Until recently, only a privileged few could read the rare, early writings that formed the basis of detective fiction in America and made it one of the most popular literary genres of the 19th century.
This book argues that language and literature actively produced chance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by categorizing injuries and losses as innocent of design.
Freeburg analyzes how Melville grapples with realities of racial difference in nineteenth-century America by examining ''blackness'' in Melville''s fiction.
Jean Genet (1910-1986) resonates, perhaps more than any other canonical queer figure from the pre-Stonewall past, with contemporary queer sensibilities attuned to a defiant non-normativity.
Contemporary American horror literature for children and young adults has two bold messages for readers: adults are untrustworthy, unreliable and often dangerous; and the monster always wins (as it must if there is to be a sequel).
A leading figure in the debate over the literary canon, Jane Tompkins was one of the first to point to the ongoing relevance of popular women's fiction in the 19th century, long overlooked or scorned by literary critics.
Dick Grayson--alter-ego of the original Robin of Batman comics--has gone through various changes in his 75 years as a superhero but has remained the optimistic, humorous character readers first embraced in 1940.
This book investigates the perceptions of motherhood in Spanish author Lucia Etxebarria's fiction and offers views of the importance of motherhood in society.
In this landmark volume, a rich array of voices make the case that religion is not partitioned off from the secular in the Global South the way it is in the Global North.
With Reading the Obscene, Jordan Carroll reveals new insights about the editors who fought the most famous anti-censorship battles of the twentieth century.
Although readers and filmgoers are strongly familiar with Disney's sanitized child-centric fairy tales, they are quick to catch on to reworkings of classic tales into a contemporary context.
Female Characters play various roles in the Odyssey: patron goddess (Athena), seductress (Kirke, the Sirens, Nausikaa), carnivorous monster (Skylla), maid servant (Eurykleia), and faithful wife (Penelope).
The crime fiction world of the late 1970s, with its increasingly diverse landscape, is a natural beginning for this collection of critical studies focusing on the intersections of class, culture and crime--each nuanced with shades of gender, ethnicity, race and politics.
Stories of vampires, werewolves, zombies, witches, goblins, mummies, and other supernatural creatures have existed for time immemorial, and scary stories are among the earliest types of fiction ever recorded.
Marvel, like other media "e;universes,"e; is a collection of highly profitable and audience-satisfying products that exist not only as individual items of popular culture but coalesce to form a unique and all-encompassing identity.
Vasily Grossman (1905-1964) was a successful Soviet author and journalist, but he is more often recognized in the West as Russian literature's leading dissident.
This book challenges the belief in the purely linguistic nature of contemporary poetry and offers an interpretation of late twentieth-century Russian poetry as a testimony to the unforeseen annulment of communist reality and its overnight displacement by a completely unfathomable post-totalitarian order.
First scholarly edition of Samuel Richardson''s correspondence with Aaron Hill, Richardson''s closest literary adviser for many years, and his daughters.
This innovative new book combines environmental justice scholarship with a material ecocriticism to explore the way in which early Victorian literature (1837-1860) responded to the growing problem of environmental injustice.
For Lewis Carroll, a deacon in the Church of England, faith in Christ and belief in a loving God stood at the core of his being, but little has been written about what the church or faith meant to the celebrated author of the Alice books.
***FEATURED ON BBC 2's BETWEEN THE COVERS WITH SARA COX***The Faber Book of Reportage is John Carey's remarkable collection of eyewitness accounts that draws on the voices and emotions of the people who experienced some of history's most memorable events.
The theme of Islam and Judeo-Christianity is the relationship between these three faiths under three headings that are often promoted as a basis for commonality between them (sons of Abraham, monotheism, and religions of the book).
For centuries before its "e;rebirth"e; as a spoken language, Hebrew writing was like a magical ship in a bottle that gradually changed design but never voyaged out into the world.
Founder of the detective genre and author of works on cryptography, Edgar Allan Poe possessed what Shawn Rosenheim called a "e;cryptographic imagination.
Bringing together scholars from across the world, Haruo Shirane presents a fascinating portrait of The Tale of Genji's reception and reproduction over the past thousand years.
A Reading of Jane Austen (first published by Peter Owen in 1975) has established itself with critics and readers as an outstanding contribution to the growing literature on this author, full of fresh and stimulating perceptions.
