Literature & Poetry

In his first collection since being appointed Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion negotiates the very space of poetry, moving between private and public realms, pondering each from the other's borders.

A lively and entertaining guide to understanding and dissecting novels to make everyday reading more enriching, satisfying and fun. Understanding Novels shows how a novel's structure - point of view, narrative voice, chapter construction, character emblems create meaning and form the special literary language of the novel.

Julian Barnes is one of the most refined British writers and distinguished intellectuals of his generation whose rich body of work has been awarded many literary prizes both in the UK and abroad. This title provides a wide range of critical perspectives on Barnes' work from early bestselling novels "Flaubert's Parrot" to "Arthur and George".

Sir Salman Rushdie is perhaps the most significant living novelist in English. His second novel, Midnight's Children, is regularly cited as the 'Booker of Bookers' and its impact is still being felt throughout in world literature. His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, led to the 'Rushdie Affair' certainly ...

Offers students an introduction to Tolstoy's literary works from his major novels to the shorter novels and texts, including "Hadji Murat" and "The Death of Ivan Ilyich". This guide also covers major themes including sex, death, authority and evil and offers an overview of Tolstoy's religious and philosophical thought.

"An informed and sympathetic portrait of a troubled mind and humble heart." --Kirkus Reviews

Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) is one of the most significant and challenging of 20th century theologians. This guide shows how his reworking of theology around the transcendentals of being, the beautiful, the good and the true, is influenced not just by classical philosophy and theology but also by his involvement with contemporary figures.

D. H. Lawrence wrote in 1914, 'Primarily I am a passionately religious man, and my novels must be written from the depths of my religious experience.' Although he had broken with the Congregationalist faith of his childhood by his early twenties, Lawrence remained throughout his writing life a passionately ...

A bestselling author in his own time and long after, Sir Walter Scott was not only a writer of thrilling tales of romance and adventure but also an insightful historical thinker and literary craftsman. Over the last two decades, scholars have come to see him as an important figure in Romantic-period ...

A biography of one of the most important writers in English of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century. It offers fresh insights into his life and work, concentrating on the themes, patterns, relationships, ideas and language common to his life and creative output.

Provides an overview of the novel, "The Heart of Darkness". This book offers discussions of the narrative structure and the narrators. It includes chapters analysing the characters in relation to the text's themes, issues and historical context.

Features poems that seem earnest one moment and flippant the next, and will see the poet rotating his caustic fire from high-society cocktail parties to street-level poverty, genocide to Obamacare, New York to Syria. This collection is a rhymed magnificence of sexual, historical, and cultural exuberance.

Mick Imlah's second and long-awaited collection The Lost Leader was published to acclaim in 2008, shortly before his early death in January 2009.

Something is wrong.' - 'Night'

Frederick Seidel - the 'ghoul' (Chicago Review), the 'triumphant outsider' (Contemporary Poetry Review) - returns with a dangerous new collection of poems. Nice Weather presents the sexual and political themes that have long preoccupied Seidel - and thrilled and offended his readers.

American poet born between 1951 and 1977 who was not influenced by popular music and the paradigm shift that occurred in the country ... Under the Rock Umbrella brings together the best poets influenced by this powerful era in music to allow us to examine the music of each poet's own verse. --Mercer ...

An examination of the hero figure in the stories of two major Victorian authors of children's literature and the complex way in which they engaged with the dominant ideologies of the time.

This book considers the kinds of responsibility which modern lyric poetry takes on, or to which it makes itself subject - social, cultural, political, aesthetic and personal.