The first bookto investigate Jane Austen's popular significance today, Everybody's Jane considers why Austen matters to amateur readers, how they make use of hernovels, what they gain from visiting places associated with her, and why theycreate works of fiction and nonfiction inspired by her novels and life.The voices of everyday readers emerge fromboth published and unpublished sources, including interviews conducted with literary tourists and archival research into thefounding of the Jane Austen Society of North America and the exceptional Austencollection of Alberta Hirshheimer Burke of Baltimore.Additional topics include new Austenportraits; portrayals of Austen, and of Austen fans, in film and fiction; andhybrid works that infuse Austen's writings with horror, erotica, or explicitChristianity.Everybody's Jane will appeal to all those who care about Austen and will change how we think about theimportance of literature and reading today.

This is a concise but comprehensive student guide to studying Emily Bronte's classic novel "Wuthering Heights". After its relatively modest reception in 1847, Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" has become one of the most widely-read novels of the nineteenth century. Seen as one of those rare works that has transcended its literary origin to become part of the lexicon of popular culture, its uncompromising awareness of the powers of both love and selfishness, landscape and revenge has made it a popular choice of text for students. This concise but comprehensive guide to the text introduces its contexts, language, reception and adaptation from its first publication to the present. It includes points for discussion, suggestions for further study and an annotated guide to relevant reading. "Continuum Reader's Guides" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to key texts in literature and philosophy. Each book explores the themes, context, criticism and influence of key works, providing a practical introduction to close reading, guiding students towards a thorough understanding of the text. They provide an essential, up-to-date resource, ideal for undergraduate students.

This comprehensive volume provides an analysis of 145 social gospel novels. Describing various conflicts presented in the American popular literary history that advocated social reform via Christian ethics during the latter half of the 19th century, the author also documents the existence of a sizable body of social Christian fiction in the period between 1865 and 1900. Wright examines the movement within American Protestant churches that called for the application of Christian principles to the solution of social and economic problems, particularly those related to the confrontation of Christian ethic and the changes generated by the shift from agriculture to industry in the United States. The introduction presents the complex issues associated with the rapid industrialization and urbanization of this country and with the conflict of Protestant values with those of the rising middle class. Individual chapters explore the varieties of social Christian novels, the effect of social change on theology as represented in the social Christian novel, and the social Christian novel as literature. The only book of its kind about social gospel fiction, the work surveys the subject from divergent points of view. Works examining the causes of economic and theological maladjustment in the nation are presented and works concerned with the effects. The Social Christian Novel will be of immeasurable value in nineteenth-century American studies, the study of American literature, and studies in American social history.

Lewis Carroll is one of the world's best-loved writers. His immortal Wonderland and delightful nonsense verses have enchanted generations of children and adults alike. The wit and imagination, the wisdom, sense of absurdity and sheer fun which fill his books shine just as clearly from the many letters he wrote. '...each is a miniature Wonderland... They reveal a truly delightful man...the combination of intense goodness and unselfishness with a magic, nonsense wit is unique'. The Scotsman '...a magnificent collection of delightful and entertaining letters reflecting all that was embraced in that remarkable character...all his charm, inventive fun, wisdom, generosity, kindliness and inventive mind'. Walter Tyson, Oxford Times.

This book reveals the lesser-known figure in a famous American friendship.Bewilderment often follows when one learns that Mark Twain's best friend of forty years was a minister. That Joseph Hopkins Twichell (1838-1918) was also a New Englander with Puritan roots only entrenches the ""odd couple"" image of Twain and Twichell. This biography adds new dimensions to our understanding of the Twichell-Twain relationship; more important, it takes Twichell on his own terms, revealing an elite Everyman - a genial, energetic advocate of social justice in an era of stark contrasts between America's ""haves and have-nots.""After Twichell's education at Yale and his Civil War service as a Union chaplain, he took on his first (and only) pastorate at Asylum Hill Congregational Church in Hartford, Connecticut, then the nation's most affluent city. Courtney tells how Twichell shaped his prosperous congregation into a major force for social change in a Gilded Age metropolis, giving aid to the poor and to struggling immigrant laborers as well as supporting overseas missions and cultural exchanges. It was also during his time at Asylum Hill that Twichell would meet Twain, assist at Twain's wedding, and preside over a number of the family's weddings and funerals.Courtney shows how Twichell's personality, abolitionist background, theological training, and war experience shaped his friendship with Twain, as well as his ministerial career; his life with his wife, Harmony, and their nine children; and his involvement in such pursuits as Nook Farm, the lively community whose members included Harriet Beecher Stowe and Charles Dudley Warner. This was a life emblematic of a broad and eventful period of American change. Readers will gain a clear appreciation of why the witty, profane, and skeptical Twain cherished Twichell's companionship.

