Many of Robert Browning's poems are concerned with different aspects of human identity. In the great dramatic monologues, such as Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea del Sarto and My Last Duchess, the question of exactly who is speaking obviously concerns us, but to what extent do the speaker's language and attitudes mirror those of the poet himself ? In the various poems on the theme of love and sexual relationships which Browning included in his published collections, we inevitably want to know which of these spring directly from his personal experience. Browning, however, never felt a duty to reveal himself to the reader within his poetry. Though he admired several of the Romantic writers among the poetic generation immediately preceding his own, especially Shelley and Wordsworth, he was unwilling to follow their example by relating his discourse to the concept of a dominant ego, an "I" whose personal drama of feeling and experience formed the substance of a sustained narrative. Several of his works deliberately criticise the tendency, made fashionable by the Romantics, to see a poem as offering clues to its writer's identity and, by association, his private life. In 1874 Browning a poem, House, arguing that the reader has no right to share an author's privacy: "For a ticket, apply to the Publisher." No: thanking the public, I must decline. A peep through my window, if folk prefer; But, please you, no foot over threshold of mine!" In this guide, Jonathan Keates looks at the roots of Browning's poetry, at at why he is so influential and at how, despite his determination to keep his private and poetic identities separate, some of his work is so shocking.

'How deeply I envy any reader coming to her for the first time!' Elizabeth Jane Howard * A finely nuanced exploration of responsibility, snobbery and culture clash from one of the twentieth century's finest novelists. When Amy is suddenly left widowed and alone while on holiday in Istanbul, Martha, an American traveller, comforts her and accompanies her back to England. Upon their return, however, Amy is ungratefully reluctant to maintain their relationship, recognising that, under any other circumstances, the two women would not be friends. But guilt is a hard taskmaster, and Martha has away of getting under one's skin ... * 'Her stories remain with one, indelibly, as though they had been some turning-point in one's own experience' Elizabeth Bowen 'No writer has described the English middle classes with more gently devastating accuracy' Rebecca Abrams, Spectator 'A Game of Hide and Seek showcases much of what makes Taylor a great novelist: piercing insight, a keen wit and a genuine sense of feeling for her characters' Elizabeth Day, Guardian

The technological realm provides an unusually active laboratory not only for new ideas and products but also for the remarkable linguistic innovations that accompany and describe them. How else would words like qubit (a unit of quantum information), crowdsourcing (outsourcing to the masses), or in vitro meat (chicken and beef grown in an industrial vat) enter our language?
In Virtual Words: Language on the Edge of Science and Technology, Jonathon Keats, author of Wired Magazine's monthly Jargon Watch column, investigates the interplay between words and ideas in our fast-paced tech-driven use-it-or-lose-it society. In 28 illuminating short essays, Keats examines how such words get coined, what relationship they have to their subject matter, and why some, like blog, succeed while others, like flog, fail. Divided into broad categories--such as commentary, promotion, and slang, in addition to scientific and technological neologisms--chapters each consider one exemplary word, its definition, origin, context, and significance. Examples range from microbiome (the collective genome of all microbes hosted by the human body) and unparticle (a form of matter lacking definite mass) to gene foundry (a laboratory where artificial life forms are assembled) and singularity (a hypothetical future moment when technology transforms the whole universe into a sentient supercomputer). Together these words provide not only a survey of technological invention and its consequences, but also a fascinating glimpse of novel language as it comes into being.
No one knows this emerging lexical terrain better than Jonathon Keats. In writing that is as inventive and engaging as the language it describes, Virtual Words offers endless delights for word-lovers, technophiles, and anyone intrigued by the essential human obsession with naming.

