In this authorised biography, Zachary Leader argues that Kingsley Amis was not only the finest comic novelist of his generation, but a dominant figure in post-war British writing, as novelist, poet, critic and polemicist.
Vanessa Bell, artist, sister of Virginia Woolf, wife of Clive Bell and lover of Duncan Grant, is one of the most fascinating and modern figures of the Bloomsbury set, but unlike most of them she rarely put pen to writing paper.
Born in Nabraska of Irish Quaker parents, educated at Dulwich College, and in the `mean streets' of Los Angeles about which he wrote, Raymond Chandler-writer, oil executive, poet, recluse, charmer, gentlman, drunk-was full of contradictions as his origins.
Adam O'Riordan's remarkable first collection traces the hidden paths from past to present, from the lost to the living, seeking familiarity in a world of 'false trails and disappearing acts'.
How New York's Lower East Side inspired new ways of seeing AmericaNew York City's Lower East Side, long viewed as the space of what Jacob Riis notoriously called the "e;other half,"e; was also a crucible for experimentation in photography, film, literature, and visual technologies.
Site Reading offers a new method of literary and cultural interpretation and a new theory of narrative setting by examining five sites-supermarkets, dumps, roads, ruins, and asylums-that have been crucial to American literature and visual art since the mid-twentieth century.
"e;We have many poets of the First Book,"e; the poet and critic Louis Simpson remarked in 1957, describing a sense that the debut poetry collection not only launched the contemporary poetic career but also had come to define it.
A compelling portrait of a beloved poet from one of today's most acclaimed novelistsIn this book, novelist Colm Toibin offers a deeply personal introduction to the work and life of one of his most important literary influencesthe American poet Elizabeth Bishop.
In this collection of recent and unpublished essays, leading analytic philosopher Scott Soames traces milestones in his field from its beginnings in Britain and Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, through its subsequent growth in the United States, up to its present as the world's most vigorous philosophical tradition.
This is the first of five volumes of a definitive history of analytic philosophy from the invention of modern logic in 1879 to the end of the twentieth century.
How Arabic influenced the evolution of vernacular literatures and anticolonial thought in Egypt, Indonesia, and SenegalSacred Language, Vernacular Difference offers a new understanding of Arabic's global position as the basis for comparing cultural and literary histories in countries separated by vast distances.
A vivid and original account of one of Ireland's greatest poets by an acclaimed Irish historian and literary biographerThe most important Irish poet of the postwar era, Seamus Heaney rose to prominence as his native Northern Ireland descended into sectarian violence.
Two simple yet tremendously powerful ideas that shaped virtually every aspect of civilizationThis book is a breathtaking examination of the two greatest ideas in human history.
How poetic modernism shaped Arabic intellectual debates in the twentieth century and beyondCity of Beginnings is an exploration of modernism in Arabic poetry, a movement that emerged in Beirut during the 1950s and became the most influential and controversial Arabic literary development of the twentieth century.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE PEN ACKERLEY PRIZE 2020'A uniquely strange and wonderful work of literature' Philip Hoare'An exciting new voice' Mark Cocker, author of Crow CountryIn his late thirties, Edward Parnell found himself trapped in the recurring nightmare of a family tragedy.
'The best poet in America' Jean Genet'He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels' Leonard CohenThe definitive collection from a writer whose transgressive legacy and raw, funny, acutely observant writing has left an enduring markHere is Bukowski eating walnuts and scratching his back, rolling a cigarette while listening to Brahms, showering with Linda in the mid-afternoon.
An 365-day anthology of readings from one of the most influential writers of all time, George MacDonald, compiled by CS Lewis himselfMacDonald was a major Christian writer of the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries.
Stanley Spencer (1891 - 1959) has recently been recognised by a wide general public, as well as by art historians, as probably the greatest English painter of the twentieth century.
The compelling love story of two extraordinary individuals - Nancy Mitford and Free French commander Gaston Palewski - living in extraordinary times - immortalised in THE PURSUIT OF LOVE'A delicious mix of drama, melancholy and enchantment' DAILY EXPRESS'Entertainingly caustic' SUNDAY TIMES'Bringing to life the worlds of Nancy Mitford's novels' INDEPENDENT'Oh, the horror of love!
An intimate portrait of Stephen Spender's extraordinary life written by Matthew Spender, shifting between memoir and biography, with new insights drawn from personal recollections and his father's copious unpublished archives.
A unique history of the Beats, in the words of the movement's most central member, Allen Ginsberg, based on a seminal series of his lecturesIn 1977, twenty years after the publication of his landmark poem 'Howl' and Jack Kerouac's On the Road, Allen Ginsberg decided it was time to teach a course on the literary history of the Beat Generation.
CUNDILL PRIZE 2018 WINNERSHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES TAIT BLACK BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 2018'Enlightening, compassionate, superb' John le CarreA visionary life and times of Joseph Conrad, and of our global world, from one of the best historians writing today.
A follow up to Mitchell's first book, THE HALF-GALLON QUARTER-ACRE PAVLOVA PARADISE, this witty, satirical description of life in 1980s New Zealand charts changes in Kiwi culture.
A witty, satirical description of life in 1960s New Zealand, and Kiwi culture, by Austin Vernon Mitchell MP, who was an extremely popular TV figure in New Zealand.
This richly illustrated short, extracted from the official book The Chronicles of Downton Abbey, focuses on the characters individually, examining their motivations, their actions and the inspirations behind them.
