Literary Criticism

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...

'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...

A survey of American literature from its 16th-century origins to its flourishing present, this sixth edition offers the work of 242 writers - 30 newly included - representing the extraordinary...

'A breathtakingly hilarious and absorbing portrait of one of the most brilliant, dotty, dippy delirious yet ultimately inspiring eccentrics in British history . . . A remarkable story of cultural...

'Quintessentially indispensable ... brimming with generosity and love of life. I want to share this book with everyone I love and those I don't ... in the conviction that Home...

Written over 30 years, these essays range over the field of Anglo-Irish literature from Yeats, Joyce and Synge through Patrick Kavanagh and Mary Lavin to Brendan Kennelly and Eavan Boland.

A SPECTATOR AND EVENING STANDARD BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020'A joy. Each chapter instantly became my favourite' David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas'Wonderful' Lucy Mangan'The right book has a neverendingness,...

The bestselling Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms provides clear and concise definitions of the most troublesome literary terms, from abjection to zeugma. It is an essential reference tool for students...

An extraordinary memoir of anticipatory grief, seventy-two minutes of life and a silent maternity leave, from artist and academic Tamarin Norwood.A few months into pregnancy, Tamarin Norwood learned that the...

Poets and playwrights, novels and novelists, publishing coups and personal stories, literature as we know it has been shaped by the key exponents of the craft, quirks of fate, meetings,...

This history of a family is an amalgamation of Garcia Marquez's shorter fiction, American fiction, biblical parables, and quixotic experiences of his own unique life story. His is a community...

Much of twentieth-century drama defies the traditional pigeon-holes of tragedy and comedy: the heroes are not straightforwardly heroic; the subject-matter seems at some times grimly realistic and at others nearer...

In this now-classic study, Praz describes the whole of Romantic literature under one of its most characteristic aspects, that of erotic sensibility. This wide spread mood in literature had a...

London has been at the centre of English literary life for centuries and the home of many men and women of genius. The city has stimulated and fascinated writers from...

In the spring of 1946 the black American novelist, Richard Wright, presented himself at the rue de Fleurus apartment of Gertrude Stein Their meeting symbolized the passing of one generation...

An illuminating new essay collection from one of the most distinctive, exciting and acclaimed writers of her generation, Zadie Smith'Zadie Smith is a wonderful essayist. She is a natural. She...

This invaluable book includes a selection of early criticism and a wide range of informative essays from critics of the last twenty years. Contributors include: Ernest Jones, Wolfgang H. Clemen,...

What are the differences between traditional readings of Hamlet and those produced by modern criticism? What sort of questions does structuralist or feminist criticism raise? What issues are foregrounded by...

Before publishing the sensuous and scandalous poems of Les Fleurs du Mal, Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) had already earned respect as a forthright and witty critic of art and literature. This...

Andre Aciman "quite simply, one of the finest essayists of the last hundred years" (Los Angeles Review of Books) and one of the most poignant stylists of his generation, selects...