Literary Criticism

The appearance of Philip Larkin's second prose collection - reviews and critical assessments of writers and writing; pieces on jazz, mostly uncollected; some long, revealing and often highly entertaining interviews...

"Reviewery" collects in one volume 50 pieces by a writer whom many regard as our greatest literary critic. Ricks writes compellingly about novelists (Waugh, Joyce and Henry James), about poets...

Shakespeare made his unique contribution to British and world culture in the midst of Elizabeth's great reign. Here, the circumstances of each play's composition are acutely described, and set within...

"A close reading of the plays that tries to map the creases and folds in Shakespeare's mysterious, elusive brain."- New York Times Book Review A. D. Nuttall's study of Shakespeare's...

As a child in Russia, Vladimir Nabokov enjoyed conjuring: "I loved doing simple tricks--turning water into wine, that kind of thing." In this engrossing book Michael Wood explores the blend...

An eminent literary critic explores five American classics How is a classic book to be defined? How much time must elapse before a work may be judged a "classic"? And...

States of Fantasy is Jacqueline Rose's striking contribution to the current controversy over the limits of English Studies. Why has so little attention been paid to Israel/Palestine and South Africa,...

When James Wood's first collection of essays, The Broken Estate, was published in 1999, the reviewers hailed a master critic. John Banville described Wood as a 'a close reader of...

To open this volume of Gustave Flaubert's letters is to be immediately transported into his world. Any reader should find here something of interest, whether it be the intimate revelations...

Over the past half-century Frank Kermode has established himself as one of the finest literary critics of his generation. When he delivered the Clark Lectures at Cambridge in 2007, he...

Understanding Dante's spiritual masterpieceDante's Divine Comedy is widely considered to be one of the most significant works of literature ever written. It is renowned not only for its ability to...

What has gone wrong with English novels? Why do they seem so feeble compared to the Victorian greats? Is it the fault of the writing or the fragmented modern world...

Taking its title from a poem of William Butler Yeats, this collection of essays focuses on "Adam's Curse"-the burdens and harsh conditions that, as Denis Donoghue underscores throughout, make any...

The successor to the highly-praised collection of Christopher Ricks's essays The Force of Poetry, this collection of lively and provoking critical essays still attends to poets and poetry: to John...

Edmund Wilson helped shape American letters from the early 1920's through the mid-'60s. He remains a presence in our literary culture, and his accounts of art and society have influenced...

The Wound and the Bow collects seven wonderful essays on the delicate theme of the relation between art and suffering by the legendary literary and social critic, Edmund Wilson (1885-1972)....

'Any new book on Jane Austen raises the urgent question, Would I get more pleasure from reading this than from re-reading my favourite Jane Austen novel? If you decide to...

For Wilde, as for many people, reading could be as powerful and transformative an experience as falling in love. He devoured books, talked books, luxuriated in books and lavished books...

For the past four decades Frank Kermode, critic and writer, has steadily established himself as one of the most brilliant minds of his generation. Questioning the public's harsh perception of...

In this practical, light-hearted, and encouraging book, Paul J. Silvia explains that writing productively does not require innate skills or special traits but specific tactics and actions. Drawing on examples...