Literary studies: general

Short narrative poems, religious and secular lyrics, and moral, political, and comic verses are all included in this comprehensive collection of works from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Poet, visionary, short-story writer and autobiographer, G rard de Nerval (1808-1855) explored the uncertain borderlines between dream and reality, irony and madness, autobiography and fiction with his groundbreaking writings.

'Both unputdownable and utterly engaging' Jonathan Raban, The Times Literary Supplement'I started reading Theroux's Sir Vidia's Shadow, the story of his friendship with V.

Robin Kirkpatrick's masterful verse translation of The Divine Comedy, published in a single volume, is the ideal edition for students as well as the general reader coming to this great masterpiece of Italian literature for the first timeThe Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide; his ascent of Mount Purgatory and encounter with his dead love, Beatrice; and finally, his arrival in Heaven.

Stay healthy and achieve your ideal weight with the help of this portable and personal blood type guide.

Written around the thirteenth century AD by Icelandic monks, the seven tales collected here offer a combination of pagan elements tightly woven into the pattern of Christian ethics.

Reality Hunger is a manifesto for a burgeoning group of interrelated but unconnected artists who, living in an unbearably artificial world, are breaking ever larger chunks of 'reality' into their work.

Coloured by poverty and horrifying brutality, Gorky's childhood equipped him to understand - in a way denied to a Tolstoy or a Turgenev - the life of the ordinary Russian.

Take control of your hormones and feel happier and healthier, with this practical guide to re-balancing your body and getting your life back on track ________ Hormones play a crucial role in our health and well-being, yet few of us understand the toll they take on our bodies when we don't achieve a balance.

Giacomo Leopardi was the greatest Italian poet of the nineteenth century and was recognized by readers from Nietzsche to Beckett as one of the towering literary figures in Italian history.

Stay healthy and achieve your ideal weight with the help of this portable and personal blood type guide.

With sly sophistication and ebullient charm, Lila Azam Zanganeh shares the intoxication of delirious joy to be found in reading - in particular, in reading the masterpieces of 'the great writer of happiness' Vladimir Nabokov.

Uncover the truth behind our food addiction - and learn how to break the cycle Many of us find ourselves powerless in front of a bag of crisps, a packet of biscuits, the last slice of pizza.

Jane Austen is the definitive biography of one of Britain's best-loved novelists, from the acclaimed author of Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, Charles Dickens: A Life and The Invisible Woman'As near perfect a life of Austen as we are likely to get: intelligent, feeling, suggestive' Carmen Callil, Daily Telegraph'Tomalin has written a biography that reflects Austen's own exacting standards, a book that radiates intelligence, wit and insight' Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times'Of all the Austen biographies, this is the best .

These are Shakespeare's greatest writings on power in all its forms - in love, in war, in politics and in the family.

These sagas recount fierce feuds in which honour is fought for, sacrifice is demanded, and blood is shed.

Kormak's Saga, The Saga of Hallfred Troublesome-Poet, The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue, The Saga of Bjorn, Champion of the Hitardal People, Viglund's Saga Set in the farmsteads of Viking age Iceland at a time when the old ethos of honour and heroic adventure merged with new ideas of romantic infatuation, each of these sagas features poet heroes, complex love triangles, and travels to foreign lands.

Discover the fascinating autobiography of Dick Francis, one of the greatest jockeys and thriller writers of all timeDick Francis was one of the most successful post-war National Hunt jockeys.

A vital resource for scholars, students and actors, this book contains glosses and quotes for over 14,000 words that could be misunderstood by or are unknown to a modern audience.

Aurora Leigh (1856), Elizabeth Barrett Browning's epic novel in blank verse, tells the story of the making of a woman poet, exploring 'the woman question', art and its relation to politics and social oppression.

Controversy raged through England during the 1570-80s as Puritans denounced all manner of games & pastimes as a danger to public morals.

Nietzsche's first published book, The Birth of Tragedy is a compelling argument for the necessity of art in lifeThis landmark work of criticism is fuelled by Nietzsche's enthusiasms for Greek tragedy, the philosophy of Schopenhauer and the music of Wagner, to whom the book was dedicated.

Kathleen Parkinson places this brilliant and bitter satire on the moral failure of the Jazz Age firmly in the context of Scott Fitzgerald's life and times.

This compilation, in the tradition of the Victorian miscellany, gathers together essential facts and fascinating insights into the plays and poems, the man behind them (insofar as this is known), and the context in which he worked.

A unique collection of Shakespeare's soliloquies, each introduced by concise and informative editorial notes.

Egil's Saga tells the story of the long and brutal life of tenth-century warrior-poet and farmer Egil Skallagrimsson: a morally ambiguous character who was at once the composer of intricately beautiful poetry, and a physical grotesque capable of staggering brutality.

Including Down and Out in Paris and London'Orwell was the great moral force of his age' SpectatorThe powerful writings collected together in this volume chronicle George Orwell's first-hand experiences of life among the underclass of the 'two nations' of rich and poor.

Humour, pathos and suffering, and the culminating drama of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, give these plays a wonderful immediacy.

This collection of letters forms a fascinating day-by-day account of Steinbeck's writing of EAST OF EDEN, his longest and most ambitious novel.

Nobel Prize-winner John Steinbeck was a prolific correspondent.

Boethius was an eminent public figure under the Gothic emperor Theodoric, and an exceptional Greek scholar.

Published to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of Armistice, this collection is intended to be an introduction to the great wealth of First World War Poetry.

How did plague turn Shakespeare from a jobbing hack into a courtly poet?

'These essays .

First published in July 1850, shortly after Wordsworth's death, The Prelude was the culmination of over fifty years of creative work.

In these impressions of the Italian countryside, Lawrence transforms ordinary incidents into passages of intense beauty.

An Icelandic saga which mixes realism with wild gothic imagination and history with eerie tales of hauntings.

The era between the accession of Henry VIII and the crisis of the English republic in 1659 formed one of the most fertile epochs in world literature.

This compelling Icelandic history describes the life of King Harald Hardradi, from his battles across Europe and Russia to his final assault on England in 1066, less than three weeks before the invasion of William the Conqueror.

When this volume of Shakespeare's poems first appeared in 1609, he had already written most of the great plays that made him famous.

The works collected in this volume have profoundly shaped the history of criticism in the Western world: they created much of the terminology still in use today and formulated enduring questions about the nature and function of literature.

'Buttonholes the reader with its informality, its unhurried rhythms, deadpan humour and acerbic remarks'Frances Spalding, Sunday TimesFor Gertrude Stein and her wife Alice B.

Tennyson's poetry epitomizes the Victorian age, for which he became a spokesman.

The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft is the acclaimed bestselling biography by Claire TomalinWinner of the Whitbread First Book PrizeWitty, courageous and unconventional, Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the most controversial figures of her day.

'Enjoyable, lively such a pleasure to read renders the drama of Shakespeare s contemporaries more than fringe entertainment Independent Shakespeare is one of the greatest of all English figures, considered a genius for all time.

In l978 Sontag wrote Illness As Metaphor.

Volume two of Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory's powerful and elegaic version of the Arthurian legend, recounts the adventures of Sir Tristram de Liones and the treachery of Sir Mordred, and follows Sir Launcelot's quest for The Holy Grail, his fatally divided loyalties, and his great, forbidden love for the beautiful Queen Guenever.

Le Morte D'Arthur is Sir Thomas Malory's richly evocative and enthralling version of the Arthurian legend.

In the twenty-one poems of the Heroides, Ovid gave voice to the heroines and heroes of epic and myth.

Bartolom de Las Casas was the first and fiercest critic of Spanish colonialism in the New World.