Discover the dark side of Christmas in this fascinating exploration of the strange folk tales and arcane traditions still haunt winter and the festive season to this day.

For centuries we have been fascinated with fairies, mythical beings often possessing intriguing magical powers to curse, trick or heal humans. In Fairies, discover the charming story behind our best loved magical characters, including the Fairy Godmother, Shakespeare's Titania and the beloved Tinker Bell.

A revolutionary approach to writing inspired by ancient Eastern wisdom, from the bestselling author of Wabi Sabi

Featuring some of the most ferocious and humorous book curses ever inscribed, this is a lively and engaging introduction to the history and development of bookish maledictions.

In the tradition of Walter Benjamin and with the journalistic attunement of Joan Didion, Jacqueline Feldman tells the story of Le Bloc, a legendary squat at the far edge of Paris which housed artists and activists.

From 'Is there Sex Before Marriage in Austen?' to 'Which important Austen characters never speak?' the Guardian Book Club columnist answers 21 apparently trivial questions that reveal deep and hidden truths about Jane Austen's fictional world

An engaging exploration of the stories behind forty famous pen names from the nineteenth century to the present day.

A unique cultural history of British comic papers and magazines.

What were people reading about as Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? How did the events around the industrial revolution influence the literary output of British writers and thinkers? This title presents a digest of significant and representative works of literature published in English by British authors from 1474 to 2001.

By the time she eventually caught the train back to Penzance two days later they had fallen in love and Eric had declared that he was determined to marry her...'Before her death in 2002, Mary Wesley told her biographer Patrick Marnham: `after I met Eric I never looked at anyone else again.

An eclectic and entirely original history of reading from eminent social historian Frank Furedi.

A meditation on twilight in Western thought, painting and literature, which combines memoir, literature and art history.

Everywhere he looks he finds fragments and gaps: disconnected typescripts, bones and husks, boxes of marbles, collections of photographs. Like a shaman flying across the globe, his mind tracks the journeys of his subjects to the deserts of Africa and the maelstroms of the Arctic, where the shapes of myth meet the patterns of science.

A wonderfully accessible handbook to the art of writing and reading poetry-itself written entirely in verse

Suitable for those who write or wants to write, this title teaches a Zen-like method that can take you straight to the source of creative power, to the mind that is 'raw, full of energy, alive and hungry'. It is packed with advice on: how to find time to write; how to discover your personal style; and, how to overcome writer's block.

The poet George Crabbe (1754 - 1832), best known as the author of Peter Grimes and The Village, was also a surgeon, a clergyman, a botanist, and a novelist.

Presents a guide to the works of Toni Morrison. This work offers an interview with Toni Morrison, relating specifically to the texts under discussion. It deals with Morrison's themes, genre and narrative technique.

With studies of Shakespeare, Dickens and Dostoevsky, Naipaul, Pritchett and Bellow, 'The Irresponsible Self' offers more exhilarating despatches from one of our finest living critics.