Literary Criticism

From 'Best of the Booker' winner Salman Rushdie, an incisive and inspiring collection of non-fiction essays, criticism and speeches that takes readers on a thrilling journey through the evolution of...

What do we mean when we claim affinity with an object or picture, or say affinities exist between such things?Affinities is a critical and personal study of a sensation that...

Annie Ernaux's father died exactly two months after she passed her exams for a teaching certificate. Barely educated and valued since childhood strictly for his labour, Ernaux's father had grown...

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR CRITICISM 2019From the MAN BOOKER PRIZE- and WOMEN'S PRIZE-SHORTLISTED author of Changing My Mind and Swing Time - discover a second...

In this entertaining and enlightening collection David Lodge considers the art of fiction under a wide range of headings, drawing on writers as diverse as Henry James, Martin Amis, Jane...

A Guest at the Feast uncovers the places where politics and poetics meet, where life and fiction overlap, where one can be inside writing and also outside of it.From the...

The first essay collection from one of the most acclaimed writers of our time. Novelist, cultural observer and social satirist Lionel Shriver is among the sharpest talents of our age....

A Sunday Times BestsellerChristopher Hitchens (1949-2011) was a matchless writer, debater and humanist. Throughout his life he shone the light of reason and truth into the eyes of charlatans and...

Where, or what, is home? What has it meant, historically and personally, to be 'Italian' or 'English', or both in a culture that prefers us to choose? What does it...

Imagine a type of writing so hard to define its very name means a trial, effort or attempt. An ancient form with an eye on the future, a genre poised...

Twentieth Anniversary Edition with Contributions from Joe Hill and Owen King Immensely helpful and illuminating to any aspiring writer, this special edition of Stephen King's critically lauded, million-copy bestseller shares...

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERPICKED BY THE SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN, INDEPENDENT, IRISH TIMES, SPECTATOR, TLS, NEW STATESMAN, MAIL ON SUNDAY, I PAPER, PROSPECT, REVEW31 AND EVENING STANDARD AS A BOOK...

'Here's something I know to be true, although it's a little corny, and I don't quite know what to do with it: What I regret most in my life are...

Key features of this text: How to study the text Author and historical background General and detailed summaries Commentary on themes, structure, characters, language and style Glossaries Test questions and...

When Dionysus the Renegade faked a Sophocles text in 400BC (cunningly inserting the acrostic 'Heraclides is ignorant of letters') to humiliate an academic rival, he paved the way for two...

In 1623 the actors John Heminges and Henry Condell assembled Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, better known as The First Folio. In doing so they preserved literature's most...

Featuring nine in-depth interviews with Mike Murphy and three round-table discussions with fellow Irish writers and critics, Reading the Future creates a unique freeze-frame portrait of Ireland's literary culture at...

Every Thursday morning in a living room in Iran, over tea and pastries, eight women meet in secret to discuss forbidden works of Western literature. As they lose themselves in...

Originally published in 1923, Jean Toomer's Cane remains an innovative literary work-part drama, party poetry, part fiction. This revised Norton Critical Edition builds upon the First Edition (1988), which was...

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to...

HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics. 'When I was about sixteen I suddenly discovered the joy of mere words' Best known for his remarkable novels...

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. 'A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but...

In Dysphoria Mundi, Paul B. Preciado has written a mutant text assembled from essays, philosophy, poetry and autofiction that captures a moment of profound change and possibility. Rooted in the...

An English teacher's love letter to reading and the many ways literature can make us, and our lives, better.How can a Victorian poem help teenagers understand YouTube misogyny? Can Jane...

In this bold and exhilarating mix of memoir and writing guide, Melissa Febos tackles the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing intimately while offering an utterly fresh examination of...

The golden age of cultural theory (the product of a decade and a half, from 1965 to 1980) is long past. We are living now in its aftermath, in an...

'A rollercoaster ride' THE TIMES'Fascinating and funny' SUNDAY EXPRESSLynda La Plante has lived an illustrious life and has the stories to prove it.From her early days in Liverpool to her...

This book surveys Irish writing in English over the last two centuries, from Maria Edgeworth to Seamus Heaney, to give the literary student and the general reader an up-to-date sense...

Ireland and Cultural Theory is a unique and timely collection offering the first major assessment of how theoretical readings of 'Ireland' and Irish culture have begun to question the grounds...

This compendium gathers together his published work and films produced over the last forty years. This material is refashioned for a contemporary readership and supplemented with a number of original...

We're not talking about rooms that are just full of books. We're talking about bookshops in barns, disused factories, converted churches and underground car parks. Bookshops on boats, on buses,...

World-renowned Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt explores the playwright's insight into bad (and often mad) rulers. Examining the psyche-and psychoses-of the likes of Richard III, Macbeth, Lear and Coriolanus, Greenblatt illuminates...

Israel's pulverization of Gaza since October 7, 2023 is not only a humanitarian crisis, but an environmental catastrophe. Far from the first event of its kind, the devastation Israel has...

'One of the most eloquent thinkers about our life in language' The Sunday TimesTime Lived, Without Its Flow is a beautiful, unflinching essay on the nature of grief from critically...