The Bible and Literature is a 1.5 million word resource in five volumes that provides researchers with an authoritative resource on the impact and influence of the bible upon the development of literature, charting this relationship from the classical period to the modern day. The international spread of the biblical text is reflected in a structure that considers the broader geographical, philosophical, and theological factors that crop up when the bible’s role in culture and society is considered. The work reflects a broader cultural narrative that is dependent upon the bible for its relevance and yet also contributes to the bible’s own continuing relevance in modern society. Each volume is edited by a leading specialist in the period, and begins with a set of introductory materials including a chapter on how the biblical text is mediated in the given period. Ten thematic essays then introduce the key thinkers, works, events and themes of the period. Extracts from primary materials are then presented with specialist commentary showing how these texts interact with the bible itself. The five volumes cover: The Late Classical and Medieval Periods, The Renaissance and Reformation Periods, Enlightenment to Romanticism, The Victorian Period, and The Modern Period.

Margaret Oliphant (1828-97) had a prolific literary career that spanned almost fifty years. She wrote some 98 novels, fifty or more short stories, twenty-five works of non-fiction, including biographies and historic guides to European cities, and more than three hundred periodical articles. This is the most ambitious critical edition of her work.

How do writers work? The differing habits of seven great authors are examined in this collection. Writers often meditate on what physical situations they need to do the work in hand. A room of their own, bills, bed, procrastination, regular meals, Benzedrine and beer, office routines, walking and riding, even prison, can be machines that make them write. Trollope got 2,000 words done every morning, watch on the table. Clare composed en pleine air, jotting on his hat rim. Wesley's hymns came to him on horseback. The Bronte sisters paced round adrawing-room table. Donne was dismally prompted to write by nappies. Johnson needed the printer's devil knocking at his door. On a grand scale, city planners try to entice the creative classes into a creative area: while at alocal level, readers have a magical sense that putting themselves into the bodily position of a writer may allow them to join in her planning and plotting. The essays in this volume examine the working habits of seven greatauthors, from 1600 to today: Jonson, Milton, the Bronte sisters, Trollope, Oliphant, and Auden. There are also interviews on the creative environment with the Poet Laureate of Great Britain, the British Library's Head of Modern Literary Manuscripts, the Director of the Hay Festival, research fellows at Stratford and the Globe, and a poet-web-blogger. CONTRIBUTORS: STAN SMITH, ELISABETH JAY, N. JOHN HALL, STEVIE DAVIS, PETER C. HERMAN, FARAH KARIM-COOPER, KATE RUMBOLD, MICHELLE O'CALLAGHAN, ADAM SMYTH, ANDREW MOTION, JAMIE ANDREWS, ROBERT SHEPPARD, PETER FLORENCE

'A wicked and detestable place, though wonderfully attractive': Charles Dickens's conflicted feelings about Paris typify the fascination and repulsion with which a host of mid-nineteenth-century British writers viewed their nearest foreign capital. Variously perceived as the showcase for sophisticated, cosmopolitan talent, the home of revolution, a stronghold of Roman Catholicism, and a shrine to irreligious hedonism, Paris was also a city where writers were respected and journalism flourished. This historically-grounded account of the ways in which Paris touched the careers and work of both major and minor Victorian writers considers both their actual experiences of an urban environment, distinctively different from anything Britain offered, and the extent to which this became absorbed and expressed within the Victorian imaginary. Casting a wide literary net, the first part of this book explores these writers' reaction to the swiftly changing politics and topography of Paris, before considering the nature of their social interactions with the Parisians, through networks provided by institutions such as the British Embassy and the salons. The second part of the book examines the significance of Paris for mid-nineteenth-century Anglophone journalists., paying particular attention to the ways in which the young Thackeray's exposure to Parisian print culture shaped him as both writer and artist. The final part focuses on fictional representations of Paris, revealing the frequency with which they relied upon previous literary sources, and how the surprisingly narrow palette of subgenres, structures and characters they employed contributed to the characteristic, and sometimes contradictory, prejudices of a swiftly-growing British readership.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

Margaret Oliphant (1828-97) had a prolific literary career that spanned almost fifty years. She wrote some 98 novels, fifty or more short stories, twenty-five works of non-fiction, including biographies and historic guides to European cities, and more than three hundred periodical articles. This is the most ambitious critical edition of her work. This volume includes her 1895 novel Old Mr Tredgold with editorial notes by Elisabeth Jay including a new introduction and headnote, proving key information about the book and its publication history.

Margaret Oliphant (1828-97) had a prolific literary career that spanned almost fifty years. She wrote some 98 novels, fifty or more short stories, twenty-five works of non-fiction, including biographies and historic guides to European cities, and more than three hundred periodical articles. This is the most ambitious critical edition of her work.

