This critical study of Hardy's short stories provides a thorough account of the ruling preoccupations and recurrent writing strategies of his entire corpus as well as providing detailed readings of several individual texts. It relates the formal choices imposed on Hardy as contributor to Blackwood's Magazine and other periodicals to the methods he employed to encode in fiction his troubled attitude towards the social politics of the West Country, where most of the stories are set. No previous criticism has shown how the powerful challenges to the reader mounted in Hardy's later stories reveal the complexity of his motivations during a period when he was moving progressively in the direction of exchanging fiction for poetry.* Unique in providing a comprehensive criticism of Hardy's entire output of short stories.* Full, detailed, close readings of a number of key stories make this useful as a potential teaching resource.* Draws on the work of social historians to make clear the background of social and political unrest in Dorset that is partly uncovered and partly hidden in Hardy's portrayals of his fictional Wessex.* Offers fascinating insights into Hardy's near-obsession in his mature phase with the marriage contract, and with its legal binding of erratic men and women.

Product Description: The writing of the 1930s is filled with a sense of being "caught between," whether it was between two world wars, different generations, modernism and realism, the middle class and the working class, local and national cultures, or national and international politics...read more

Product Description: Henry Green (1905-1974) was the writer of nine technically outstanding novels, and of an autobiographical text. In the role of author he was intensely private, even secretive (Henry Green being a pseudonym), and his strange and heady writings derive their power in some way from their very secretiveness...read more

A comprehensive survey of Dickens's work by a leading Cambridge scholar who accessibly analyses the systematic complexity of his writing. Organized thematically, the study reflects the progress of Dickens's development throughout all his major fiction.

Product Description: This volume provides a comprehensive introduction to fiction in the English-speaking world during the period from 1970 to the present day. During this period, a sea change has transformed fiction in English, and this collection introduces the key developments as well as the works of some of the most important writers today...read more

Product Description: This book presents an analysis of the phenomenon of the aesthetics of sexual and political violence, a central theme in European culture of the early 20th century. Presenting a synthesis of a wide range of material across disciplines and an analysis of the sources of such ideas in their political, historical and cultural context, this volume presents a broad treatment of the theme of violence during this turbulent period...read more

A noted poet investigates the origins of language development and how it affected societies and individuals throughout history, analyzing the way cultures are organized around language.

Product Description: Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. WRITING OUT OF CHARACTER comprises three texts: Hid Lip, poems by John Wilkinson; The Romaniad, prose by Stephen Rodefer; and Kobro, poems by Rod Mengham.