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A darkly comic and moving reflection on what it means to be human
in a world where nothing is certain, from the award-winning Oxford
professor We all have trapdoors in our lives. Sometimes we jump off
just in time ... But sometimes we are unlucky. My own trapdoor was
hidden in the consulting room of an Oxford neurologist. When the
trapdoor opened for Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, he plummeted into a
world of MRI scans, a disobedient body and the crushing
unpredictability of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis. But, like Alice
tumbling into Wonderland, his fall did something else. It took him
deep into his own mind: his hopes, his fears, his loves and losses,
and the books that would sustain, inform and nourish him as his
life began to transform in ways he could never have imagined. From
Kafka to Barbellion, this is a literary map of the journey from the
kingdom of the well to the land of the sick, and forwards into a
hopeful future. It's an ode to great writing, to storytelling, to
science and to the power of the imagination. 'A pitch-perfect
memoir: stylish, erudite, touchingly honest and darkly funny'
Jacqueline Wilson
*A BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021 PICK IN THE TIMES, FINANCIAL TIMES,
SPECTATOR AND NEW STATESMAN* From the award-winning author of
Becoming Dickens and The Story of Alice comes a major new biography
of Charles Dickens, tracing the year that would transform his life
and times. The year is 1851. It's a time of radical change in
Britain, when industrial miracles and artistic innovations rub
shoulders with political unrest, poverty and disease. It's also a
turbulent time in the private life of Charles Dickens, as he copes
with a double bereavement and early signs that his marriage is
falling apart. But this formative year will become perhaps the
greatest turning point in Dickens's career, as he embraces his
calling as a chronicler of ordinary people's lives, and develops a
new form of writing that will reveal just how interconnected the
world is becoming. The Turning Point transports us into the foggy
streets of Dickens's London, closely following the twists and turns
of a year that would come to define him, and forever alter
Britain's relationship with the world. Fully illustrated, and
brimming with fascinating details about the larger-than-life man
who wrote Bleak House, this is the closest look yet at one of the
greatest literary personalities ever to have lived. 'A startling
and exciting writer' A. S. BYATT, SPECTATOR
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Great Expectations (Paperback, New)
Charles Dickens; Edited by Margaret Cardwell; Introduction by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst; Notes by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
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R206
R154
Discovery Miles 1 540
Save R52 (25%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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'you are to understand, Mr. Pip, that the name of the person who is
your liberal benefactor remains a profound secret...' Young Pip
lives with his sister and her husband the blacksmith, with few
prospects for advancement until a mysterious benefaction takes him
from the Kent marshes to London. Pip is haunted by figures from his
past - the escaped convict Magwitch, the time-withered Miss
Havisham and her proud and beautiful ward, Estella - and in time
uncovers not just the origins of his great expectations but the
mystery of his own heart. A powerful and moving novel, Great
Expectations is suffused with Dickens's memories of the past and
its grip on the present, and it raises disturbing questions about
the extent to which individuals affect each other's lives. This
edition includes a lively introduction, Dickens's working notes,
the novel's original ending, and an extract from an early
theatrical adaptation. It reprints the definitive Clarendon text.
ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has
made available the widest range of literature from around the
globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to
scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of
other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading
authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date
bibliographies for further study, and much more.
'To die will be an awfully big adventure.' Peter Pan, the boy who
refused to grow up, is one of the immortals of children's
literature. J. M. Barrie first created Peter Pan as a baby, living
in secret with the birds and fairies in the middle of London, but
as the children for whom he invented the stories grew older, so too
did Peter, reappearing in Neverland, where he was aided in his epic
battles with Red Indians and pirates by the motherly and
resourceful Wendy Darling. Peter Pan has become a cultural icon and
symbol for escapism and innocence, remaining popular with both
children and adults. In this collected edition, Robert
Douglas-Fairhurst brings together five of the main versions of the
Peter Pan story, from Peter Pan's first appearance in The Little
White Bird, to his novelisation of the story, the stage version,
and unrealised silent film script. This edition contains a lively
introduction, detailed explanatory notes, original illustrations,
and appendices that include Barrie's coda to the play that was only
performed once.