Part IV offers the first critical edition of the four full length novels and three stories that comprise the Chronicles of Carlingford. Each of the five volumes contains a full scholarly apparatus, including the important variations between the serial versions and the first publication in volume format.

Part IV offers the first critical edition of the four full length novels and three stories that comprise the Chronicles of Carlingford. Each of the five volumes contains a full scholarly apparatus, including the important variations between the serial versions and the first publication in volume format.

This is the most ambitious scholarly critical edition of Oliphant's work ever undertaken. The sheer scale of her output has meant that selection is essential, but the edition aims to convey the range and variety of her work in both fiction and non-fictional genres. It will bring together for the first time her critical writing and other journalism for Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, the Spectator, the St James's Gazette, as well as her articles in the Contemporary Review, the Edinburgh, and Macmillan's Magazine. Much of her fiction, including full length novels, short stories and novellas, was first published in periodicals: in Blackwood's, the Cornhill, Longman's Magazine, Macmillan's, and Good Words. Few of her manuscripts survive, but substantive textual work remains to be done on the editorial changes made between periodical serialization and first appearance in volume form. The edition will place particular emphasis on her shorter fiction, much of which will be reprinted for the first time, and on her work as a biographer, historian, and literary historian.

Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant (1828-97) had a wide-ranging and prolific literary career that spanned almost fifty years. She wrote some 98 novels, over fifty short stories, twenty-five works of non-fiction, including biographies and historic guides to European cities, and more than three hundred periodical articles. As the self-styled 'general utility woman' for Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, often contributing both fiction and literary reviews to the same issue, she became a major critical voice for her generation. Her influence, usually cast on the side of 'the common reader', was such that it provoked fellow novelists such as Anthony Trollope, Henry James and Thomas Hardy to savage fictional portraits by way of retaliation. The scholarly interest that her work now receives is hampered by difficulty in accessing the full range of her oeuvre: whilst her most famous fictional series, 'The Chronicles of Carlingford', together with a handful of her tales of the supernatural, have gone in and out of print in recent years, the bulk of her fiction and critical writing remains uncollected. This is the most ambitious scholarly critical edition of Oliphant's work ever undertaken.

This is the most ambitious scholarly critical edition of Oliphant's work ever undertaken. The sheer scale of her output has meant that selection is essential, but the edition aims to convey the range and variety of her work in both fiction and non-fictional genres. It will bring together for the first time her critical writing and other journalism for Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, the Spectator, the St James's Gazette, as well as her articles in the Contemporary Review, the Edinburgh, and Macmillan's Magazine. Much of her fiction, including full length novels, short stories and novellas, was first published in periodicals: in Blackwood's, the Cornhill, Longman's Magazine, Macmillan's, and Good Words. Few of her manuscripts survive, but substantive textual work remains to be done on the editorial changes made between periodical serialization and first appearance in volume form

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

The Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology is a defining volume of essays in which leading international scholars apply an interdisciplinary approach to the long and evolving relationship between English Literature and Theology. The volume first offers a chronological account of key moments in the formation of the tradition; goes on to demonstrate literary ways of reading the Bible, theological ways of reading literature, and literary conceptions of theological texts; and finally explores the great themes that have preoccupied the Jewish and Christian traditions. Framing editorial essays describe the history, the cultural implications, and the methodological issues of this now popular interdisciplinary study, before speculating as to its possible futures in a postmodern, multicultural world.

As an expatriate Scots woman, Mrs Oliphant (1828-97) started her prolific and accomplished writing career far removed from the centre of Victorian literary life. Presenting an often surprising portrait of the professional Victorian woman writer, Elisabeth Jay's comprehensive biography considers the way in which Mrs Oliphant perceived her own life, and the wider question of whether women writers have been well served by the mythological structures of male biography.

'I am sure the more fully she - Charlotte Brontë - the friend, the daughter, the sister, the wife, is known - the more highly she will be appreciated.' Mrs Gaskell was quite clear about her priorities when she began to set down the facts of a 'wild, sad life and the beautiful character that grew out of it'. The result was one of the greatest of all English biographies. The book itself was not to be without its stormy passage: Mrs Gaskell, as well she knew, ran up against Victorian shibboleths of propriety and sexual prudery. However, not even the amendments and cuts she was obliged to make in the second and third editions could destroy its overall unity or her psychologically convincing vision of the suffering, emotionally starved and tortured Charlotte Brontë whose life and pitiful death still grips and appalls us. The present text follows the controversial first edition throughout, while all the variations which appeared in the third edition have been recorded in notes and appendices.