Product Description: In 2012 writer John Sutherland permanently lost his sense of smell. At about the same time, he embarked on a rereading of George Orwell and—still coping with his recent disability—noticed something peculiar: Orwell was positively obsessed with smell...read more

Product Description: Jack Sutherland, the narrator and protagonist of this memoir has, you night say, led a charmed life in the face of seeming damnation. A confirmed alcoholic in his early teens, by his twenties he was PA and bodyguard to the Hollywood stars most notably Michael Stipe, RuPaul and Mickey Rourke...read more

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

The much loved bishop having died, all expectations are that his son, Archdeacon Grantly, will succeed him. Instead, owing to the passage of the power of patronage to a new Prime Minister, a newcomer, the far more Evangelical Bishop Proudie, gains the see. His wife, Mrs Proudie, exercises an undue influence over the new bishop, making herself as well as the bishop unpopular with most of the clergy of the diocese. Her interference to veto the reappointment of the universally popular Mr Septimus Harding as warden of Hiram's Hospital is not well received, even though she gives the position to a needy clergyman, Mr Quiverful, with 14 children to support.

Product Description: As the annual flood of published novels grows ever greater, it’s a hard a job to keep up, let alone sort the wheat from the chaff. Fortunately, literary sleuth and academic John Sutherland is on hand to do precisely that. In the course of over 500 wittily informative pieces he gives us his own very personal take on the most rewarding, most remarkable and, on occasion, most shamelessly enjoyable works of fiction ever written – the perfect reading list for the would-be literary expert...read more

Product Description: About three months ago—that is to say, toward the end of May of this year of 1900—the writer whose name appears on the title-page received as noteworthy a letter, and packet of papers, as it has been his lot to examine. They came from a very good friend of mine, whose name there is no reason that I should now conceal—Dr...read more

Product Description: iGuerilla: Reshaping the Face of War in the 21st Century, is a book in the tradition of Thomas Paine in Common Sense and Winston Churchill in The Gathering Storm. Like Paine, author John Sutherland alerts those in the large populace of the United States and Western Europe who have yet to see the big picture of international war that is underway...read more

As the manager of the Performance sits before the curtain on the boards and looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over him in his survey of the bustling place. There is a great quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing and fiddling; there are bullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves picking pockets, policemen on the look-out, quacks (OTHER quacks, plague take them!) bawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind. Yes, this is VANITY FAIR; not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one, though very noisy. Look at the faces of the actors and buffoons when they come off from their business; and Tom Fool washing the paint off his cheeks before he sits down to dinner with his wife and the little Jack Puddings behind the canvas. The curtain will be up presently, and he will be turning over head and heels, and crying, "How are you?"

Product Description: Martin Amis’s acclaimed novel—now in a twenty-fifth-anniversary hardcover edition—is a blackly comic murder mystery about a murder that has not yet happened. First published in 1989, LONDON FIELDS is set ten years into a dark future, against a backdrop of environmental and social decay and the looming threat of global cataclysm...read more

Product Description: Born in 1861 in French Sudan, imported to Paris as a two year old calf, then later sold to the London Zoo at Regent's Park, Jumbo the elephant delighted countless children (including Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt) with rides and treats gently taken from outstretched hands...read more

An attempted murder one dark night on the river disrupted the lives of two families and deeply affected the lives of two individuals from those same two families for the next five years. They had been forced to make choices that took them far apart before being serendipitously brought together once more. The would-be murderers, three of them, lost one of their own soon after that night from wounds he had received at the hands of their intended victim. Three years later, a second of them fortuitously became the victim of that same man they would have killed. The third and last one, attempting to recover the failing fortunes of the family in a poker game on the river, saw the means to cheat his opponent and at the same time to be rid of his sister who had unexpectedly shown up again. His first attempt on her life as they had travelled upriver had failed, and a second attempt would be difficult now that she expected it and now that she had a protector. He saw another way to be rid of her: in a poker game where he would wager her away. If only it could be that simple. He had no idea the trouble he would cause by that act. The unexpected outcome of that game brought two individuals closer together and eventually healed the initial disruption that had seen them torn apart five years earlier.

