Literary Criticism

The publishers of Ulysses by James Joyce were brought to trial and convicted of obscenity in the USA in 1921. The immortal prose, ultimately recognized as the greatest English language...

Like its three predecessors, this fourth instalment of Trinity Tales gathers together recollections of a decade at Trinity College Dublin. This time, the story is taken up by 1990s graduates-...

This handsome volume presents more than twenty images of book covers, poems and other works that reflect Sligo's presence in the work of W.B. Yeats and his family. Thoughtful reflections...

The essential guide to the Bard and his work, celebrating 400 years of his legacy.The works of William Shakespeare have been a permanent feature on school curricula for years, and...

What is Literary Theory? Is there a relationship between literature and culture? In fact, what is Literature, and does it matter? These are the sorts of questions addressed by Jonathan...

Informative, broad-ranging, this title sheds new light on the life and literary art of one of the last century's most celebrated authors. The first volume to be authorized by the...

In the dusty, ramshackle town of Suse lives A'ida. Her insurgent lover Xavier has been imprisoned. Resolute, sensuous and tender, A'ida'sletters to the man she loves tell of daily events...

The works of Shakespeare have become staples of literature. They are everywhere, from our early schooling to the lecture rooms of academia, from classic theatre to modern adaptations on stage...

James Joyce is one of the greatest writers in English. His first book, A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man laid down the template for the Coming of...

James Joyce's Ulysses is filled with all sorts of references that can get in the way of many of its readers. This volume, with over 12,000 individual annotations (and more...

'Donoghue was alert to the idea of the unsayable, as he circled around the idea of language itself as pliable material, all the more beautiful for that and worthy of...

Irish life between 1930 and 1960 is normally presented as a sort of cultural wasteland. In a radical re-examination of the period, Brian Fallon challenges this sterotype and argues that...

That rare person who looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf, Clarice Lispector is one of the most popular but least understood of Latin American writers. Now, after...

Shakespeare's sonnets of 1609 are as thrilling and persuasive today as they were when they were first published: perhaps no collection of verses before or since has so captured the...

"I greatly admire the work of Tiziana de Rogatis. She is a reader of deep refinement. Often I think that she knows my books better than I. So, I read...

When we think of great events in the history of the world, we tend to think of war, revolution, political upheaval or natural catastrophe. But throughout history there have been...

LONGLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2017From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sportswriter comes a deeply personal account of his parents - an intimate portrait of American mid-twentieth century...

A-Z Great Modern Writers is an essential reference guide to the world's most important contemporary writers, boldly illustrated by Andy Tuohy.Artist and graphic designer Andy Tuohy turns his hand to...

Finders Keepers is a gathering of Seamus Heaney's prose of three decades. Whether autobiographical, topical or specifically literary, these essays and lectures circle the central preoccupying questions: How should a...

These lectures were delivered by Seamus Heaney while he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford University. In the first of them, Heaney discusses and celebrates poetry's special ability to redress...

Traces the history of the Peppercanister Press and illuminates the evolving development of Kinsella's ambitious poetic project. The poems are discussed chronologically and the clear interpretations are accompanied by drawings...

A sharp and provocative new essay collection from the award-winning author of Freedom and The Corrections In The End of the End of the Earth, which gathers essays and speeches...

Chuck Palahniuk's world has been, well, different from yours and mine. The pieces that comprise Non-Fiction prove just how different, in ways both highly entertaining and deeply unsettling. Encounters with...

This book is designed to help aspiring thriller writers to create exciting, suspenseful novels and to give you the best chance of getting your work published and into the bookshops....

When humankind faces what it perceives as a threat to its very existence, a macabre thing happens in art, literature, and culture: corpses begin to stand up and walk around....

'A vital and timely introduction to some of the best books I've ever read. Perfectly curated and filled with brilliant literature'Nikesh Shukla'The ultimate introduction to post-colonial literature for those who...

A WATERSTONES BEST POLITICS BOOK OF 2024This is an exceptional moment for democracy.In the year of elections, read Margaret Atwood, Mary Beard, Lea Ypi, Elif Shafak and more on what...

More than just a walking guide, The Ulysses Guide: Tours Through Joyce's Dublin provides a guide to James Joyce's novel Ulysses by following its eighteen episodes on their original locations,...

A magazine of innovative new writing, including fiction and essays from: Diane Williams, Kathryn Scanlan, Eley Williams, Gordon Lish, David Hayden, Laura Ellen Joyce, Greg Mulcahy, Kimberly King Parsons, Jason...

Life constantly requires us to give other people some hugely awkward messages: that we don't love them anymore; that we do love them (though we're not meant to); that they...

Illuminating, insightful, informed, inspired, intelligent. These are words that could - and do - apply equally to book or author; in fact, The Revolt of the Pendulum, Clive James's latest...

'For if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from...