According to Vasari, the young Michelangelo often borrowed drawings of past masters, which he copied, returning his imitations to the owners and keeping originals. Half a millennium later, Andy Warhol made a game of "forging" the Mona Lisa, questioning the entire concept of originality. Forged explores art forgery from ancient times to the present. In chapters combining lively biography with insightful art criticism, Jonathon Keats profiles individual art forgers and connects their stories to broader themes about the role of forgeries in society. From the Renaissance master Andrea del Sarto who faked a Raphael masterpiece at the request of his Medici patrons, to the Vermeer counterfeiter Han van Meegeren who duped the avaricious Hermann Goering, to the frustrated British artist Eric Hebborn, who began forging to expose the ignorance of experts, art forgers have challenged "legitimate" art in their own time, breaching accepted practices and upsetting the status quo. They have also provocatively confronted many of the present-day cultural anxieties that are major themes in the arts. Keats uncovers what forgeries-and our reactions to them-reveal about changing conceptions of creativity, identity, authorship, integrity, authenticity, success, and how we assign value to works of art. The book concludes by looking at how artists today have appropriated many aspects of forgery through such practices as street-art stenciling and share-and-share-alike licensing, and how these open-source "copyleft" strategies have the potential to make legitimate art meaningful again. Forgery has been much discussed-and decried-as a crime. Forged is the first book to assess great forgeries as high art in their own right.

How many times have you wanted to kill your boss?

How far would you go for that corner office?

Gloria Greene is young, beautiful, brilliant, and dead serious about what she wants. She's used her many charms to fuel her blazing rise from intern to editor in chief of sophisticated Portfolio magazine. But is she really the killer who hacked the former editor to pieces and shipped his body parts cross-country by UPS? The prime suspect, Gloria shines in the media spotlight and FBI glare, enjoying the attentions of a daddy who loves her a little too much and the excessive worrying of her fabulous and neurotic friends. Now she covets the editorship of the legendary Algonquin magazine-after all, nobody is a suspect forever...

Marvelous and mystical stories of the thirty-six anonymous saints whose decency sustains the world-reimagined from Jewish folklore.
A liar, a cheat, a degenerate, and a whore. These are the last people one might expect to be virtuous. But a legendary Kabbalist has discovered the truth: they are just some of the thirty-six hidden ones, the righteous individuals who ultimately make the world a better place. In these captivating stories, we meet twelve of the secret benefactors, including a timekeeper's son who shows a sleepless village the beauty of dreams; a gambler who teaches a king ruled by the tyranny of the past to roll the dice; a thief who realizes that his job is to keep his fellow townsfolk honest; and a golem-a woman made of mud-who teaches kings and peasants the real nature of humanity.
With boundless imagination and a delightful sense of humor, acclaimed writer and artist Jonathon Keats has turned the traditional folktale on its head, creating heroes from the unlikeliest of characters, and enchanting readers with these stunningly original fables.

"Not since Dr. Johnson explained the English language to the people of his time has there been a lexicon so witty, deep and indispensable. For any citizen of either the analog or -digital space who wishes to live in this century instead of the last, this is required reading."
Stanley Bing, author and columnist for FORTUNE magazine Bug--A minor glitch in computer software or hardware that often results in major problems for the user or owner. According to legend, the first bug to cause system malfunction was a moth caught in one of the relays of a Mark II computer at Harvard shortly after World War II. Podcast--Audio or video programming automatically downloaded from the Internet onto a portable MP3 player, such as the Apple iPod, for listening or viewing on the go. Thumbing--A method of texting on a portable device, such as a cell phone, by typing with one or both thumbs. Frazzing--Frenzied multitasking, as occurs when the combined output of cell phone, PDA, and laptop overwhelms the processing power of the human brain. Web--The abbreviated name of the World Wide Web, also often shortened to www. In Chinese, the Web is called the wan wei wang, meaning "ten thousand-dimensional net." The technology revolution is also a revolution in -language, with new words created seemingly every day. And along with a new vocabulary comes the mortifying fear of being out of the loop. Control + Alt + Delete is a reference book that will inform and entertain you while decoding the fast-changing language of high-tech -culture.