Literary Criticism

Our relationship with trees is a lengthy, complex one. Since we first walked the earth we have, at various times, worshiped them, felled them and even talked to them. For...

Though best known in the English speaking world for his short fictions and poems, Borges is revered in Latin America equally as an immensely prolific and beguiling writer of non-fiction...

A glorious treasury of literary curiosities for every night of the year.Bedside Companion for Book Lovers contains an eclectic mix of fact and fiction, letters, diaries, essays and dedications, all...

In James Joyce and the Matter of Paris, Catherine Flynn recovers the paradigmatic city of European urban modernity as the foundational context of Joyce's imaginative consciousness. Beginning with Joyce's underexamined...

W. B. Yeats believed that a poet's life should be an experiment in living. His poems fashion into memorable words the sometimes puzzling emotions that hover over important life events....

In Letters of Note: Love, Shaun Usher gathers together some of the most powerful messages about love ever composed, whether inspired by love's first blush or the recriminations at its...

Richard Holloway is one of our most beloved public thinkers. Throughout his life he has turned to poets and writers to help answer the big questions, and for solace and...

In this love letter to reading, curated by Pandora Sykes in aid of the National Literacy Trust, bestselling and beloved writers share their favourite books: the ones they hold most...

John le Carre was a defining writer of his time. From The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, which changed our understanding of the secret agent from guns and...

A personal and powerful essay on loss from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the bestselling author of Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun. 'Grief is a cruel kind of education. You...

A NEW, REVISED EDITION OF THE ULTIMATE NORA EPHRON COLLECTION, PACKED WITH WIT, WISDOM AND COMFORT, WITH AN INTRODUCTION FROM CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS'The perfect introduction to the iconic writer' STYLISTINCLUDING:* Nora's...

What exactly are the Weird and the Eerie? In this new essay, Mark Fisher argues that some of the most haunting and anomalous fiction of the 20th century belongs to...

From first steps to final submission, this accessible guide takes students through each stage of the assignment-writing process and equips them with the skills they need to construct and develop...

Thomas Mann arrived in Princeton in 1938, in exile from Nazi Germany, and feted in his new country as "the greatest living man of letters." This beautiful new book from...

Part literary history, part personal memoir, Alice Brittan's beautifully written The Art of Astonishment explores the rich intellectual, religious, and philosophical history of the gift and tells the interconnected story...

Foreword by bestselling and award-winning author Smriti Halls.The indispensable guide to writing for children of all ages from pre-school to young adults, this Yearbook provides inspirational articles from dozens of...

The world of books in one little book. It doesn't matter how well read you are, A Little Book About Books is packed full of quotes, one-liners and famous lines...

A momentous memoir of childhood and adolescence from one of our finest and most beloved writers, as we've never seen her before. In The Lost Landscape, Joyce Carol Oates vividly...

'I find it impossible to imagine anyone better read than White ... Wisdom and a certain kind of tenderness are to be found on every page' ObserverEdmund White made his...

'Castillo's How To Read Now took my breath away. Energetically brilliant, warmly humane, incisively funny' Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize -winning author of Less'I gasped, shouted, and holler-laughed while reading...

A new collection of Shaw's major political writings presents an opportunity to reflect on his influential role as a public intellectual. At the forefront of economic and political debate from...

Teeming with life and compulsively readable, the pieces gathered together in The Tribe aggregate into an extraordinary mosaic of Cuba today. Carlos Manuel Alvarez, one of the most exciting young...

Each topic is a gem of brilliant writing from a master storyteller. By turns delightful, thought provoking, funny and packed with stories and observations about life's vagaries.

This study in reception develops close readings of English literature as means of interrogating Virgil's texts. Through four case studies, bookended by wide-ranging introductory and concluding chapters, this book shows...

A collection of exquisitely crafted essays by Ben Okri, one of Britain's foremost poets, and a Booker Prize-winning novelist, that explore such diverse themes as childhood and creativity, beauty, censorship,...

We all live online now, but what does that mean in IRL? How do strange subcultures on reddit affect our local shopping centres, what do night gyms owe to Twitter,...

'I cannot think of a time in living memory when this book would have been more urgent or more necessary' Sarah Perry, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Essex Serpent'There...

In litter-strewn Epping Forest on the edge of London, might a writer find that magical moment of transcendence? He will certainly discover filthy graffiti and frightening dogs, as well as...

Enjoy this portable guide to the London of Sherlock Holmes, then and now. Packed with fascinating information about London past and present, and in a handy pocket-sized format, this new...

A lifetime in the making, Cultural Amnesia is one of the crowning achievements in Clive James's illustrious career. Containing over a hundred essays, this is a definitive guide to twentieth...

Foreword by William Sutcliffe, author of Are you Experienced?, New Boy and We See EverythingThe indispensable guide to writing for children and young adults, this Yearbook provides inspirational articles from...

*BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week*'The Life and Rhymes has a performative quality reminiscent of Zephaniah's poetry - honest, unshowy and ultimately unthreatening. It matches the man.' The Guardian...

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF LAST ORDERS AND MOTHERING SUNDAY, and reissued for the first time in Scribner, a brilliant collection of essays, as well as brand new material, that...

This book examines the writings of the American novelist Ayn Rand, especially The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), which Rand considered her definitive statement about the need for an...

Warning signs are all around us. In ancient Egypt, tombs were lavishly adorned with signs and symbols warning of the dire consequences that would befall any robbers and thieves. And...

It's one of the most successful - and surprising - of phenomena in the entire crime fiction genre: detectives (and protodetectives) solving crimes in earlier eras. There is now an...

A vital, engaging, and hugely enjoyable guide to poetry, from ancient times to the present, by one of our greatest champions of literature--selected as the literature book of the year...

An irresistible collection of favorite writings from an author celebrated for his bravura style and sheer unpredictability Francis Spufford's welcome first volume of collected essays gathers an array of his...

'A gentle book and, like death itself, sometimes an unexpectedly kind one' Neil Gaiman'This is an absorbing and important book, seeking out stories so many shy away from and telling...

Art honours the world, and criticism honours art, even - perhaps especially - when the critic sets out to destroy. The bad review is hardly ever written out of mere...

From the Booker-shortlisted author of The Mars Room, a career-spanning collection of spectacular essays about politics and culture.In The Hard Crowd, Rachel Kushner gathers a selection of her writing from...

From A Long Long Way, his Booker shortlisted novel about the Irish soldiers who fought for Britain during the First World War to his Donal McCann starring hit-play, The Steward...

THE CONTROVERSIAL SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER.Candid, fearless and provocative - the author of American Psycho on who he is and what he thinks is wrong with the world today....