Numerological patterning in literature, where structural details of a literary work are symbolically related to its meaning on the verbal level, was particularly common from the Middle Ages up to the seventeenth century. Originally published in 1973, the author breaks new ground in revealing that familiarity with this technique lived on into the eighteenth century, supplying the more artistically aware of the early British novelists with meaningful formal guidelines. An account is given of the origins and continuity of the numerological tradition in Western European - and particularly English - thought as it affected literary structure. The careful structural patterning in the novels of Defoe and in Fielding's Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones is examined in detail. Smollett, too, is shown to have been interested in exploring the possibilities of number and pattern, and the clear-cut numerological framework of Sterne's Tristram Shandy is revealed. This original and controversial study combines structural analysis with fresh interpretative insights, and draws parallels with painting, music and architecture. It also has an important bearing on the history of ideas in the first half of the eighteenth century.

Numerological patterning in literature, where structural details of a literary work are symbolically related to its meaning on the verbal level, was particularly common from the Middle Ages up to the seventeenth century. Originally published in 1973, the author breaks new ground in revealing that familiarity with this technique lived on into the eighteenth century, supplying the more artistically aware of the early British novelists with meaningful formal guidelines. An account is given of the origins and continuity of the numerological tradition in Western European - and particularly English - thought as it affected literary structure. The careful structural patterning in the novels of Defoe and in Fielding's Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones is examined in detail. Smollett, too, is shown to have been interested in exploring the possibilities of number and pattern, and the clear-cut numerological framework of Sterne's Tristram Shandy is revealed. This original and controversial study combines structural analysis with fresh interpretative insights, and draws parallels with painting, music and architecture. It also has an important bearing on the history of ideas in the first half of the eighteenth century.

L.P. Hartley's moving exploration of a young boy's loss of innocence The Go-Between is edited with an introduction and notes by Douglas Brooks-Davies in Penguin Modern Classics. 'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there' When one long, hot summer, young Leo is staying with a school-friend at Brandham Hall, he begins to act as a messenger between Ted, the farmer, and Marian, the beautiful young woman up at the hall. He becomes drawn deeper and deeper into their dangerous game of deceit and desire, until his role brings him to a shocking and premature revelation. The haunting story of a young boy's awakening into the secrets of the adult world, The Go-Between is also an unforgettable evocation of the boundaries of Edwardian society. Leslie Poles Hartley (1895-1972) was born in Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire, and educated at Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford. For more than thirty years from 1923 he was an indefatigable fiction reviewer for periodicals including the Spectator and Saturday Review. His first book, Night Fears (1924) was a collection of short stories; but it was not until the publication of Eustace and Hilda (1947), which won the James Tait Black prize, that Hartley gained widespread recognition as an author. His other novels include The Go-Between (1953), which was adapted into an internationally-successful film starring Julie Christie and Alan Bates, and The Hireling (1957), the film version of which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. If you enjoyed The Go-Between, you might like Barry Hines's A Kestrel for a Knave, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'Magical and disturbing' Independent 'On a first reading, it is a beautifully wrought description of a small boy's loss of innocence long ago. But, visited a second time, the knowledge of approaching, unavoidable tragedy makes it far more poignant and painful' Express