Essays exploring the opportunities for and challenges to the discipline of English language and literature in education. The study of English literature, language, culture and creative writing is an important and dynamic enterprise. English: Shared Futures celebrates the discipline's intellectual strength, diversity and creativity, explores its futures in the nations of the UK and across the world, and brings together the huge scholarly, cultural and social energy of the biggest subject in the Arts and Humanities in Higher and in Secondary education: the most staff, the most students. It represents the synergies produced when practitioners and students from across the discipline come together, and aims to enable new understanding of the challenges that the discipline faces within schools and universities, the vital cultural and political role that English plays, and a renewed appreciation of the intellectual vitality and commitment of its scholars and students. Overall, it demonstrates the rich ecosystem of a subject crucial to social, cultural, and economic well-being, and offers ways in which its vitality can be ensured in the face of new challenges within and beyond the academy. ROBERT EAGLESTONE is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought, Royal Holloway, University of London; GAIL MARSHALL is Head of the School of Literature and Languages at the University of Reading. Contributors: James Annesley, Katherine Baxter, Barbara Bleiman, Elleke Boehmer, Kirsti Bohata, Benjamin A. Brabon, Linda Bree, Susan Bruce, Billy Clark, Stefan Collini, Jane Davis, Sarah Dillon, Clare Egan, Elizabeth English, Emily Ennis, Martin Paul Eve, Corinne Fowler, Barbara Gallego Larrarte, Marcello Giovanelli, Diya Gupta, Rob Hawkes, Ann Hewings, Keith Jarrett, Clara Jones, Seraphima Kennedy, Ben Knights, Simon Koevesi, Clare A. Lees, Alison Lumsden, Andrea Macrae, Lewi Mondal, Paul Munden, Daniel O'Gorman, Lynda Prescott, Ilse A. Ras, Catherine Redford, Rick Rylance, Helen Saunders, Jenny Stevens, Marion Thain, Stephen Watkins, Harry Whitehead

No historical figures appear in The Pirate, and there are no historical events, but it is still an historical novel because it dramatises those 'corners of time' where an old era is coming to an end, and a new is beginning. The novel is set in Orkney and Shetland in 1689, and for the northern isles the 'Glorious Revolution' actually means the beginning of the cultural dominance of Scotland and the advent of English power. Scott draws heavily on the diary he kept on his tour round the lighthouses of Scotland in 1814. In both the diary and the novel he weighs the real need to improve the agricultural methods of this barely subsistence economy against the force of tradition and the human cost of rapid change. The plot hinges on an illicit relationship, and is driven by dark men twisted by their criminality, an obsessed woman searching for her lost son, and the murderous rivalry of two young men - a family tale which illustrates the uses and abuses of traditional lore, as well as Scott's extraordinary grasp of the literature of the north.

Woodstock opens in farce, yet it is one of Scott's darkest novels. It deals with revolution, to Scott the most disturbing of all subjects: 'it appears that every step we made towards liberty, has but brought us in view of more terrific perils'. Written during the financial crisis which led to his insolvency in January 1826, the novel, Scott feared, 'would not stand the test'. Yet it does: it is set in England in 1651 as Parliamentary forces hunt the fugitive Charles Stewart who days previously had been defeated at Worcester. In the superb portrait of Cromwell we see a self-torturing despot who attempts to be in full control in the name of religion; in the rakish Charles we see a man without self-reflection whose own libertarianism after his restoration to the English throne in 1660 permitted a great burgeoning in scientific enquiry and the arts. This edition of Woodstock is based on the first, but emended in the light of readings in the manuscript and proofs that were misread, and at times deliberately suppressed, as Scott's own hand-written words were turned into a printed book.

