Literary studies: general

'A fantasy, impossible but delicious .

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

Describing Dante's descent into Hell midway through his life with Virgil as a guide, Inferno depicts a cruel underworld in which desperate figures are condemned to eternal damnation for committing one or more of seven deadly sins.

'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.

In 1612 Shakespeare gave evidence at the Court of Requests in Westminster it is the only occasion his spoken words are recorded.

In 1929 Robert Graves went to live abroad permanently, vowing 'never to make England my home again'.

Several Strangers is an acclaimed literary collection by bestselling author Claire TomalinFrom the celebrated biographer of Charles Dickens: A Life and The Invisible Woman, Several Strangers collects together the best of Claire Tomalin's literary pieces over a period of thirty years - including reviews of books on Freud, Katherine Mansfield, Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Gaskell, Christina Rossetti and Virginia Woolf.

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THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE was written towards the beginning of Hardy's career as a novelist and can be considered one of his most representative works.

The first full-length biography of a woman novelist by a woman novelist, which was almost single-handedly responsible for creating the Bront myth A classic in its own right, still read today as one of the great works of Victorian literature Lucasta MillerElizabeth Gaskell s biography of her close friend Charlotte Bront was published in 1857 to immediate popular acclaim and remains the most significant study of the enigmatic author who gave Jane Eyre the sub-title An Autobiography .

A unique treatise by a poet, written for poets, on the art of poetry, LA VITA NUOVA is elaborately and symbolically patterned, consisting of a selection of Dante's early poems, interspersed with his own prose commentary.

He was born to be King.

One of the most powerful, perceptive and influential works of criticism in Western literary history In his near-contemporary account of classical Greek tragedy, Aristotle examines the dramatic elements of plot, character, language and spectacle that combine to produce pity and fear in the audience, and asks why we derive pleasure from this apparently painful process.

These three works of fiction - two by Mary Wollstonecraft, the radical author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and one by her daughter Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein - are powerfully emotive stories that combine passion with forceful feminist argument.

Taking the legends surrounding King Arthur and weaving in new psychological elements of personal desire and courtly manner, Chr tien de Troyes fashioned a new form of medieval Romance.

Butterflies, ice-cream, writing at night, playing word games.

Beowulf is the greatest surviving work of literature in Old English, unparalleled in its epic grandeur and scope.

From the Globe at Bankside to the Wimpole Street home of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, London is, and always has been, crammed with literary life.

The fascinating untold story of digital cash and its creators-from experiments in the 1970s to the mania over Bitcoin and other cryptocurrenciesBitcoin may appear to be a revolutionary form of digital cash without precedent or prehistory.

From one of our most eminent and accessible literary critics, a groundbreaking account of how the Greek and Roman classics forged Shakespeare's imaginationBen Jonson famously accused Shakespeare of having "e;small Latin and less Greek.

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.

Why Read the Classics?

Novelist, playwright and barrister John Mortimer has led an extraordinarily rich life, privately and professionally, much of it in the public eye.

From Treasure Island to Trainspotting, Scotland's rich literary tradition has influenced writing across centuries and cultures far beyond its borders.

Regarded by many as the greatest of the Metaphysical poets, John Donne (1572-1631) was also among the most intriguing figures of the Elizabethan age.

A compelling new translation of Tacitus' Annals, one of the greatest accounts of ancient Rome, by Cynthia Damon.

Few, if any, English-language critics have written as perceptively as Isaiah Berlin about Russian thought and culture.

"e;There was no patriotism in the trenches.

Discover Dante's original Inferno in this modern and acclaimed Penguin translation.

Composed during the fourteenth century in the English Midlands, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight describes the events that follow when a mysterious green-coloured knight rides into King Arthur's Camelot in deep mid-winter.

In this hilarious, inspiring and provocative series of essays, Kingsley Amis introduces every reader to the wonders and value of science fiction writing.

Katherine Mansfield is the celebrated biography be bestselling author Claire Tomalin'One of the best biographies I have ever read: a perfect match of author and subject.

Die Estherdichtungen spielen in der jiddischen Literatur vom späten Mittelalter bis in die Neuzeit hinein eine besondere Rolle, da ihr Ausgangspunkt ein sich immer wiederholendes Ereignis ist: das Purimfest.

How decolonization and the cold war influenced literature from Africa, Asia, and the CaribbeanHow did superpower competition and the cold war affect writers in the decolonizing world?