Despite the warnings of critics and moral leaders, French novels were widespread in Victorian culture. How did Victorian readers gain access to them? How were the novels' supposed immorality debated and challenged? And how far did the influx of French novels raise questions and anxieties about the literary and commercial value of the English novel?

The long-awaited memoir of celebrated writer and journalist Barbara Amiel

Tapping into the resurgence of interest in mythology and illustrated with 75 linocut-style artworks, this contemporary, cool and highly desirable collection of North American folktales has standout visual appeal.

This volume includes essays that consider how changes such as the mounting ubiquity of digital technology and the globalization of structures of publication and book distribution are shaping the way readers participate in the encoding and decoding of textual meaning. Contributors also examine how and why reading communities cohere in a range of contexts.

In blood-soaked lore handed down the centuries, the vampire is a monster of endless fascination: from Bram Stoker's "Dracula" to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", this seductive lover of blood haunts popular culture and inhabits our darkest imaginings. This book tells the history of the vampire, and reveals why the vampire myth fascinates us.

In twenty-three dispatches - that range over such crucial writers as Thomas Hardy, Leo Tolstoy, and Edmund Wilson, the author offers a look at the modern novel. He connects his encyclopaedic understanding of the literary canon with an equally in-depth analysis of the most important authors writing today, including Cormac McCarthy, and V S Naipaul.

Olivia Laing, prize-winning, bestselling author of The Lonely City and Crudo, returns with a career-spanning collection of essays on the power of art in times of crisis.

For Virago's 50th anniversary, we are reissuing the second title in Maya Angelou's bestselling autobiography series in a new look to celebrate its induction to the Virago Modern Classics list.

Covering Geoffrey Chaucer's life and work, David Wallace considers the influence and enduring appeal of his body of writing, exploring the wide ranging geography and iconic characters in his stories, and discusses how Chaucer's own experiences contributed to his literature.

A chronicle of Geoffrey Chaucer's life, accomplishments and roles outside poetry.

This volume explores the interface between modernism and geography in a range of writers, texts and artists across the 20th century.

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.

One of the most highly acclaimed biographies of 2006 -- now published in paperback

A journey through the life and thought of George Orwell, from public school satirist and imperial policeman to Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four.

A portrait of George Orwell that gives centre-stage to his deep commitment to freedom of speech and thought, and to speaking truth to power.

This expansive edited collection explores in depth the georgic genre and its connections to the natural world. It is a much-needed volume for literary critics, academics and students engaged in ecocritical studies, environmental humanities and literature, addressing a significantly overlooked environmental literary genre.

A biographical and critical account of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, (1844-1889) and his involvement with religion and literature, specifically Christian poetry. Included are accounts of his contemporaries, such as Christina Rossetti and John Henry Newman.

Drawing on historical and cultural studies of Victorian Catholicism, along with Hopkins's writings, Muller shows how the melancholy trajectory of the Jesuit poet's career mimics the deflation of Catholic hopes during the second half of Victoria's reign.

Getting Lost is the diary kept by Annie Ernaux during the year and a half she had a secret love affair with a younger, married man, a haunting record of a woman in the grips of love, desire and despair.

The Ghost Story 1840-1920: A Cultural History is the first book length analysis of the British ghost story in over thirty years. It includes readings of the economic, national, colonial, and gender contexts of the ghost story and provides a new and important critical re-evaluation of writers including Dickens, Collins, Henry James, and M.R. James. -- .

In this highly acclaimed memoir the writer Jeff Young takes us on a journey through the Liverpool of his youth, down the back alleys and through arcades, through arcades and oyster bars into vanished tenements.