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Iris Murdoch: The Essential Guide (Vintage Living Texts #2)
Par Jonathan Noakes, Margaret Reynolds. 2003
In Vintage Living Texts, teachers, students and any lover of literature will find the essential guide to the major works…
of Iris Murdoch. Iris Murdoch's themes, genre and narrative techniques are put under scrutiny and the emphasis is on providing a rich source of ideas for intelligent and inventive ways of approaching the novels. Amongst many other features you'll find inspirational reading plans and contextual material, suggested complementary and comparative reading and an indispensable glossary. Featured texts: The Black Prince, The Sea, The Sea, The Bell'I didn't realise just how good the series was until I started working closely with it. The questions are so thoughtful and probing-the texts really do occupy their own niche between guides purely for teachers and the ubiquitous student crib, and are much better than either' Head of English, Newington College, AustraliaThe History of the Kings of Britain
Par Geoffrey Of Monmouth. 2010
Completed in 1136, The History of the Kings of Britain traces the story of the realm from its supposed foundation…
by Brutus to the coming of the Saxons some two thousand years later. Vividly portraying legendary and semi-legendary figures such as Lear, Cymbeline, Merlin the magician and the most famous of all British heroes, King Arthur, it is as much myth as it is history and its veracity was questioned by other medieval writers. But Geoffrey of Monmouth's powerful evocation of illustrious men and deeds captured the imagination of subsequent generations, and his influence can be traced through the works of Malory, Shakespeare, Dryden and Tennyson.The Invisible Mender
Par Sarah Maguire. 1997
Lucid, complex, sensual and richly textured, the poems in The Invisible Mender are notable for the breadth of their subject…
matter and the precision of their detail. We travel on journeys through landscapes dense with historical and political meanings, from the post-industrial decline of frozen North America to the stymied fecundity of a London garden paralysed in a heatwave: each emotional and physical climate explored and illuminated by the writer's astonishing images and searching intelligence. This is the work of unusual power and frankness, unflinching in its steady examination of grief and love, as in the heartbreaking title poem about the poet's loss of her first mother. But here, and in the magnificent long poem 'The Hearing Cure' this explicit engagement with what is difficult also reveals the redemptive, healing force of language. Sarah Maguire's outstanding first collection of poems, Spilt Milk, was published to considerable critical acclaim and led to her being chosen as one of the New Generation Poets. The Invisible Mender, her eagerly awaited second volume, will confirm her reputation as one of the most exciting young poets in Britain.Inventing Ireland: The Literature of a Modern Nation
Par Declan Kiberd. 1995
Kiberd - one of Ireland's leading critics and a central figure in the FIELD DAY group with Brian Friel, Seamus…
Deane and the actor Stephen Rea - argues that the Irish Literary Revival of the 1890-1922 period embodied a spirit and a revolutionary, generous vision of Irishness that is still relevant to post-colonial Ireland. This is the perspective from which he views Irish culture. His history of Irish writing covers Yeats, Lady Gregory, Synge, O'Casey, Joyce, Beckett, Flann O'Brien, Elizabeth Bowen, Heaney, Friel and younger writers down to Roddy Doyle.The Hunt in the Forest
Par John Burnside. 2009
Taking its title from Uccello's famous painting of a band of men - on foot and on horseback - massing…
for the chase, John Burnside's new poems take us on a journey out of the light and into the darkness, where we may just as easily lose ourselves as find what we are looking for. In these poems of hunting and predation, Burnside explores our most deep-rooted and primeval pursuits: romantic love, memory, selfhood, grief, the recollection of the dead. Yet just as we seek, so are we sought out: at any moment we may slide into loss or be gathered in by some otherworldly light; at any moment, the angel of the annunciation may seek us out and demand some astonishing transformation. Even in the pursuit of love, or in the exercise of memory, we fall into snares and become entangled in veils; just as we are always on the point of discovery, so we are always a hair's-breadth away from being lost. Concerned with love and mourning, with what we discover and what remains hidden - with learning how to follow the trail through the forest and find the way home - above all, these poems are about the quest: knowing that whatever we bring back from the hunt, it is always hard-won and never fully our own.With this extraordinary collection of fleet and deftly beautiful poems, John Burnside confirms his place at the forefront of writing, as one of a handful of truly important British poets working today.Into The Frame: The Four Loves of Ford Madox Brown
Par Angela Thirlwell. 2010
Madox Brown, who grew up in France and Belgium before he came to England and won fame with paintings like…
