This 1944 novel is about memory loss and is the only book we know of, apart from "Iris about Iris Murdoch" (and arguably "There Were No Windows" is wittier and more profound), on this subject. Based on the last years of the writer Violet Hunt, a once- glamorous woman living in Kensington during the Blitz who is now losing her memory, the novel's three 'acts' describe with insight, humour and compassion what happens to 'Claire Temple' in her last months.

The astonishing success of J.K. Rowling and other contemporary children's authors has demonstrated how passionately children can commit to the books they love. But this kind of devotion is not new. This timely volume takes up the challenge of assessing the complex interplay of forces that have created the popularity of children's books both today and in the past. The essays collected here ask about the meanings and values that have been ascribed to the term 'popular'. They consider whether popularity can be imposed, or if it must always emerge from children's preferences. And they investigate how the Harry Potter phenomenon fits into a repeated cycle of success and decline within the publishing industry. Whether examining eighteenth-century chapbooks, fairy tales, science schoolbooks, Victorian adventures, waif novels or school stories, these essays show how historical and publishing contexts are vital in determining which books will succeed and which will fail, which bestsellers will endure and which will fade quickly into obscurity. As they considering the fiction of Angela Brazil, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl and J.K. Rowling, the contributors carefully analyse how authorial talent and cultural contexts combine, in often unpredictable ways, to generate - and sometimes even sustain - literary success.

The astonishing success of J.K. Rowling and other contemporary children's authors has demonstrated how passionately children can commit to the books they love. But this kind of devotion is not new. This timely volume takes up the challenge of assessing the complex interplay of forces that have created the popularity of children's books both today and in the past. The essays collected here ask about the meanings and values that have been ascribed to the term 'popular'. They consider whether popularity can be imposed, or if it must always emerge from children's preferences. And they investigate how the Harry Potter phenomenon fits into a repeated cycle of success and decline within the publishing industry. Whether examining eighteenth-century chapbooks, fairy tales, science schoolbooks, Victorian adventures, waif novels or school stories, these essays show how historical and publishing contexts are vital in determining which books will succeed and which will fail, which bestsellers will endure and which will fade quickly into obscurity. As they considering the fiction of Angela Brazil, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl and J.K. Rowling, the contributors carefully analyse how authorial talent and cultural contexts combine, in often unpredictable ways, to generate - and sometimes even sustain - literary success.

'Language is his power. His characters are precisely the words they speak' A. S. Byatt A young man is condemned to death for breaking a law forbidding sex outside marriage. When his sister pleads with the Lord Angelo to save him, he offers her a bargain - her brother's life in exchange for her virginity. One of Shakespeare's most enigmatic plays, Measure for Measure is a morally complex drama of intricate moves and countermoves that explores falsehood, justice and humanity's best and basest instincts. Used and Recommended by the National Theatre General Editor Stanley Wells Edited by J. M. Nosworthy Introduction by Julia Briggs

'It's impossible that we should ever marry . . . At the same time, we can't live without each other' Night and Day, Virginia Woolf's second novel, is both a love story and a social comedy in the tradition of Jane Austen; yet it also questions that tradition, recognizing that the goals of society and the individual may not necessarily coincide. At its centre is Katherine Hilbery, the beautiful grand-daughter of a great Victorian poet. She must choose between becoming engaged to the oddly prosaic poet William Rodney and her attraction to Ralph Denham, with whom she feels a more profound and disturbing affinity. Katherine's hesitation is vividly contrasted with the approach of her friend Mary Datchet, dedicated to the Women's Rights movement. The ensuing complications are underlined and to some extent unravelled by Katharine's mother, Mrs Hilbery, whose struggles to weave together the known documents, events and memories of her father's life into a coherent biography reflect Woolf's own sense of the unique and elusive nature of experience.

The pleasure and excitement of exploring Virginia Woolf's writings is at the heart of this book by a highly respected Woolf critic and biographer. Julia Briggs reconsiders Woolf's work - from some of her earliest fictional experiments to her late short story, 'The Symbol', and from the most to the least familiar of her novels - from a series of highly imaginative and unexpected angles. Individual essays analyse Woolf's neglected second novel, Night and Day and investigate her links with other writers (Byron, Shakespeare), her ambivalent attitudes to 'Englishness' and to censorship, her fascination with transitional places and moments, with the flow of time (and its relative nature), her concern with visions and revision and with printing and the writing process as a whole. We watch Woolf as she typesets an extraordinarily complex high modernist poem (Hope Mirrlees's 'Paris'), and as she revises her novels so that their structures become formally - and even numerologically - significant. A final essay examines the differences between Woolf's texts as they were first published in England and America, and the further changes she occasionally made after publication, changes that her editors have been slow to acknowledge. Julia Briggs brings to these discussions an extensive knowledge of Woolf both as a scholar and as an editor. She records her findings and observations in a lively, graceful and approachable style that will entice readers to delve further and more meaningfully into Woolf's work. Features * Addresses a wide range of familiar and less familiar texts, including Woolf's short stories. * Opens up difficult texts in an inviting style. * Covers aspects of Woolf's work that have been consistently neglected or have never been considered before.

Utilizing new historicist, feminist, and cultural studies critiques, these essays by leading scholars provide new perspectives on early children's literary texts. The essays are divided into four parts: Part 1 critiques the rise of children's literature throughout the eighteenth-century, Part 2 focuses on the rise of the female educator and the 'rational dames', Part 3 contains three essays on the politics of pedagogy and the child, Part 4 is a detailed examination of the work of children's literature scholar Mitzi Myers (1939-2001). Scholars of children's literature, literary history, and gender studies will find this volume very illuminating.