"A pitch-perfect memoir: stylish, erudite, touchingly honest and
darkly funny." Jacqueline Wilson "We all have trapdoors in our
lives. Sometimes we jump off just in time ... But sometimes we are
unlucky enough to be on the trapdoor when the lever is pulled. My
own trapdoor was hidden in the consulting room of an Oxford
neurologist." When the trapdoor opened for Robert
Douglas-Fairhurst, he plummeted into a world of MRI scans, a
disobedient body and the crushing unpredictability of a multiple
sclerosis diagnosis. But, like Alice tumbling into Wonderland, his
fall did something else. It took him deep into his own mind: his
hopes, his fears, his loves and losses, and the books that would
sustain, inform and nourish him as his life began to transform in
ways he could never have imagined. From Kafka to Barbellion, this
is a literary map of the journey from the kingdom of the well to
the land of the sick, and forwards into a hopeful future. It's an
ode to great writing, to storytelling, to science and to the power
of the imagination. And, above all, it's a darkly comic and moving
reflection on what it means to be human in a world where nothing is
certain.
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The Water -Babies (Paperback)
Charles Kingsley; Revised by Brian Alderson; Introduction by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
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R251
R179
Discovery Miles 1 790
Save R72 (29%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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'this is all a fairy tale...and, therefore, you are not to believe
a word of it, even if it is true' The Water-Babies (1863) is one of
the strangest and most powerful children's stories ever written. In
describing the underwater adventures of Tom, a chimney-sweeper's
boy who is transformed into a water-baby after he drowns, Charles
Kingsley combined comic fantasy and moral fable to extraordinary
effect. Tom's encounters with friendly fish, curious lobsters, and
characters such as Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby are both an exciting
fairy tale and a crash course in evolutionary theory. They also
reflect the quirky imagination of one of the great Victorian
eccentrics. Tom's adventures are constantly interrupted by
Kingsley's sideswipes at contemporary issues such as child labour
and the British education system, and they offer a rich satiric
take on the great scientific debates of the day. This edition
reprints the original complete version of the story, and includes a
lively introduction, detailed explanatory notes, and an appendix
that reprints Kingsley's first attempt to describe the mysterious
creatures that live under the sea.
'What was merry Christmas to Scrooge? Out upon merry Christmas!
What good had it ever done to him?' Ebenezer Scrooge is a
bad-tempered skinflint who hates Christmas and all it stands for,
but a ghostly visitor foretells three apparitions who will thaw
Scrooge's frozen heart. A Christmas Carol has gripped the public
imagination since it was first published in 1843, and it is now as
much a part of Christmas as mistletoe or plum pudding. This edition
reprints the story alongside Dickens's four other Christmas Books:
The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The
Haunted Man. All five stories show Dickens at his unpredictable
best, jumbling together comedy and melodrama, genial romance and
urgent social satire, in pursuit of his aim 'to awaken some loving
and forbearing thoughts, never out of season in a Christian land'.
A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR The year is 1851. It's a time of radical
change in Britain, when industrial miracles and artistic
innovations rub shoulders with political unrest, poverty and
disease. It's also a turbulent time in the life of Charles Dickens,
as he copes with a double bereavement and early signs that his
marriage is falling apart. But this year will become the turning
point in Dickens's career, as he embraces his calling as a
chronicler of ordinary people's lives. The Turning Point transports
us into the foggy streets of Dickens's London, closely following
the twists and turns of a year that would come to define him, and
forever alter Britain's relationship with the world. 'Sparklingly
informative' Guardian 'Wonderfully entertaining' Observer 'It is
hard to imagine a better book on Dickens' New Statesman
'What was merry Christmas to Scrooge? Out upon merry Christmas!
What good had it ever done to him?' Ebenezer Scrooge is a
bad-tempered skinflint who hates Christmas and all it stands for,
but a ghostly visitor foretells three apparitions who will thaw
Scrooge's frozen heart. A Christmas Carol has gripped the public
imagination since it was first published in 1843, and it is now as
much a part of Christmas as mistletoe or plum pudding. This edition
reprints the story alongside Dickens's four other Christmas Books:
The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The
Haunted Man. All five stories show Dickens at his unpredictable
best, jumbling together comedy and melodrama, genial romance and
urgent social satire, in pursuit of his aim 'to awaken some loving
and forbearing thoughts, never out of season in a Christian land'.
ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has
made available the widest range of literature from around the
globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to
scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of
other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading
authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date
bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Becoming Dickens tells the story of how an ambitious young Londoner
became England's greatest novelist. In following the twists and
turns of Charles Dickens's early career, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
examines a remarkable double transformation: in reinventing himself
Dickens reinvented the form of the novel. It was a high-stakes
gamble, and Dickens never forgot how differently things could have
turned out. Like the hero of Dombey and Son, he remained haunted by
"what might have been, and what was not." In his own lifetime,
Dickens was without rivals. He styled himself simply "The
Inimitable." But he was not always confident about his standing in
the world. From his traumatized childhood to the suicide of his
first collaborator and the sudden death of the woman who had a good
claim to being the love of his life, Dickens faced powerful
obstacles. Before settling on the profession of novelist, he tried
his hand at the law and journalism, considered a career in acting,
and even contemplated emigrating to the West Indies. Yet with The
Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and a groundbreaking series of
plays, sketches, and articles, he succeeded in turning every
potential breakdown into a breakthrough. Douglas-Fairhurst's
provocative new biography, focused on the 1830s, portrays a
restless and uncertain Dickens who could not decide on the career
path he should take and would never feel secure in his considerable
achievements.
'To die will be an awfully big adventure.' Peter Pan, the boy who
refused to grow up, is one of the immortals of children's
literature. J. M. Barrie first created Peter Pan as a baby, living
in secret with the birds and fairies in the middle of London, but
as the children for whom he invented the stories grew older, so too
did Peter, reappearing in Neverland, where he was aided in his epic
battles by the motherly and resourceful Wendy Darling. Since then
Peter Pan has become a cultural icon and symbol for escapism and
innocence, remaining popular with both children and adults. In this
collected edition, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst brings together five of
the main versions of the Peter Pan story, from Peter Pan's first
appearance in The Little White Bird, to his novelisation of the
story, the stage version, and unrealised silent film script. This
edition contains an introduction and notes, detailed explanatory
notes, original illustrations, and appendices that include Barrie's
coda to the play that was only performed once. ABOUT THE SERIES:
For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the
widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable
volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the
most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features,
including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful
notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further
study, and much more.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD This is the secret
history of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Wonderland is part of
our cultural heritage. But beneath the fairy tale lies the complex
history of the author and his subject. Charles Dodgson was a quiet
academic but his second self, Lewis Carroll, was a storyteller,
innovator and avid collector of 'child-friends'. Carroll's
imagination was to give Alice Liddell, his 'dream-child', a
fictional alter ego that would never let her grow up. This is a
biography that beautifully unravels the magic of Alice. It is a
history of love and loss, innocence and ambiguity. It is the story
of one man's need to make a Wonderland in a changing world.
'I go about the street with water-creases crying, "Four bunches a
penny, water-creases."' London Labour and the London Poor is an
extraordinary work of investigative journalism, a work of
literature, and a groundbreaking work of sociology. Mayhew
conducted hundreds of interviews with London's street traders,
entertainers, thieves and beggars which revealed that the 'two
nations' of rich and poor in Victorian Britain were much closer
than many people thought. By turns alarming, touching, and funny,
the pages of London Labour and the London Poor exposed a previously
hidden world to view. The first-hand accounts of costermongers and
street-sellers, of sewer-scavenger and chimney-sweep, are intimate
and detailed and provide an unprecedented insight into their
day-to-day struggle for survival. Combined with Mayhew's obsessive
data gathering, these stories have an immediacy that owes much to
his sympathetic understanding and highly effective literary style.
This new selection offers a cross-section of the original volumes
and their evocative illustrations, and includes an illuminating
introduction to Henry Mayhew and the genesis and influence of his
work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics
has made available the widest range of literature from around the
globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to
scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of
other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading
authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date
bibliographies for further study, and much more.