'The Last of England', was always an outsider, and the women he loved also burst out of stereotypes. His two wives, Elisabeth Bromley and Emma Hill, and his secret passions, the artist Marie Spartali and the author Mathilde Blind, were all remarkable personalities, from very different backgrounds.Their striving for self-expression, in an age that sought to suppress them, tells us much more about women's journey towards modern roles. Their lives - full of passion, sexual longing, tragedy and determination - take us from the English countryside and the artist's studio to a Europe in turmoil and revolution. These are not silent muses hidden in the shadow of a 'Master'. They step out of the shadows and into the picture, speaking with voices we can hear and understand.Intimates
Par Helen Farish. 2005
Provocative and tender, passionate yet wary, the highly charged poems in Helen Farish's first collection testify to the complex nature…
of relationships with lovers, with family and with the self. The love poems explore moments of intense exposure, and within the erotic relation seek to carve out a voice adequate to the expression of female sexuality and desire. Within this framework, the body itself becomes a rich and compelling site of inquiry. Posted throughout the collection like sentinels, poems on the death of the father draw the poet back home where grief mingles with surprising moments of grace or redemption. But whether the encounter concerns sudden loss or sudden blessing, constant throughout is a warm and boldly embodied lyric 'I' voice generously inviting the reader in. Poised at life's mid-point, these haunting, haunted poems negotiate their emotional freight in carefully crafted forms which mediate between exposure and guardedness. Expertly charting the geographies of sex and love, the histories of childhood and grief, Intimates introduces a new poet of originality, honesty and singular power.Hrafnkel's Saga and Other Icelandic Stories
Par Anonymous. 1971
Written around the thirteenth century AD by Icelandic monks, the seven tales collected here offer a combination of pagan elements…
tightly woven into the pattern of Christian ethics. They take as their subjects figures who are heroic, but do not fit into the mould of traditional heroes. Some stories concern characters in Iceland - among them Hrafknel's Saga, in which a poor man's son is murdered by his powerful neighbour, and Thorstein the Staff-Struck, which describes an ageing warrior's struggle to settle into a peaceful rural community. Others focus on the adventures of Icelanders abroad, including the compelling Audun's Story, which depicts a farmhand's pilgrimage to Rome. These fascinating tales deal with powerful human emotions, suffering and dignity at a time of profound transition, when traditional ideals were gradually yielding to a more peaceful pastoral lifestyle.How to be Well Read: A guide to 500 great novels and a handful of literary curiosities
Par John Sutherland. 2013
'Generous, enjoyable and well informed.' Observer'500 expertly potted plots and personal comments on a wide range of pop and proper…
prose fiction.' The Times___________________________________________________________Ranging all the way from Aaron's Rod to Zuleika Dobson, via The Devil Rides Out and Middlemarch, literary connoisseur and sleuth John Sutherland offers his very personal guide to the most rewarding, most remarkable and, on occasion, most shamelessly enjoyable works of fiction ever written.He brilliantly captures the flavour of each work and assesses its relative merits and demerits. He shows how it fits into a broader context and he offers endless snippets of intriguing information: did you know, for example, that the Nazis banned Bambi or that William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying on an upturned wheelbarrow; that Voltaire completed Candide in three days, or that Anna Sewell was paid £20 for Black Beauty? It is also effectively a history of the novel in 500 or so wittily informative, bite-sized pieces.Encyclopaedic and entertaining by turns, this is a wonderful dip-in book, whose opinions will inform and on occasion, no doubt, infuriate.__________________________________________________'Anyone hooked on fiction should be warned: this book will feed your addiction.' Mail on Sunday'A dazzling array of genres, periods, styles and tastes... chatty, insightful, unprejudiced (but not uncritical) and wise.' Times Literary SupplementHarm
Par Alan Jenkins. 1994
The poems in this, Alan Jenkin's third collection, speak of the harm done and suffered - most frequently in the…
name of love - in the course of lives gone adrift among lost causes, chance meetings and missed chances. A new directness and simplicity, and throughout, a raw urgency of personal feeling, inform a voice that is as resourceful as in Jenkin's earlier volumes, and continues to salvage a 'fugitive lyricism' (as one reviewer put it) from harsh and dissonant realities. 'By turns jocular, disquieting, sexy and inventive'-PETER READING, SUNDAY TIMES 'Jenkins' poetry is exhilarating. . . It is charged with erotic energy, rage, sorrow and confusion'-TLS 'Stylish, Savage, unforgiving'-HUGO WILLIAMS, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Jenkins has a restless mind: following his poetry gives his readers a rocky ride, but also a rewarding one. '-PETER PORTER, OBSERVER.Hard Water
