vexed one. The publication of his masterwork Ulysses - referred to by The...

This collection of essays covering many aspects of Austen's life, works and historical context provides the fullest introduction in one volume to the life and times of Jane Austen. Jane Austen in Context is a generously illustrated collection of short,...

This volume offers an account of English literary culture in one of its most volatile and politically engaged moments. From the work of Milton and Marvell in the 1650s and 1660s through the brilliant careers of Dryden, Rochester, and Behn, Locke and...

This is the first collection to investigate Charles Dickens on his vast and various opinions about the uses and abuses of the tenets of Christian faith that imbue English Victorian culture. Although previous studies have looked at his well-known...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780226115047Author Cyril ConnollyFormat PaperbackPage Count 288Imprint University of Chicago PressPublisher University of Chicago PressWeight(grams)...

What is meant by the Puritan literary tradition, and when did the idea of Puritan literature, as distinct from Puritan beliefs and practices, come into being? The answer is not straightforward. This volume addresses these questions by bringing together...