'Heartfelt, emotional and uplifting' Faith Hogan, author of The Gin Sisters' Promise 'Written with warmth, humour, sincerity and so much heart' Hazel Prior, author of Away with the Penguins One lost suitcase. Two strangers. And a notebook that will change lives. For almost fifty years, sisters Dolly and Greta have lived together - getting each other through the good times and the bad. Except this year, Greta isn't there and Dolly is feeling lost and alone. In memory of her sister, Dolly heads to the lost luggage auction where she and Greta go each Christmas. But her bid reveals a gift she never imagined. Amongst the clothes is the notebook of a reclusive woman who has hardly been outside for an entire year, but who isn't ready to give up on life. The notebook's contents resonate with Dolly. With the support of her neighbours, retired Leroy and eleven year old Flo, Dolly decides to take on the year of firsts Phoebe had planned. But, can you have a year of firsts when you're seventy-two? And is Dolly ready to discover the notebook's secrets, or are some secrets better left lost at the airport? ________ 'Deeply satisfying. Dolly's story will stay with me for a long, long time' Celia Anderson 'Inspirational and incredibly uplifting' NetGalley Reviewer 'This was just such a lovely, heartfelt, joyous and emotional book' This Hannah Reads 'A truly heartwarming, moving and outstanding story' Amazon Reviewer 'Real curl up on the sofa with a hot drink stuff! NetGalley Reviewer 'Just gorgeous - tremendously engaging . . . and life-affirming in every way' Being Anne 'An uplifting and emotional book' Amazon Reviewer 'An emotional story full of hope' NetGalley Reviewer 'The story is written with such sensitivity and I was so touched by it' Jan's Book Buzz

In the first half of the nineteenth century most leading French Romantic authors wrote travel books. French Romantic Travel Writing is the first study exclusively devoted to surveying the travelogues they produced and the reasons for, and significance of, this trend. Whilst 'the journey' was one of Romanticism's central images, suggesting as it did a dynamic, expanding, and evermore complex world in which artists' lives were increasingly experienced as wanderings and endless quests, the fashion for Romantic travel books was more marked in France than in Germany or England. Chateaubriand, Stael, Stendhal, Nodier, Hugo, Lamartine, Nerval, Gautier, Sand, Custine, Quinet, Merimee, Dumas, and Tristan all wrote one or more travelogues, including at least four masterpieces-Hugo's Le Rhin (1842), Nerval's Voyage en Orient (1851), and Stendhal's two Rome, Naples et Florence (1817 and 1826). The book explores the reasons for this difference from England and Germany. These include French foreign and cultural policies, as well as the particular needs of Parisian publishers. It puts forward the case for the collective achievement of these Romantic travel books, compared to those of most later writers in nineteenth-century France. A distinctive feature of the survey is its belief in the value of concentrating on the text of these books as published by their authors, as opposed to manuscript and peripheral material.

No thanks to Walter Scott, Scotland has at last regained its parliament. If this statement sounds extreme, it echoes the tone that criticism of Scott and his culture has taken through the twentieth century. Scott is supposed to have provided stories of the past that allowed his country no future--that pushed it "out of history." Scotland has become a place so absorbed in nostalgia that it could not construct a politics for a changing world.
Possible Scotlands disagrees. It argues that the tales Scott told, however romanticized, also provided for a national future. They do not tell the story of a Scotland lost in time and lacking value. Instead they open up a narrative space where the nation is always imaginable. This book reads across Scott's complex characters and plots, his many personae, his interventions in his nation's nineteenth-century politics, to reveal the author as an energetic producer of literary and national culture working to prevent a simple or singular message. Indeed, Scott invites readers into his texts to develop multiple and forward-looking interpretations of a Scotland always in formation. Scott's texts and his nation are alive in their constant retelling. Scott was an author for Scotland's new times.

