Product Description: This Guide offers a comprehensive survey of the key criticism on Shakespeare's tragedies, from the seventeenth century through to the present day. Introducing essential concepts, themes and debates, and summarising major critical texts, Nicolas Tredell examines how the category of Shakespeare's tragedies has been constructed, contested and changed...read more

Product Description: Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794) is William Blake's best-known work, containing such familiar poems as 'London', 'Sick Rose' and 'The Tyger'. Evolving over the author's lifetime, the collection was printed by Blake himself on his own press...read more

Product Description: David Copperfield and Great Expectations are among Charles Dickens's most famous novels. In both books, the hero tells the vivid and absorbing tale of his education by life, presents a rich range of characters and scenes, and tackles profound moral, social and psychological themes...read more

Product Description: 'One of the more earnest and interesting writers of his generation.' - The Guardian 'Readable to an almost hypnotic degree . . . absorbing and exciting.' - Sphere 'Some really good narrative . . . impressive.' - New Statesman As a child, the brilliant mathematical prodigy Hugh Greene's two major influences were his eccentric old uncles, Nick and Sam...read more

Product Description: Novelist and cultural commentator C.P. Snow was a large and controversial presence in his lifetime but his work has been largely neglected since his death in 1980. This is the first 21st-century book to offer a clear, informed and sympathetic survey of all his novels and major non-fiction books and to affirm their importance for the world today...read more

Product Description: The plays of Shakespeare's contemporaries are increasingly popular thanks to a spate of recent stage and screen productions and to courses that set Shakespeare's plays in context. This Reader's Guide introduces students to the criticism and debates that are specific to the drama of playwrights such as Jonson, Middleton, Dekker and Webster...read more

Product Description: A Midsummer Night's Dream is an enchanting and extraordinary comedy. With its rich poetry and vigorous prose, and its combination of magic, myth, romance and humor, it ranks among Shakespeare's most popular and memorable plays. However, it has also increasingly been recognized as a profound and penetrating exploration of love, desire, gender, social hierarchy, dramatic art, imagination and vision...read more

Product Description: This Guide discusses the range of critical reactions to three of Jane Austen's most widely-studied and popular novels. Annika Bautz takes the reader chronologically through the profusion of criticism by selecting key approaches from the immense variety of responses these three Austen novels have provoked over the last two centuries...read more

Product Description: One of the most popular contemporary authors, Kazuo Ishiguro has so far produced six highly regarded novels which have won him international acclaim and honours, including the Booker Prize, the Whitbread Award and an OBE for Services to Literature...read more

Product Description: Sara Lodge offers a lively introduction to the critical history of one of the most widely-studied nineteenth-century novels, from the first reviews through to present day responses. The Guide also includes sections devoted to feminist, Marxist and postcolonial criticism of Jane Eyre, as well as analysis of recent developments...read more

Product Description: This guide examines the critical construction of the genre of 'contemporary Scottish literature' and assesses the critical responses to a wide range of contemporary Scottish fiction, poetry and drama. The guide is structured thematically with each chapter addressing a specific area of debate within the field of contemporary Scottish Studies...read more

Product Description: This comprehensive survey of the critical response to Dracula provides an overview of the trends and development of work surrounding the novel. The critics and approaches discussed range from the earliest studies to the present day, with particular emphasis on biography, psychoanalysis, postcolonialism, Irish studies and gender...read more

Product Description: A concise and lucid overview of the key criticism -- from early reviews to twenty-first commentaries -- surrounding the popular genre of Victorian "sensation" fiction.

Product Description: David Mamet is arguably the most important living American playwright. This Guide provides an up-to-date study of the key criticism on the full range of Mamet's work. It engages with his work in film as well as in the theatre, offering a synoptic overview of, and critical commentary on, the scholarly criticism of each play, screenplay or film...read more

Product Description: Matthew Woodcock provides a survey of the critical responses to this popular play, as well as the key debates and developments, from the seventeenth century to the present day. Leading the reader through material chronologically, the Guide summarises and assesses key interpretations, setting them in their intellectual and historical context...read more

Product Description: This book offers a comprehensive overview of the criticism surrounding the work of one of the most prolific and popular contemporary British writers. Byatt is a popular and widely-studied British author. The book features two chapters dedicated to "Possession", Byatt's most well-known novel...read more

Product Description: What is the Gothic? Few literary genres have attracted so much praise and critical disdain simultaneously. This Guide returns to the Gothic novel's first wave of popularity, between 1764 and 1820, to explore and analyse the full range of contradictory responses that the Gothic evoked...read more

Product Description: What is the Gothic? Few literary genres have attracted so much praise and critical disdain simultaneously. This Guide returns to the Gothic novel's first wave of popularity, between 1764 and 1820, to explore and analyse the full range of contradictory responses that the Gothic evoked...read more

Reader's Guides provide a comprehensive starting point for any advanced student, giving an overview of the context, criticism and influence of key works. Each guide also offers students fresh critical insights and provides a practical introduction to close reading and to analysing literary language and form. They provide uptodate, authoritative but accessible guides to the most commonly studied classic texts. The Great Gatsby (1925) is a classic of modern American literature and is often seen as the quintessential novel of 'the jazz age'. This is the ideal guide to the text, setting The Great Gatsby in its historical, intellectual and cultural contexts, offering analyses of its themes, style and structure, providing exemplary close readings, presenting an uptodate account of its critical reception and examining its afterlife in literature, film and popular culture. It includes points for discussion, suggestions for further study and an annotated guide to relevant reading.

This Guide provides a critical survey of the responses to this popular play. Chronologically arranged, the book draws on a rich range of critical writings, including Dr Johnson, Coleridge, Bradley and Leavis. This material is linked to more general issues regarding Shakespearean criticism and scholarship, and the development of literary theory.

Provides a critical survey of the rich range of responses to 'Macbeth', as well as the key debates and developments from the seventeenth century. Leading the reader through the material chronologically, this guide summarizes, explains and assesses key interpretations, and sets them in their intellectual and historical contexts.

Describes the theaters of Shakespeare's time and indicates the topics of theater at royal courts, how plays were staged, and early acting techniques.