Literary Criticism

Everything you need to know about The Handmaid's Tale to succeed in your A Level or undergraduate studies. York Notes Advanced provide everything you need to know about Atwood's modern...

A blend of literary history, memoir, and self-help that shows how French literature can bring humor, happiness, and romance to our lives Like many people the world over, Viv Groskop...

"How should a poet properly live and write? What is his relationship to be to his own voice, his own place, his literary heritage and to his contemporary world?" These...

James Joyce, an Irish Catholic by upbringing, was described as ""the greatest Jew of all"" by his countryman and fellow writer Frank O'Connor. In this exploration of Joyce's identity with...

From the private papers of Mark Twain and Mozart to those of Robert Browning and Nelson, Love Letters of Great Men collects together some of the most romantic letters in...

A.C. Bradley put Shakespeare on the map for generations of readers and students for whom the plays might not otherwise have become "real" at all' writes John Bayley in his...

'Maeve's Times is funny and clever and kind, which are excellent qualities in both books and people' Irish Times'As someone who fell off a chair not long ago trying to...

Expanded second edition of this hugely successful introduction to literary theory, a book which has already proven itself as the first port of call for students - Two new chapters...

For his many friends and fans, Peter Cook was quite simply the funniest man they'd ever encountered. And nearly eight years since his death, his status as one of Britain's...

The Book of Other People is just that: a book of other people. Open its covers and you'll make a whole host of new acquaintances. Nick Hornby and Posy Simmonds...

Acerbic, wisecracking and hilarious, this is the definitive essay collection from New York legend and satirist, Fran Lebowitz, star of Martin Scorsese's hit Netflix series, Pretend It's a City.'The gold...

The Underground Sea is a succinct, urgent collection of writing from John Berger's archive. It brings together for the first time his work on mineworkers and the miners' strikes and...

What makes a good death? A good daughter? In 2009, with her forties and a harsh wave of austerity on the horizon, Marianne Brooker's mother was diagnosed with primary progressive...

Can we ever be wholly free? In this book of breathtaking imaginary leaps that conjure dystopias and magical islands, Margaret Atwood holds a mirror up to our own world. The...

John McGahern did not spread himself thinly as a writer. Nearly all of his creative energy went into what was central for him: the great novels and stories that are...

'Wordy is about the intoxication of writing; my sense of playful versatility; different voices for different matters: the polemical voice for political columns; the sharp-eyed descriptive take for profiles; poetic...

In these seventeen essays (and one short story) the 2011 Man Booker Prize winner examines British, French and American writers who have meant most to him, as well as the...

The World of Sherlock Holmes delves into the detective's storied history to explore the myths and reality of the era where Holmes was first born - a time when crime...

Neil Cornwell's study, while endeavouring to present an historical survey of absurdist literature and its forbears, does not aspire to being an exhaustive history of absurdism. Rather, it pauses on...

Author of the Booker-longlisted novel Second Place'Cements her reputation as one of the most fierce and elegant chroniclers of how we live now.' Stephanie Merritt, ObserverCoventry is a collection of...

The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism is the gold standard for anyone who wishes to understand the development and current state of literary theory. Offering 185 pieces (31 of...

A celebration of Percy Shelley's assertion that 'poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world', these thirty-plus essays on writers from Oscar Wilde to Salman Rushdie dispel the myth of...

Village rectories, the traditional family homes of church ministers, have had a long association with writers in Britain. For many, the Georgian rectory nestling against an historic church immediately evokes...

This book features 18 short readings on methods of arguing and persuading, demonstrating that arguments are seldom matters simply of pro and con. The selected readings include: "Freedom of Hate...

By means of short entries linked to individual works, this index provides a guide to Dickens' novels, short stories, pamphlets, plays, collections of journalism and travel books. Entries are listed...

NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER'A beautiful book of great tenderness, love of life, and wisdom' JOSEPH O'CONNORFor almost fifty years, Michael Harding has been crafting words in a bid to express himself...

This anthology of classic and cutting-edge statements in literary theory has now been updated to include recent influential texts in the areas of Ethnic Studies, Postcolonialism and International Studies. This...

Literary Theory: An Anthology is a unique combination of the classic statements in criticism and the new theories that have revolutionized literary study in the past several decades. This unprecedented...

"Rolling Stone" is one of the most influential rock magazines in the world, and over the last 25 years it has published some of the most innovative, powerful and evocative...

In her latest work, Annie Ernaux recounts a relationship with a student thirty years her junior - an experience that transforms her, briefly, back into the 'scandalous girl' of her...

Presented for the first time in English, the recently discovered early manuscripts of the twentieth century's most towering literary figure offer uncanny glimpses of his emerging genius and the creation...

In his first critical work since the highly successful "The Art of Fiction" (0140174923), David Lodge writes principally about Grahame Greene, Kingsley Amis and James Joyce, and from there goes...

Edna Longley's second collection of essays for Bloodaxe investigates the links between Irish literature (especially contemporary poetry), Irish culture and Irish politics. The Living Stream takes its title from Yeats's...

In his essay on Patrick Kavanagh, Brendan Kennelly writes: 'A poet's critical judgements are always, at bottom, necessary justifications of his own most dearly held aesthetic.' This selection of his...

The Book of Lost Books is a book of stories involving kings, heretics, untimely interruptions and back room deals, falling tortoises and fairy princesses, train crashes and war atrocities, bravery,...

Early one autumn afternoon in pursuit of an elusive book on her shelves, Susan Hill encountered dozens of others that she had never read, or forgotten she owned, or wanted...