This book traces the artistic trajectories of Djuna Barnes and Jane Bowles, examining their literary representations of the nomadic ethic pervading the twentieth-century expatriate movements in and out of America. The book argues that these authors contribute to the nomadic aesthetic of American modernism: its pastoral ideographies, (post)colonial ecologies, as well as regional and transcultural varieties. Mapping the pastoral moment in different temporalities and spaces (Barnes representing the 1920s expatriation in Europe while Bowles comments on the 1940s exodus to Mexico and North Africa), this book suggests that Barnes and Bowles counter the critical trend associating American modernity primarily with urban spaces, and instead locate the nomadic thrust of their times in the (post)colonial history of the American frontier.

Still the most popular book of Hemingway's to teach, The Sun Also Rises captures the quintessential romance of the expatriate Americans and Britains in Paris after World War I. As the international vacationers move from Paris to Pamplona for the bullfight festival, the characters wend their various narratives through the impressionistic colours of modern European life. The text provides a way for discussions of war, sexuality, personal angst, and national identity to be linked inextricably with the stylistic traits of modern writing. Both in theme and style, this novel has become synonymous with modernism and is often used as either a starting point for courses in modernism or as a representative modernist novel in broader survey courses. This volume, to be edited by one of Hemingway's most eminent scholars, will present the best in critical essays written about The Sun Also Rises.

A Literary Symbiosis studies the merger of science fiction/fantasy and mystery fiction from historical and critical perspectives. Pierce examines the problems and expectations raised by the various literary labels, particularly as regards definition, theme, conventions, stock characters, and setting. While she admits the difficulties inherent in merging idea-oriented, speculative science fiction with the situation-specific and present-time oriented mystery story, she argues that the two genres have much in common. The book examines critically the elements of mystery fiction which have been integrated with varying degrees of success, into science fiction/fantasy. This evaluation focuses on individual authors and novels or short stories which contributed to the original modes and to their synthesis.

Harvey J. Satty and Curtis C. Smith have painstakingly assembled a complete bibliographic description of the literary career of an author they rank among the giants of twentieth-century science fiction. Following a biographical preface, they have recorded all of Stapledon's independent English language publications. In addition to complete descriptions of all first editions, citations are given for later editions, omnibus volumes, and books to which Stapledon contributed chapters or poems. The dust jackets of all first editions and books to which Stapledon contributed are described in detail, giving the reader unique insight into the manner in which Stapledon's books have been presented. A previously unpublished Stapledon work, The Peak and the Town, is included in the bibliography. An allegorical autobiography, it depicts the author's view of his own life. A brief secondary bibliography concludes the book. The comprehensive author index provides further access to this bibliography of the intricate body of Stapledon's work.

Jan Gordon proposes that a reviled communicational 'interest' in gossip and its purveyors be given its proper due in the development of the novel in Britain. Commencing with Sir Walter Scott's historically persecuted (but economically and politically necessary) androgynous voices in caves and concluding with Oscar Wilde's premature celebration of gossip at the very moment it is transformed from public opinion to public judgment, the author finds gossip to be both deforming and shaping nineteenth century 'letters' in surprising ways. Like the ignominious orphan-figure of nineteenth-century fiction, gossip is the 'unacknowledged reproduction' searching for a political antecedence which might lend a legitimacy to its often discontinuous testimony, for a culture historically resistant to obtrusive voices.

The English novel written between 1700 and 1740 remains a comparatively neglected area. In addition to Daniel Defoe, whose "Robinson Crusoe" and "Moll Flanders" are landmarks in the history of English fiction, many other authors were at work. These included such women as Penelope Aubin, Jane Barker, Mary Davys, and Eliza Haywood, who made a considerable contribution to widening the range of emotional responses in fiction. These authors, and many others, continued writing in the genres inherited from the previous century, such as criminal biographies, the Utopian novel, the science fictional voyage, and the epistolary novel. This annotated bibliography includes entries for these works and for critical materials pertinent to them.