Par Jean Sprackland. 2003
Though firmly rooted in the domestic, natural world, Jean Sprackland's poems are thrilling excursions into the lives that we live…
alongside our everyday ones: the lives we are aware of in dreams, in grief, in love. She shows us the vertigo and vulnerability of human experience with great clarity and precision, tenderness and care. These are vivid poems full of light and weather and water: a flooded forest, acid rain, an inland tidal wave, an ocean of broken glass; jellyfish washed up on the beach that 'lay like saints/ unharvested, luminous'. There is an arresting imagination at work here, one as relaxed and at home in an alternative world of babies in filing cabinets, light collectors or the visiting dead, as it is in the world we think we know: supermarkets, empty flats, the A580 from Liverpool to Manchester.Lucid, sensuous and informed by an unusually tactile curiosity, the poems in Hard Water mark the assured arrival of an important poet.The House of Ulloa
Par Emilia Pardo Bazán, Paul O'Prey. 2013
This rich and unforgettable story of sexual intrigue and political scheming, written by the Spanish feminist and intellectual Emilia Pardo…
Bazan, deserves recognition as one of the great nineteenth-century novels. The House of Ulloa follows pure and pious Father Julián Alvarez, who is sent to a remote country estate to put the affairs of the marquis, an irresponsible libertine, in order. When he discovers moral decadence, cruelty and corruption at his new home, Julián's well-meaning but ineffectual attempts to prevent the fall of the House of Ulloa end in tragedy. The House of Ulloa is the finest achievement of Emilia Pardo Bazán, a prolific writer, feminist, traveller and intellectual, and one of the most dynamic figures of her time.Fans of Zola or Hardy will enjoy the novel's rich naturalism, which combines gothic elements with evocative descriptions of Spanish customs and the countryside. At the same time, the novel evokes the social comedy of a Dickens or Thackeray with its biting social satire, frank exposure of sexual mores, and gentle mockery of its innocent hero-priest.Hiero the Tyrant and Other Treatises
Par Xenophon. 1997
One of Socrates' Athenian disciples in his youth, Xenophon (c. 498-354 bc) fought as a mercenary commander in Cyrus the…
Younger's campaign to seize the Persian throne, and later wrote a wide range of works on history, politics and philosophy. These six treatises offer his informed insights into the nature of leadership. In the dialogue between the poet Simonides and Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse, Xenophon provides a consummate consideration of the burdens of being an absolute dictator and the superior happiness of the private man. Elsewhere, his biography of King Agesilaus II of Sparta depicts the author's patron as a model of piety, justice, courage and wisdom, while other texts consider the essential qualities of the cavalry commander, analyse the skills of the horseman and the hunter, and advance a bold economic plan for democratic Athens.Henry V
Par A. Humphreys, William Shakespeare. 1968
Shakespeare's immutable history of Henry's victory over the French at Agincourt and the subsequent peace between the two nations is…
also a study of war and kingship. From a wild youth, Henry comes to embody all of the kingly virtues: courage, justice, integrity and honour. Ironically these qualities are brought to the fore by the realities of war. Written at the end of the life of Elizabeth I, Henry V told the British people that with strong leadership, they had little to fear at a time of uncertainty.The Handless Maiden
Par Vicki Feaver. 1994
The poems in this extraordinary book deal in familiar emotions - love, grief, rage, loneliness - but do so with…
such a fresh and fierce eye, such lived intensity, that the familiar is given again the force to touch our nerves, to seem raw and new. Some of the poems are based in the territory of home and childhood, others move into that unnerving space where the safe and polite world plunges over a ledge - into anarchic revisions of what is possible or acceptable. They treat myths and fairy stories, or even paintings, not as fictions but as part of our continuing experience. Powerful and sensuous, wry and witty, their clear voice stays in the mind: provoking, questioning, refusing to accept the soft lie. These disturbing and passionate poems demand to be read.The Harvill Book of 20th Century Poetry in English
Par Michael Schmidt. 1991
Michael Schmidt’s anthology includes the work of more than a hundred poets from every part of the English-speaking world. What…
links their diverse voices is a common language: each poem, in its own way, adds to the resources of the medium and makes it new.The poems in this book are allowed to slip free of their moorings in the biography and history of the last century to create new spaces and times. They have been chosen because they are exceptional, profound and unique in what they do to language, regardless of their subject matter or the orientation of the poet. It is a powerful reminder that in the twentieth century poems did what they have never done before, and it provides us with a unique insight into the forces that will shape the poetry of the twenty-first century.The Gifts of Reading
