Literature & Poetry

'Lines off' is a term used for lines spoken from the wings of a theatre, or off-camera in a film. Autobiographical, psychological, remedial, Lines Off heralds the return of this acclaimed poet, back to the stage of the page, offering us 'the performance of a lifetime'.

Since his precise, potent and subtle portraits of Northern Irish life first came to public attention in the 1970s, Tom Paulin has been an unmissable writer on the contemporary poetry scene.

The extraordinary true story of the Stasi's poetry club: The Lives of Others crossed with Dead Poets Society.

Matthew Francis's latest collection celebrates the richness of nature and of our responses to it. And, in a moving elegy for a friend killed in a parachute accident, Francis shows us a vertiginous vision of a world where even the dead 'sleep on the wing'.

Classic fiction. These titles are timeless classics which have stood the test of time. Each has its own introduction, is suitable for both the academic and general reader alike and offer excellent value for money.

A ne'er-do-well exploits his gentle daughter's beauty for social advancement in this masterpiece of tragic fiction. Hardy's 1891 novel defied convention to focus on the rural lower class for a frank treatment of sexuality and religion. Then and now, his sympathetic portrait of a victim of Victorian hypocrisy ...

Myra Schneider's new collection brings a fresh sense of reality to some well-known images. Colour is the keynote of the book, moving through Matisse, Hockney, Chagall; sound too, in Mahler and Beethoven. Often we find skin-deep assumptions turned around.

PRAISE FOR WOLE SOYINKA: You don't see the things the same when you encounter a voice like that - Toni Morrison

One of the best there is today, a poet and a thinker, who knows both how the world works and how the world should work - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A towering figure in world literature, Wole ...

Contains poems of night and winter, autumn and evening.

The exotic and dangerous stereotype of the Gypsy woman formed in nineteenth-century literature and visual culture remains alive today. These contemporary cliches about Gypsy culture - both negative and romanticised - have a long history. In The Gypsy Woman, Jodie Matthews analyses why the representation ...

Using new and cutting-edge perspectives, this book explores literary criticism and the reception of Aristotle's Poetics in early modern Italy. Written by leading international scholars, the chapters examine the current state of the field and set out new directions for future study.

The reception of ...

This book draws on the philosopher Rene Girard to argue that three twentieth-century American novels (Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides, Rick Moody's The Ice Storm, and Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road) are tragedies.

Until now, Girardian literary analysis has generally focused on representations ...

Jo Shapcott's award-winning first three collections, gathered in Her Book: Poems 1988-1998, revealed her to be a writer of ingenuous, politically acute and provocative poetry, and rightly earned her a reputation as one of the most original and daring voices of her generation.

When Dr. John Watson takes lodgings in Baker Street with the quirky consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, they are both quickly drawn into a mysterious case that has left Scotland Yard baffled. A man is found dead in a south London house, his face a mask of horror, but there are no signs of violence. ...