The pleasure and excitement of exploring Virginia Woolf's writings is at the heart of this book by a highly respected Woolf critic and biographer. Julia Briggs reconsiders Woolf's work - from some of her earliest fictional experiments to her late short story, 'The Symbol', and from the most to the least familiar of her novels - from a series of highly imaginative and unexpected angles. Individual essays analyse Woolf's neglected second novel, Night and Day and investigate her links with other writers (Byron, Shakespeare), her ambivalent attitudes to 'Englishness' and to censorship, her fascination with transitional places and moments, with the flow of time (and its relative nature), her concern with visions and revision and with printing and the writing process as a whole. We watch Woolf as she typesets an extraordinarily complex high modernist poem (Hope Mirrlees's 'Paris'), and as she revises her novels so that their structures become formally - and even numerologically - significant. A final essay examines the differences between Woolf's texts as they were first published in England and America, and the further changes she occasionally made after publication, changes that her editors have been slow to acknowledge. Julia Briggs brings to these discussions an extensive knowledge of Woolf both as a scholar and as an editor. She records her findings and observations in a lively, graceful and approachable style that will entice readers to delve further and more meaningfully into Woolf's work. Features * Addresses a wide range of familiar and less familiar texts, including Woolf's short stories. * Opens up difficult texts in an inviting style. * Covers aspects of Woolf's work that have been consistently neglected or have never been considered before.

The later years of Elizabeth and the reign of James I were the age of Shakespeare, but the age also of Sidney, Spenser, and Donne, of fellow dramatists Marlowe, Jonson, and Webster, and of the prose writers Nashe, Bacon, and Burton. This book examines the social conditions that produced this array of talent, and relates them closely to the literature of the period. Politically, 1580-1625 was a period of comparative stability, but men's lives were constantly threatened by plague, famine, or even casual violence; a sudden population rise added problems of inflation and unemployment. Writers struggling to earn a living needed either to please the court, with its wealthy and influential patrons, or else to score a popular success with London's new theatre-going public. The establishment itself was actively engaged in promoting ideals of order, hierarchy and centralized authority, while religious reformers urged men to heed the promptings of the spirit, and humanist schoolmasters introduced the young to the pagan culture of ancient Rome, its erotic poetry, and its republican sentiments. New ideas were in the air and sceptical, sometimes iconoclastic attitudes were widely expressed: a co

Virginia Woolf is one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century literature. She was original, passionate, vivid, dedicated to her art. Yet most writing about her still revolves around her social life and the Bloomsbury set. In this fresh, absorbing book, Julia Briggs puts the writing back at the center of Woolf's life, reads that life through her work, and mines the novels themselves to create a compelling new form of biography. Analyzing Woolf's own commen-tary on the creative process through her letters, diaries, and essays, Julia Briggs has produced a book that is a convincing, moving portrait of an artist, as well as a profound meditation on the nature of creativity.

The author of such landmark works as "Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, " and "A Room of One's Own" and a woman and an artist far ahead of the time in which she lived and worked, Virginia Woolf has been the object of scrutiny ever since her suicide in 1941. Here, using excerpts from family journals as well as pieces of Virginia's own correspondance and diaries, Quentin Bell has created an unparalleled portrait of his aunt and provides a view of Bloomsbury life as only a family member could. Through a childhood of arrivals and departures to the inspiration behind Woolf's greatest books, her marriage to Leonard Woolf, and her daring affair with Vita Sackville-West, Bell reveals the human being behind what has become the Bloomsbury legend.

In A Woman of Passion, Julia Briggs chronicles the life of author Edith Nesbit who is credited with being the first modern writer for children and the creator of the children's adventure story. Nesbit recorded her life with varying degrees of honesty in verse and prose, and while she seldom wrote entirely openly of her own experiences, she seldom wrote convincingly of anything else. In this fascinating read, Julia Briggs attempts to fill in the gaps of Nesbit's autobiographical material, painting an intriguing portrait of the famous author.

Gender in Modernism, conceived as a sequel to the now-classic volume The Gender of Modernism, selects the best from the fifteen years of feminist literary and modernist scholarship that has appeared since the original's publication. Its fresh and diverse texts examine new themes and reflect today's broader, more inclusive understanding of modernism. The collection's modernist works have been grouped into twenty-one thematic sections, with theoretical introductions to the primary texts provided by the scholars who have taken the lead in pushing both modernism and gender in new directions. The selections enhance our understanding of the complex intersections of gender with a large array of social identifications, including global location, ideas of race, passing, the queering of sexualities, medicine, and experiences of trauma and war. It sees continental modernism in a different light, and moves on to colonial and postcolonial sites. less-studied genres of modernism, including writers on the left, suffragists, authors of manifestos, mediums, authors dismissed as sentimental, artists, dancers, dramatists, and filmmakers. Gender in Modernism will quickly move from resource to springboard, furthering modernist study well into the twenty-first century. Contributors include Tuzyline Jita Allan, Ann Ardis, Nancy Berke, Julia Briggs, Pamela L. Caughie, Mary Chapman, Suzanne Clark, Patrick Collier, Diane F. Gillespie, Barbara Green, Leslie Kathleen Hankins, Suzette A. Henke, Katherine Kelly, Colleen Lamos, Bette London, Janet Lyon, Jayne Marek, Sonita Sarker, Carol Shloss, Susan Squier, Claire Tylee, and Gay Wachman.