He came to public notice after the publication of his award-winning novel, Hawksmoor (1985), a thrilling historiographic metafiction that combines the horror of an 18th-century gothic tale of ritual murder with the suspense of a 20th-century detective story.

This book treats Burns' work from the first publication of his poetry in 178 to his song writing and collecting which predominated in the 1790s. In line with modern Burns scholarship, this study reads Burns' against both his Scottish and British literary backgrounds and emphasises, particularly, Burns' construction of his poetic persona.

The new edition of the successful first edition will cover all of Rushdie's work up to the present.

A concise and informative account of the development of Beckett's prose and drama from the early experiments in fiction through the major work to the minimal.

In this second edition of his popular book on Heaney, Andrew Murphy charts the trajectory of Heaney's career as a poet and places his work within its various contexts.

Providing a brief account of the life of Sir Walter Scott, this text charts his development as a poet and novelist, and justifies his claims to attention as a major 19th century novelist and a seminal influence on later writers.

Stephen Crane provides a general overview of all of Stephen Crane's major works, and many of his minor ones. The Red Badge of Courage was recognised by many as the finest war novel in English, and Crane subsequently devoted much effort to writing more about the war.

Best known for his sexually provocative Poems and Ballads (1866), Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) was much admired throughout the 19th-century for his daring subject matter and superb poetic craftsmanship.