Reliquiae Trotcosienses was one of Scott's last works, and, after his death, was suppressed by his literary executor and his publisher. Although extracts were published in 1889 and 1905, this is the first complete edition, and has been edited from the manuscript recently relocated in the library at Abbotsford, the house near Melrose in the Scottish Borders which Scott built for his library and museum. Reliquiae Trotcosienses (the relics of Trotcosey) is a guide to Abbotsford and to its collections, and illustrates in miniature all the different ways in which Scott tried to recover the past: in building, in collecting, and in the multiple acts of narration which invest objects with significance. But it is simultaneously a work of fiction, which satirises the impulses of antiquarian collection. Scott would not take himself seriously, and through the learned buffoonery of this extraordinary work he mocks the kind of activity in which he was engaged as writer and collector.Yet this is also a personal, elegiac creation, for the narrator as he approaches death recognises that the house, its artefacts, and above all the writings will live on to mourn their begetter: they are fragments shored against his ruin.

The Heart of Mid-Lothian is precisely focused on the trials for murder of John Porteous and of Effie Deans in 1736 and 1737. Yet it is a chronicle--Scott's only chronicle--which spans the eighty years of the life of David Deans, whose death takes place in 1751. It is the most complex of all Scott's narratives. It is also the most challenging in that it raises in an acute fashion the problem of a judicial system that does not produce justice. Scott places this fundamental issue in its immediate political context, in history as represented by the life of Deans, and alongside the justice of Providence as perceived by his daughter Jeanie, the greatest of Scott's heroines. This edition of The Heart of Mid-Lothian provides a new text established in accordance with the tried policies and practices of the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels, and in its annotation treats comprehensively the novel's historical, legal, religious and cultural sources.

'Here is a plot without a drop of blood; and all the elements of a romance, without its conclusion', comments the King towards the end of Scott's longest, and arguably most intriguing, novel. Set against the backdrop of the Popish Plot to overturn Charles II, "Peveril of the Peak" explores the on-going tensions between Cavalier and Puritan loyalties during the fraught years of Restoration England. Ranging from Derbyshire to the Isle of Man and culminating in London it is a novel which interweaves political intrigue, personal responsibilities and the ways in which the forces of history are played out in the struggles of individual human lives. But its true subject is perhaps the role of narration and the limits of storytelling itself. In this, the first scholarly edition of "Peveril," Alison Lumsden recovers a lost novel.

Compared with other developed nations, the United States is unique in its high rates of both gun ownership and murder. Although widespread gun ownership does not have much effect on the overall crime rate, gun use does make criminal violence more lethal and has a unique capacity to terrorize the public. Gun crime accounts for most of the costs of gun violence in the United States, which are on the order of $100 billion per year. But that is not the whole story. Guns also provide recreational benefits and sometimes are used virtuously in fending off or forestalling criminal attacks. Given that guns may be used for both good and ill, the goal of gun policy in the United States has been to reduce the flow of guns to the highest-risk groups while preserving access for most people. There is no lack of opinions on policies to regulate gun commerce, possession, and use, and most policy proposals spark intense controversy. Whether the current system achieves the proper balance between preserving access and preventing misuse remains the subject of considerable debate. Evaluating Gun Policy provides guidance for a pragmatic approach to gun policy using good empirical research to help resolve conflicting assertions about the effects of guns, gun control, and law enforcement. The chapters in this volume do not conform neatly to the claims of any one political position. The book is divided into five parts. In the first section, contributors analyze the connections between rates of gun ownership and two outcomes of particular interest to society -suicide and burglary. Regulating ownership is the focus of the second section, where contributors investigate the consequences a large-scale combined gun ban and buy-back program in Australia, as well as the impact of state laws that prohibit gun ownership to those with histories of domestic violence. The third section focuses on efforts to restrict gun carrying and includes a critical examination of efforts in Pittsburgh to patrol illegal gun traffic and a re-examination of the effects of permissive state gun-carrying laws. This section also features the first rigorous -and critical -analysis of Richmond's Project Exile, which serves as one model for the national Project Safe Neighborhoods program. The fourth section focuses on efforts to facilitate research on gun violence, including a database on state gun laws and the ongoing development of a nationwide violent-death reporting system. The book concludes with an examination of the policy process. Differences in opinion about gun policy flourish partly because of the lack of sound evidence in this area. The contributors to this volume demonstrate that skilled and dispassionate analysis of the evidence is attainable, even in an area as contentious as firearm policy. For pragmatists who wish to reduce the social burden of gun violence, there is no acceptable alternative.