The Critical Heritage series gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The selected sources range from important essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, as well as documentary material such as letters and diaries. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects. The Critical Heritage is available as a set of 67 volumes, as mini- sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes), or as individual volumes.

In The Writing of Royalism, Robert Wilcher charts the political and ideological development of "royalism" between 1628 and 1660. His study situates a wide range of minor and canonical texts in the tumultuous political contexts of the time, helpfully integrating them into a detailed historical narrative. He illustrates the role of literature in forging a party committed to the military defense of royalist values and determined to sustain them in defeat.

The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contempoprary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read the material themselves.

In The Writing of Royalism, Robert Wilcher charts the political and ideological development of 'royalism' between 1628 and 1660. His study of the literature and propaganda produced by those who adhered to the crown during the civil wars and their aftermath takes in many kinds of writing to provide a comprehensive account of the emergence of a partisan literature in support of the English monarchy and Church. Wilcher situates a wide range of minor and canonical texts in the tumultuous political contexts of the time, helpfully integrating them into a detailed historical narrative. He illustrates the role of literature in forging a party committed to the military defence of royalist values and determined to sustain them in defeat. The Writing of Royalism casts light on the complex phenomenon of 'royalism' by making available a wealth of material that should be of interest to historians as well as literary scholars.

This is the first newly prepared, complete edition of Henry Vaughan's poetry and prose for over a century. In the introduction, the reader will find an up-to-date biography of Vaughan, a substantial history of developments in Vaughan scholarship and criticism from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries, and full bibliographical descriptions of each of the volumes published in the author's lifetime. The texts carefully reproduce original spelling and punctuation, with textual variants and significant editorial emendations made in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries noted at the foot of the page for easy reference. Vaughan's volumes are printed in the order of their first publication and each is introduced by a brief essay on the date and circumstances of its publication, its historical and literary contexts, and the nature of its contents. Vaughan's surviving letters are also included, and appendices print additional poems found in other volumes, poems of dubious ascription, and marginalia made in medical books owned by Vaughan. The third volume contains the commentary on prose works and poems. The notes on the poetry take into consideration material derived from scholarly and critical work published over the past forty years, and the edition locates Vaughan's translations and original prose texts firmly, and for the first time, in the complex religious, political, and intellectual contexts of the mid-seventeenth century. The third volume also contains a substantial bibliography and an index.

An epic drama of love, loyalty and betrayal this play spans the last thirty years of Northern Ireland's turbulent history.
Through the stories of poets, politicians, churchmen and men of violence, finnegan exposes the infinite complexity of one of the longest wars this century. Of interest to readers of Irish literature, politics and history, Dead Faces Laugh provides a unique historical overview of the troubles', a view which is of relevance to those undergoing similar conflicts in various countries worldwide.
Seamus Finnegan has written extensively for the theatre, radio, television and film. His plays have been performed internationally. Other publications include "North" (four plays) and "The Cemetery of Europe" (three plays). "James Joyce and the Israelites" and "Dialogues in Exile" is published by Harwood Academic Publishers, as is "It's All Blarney" (four plays). Robert Wilcher is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Birmingham, UK.