With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Claire Seymour, University of Kent at Canterbury. Under the Greenwood Tree is Hardy's most bright, confident and optimistic novel. This delightful portrayal of a picturesque rural society, tinged with gentle humour and quiet irony, established Hardy as a writer. However, the novel is not merely a charming rural idyll. The double-plot, in which the love story of Dick Dewey and Fancy Day is inter-related with a tragic chapter in the history of Mellstock Choir, hints at the poignant disappearance of a long-lived and highly-valued traditional way of life.

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Claire Seymour, University of Kent at Canterbury. The Turn of the Screw is the classic ghost story for which James is most remembered. Set in a country house, it is a chilling tale of the supernatural told by a master of the genre. The Aspern Papers is a tale of Americans in Europe, a theme in which Henry James is at his most assured and accomplished. The author cleverly evokes the drama of comedie humaine against the settings of a Venetian palace.

An essay collection which examines Britten's juvenilia, influences such as Shostakovich and Verdi, his opera Owen Wingrave and a libretto written by Australian novelist Patrick White with the hope of a future collaboration. Benjamin Britten: New Perspectives on his Life and Work reveals the extent to which Britten scholarship is reaching outside the confines of Anglo-American criticism. The volume engages with juvenilia and other orchestral works from the 1920s and examines a broad range of influences on Britten, including the works of Shostakovich and Verdi, the poetry of Ovid, and the cinema. Among his operatic works the dramatic qualities of Owen Wingrave arediscussed through a close study of Piper's libretto and we witness the genesis of a libretto written by Australian novelist Patrick White and submitted to Britten with the hope of a future collaboration. The volume uncovers the generally hostile reception Britten's operas received in Paris until around the 1990s. Britten's status as 'outsider' in both the USA and in his own country when he returned in 1942 is discussed: the possibility is that Britten wasbecoming nervous of the gathering US involvement in the war and the real chance he may be called up to serve in the US forces is also discussed here.

This controversial analysis of Britten's operatic works demonstrates how he used music to explore his most private concerns. Claire Seymour examines ways in which Britten's operas explored and articulated the inherent ambiguity and latent sexuality of music, particularly song, and suggests that they may illustrate his search for a public "voice" which would embody, communicate, and perhaps resolve his private beliefs and anxieties. She demonstrates how the delicate balance between private and public communication, and the tension between art as self-expression and art as moral resolution were key concerns in Britten's music. Analyses of Britten's operas from Paul Bunyan to Death in Venice, the three Church Parables, and several of the "children's operas" offer evidence that, for Britten, opera was the natural medium through which to explore, express and, paradoxically, repress his private concerns.

Introduction and Notes by Dr Claire Seymour, University of Kent at Canterbury. The proverbial phrase 'life's little ironies' was coined by Hardy for his third volume of short stories. These tales and sketches possess all the power of his novels: the wealth of description, the realistic portrayal of the quaint lore of Wessex, the 'Chaucerian' humour and characterisation, the shrewd and critical psychology, the poignant estimate of human nature and the brooding sense of wonder at the essential mystery of life. The tales which make up Life's Little Ironies tenderly re-create a rapidly vanishing rural world and scrutinise the repressions of fin-de-siecle bourgeois life. They share the many concerns of Hardy's last great novels, such as the failure of modern marriage and the insidious effects of social ambition on the family and community life. Ranging widely in length and complexity, they are unified by Hardy's quintessential irony, which embraces both the farcical and the tragic aspects of human existence.