A unique A-Z reference work of over 3,100 entries spanning the length and breadth of classical literature. It ranges from detailed biographies of authors, overviews of myths and legends, and explanations of literary styles, to topical entries on the wider aspects of classical society, and on the literary works that shed light on them.

With over 750 authoritative entries covering all areas of critical theory, this dictionary is an essential reference work for anyone needing a clear guide to theory, from feminism to globalization, from Marxism to psychoanalysis. This edition is fully up to date and thoroughly comprehensive.

The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms provides clear and concise definitions of even the most complex literary terms from abjection to zeugma. An essential reference tool for students of literature in any language. Recommended web links are available via a companion website.

This edition of the classic reference has been thoroughly revised and updated, offering unrivalled coverage of English literature. It continues to offer detailed and authoritative information on authors and works, alongside extended coverage of popular literary genres, as well as of the themes and concepts encountered by students.

The Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature and Legend offers a comprehensive survey of the Arthurian legends in all their manifestations, from the earliest medieval texts to their appearances in contemporary culture. Essential reading for Arthurian scholars, medievalists, and for those interested in myth and legend.

An international team of scholars examines the theatrical world in which Shakespeare worked, tracing the social, political, and patronage pressures under which actors operated. They also explore the practicalities of playing: acquiring scripts, theatres, rehearsing, lighting, music, props, boy actors, and the role of women in an 'all-male' world.

The Oxford Handbook of English Prose 1500-1640 is the only available overview of early modern English prose writing. It considers the range and variety of the substance and types of English prose, and also analyses the forms and styles of writing adopted in the early modern period.

It looks not only at Frankenstein and its composition, sources, themes and reception but at the wide range of other work by Shelley including such novels as The Last Man and Mathilda and her tales, reviews, travel writing and the (until recently neglected) Literary Lives of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French writers.

In Palm Sunday, Kurt Vonnegut writes beguilingly about everything from country music to George Bush, his favourite comedians to his mother's midnight mania, and bittersweet tributes to a dead best friend and a dead marriage.

This work is part of the "Continuum Contemporaries" series giving readers accessible and informative introductions to 30 of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential contemporary novels. It contains a biography of the novelist and a full-length study of the novel.

Stunning account of conversations between these two great intellectuals of our time

The first study of the world of parenting in late Georgian England. Based on extensive and wide-ranging sources from memoirs and correspondence, to fiction, advice guides, and engravings, Bailey uncovers how people, from the poor to the rich, thought about themselves as parents and remembered their own parents.

The first volume of fascinating interviews from one of the world's best loved literary magazines

Spiritual conversions figure heavily in such novels as Thomas Pynchon's "Vineland" and Toni Morrison's "Paradise". What connects such varied works is that their convert-characters are disenchanted with secularism yet apprehensive of dogmatic religiosity. This work is a study to identify a body of contemporary fiction in such terms.

In 1926 Vita Sackville-West travelled to Iran to visit her husband, Harold Nicolson, who was serving as a diplomat in Teheran. This work reveals the lesser-known side of one of the twentieth century's most luminous authors.

An introductory text to the history, major writers and critical issues of this genre, this volume clarifies the different uses of pastoral covering: the history of the genre; the pastoral impulse of retreat and return; and an examination post-pastoral texts.

The authorized biography shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year, the National Book Awards and the Costa Biography Award

Kennedy sought to understand the social, economic, and military forces that shape great powers. While earlier scholars of international history had written about `great men' and their achievements, Kennedy focused on the interdependence of military might and economic growth.

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

Winner of the James Tait Black Prize for Biography 2014 Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) was a great English writer, who would never have described herself in such grand terms.

Looking at travel writing by British women from the seventeenth century on, Karen R. Lawrence asks an intriguing question: What happens when, instead of waiting patiently for Odysseus, Penelope voyages and records her journey...