Par Robert Macfarlane. 2016
From the bestselling author of UNDERLAND, THE OLD WAYS and THE LOST WORDS - an essay on the joy of…
reading, for anyone who has ever loved a bookEvery book is a kind of gift to its reader, and the act of giving books is charged with a special emotional resonance. It is a meeting of three minds (the giver, the author, the recipient), an exchange of intellectual and psychological currency, that leaves each participant enriched. Here Robert Macfarlane recounts the story of a book he was given as a young man, and how he managed eventually to return the favour, though never repay the debt.From one of the most lyrical writers of our time comes a perfectly formed gem, a lyrical celebration of the transcendent power and humanity of the given book.Gift Songs
Par John Burnside. 2007
To the Shakers, a good song was a gift; indeed the test of a song's goodness was how much of…
a gift it was. In their call to 'labour to make the way of God your own', Shaker artists expressed an aesthetic that had much in common with the old Japanese notion, attributed to Hokusai, that to paint bamboo, one had first to become bamboo. In his tenth collection, John Burnside begins with an interrogation of the gift song, treating matters of faith and connection, the community of living creatures and the idea of a free church - where faith is placed, not in dogma or a possible credo, but in the indefinable - and moves on through explorations of time and place, towards a tentative and idiosyncratic re-ligere, the beginnings of a renewal of the connection to, and faith in, an ordered world. The book closes with a series of meditations on place, entitled 'Four Quartets', intended both as a spiritual response to the string quartets of Bartók and Britten (as Eliot's were to Beethoven's late quartets), and as an experiment in the poetic form that the finest of poets, the true miglior fabbro, chose as a medium for his own declaration of faith. The poems in this collection are true gifts: thrillingly beautiful, charged with power and mystery, each imbued with the generous skills of a master of his craft.Ghosts
Par John Fuller. 2008
Like the possible phantoms that stalk the dark passageways of its title poem, John Fuller's beautifully lucid collection explores the…
grey area between life and death. Full of self-deprecating wit and subtle insight, the poems contemplate the inevitability that, when one reaches a certain age, the moment of one's own passing will start to haunt one.In 'Flea Market' there is the pathos of once-loved objects laid out, meaningless, 'on the cobbles for scavengers'. In 'Positions in the Bed', the restless search for a comfortable way to sleep leads to thoughts of the morning when 'we find/ Ourselves absconded from the body's/ Weary roll-call'. And yet, out of this sense of mortality, grows a determination to take delight in the moment, to appreciate fully 'the business of living'.These poems are not only intimate, domestic and often funny, they are uncompromising in the way they confront the huge and unanswerable questions of life. The movement of thought is rendered beautifully concrete in the intricate music of their langauge, and melancholy co-exists with a lightness of touch that builds a moving and humane barricade against 'life's brevity/ And it's insignificance'.Shortlisted for the Whitbread Award for Poetry.Georges Perec: A Life in Words
Par David Bellos. 1993
"It's hard to see how anyone is ever going to better this User's Manual to the life of Georges Perec"…
- Gilbert Adair, Sunday TimesWinner of the Prix Goncourt for Biography, 1994George Perec (1936-82) was one of the most significant European writers of the twentieth century and undoubtedly the most versatile and innovative writer of his generation.David Bellos's comprehensive biography - which also provides the first full survey of Perec's irreverent, polymathic oeuvre - explores the life of an anguished, comical and endearingly modest man, who worked quietly as an archivist in a medical research library. The French son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, he remained haunted all of his life by his father's death in the war, fighting to defend France, and his mother's in Auschwitz-Birkenau. His acclaimed novel A Void (1969) - written without using the letter "e" - has been seen as an attempt to escape from the words "père", "mere", and even "George Perec".His career made an auspicious start with Things: A Story of the Sixties (1965), which won the Prix Renaudot. He then pursued an idiosyncratic and ambitious literary itinerary through the intellectual ferment of Paris in the 1960s and 1970s.He belonged to the Ouvrior de Littérature Potentielle (OuLiPo), a radically inventive group of writers whose members included Raymond Queneau and Italo Calvino. Perec achieved international celebrity with Life A User's Manual (1978), which won the Prix Medicis and was voted Novel of the Decade by the Salon du Livre. He died in his mid-forties after a short illness, leaving a truly puzzling detective novel, 53 Days, incomplete."Professor Bellos's book enables us at once to relish the most wilfully bizarre aspects of Perec's oeuvre and to understand the whys and wherefores of his protean nature" - Jonathan Romney, Literary Review