This Dictionary is a guide to the literary terms most relevant to
students and readers of English literature today, thorough on the
essentials and generous in its intellectual scope. With terms as
wide-ranging in theme as 'emphasis', 'ekphrasis', 'ecocriticism'
and 'epithalamion' the definitions are always lively and precise in
equipping students and general readers with a genuinely useful
critical vocabulary. Above all, it directs readers to make full use
of terms, in navigating the confusing world of literary criticism
and discovering the concepts behind terms. It does this with the
help of fresh examples, literary timeline and up-to-date
bibliography (with recommended websites). Extensive
cross-referencing is linked to a thematic index that makes it
simple to find related terms (e.g. technical terms for repetition;
names for six- or seven-line stanzas) and is explicit about the
exact distinctions between such terms as 'metonym' and
'synecdoche', or 'couplet' and 'distich'. In addition to teaching
key terms, the Dictionary identifies the thinking and unresolved
controversies surrounding them, and offers fresh insights and
directions for future reading. It seeks to challenge as well as
complement the reader's own ideas about literature. It is a
Dictionary for the twenty-first century, both in its broad view of
literature in English and its emphasis on readers enjoying poetry,
prose and drama.
Following his acclaimed life of Dickens, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
illuminates the tangled history of two lives and two books. Drawing
on numerous unpublished sources, he examines in detail the peculiar
friendship between the Oxford mathematician Charles Dodgson (Lewis
Carroll) and Alice Liddell, the child for whom he invented the
Alice stories, and analyzes how this relationship stirred Carroll's
imagination and influenced the creation of Wonderland. It also
explains why Alice in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel, Through the
Looking-Glass (1871), took on an unstoppable cultural momentum in
the Victorian era and why, a century and a half later, they
continue to enthrall and delight readers of all ages. The Story of
Alice reveals Carroll as both an innovator and a stodgy
traditionalist, entrenched in habits and routines. He had a keen
double interest in keeping things moving and keeping them just as
they are. (In Looking-Glass Land, Alice must run faster and faster
just to stay in one place.) Tracing the development of the Alice
books from their inception in 1862 to Liddell's death in 1934,
Douglas-Fairhurst also provides a keyhole through which to observe
a larger, shifting cultural landscape: the birth of photography,
changing definitions of childhood, murky questions about sex and
sexuality, and the relationship between Carroll's books and other
works of Victorian literature. In the stormy transition from the
Victorian to the modern era, Douglas-Fairhurst shows, Wonderland
became a sheltered world apart, where the line between the actual
and the possible was continually blurred.
Published to mark the bicentenary of Alfred Tennyson's birth, these
essays offer an important revaluation of his achievement and its
lasting importance. After several years in which the temper of
criticism has been largely political (and often hostile towards
Tennyson in particular) a number of influential recent accounts of
Victorian poetry have rediscovered the virtues of a closer style of
reading and the benefits and pleasures of an approach that, without
at all ignoring social and cultural contexts, approaches them
through a primary alertness to textual detail and literary history.
This volume, including entirely commissioned work by a wide range
of critics and scholars from across the profession in both Britain
and North America, seeks to bring such forms of attention to bear
on the immense variety of Tennyson's career by exploring the
complex and multiple connections between Tennyson and other writers
- his predecessors, his contemporaries, and his successors.
Collectively, the essays describe an intricate network of
affiliation and indebtedness, resistance and reconciliation. They
provide a unique assessment of Tennyson's origins, work, and
imaginative legacy as he enters upon his third century.
Questions of survival were much discussed during the
nineteenth-century, ranging from debates over the likelihood of a
personal immortality, to anxieties over the more dispersed and
unpredictable aftermath of particular acts and utterances. Some of
these questions emerged in the intellectual and stylistic
preoccupations of individual writers, such as Dickens, Tennyson,
and FitzGerald. Others contributed towards the cultural atmosphere
they shared, in which shifty and overlapping ideas of 'influence'
(from the seductive touch of the mesmerist to the contagious breath
of the poor) became central to attempts to work out how
far-reaching were the effects which people had on one another and
themselves. Victorian Afterlives sets out to recover this
atmosphere, and to explain why its pressures are still being
exercised on and in our own ways of thinking. Moving freely between
different fields of enquiry (including literary criticism,
philosophy, and the history of science), and written in a lively
and accessible style, this major new study redraws the map of
nineteenth-century culture to show what the Victorians made of one
another, and what they might still help us make of ourselves.
This major study examines a Victorian obsession with 'influence', the often unpredictable after-effects of words and actions, in fields as diverse as mesmerism and theology, literary theory and sanitation reform. For writers such as Tennyson, FitzGerald and Dickens, the idea is both a theoretical and a practical problem.Survival is not only what their writing critically examines, but also what it sets out to achieve.
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