Product Description: In The Fairy Way of Writing, Kevin Pask seeks to explain the origins and popularity of enchantment in Shakespeare’s plays. Writers John Dryden and Joseph Addison originated the phrase "fairy way of writing" to define the concept of an English creative imagination founded on a synthesis of high literary culture and the popular culture of tales and superstitions...read more

Product Description: At the beginning of the eighteenth century ordinary written English was close to speech; by 1800, people expressed themselves more formally, politely, and precisely. The new "writtenness" of prose coincided with the development of a mature print culture, the rise of women writers, the invention of prescriptive grammars, and a powerful new rhetoric...read more

Product Description: The historical construction of authorship is of enormous interest to scholars and critics. Yet an important aspect of the historical emergence of the author--the literary biography or "life of the poet"--has received scant attention...read more