The volume first seeks to establish the existing studies of the era, along with anthologies. It then provides entries for a wide-ranging selection of works which cover fictional, theoretical, historical, political, and cultural topics, to provide a comprehensive background to the unfolding and understanding of prose fiction in the early 18th century. This is followed by an alphabetical listing of novels, their editions, and any critical material available on each. The next section provides a chronological record of significant and enduring works of fiction composed or translated in this period. The volume concludes with extensive indexes.

For the past twenty years, evangelical prophecy novels have been a powerful presence on American bestseller lists. Emerging from a growing conservative culture industry, the genre dramatizes events that many believers expect to occur at the end of the age - the rapture of the saved, the rise of the Antichrist, and the fearful tribulation faced by those who are "left behind."
Seeking the forces that drove the unexpected success of the Left Behind novels, Crawford Gribben traces the gradual development of the prophecy fiction genre from its eclectic roots among early twentieth-century fundamentalists. The first rapture novels came onto the scene at the high water mark of Protestant America. From there, the genre would both witness the defeat of conservative Protestantism and participate in its eventual reconstruction and return, providing for the renaissance of the evangelical imagination that would culminate in the Left Behind novels.
Yet, as Gribben shows, the rapture genre, while vividly expressing some prototypically American themes, also serves to greatly complicate the idea of American modernity-assaulting some of its most cherished tenets. Gribben concludes with a look at "post-Left Behind" rapture fiction, noting some works that were written specifically to counter the claims of the best-selling series. Along the way, he gives attention not just to literary fictions, but to rapture films and apocalyptic themes in Christian music. Writing the Rapture is an indispensable guide to this flourishing yet little understood body of literature.

Bosha collects major, representative criticism of John Cheever's fiction, and his posthumously published Letters and Journals, from the earliest reviews of 1943, through to the present. The volume provides a clear and comprehensive assessment of Cheever's critical reputation both during his lifetime, as each of his books was published and reviewed, and retrospectively, by academics and literary historians who have sought to place Cheever's work in a larger literary context. In addition to several new essays written specifically for this volume, this book publishes, for the first time, a long interview which John Cheever gave less than a year before his death. This interview, according to Prof. Robert G. Collins, who conducted it, is almost certainly the last to be publicly heard. The book begins with a critical introductory essay that traces the dominant themes and patterns in Cheever criticism and comments on the critical reception of his work over the last five decades. A chronology highlights the chief events in Cheever's life and career. The chapters that follow are arranged chronologically, with each chapter devoted to one of Cheever's works. Within each chapter are selections of criticism. The book concludes with a bibliography and index.

The death of Spain's Don Carlos, Prince of Asturias, on July 24, 1568, remains an enigma. Several accounts insinuated that the Spanish Crown Prince was murdered while incarcerated by order of his father, King Philip II. The mystery of Don Carlos's death, supported by ambassadorial accounts that implied foul play, became a fertile subject for defamation campaigns against Philip, fostering an extraordinary fluidity between history and fiction. This book investigates three treatments of the Don Carlos legend on which this fluidity had a potent, transformational impact: Cesar Vichard de Saint-Real's novel, Dom Carlos, nouvelle historique (1672), Friedrich Schiller's play, Don Karlos, Infant von Spanien (1787), and Giuseppe Verdi's opera, Don Carlos (1867). Through these cultural variations on a historical theme, the authors and composer contributed innovative elements to their genres. In The Don Carlos Enigma, the exciting young scholar Maria-Cristina Necula explores how the particular blend of history and fiction around the personage of Don Carlos inspired such artistic liberties with evolutionary outcomes. Saint-Real advanced the nouvelle historique genre by developing the element of conspiracy. Schiller's play began the transition from the Sturm und Drang literary movement towards Weimar Classicism. Verdi introduced new dramatic and musical elements to bring opera closer to the realism of dramatic theatre. Within each of these treatments, pivotal points of narrative, semantic, dramatic, and musical transformation shaped not only the story of Don Carlos, but the expressive forms themselves. In support of the investigation, selected scenes from the three works are explored and framed by an engagement with studies in the fields of French literature, German theatre, French and Italian opera, and Spanish history. The enigma of the Spanish prince may never be solved, but Saint-Real, Schiller, and Verdi have offered alternatives that, in a sense, unburden history of truth that it could never bear alone. In the case of Don Carlos, history is in itself an encyclopedia of variations.

