Italo Calvino once said that he preferred to give false details about his biography since he felt that even the genuine data of a writer's life shed no light on the creative work. This volume of posthumously collected personal writings is the closest we may ever come to the autobiography of this most private of writers.

Unique comedy title for Christmas by national treasure and doyenne of Radio 4, Sandi Toksvig.

Against Nazi dictatorship,the disillusionment of Weimar, and Christian austerity, Hermann Hesse's stories inspired a nonconformist yearning for universal values to supplant fanaticism in all its guises. He reenters our world through Gunnar Decker's biography-a champion of spiritual searching in the face of mass culture and the disenchanted life.

John Wyndham redefined science fiction with dystopian classics The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos. In Hidden Wyndham, Amy Binns reveals the woman who was the inspiration for his strong-minded heroines. Their secret love affair sustained this gentle and desperately shy man through failure, war, and, ultimately, success.

Revised and updated throughout, the third edition of this best-selling book traces the development of one of the world's richest literatures from the old English period to the present day. It now features a full chapter on the contemporary period, with more on genres and the impact of globalisation.

Summarises the main debates and perspectives shaping the field of reading. This title introduces key theorists such as Iser, Fish and Bakhtin. It surveys influential works and outlines important studies on mass reading. It focuses on specific communities such as Welsh miners, African American library users and Australian convicts.

A response to our fractured political discourse, Hobbit Virtues speaks to the importance of "virtue ethics" by examining the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien-with particular attention to his hobbits.

This text presents a critical survey of a broad range of fictional representations of the Holocaust published over the last 20 years. It looks at both the critical receptions around the publication of these fictions, and at what can be concluded about the ethics and practice of Holocaust fiction.

Providing a comprehensive generic study of Holocaust literature, this volume enables readers to understand a genre in which boundaries are often blurred between history fiction, autobiography and memoir. It offers a guide to holocaust literature, along with an annotated bibliography, chronology, and further reading list.

Part war memoir, part tract, part expose, Homage to Catalonia is a pivotal work in Orwell's oeuvre, and a key to understanding his political ideas and his commitment to the socialist cause. Unavailable in the US until 1952, it is here presented in its original version, as published by Secker & Warburg in 1938.

Home and Away: The Place of the Child Writer is an important contribution to the fast-growing and rapidly evolving field of literary juvenilia studies. This collection of essays by fifteen scholars is the first in this area to be published in the past decade.

A book on the experience of reading Honore de Balzac's La Comedie humaine which recounts the process of Peter Brooks's own discovery of Balzac.

This text provides a re-examination of the 19th century poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889). The volume contains Hopkins' undergraduate essays and notes on philosophy and mechanics, along with new readings of some of Hopkins' poems, including "Pied Beauty", "Heaven-Haven" and "The Windhover".

From shambling zombies to Gothic ghosts, horror has entertained thrill-seeking readers for centuries. This collection of essays takes in a range of topics, focusing on historic works and modern novels. Other contributions examine weird fiction, Stephen King, Richard Laymon, Indigenous Australian monster mythology and picture books.

Reflections on Covid and confinement from the unparalleled pen of Alan Bennett.

Selected as one of The Times Books of 2017: a journey through the most iconic houses in English literature

Literary history meets economic policy in this entertaining polemic on the ethical and potentially destructive power of terrible literature.

Examines the parallels between certain features of literary experience and functions of the brain. For the neuroscientific community, this book suggests that different areas of research - the neurobiology of vision and reading, the brain-body interactions underlying emotions - may be connected to a variety of aesthetic and literary phenomena.

A fascinating, richly illustrated exploration of the poignant origins of Rudyard Kipling's world-famous children's classic

When did the coffee-table book become an object of scorn? Why did law courts forbid witnesses to kiss the Bible? What made Victorian cartoonists mock commuters who hid behind the newspaper, ladies who matched their books' binding to their dress, and servants who reduced newspapers to fish 'n' chips wrap? This title deals with these questions.

In this book of practical advice, Alex Johnson brings his tremendous enthusiasm and informed passion to answer the question of how to start, and keep your child reading, to ensure a new generation of bookworms are whisked away to new worlds and essential discoveries.