Literary Criticism

'Irby might be our great bard of quarantine.' New York TimesIn this painfully funny collection, Samantha Irby captures powerful emotional truths while chronicling the rubbish bin she calls her life....

ONE OF THE WHITE REVIEW'S BEST BOOKS OF 2019Elizabeth Hardwick's iconic essay collection Seduction and Betrayal is a radical portrait of women and literature, reissued with a new introduction by...

A lethal cocktail of memoir and criticism.A documentary through the speaker's post-adolescent relationships.An arrangement of time in Chemnitz, Bergen, Dublin, Paris, Gwangju, Munich and Madrid.An intimate portrayal of unstable masculinity...

When in 1999 I began writing for The New York Review of Books ... my stance became that of the ingenuous Martian who had just landed on a gorgeous alien...

What happens within us when we read a novel? And how does a novel create its unique effects, so distinct from those of a painting, a film, or a poem?...

A guide to writing fiction by the Booker Prize-winning author of Vernon God Little.Part biography, part reflection and part practical guide, Release the Bats explores the mysteries of why and...

Kundera's essay has been written like a novel. In the course of nine separate sections, the same characters meet and cross paths with each other. Stravinsky and Kafka with their...

In this investigation into loss, losing and being lost, Rebecca Solnit explores the challenges of living with uncertainty. A Field Guide to Getting Lost takes in subjects as eclectic as...

Get comfortable, sink under the covers and dip into the hilarious Under the Duvet: Deluxe Edition for a behind-the-scenes glimpse into bestselling author Marian Keyes' life . . .'A must-read...

In her spare, stark style, Annie Ernaux documents the desires and indignities of a human heart ensnared in an all-consuming passion. Blurring the line between fact and fiction, she attempts...

Chambers Dictionary of Literary Characters provides an invaluable guide to the wealth of characters created by writers in English, with over 6,500 entries from novels, plays and poetry - from...

This fourth and final volume, which completes the Cambridge edition of The Letters of Samuel Beckett, covers the final twenty-four years of what was, as Beckett saw it, a surprisingly...

The Writer's Map winner of Trade Illustrated category in the British Design and Production AwardsPhotography & Illustrated Travel Book of the Year at the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards 2019Maps...

An excellent introduction to the unique voice of Gertrude Stein - as well as a treat for her fans - this 1931 book presents the modernist author's thoughts on the...

Do you have an idea that you're burning to get down on paper? Do you want to document your travels to far-flung places, or write a few stanzas of poetry?...

DIALOGUE is the follow-up title to Robert McKee's hugely successful STORY. Divided into four sections (The Art of Dialogue, Flaws & Fixes, Creating Dialogue & Dialogue Design) Dialogue teaches how...

The Essential Essays gathers twenty-five of Adrienne Rich's most renowned essays, demonstrating the lasting brilliance of her voice and her prophetic vision. Her thoughts on feminism, poetry, race, homosexuality and...

When Jane Austen's father deeded the family home to her brother, Jane was tossed to the winds, no money to her name, probably too old to be wed. At this...

In her admired works of fiction, Ann Hood explores the transformative power of literature. Now, with warmth and honesty, Hood reveals the personal story behind these works of fiction. Growing...

From Sioux Falls to Khartoum, from Kyoto to Darwin; from the panchayat forests to the Giant's Causeway; in taxis and at bus stops, in kitchens and sleigh beds, haystacks and...

Soon after its publication on 30 September 1868, Little Women became an enormous international bestseller. When Anne Boyd Rioux read it in her twenties, it had a powerful effect on...

Why is it that for many people 'England' has always meant an unspoilt rural landscape rather than the ever-changing urban world in which most English people live? What was the...

An original look at how literary characters can transcend their books to guide our lives, by one of the world's most eminent bibliophiles Alberto Manguel, in a style both charming...

A literary master's entertaining guide to reading with deeper insight, better understanding, and greater pleasure-"English 101 in a book." (Michael Lindgren, Washington Post) What makes a work of literature good...

An authoritative new history of the vampire, two hundred years after it first appeared on the literary scene Published to mark the bicentenary of John Polidori's publication of The Vampyre,...

The National Book Award-winning author of Year of the Monkey, Just Kids, and M Train offers a rare, intimate account of her own creative process "Devotion is short enough to...

'Wonderful. A manifesto of horticultural delight' Literary Review 'Beautiful. Perfect for literary garden lovers' Good Housekeeping'Rich and unusual, a book to treasure. Few recent gardening books come anywhere close to...

Steven Pinker, the bestselling author of The Language Instinct, deploys his gift for explaining big ideas in The Sense of Style - an entertaining writing guide for the 21st centuryWhat...

The definitive biography of an extraordinary novelist, by acclaimed literary biographer Claire Harman'There was no possibility of taking a walk that day . . .' With these words Charlotte Bronte...

Jonathan Swift was a man of contradictions: a man who satirized the powerful but aspired to political greatness, who mocked men's vanity but held himself in high esteem, a religious...

One of Time Magazine's 100 Must-Read Books of 2020 and an FT Best Book of the YearThought-provoking and deeply consoling, a perfectly distilled set of essays on the strangest year...

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,...

An intimate study of three of Ireland's greatest writers from one of its best-loved contemporary voices, Colm Toibin__________________In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know Colm Toibin takes three of Ireland's greatest...

From the International Man Booker Prize-winning author of Can't and Won't and The End of the Story - a crystalline collection of literary essays for fans of Susan Sontag and...

'There is something interesting and intriguing to be found on almost every page' Guardian 'A father . . . is a necessary evil.' Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses____________________________________In Mad, Bad, Dangerous...

Tourists, terrorists, secularists, hackers, fundamentalists, transhumanists, algorithmicians: in this book Roberto Calasso considers the tribes that inhabit and inform the world today. A world that feels more elusive than ever...

Advertisements for Myself is a comprehensive collection of the best of Norman Mailer's essays, stories, interviews and journalism from the Forties and Fifties, linked by anarchic and riotous autobiographical commentary....

Explore the fascinating lives and loves of the greatest novelists, poets, and playwrights.From William Shakespeare and Jane Austen to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Toni Morrison, Writers explores more than 100...

Incisive and highly original, an investigation of the connection between literature and psychoanalysis, from Britain's leading psychoanalyst, author of On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored and On Kindness, the essential...

'Words connect the visible track to the invisible thing ... like a fragile makeshift bridge cast across the void'With imagination and wit, Italo Calvino sought to define the virtues of...