This work provides concise, accessible introductions to major writers focusing equally on their life and works. Written in a lively style to appeal to both students and readers, books in the series are ideal guides to authors and their writing. Charles Dickens is without doubt a literary giant. The most widely read author of his own generation, his works remain incredibly popular and important today. Often seen as the quintessential Victorian novelist, his texts convey perhaps better than any others the drive for wealth and progress and the social contrasts that characterised the Victorian era. His works are widely studied throughout the world both as literary masterpieces and as classic examples of the nineteenth century novel. Donald Hawes book will provide a short, lively but sophisticated introduction to Dickens's work and the personal and social context in which it was written.

By taking as its point of departure the privileged relationship between the crime novel and its setting, this book is the most wide-ranging examination of the way in which Italian detective fiction in the last twenty years has become a means to articulate the changes in the social landscape of the country. Nowadays there is a general acknowledgment of the importance of place in Italian crime novels. However, apart from a limited scholarship on single cities, the genre has never been systematically studied in a way that so comprehensively spans Italian national boundaries. The originality of this volume also lies in the fact that the author have not limited her investigation to a series of cities, but rather she has considered the different forms of (social) landscape in which Italian crime novels are set. Through the analysis of the way in which cities, the "urban sprawl," and islands are represented in the serial novels of eleven of the most important contemporary crime writers in Italy of the 1990s, Pezzotti articulates the different ways in which individual authors appropriate the structures and tropes of the genre to reflect the social transformations and dysfunctions of contemporary Italy. In so doing, this volume also makes a case for the genre as an instrument of social critique and analysis of a still elusive Italian national identity, thus bringing further evidence in support of the thesis that in Italy detective fiction has come to play the role of the new "social novel."

York Notes for GCSE offer an exciting approach to English Literature and will help you to achieve a better grade. This market-leading series has been completely updated to reflect the needs of today's students. The new editions are packed with detailed summaries, commentaries on key themes, characters, language and style, illustrations, exam advice and much more. Written by GCSE examiners and teachers, York Notes are the authoritative guides to exam success.

The 1950s are widely regarded as the golden age of American science fiction. This book surveys a wide range of major science fiction novels and films from the long 1950s--the period from 1946 to 1964--when the tensions of the Cold War were at their peak. The American science fiction novels and films of this period clearly reflect Cold War anxieties and tensions through their focus on such themes as alien invasion and nuclear holocaust. In this sense, they resemble the observations of social and cultural critics during the same period.

Meanwhile, American science fiction of the long 1950s also engages its historical and political contexts through an interrogation of phenomena, such as alienation and routinization, that can be seen as consequences of the development of American capitalism during this period. This economic trend is part of the rise of the global phenomenon that Marxist theorists have called late capitalism. Thus, American science fiction during this period reflects the rise of late capitalism and participates in the beginnings of postmodernism, described by Frederic Jameson as the cultural logic of late capitalism.

"I find myself talking to you about all the great joys, all the agonies, all my thoughts..." - Letter to Eva Konikova, 1946 Out of the thousands of letters Tove Jansson wrote a cache remains that she addressed to her family, her dearest confidantes, and her lovers, male and female. Into these she spilled her innermost thoughts, defended her ideals and revealed her heart. To read these letters is both an act of startling intimacy and a rare privilege. Penned with grace and humour, Letters from Tove offers an almost seamless commentary on Tove Jansson's life as it unfolds within Helsinki's bohemian circles and her island home. Spanning fifty years between her art studies and the height of Moomin fame, we share with her the bleakness of war; the hopes for love that were dashed and renewed, and her determined attempts to establish herself as an artist. Vivid, inspiring and shining with integrity, Letters from Tove shows precisely how an aspiring and courageous young artist can evolve into a very great one.

Take Note for Exam Success! York Notes offer an exciting approach to English literature. This market leading series fully reflects student needs. They are packed with summaries, commentaries, exam advice, margin and textual features to offer a wider context to the text and encourage a critical analysis. York Notes, The Ultimate Literature Guides.