Margins of Desire' turns the critical spotlight on the London suburbs by showing how the expanding city created new literary locations, genres and themes between 1880 and 1925. Drawing on a wide range of writings, the book considers not only the fiction that identified the suburbs as significant but also the fiction that suburban dwellers, particularly women, wrote and read for themselves. Pervasive suburban themes included the loss of the rural, the rejection of the urban, the feminisation of culture and changing class identities. By engaging with modernity as represented by the suburbs, such writing was subversive of literary tradition and value, and signalled a shift towards the idea of the ordinary, the accessible and the harmonious. The suburbanisation of the literary imagination is addressed through studies of suburban and anti-suburban utopias by writers such as William Morris, E.M. Forster, Jerome K. Jerome and Arthur Conan Doyle; the imaginative terrain created by women writers in magazine and popular fiction, and representation of suburban realities from George Gissing's attacks on mediocrity to G.K. Chesterton's celebration of the ordinary. Lynne Hapgood's lively approach opens up a counter-culture to modernist metropolitanism and argues for a more inclusive understanding of the fiction of the period. -- .

This pioneering study, described as 'a model of feminist criticism' (The Year's Work in English Studies) on first publication, revealed Gaskell as an important social analyst who deliberately challenged the Victorian disjunction between public and private ethical values, who maintained a steady resistance to aggressive authority, advocating female friendship, rational motherhood and the power of speech as forces for social change. Since 1987, Gaskell's work has risen from minor to major status. This new edition presents the original text (except for bibliographical updating) together with a new and extensive critical 'Afterword'. This addition contains detailed evaluation of all the Gaskell criticism published between 1985 and 2004 which has a bearing on her thesis, and thus provides both a wide-ranging debate on the social implications of motherhood, and an invaluable survey of Gaskell criticism over the last twenty years. This study will bring a well-tried classic to a new audience, while also offering a uniquely comprehensive overview of current Gaskell studies. -- .

Brazil has one of the most significant and productive film industries in Latin America. This ground-breaking study provides an entertaining insight into the Brazilian films that have most captured the imagination of domestic audiences over the years. The recent international success of films such as Central Station and City of God, has stimulated widespread interest in Brazilian film, but studies written in English focus on the 'auteur' cinema of the 1960s. This book focuses on individual films in their socio-historical context, drawing on extensive fieldwork in Brazil and Latin America. It argues that Brazilian cinema has almost always been grounded in intrinsically home-grown cultural forms, dating back to the nineteenth century, such as the Brazilian music-hall, the travelling circus, radio shows, carnival, and, later, comedy television. Combining a chronological structure with groundbreaking research and a lively approach, Popular cinema in Brazil is the ideal introduction to Brazilian cinema. -- .

Blasted brought Sarah Kane to the theatre pages of the broadsheets, the front pages of the tabloids, and to the notice of the nation. Covers all Kane's major plays and productions, contains hitherto unpublished material and reviews, and looks at her continuing influence after her tragic early death. A chapter-by-chapter analysis looks at each play in detail and the appendices carry transcripts of interviews with colleagues and leading theatre practitioners involved with her productions. This book is the first study of the most significant British dramatist in post-war theatre and includes unpublished interview material with Sarah Kane herself. -- .

Unique, readable first hand accounts of one of the most significant periods in British television history. Introductory essay from leading academic Julia Hallam (University of Liverpool), sets the creation of Granada in the context of British broadcasting history and of television as it is today. Provides an insight into the culture of Granada TV during its pioneering early years, from the perspectives of writers, producers, directors, technicians and presenters.. An illustrious collection of contributors, to name a few; Lord Isaacs, Lord MacDonald, Lord Birt, Michael Parkinson, Michael Apted, Stan Barstow, Nick Elliott, Victoria Wood, Kenith Trodd, Jack Rosenthal, Charles Sturridge, Anna Ford, Chris Kelly and Alan Plater. Concerns the production of such legendary programmes as World in Action,'Brideshead Revisited, Coronation Street, A Family at War and What the Papers Say. -- .

This fascinating collection provides a chronologically arranged set of case studies looking at how interior design has constantly redefined itself as a manifestation of culture, from the eighteenth-century to the present day. The book looks at the amateur activities of female 'home makers' in search of creative outlets and married couples seeking to modernise their homes as well as the contributions of early professional (female) 'interior decorators', and later, (male) 'interior designers'. It also considers the more anonymous role of commercial enterprises, such as hairdressing salons, ocean-going liners or modern offices as well as public institutions, such as hospitals or naval training establishments. Interior design and identity examines interior design in relation to the changing identities of its practitioners, its inhabitants and of the furnishings, focussing on the ways in which cultural values came to be embedded in the spaces which people inhabited and made their own. Issues relating to interiority, gender, and the relationship of the public sphere are also considered opening up a new level of design historical enquiry. -- .

Margins of desire turns the critical spotlight on the London suburbs by showing how the expanding city created new literary locations, genres and themes between 1880 and 1925. Drawing on a wide range of writings, the book considers not only the fiction that identified the suburbs as significant but also the fiction that suburban dwellers, particularly women, wrote and read for themselves. Pervasive suburban themes included the loss of the rural, the rejection of the urban, the feminisation of culture and changing class identities. By engaging with modernity as represented by the suburbs, such writing was subversive of literary tradition and value, and signalled a shift towards the idea of the ordinary, the accessible and the harmonious. Lynne Hapgood's lively approach opens up a counter-culture to modernist metropolitanism and argues for a more inclusive understanding of the fiction of the period. -- .

A popular and influential play from its first performance in 1611 until the early eighteenth century, "A King and No King" helped establish tragicomedy as the seventeenth century's favored dramatic genre, and Beaumont and Fletcher as leading playwrights of the day.

Accompanying this newly edited text, an introduction explores the play's sources, both literary and dramatic, and offers a thorough reconsideration of its relation to its social and political context, and contemporary issues of royal absolutism, good governance, and the political role of the aristocracy. In addition, the introduction provides the fullest available account of "A King and No King's" stage history, tracing the shifts in cultural mores that eroded its popularity and ultimately consigned it to the study rather than the stage. This fully annotated edition encourages an appreciation of the play's very real virtues and will appeal to theatre professionals as well as to students of Renaissance drama.