In this authoritative study guide Graham Bradshaw presents his own vision of 'Heart of Darkness' and shows why the novel's peculiarly dark and intense vision of life has been so frequently misunderstood.

This play is a revolutionary masterpiece, argues Tom Bishop. Held together by a lyrical energy, it is about love and the role of the imagination in love. Human folly, Shakespeare suggests, is also a blessing: the paradox at the heart of the play is that the source of all that is most destructive in the world is also the source of all that is best.

All you need to know about William Shakespeare's Hamlet is in this advanced guide to the text. Connell Guides are advanced guide books that offer sophisticated analysis and broad critical perspectives for higher-level GCSE and A Level English Literature students.

Valentine Cunningham shows what it is that Shakespeare is driving at in Lear and how this extraordinary tragedy about a foolish old king who goes mad leads directly to Samuel Beckett and the Theatre of the Absurd.

In this concise guide, Graham Bradshaw shows that Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' is much more terrifying than traditional critics allow and offers how own incisive view.

In the 400 years since Othello was written, thousands of critics have expended millions of words arguing about it. Drawing on over thirty years of experience teaching and writing about Shakespeare, Bradshaw outlines, in a clear and enjoyable way, the most interesting critical opinions and offers his own incisive and convincing view of the play.

In this short but provocative guide Simon Palfrey, a leading Shakespearean scholar, shows us why Romeo and Juliet is such an extraordinary work of art and what Shakespeare is really saying about the nature of love itself.

T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land is the most famous of modern poems. It is also famously difficult. So why has it always been so popular? What is it that has made generation after generation of readers succumb to its greatness despite its apparently baffling complexity?