Product Description: 'A very fine first novel. Dawson writes very well, with . . . a poetic perception of how tremulous is the distinction between the mad world and the sane.' - Glasgow Herald 'A remarkably talented first novel . . . Miss Dawson is neither sentimental nor sensational ...read more

Product Description: A dreadful curse was laid on two families in 1497 when a wife murdered her husband of a few hours. He had intended to kill her for refusing his advances on their wedding night, but she had turned the tables on him and he was the one now dying...read more

Product Description: No previous author has attempted a book such as this: a complete history of novels written in the English language, from the genre's seventeenth-century origins to the present day. In the spirit of Dr. Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, acclaimed critic and scholar John Sutherland selects 294 writers whose works illustrate the best of every kind of fiction—from gothic, penny dreadful, and pornography to fantasy, romance, and high literature...read more

Product Description: Two stunning, Booker Prize-winning historical novels that vividly chronicle the crumbling edges of the British Empire in India and Ireland--in one Contemporary Classics hardcover.   Inspired by historical events, The Siege of Krishnapur is the mesmerizing tale of a British outpost, under siege during the Indian Mutiny of 1857, whose residents find their smug assumptions of moral and military superiority and their rigid class barriers under fire—literally and figuratively...read more

Product Description: Charles Dickens created a riotous fictional world that still lives and breathes for thousands of readers today. But how much do we really know about the dazzling imagination that brought it into being? This alphabetical companion to Dickens' work excavates the hidden links between his characters, themes, and preoccupations...read more

Product Description: The adventure story told in Treasure Island has become a part of popular folklore. John Sutherland discusses the novel’s place in Stevenson’s biography and oeuvre in his learned and lively critical introduction to this new edition...read more

Product Description: First published in 1981, this book offers a study of British and American popular fiction in the 1970s, a decade in which the quest for the superseller came to dominate the lives of publishers on both sides of the Atlantic. Illustrated by examples of the lurid incidents that catapult so many books into the bestseller charts, this comprehensive study covers the work of Robbins, Hailey and Maclean, the 'bodice rippers', the disaster craze, horror, war stories and media tie-ins such as The Godfather, Jaws and Star Wars...read more

Two lives, fated to interact in some violent way! That was the prediction that Richard Shawcross had been raised believing. He had learned that he, and an unknown lady from a French Family would encounter each other in a violent situation, in her twentieth year. That encounter would be the means of them saving each other; but from what, had not been disclosed. Memory of that prophecy had long since faded into the past when he had briefly returned for just the one night, carrying dispatches from the Continent and fighting Napoleon. That same night, on his way home, he had blundered upon a robbery. Three men were striving to rob an older gentleman and his passenger; a young lady, until he had ridden out of the fog with his saber drawn and had summarily dealt with them. After the carriage and its passengers had gone, their rescuer discovered a coin, threaded on a green ribbon, on the ground. The young lady had lost it. The coin matched one about his own neck, and exactly matched another that his older sister had also been given at his birth. They were all part of that same prophecy from many years earlier. Some parts of the prophecy seemed to have happened earlier than they should have done, but now, for the first time, he had proof that it all had meaning. He was not to know it, but that brief meeting, on that one occasion, was to provide the means to ensure that the fate predicted for them both would indeed come to pass, as it should, and almost to the day predicted, but still some two years off into the future. Two years later, Richard encounters inexpected difficullties. He finds that he has bitten off far more than he can chew when he kidnaps a young lady from her bed in the dead of night, and rides off with her. When he confronts her with the reality of her circumstance and what is to be her fate at his hands, she responds in a way that he cannot deal with. This was not the person he had expected to be faced with, but someone else altogether. This is a soft-spoken and genteel young lady, capable of turning him against himself. He begins to recognize that his many assumptions about her, turn out to have been very wrong, and he must rapidly re-evaluate what his options are to save her from the situation that he has presented her with. However, time is running out for him, and the matter is taken from his hands, when a knife wound she had earlier inflicted upon him, overcomes him, and strands them both in an impossible situation; she, knowing little of what has happened to bring this about, and he, lying unconscious on the floor and likely to die without her assistance. Fate brought them this far, and fate takes over to see it move forward in an unexpected way, but no less violent. It had all been predicted to unfold in such a way some twenty and more years earlier.

How Literature Works is an indispensable book for any reader seeking a greater appreciation of their favorite novel, poem, or play. It offers a lively and straightforward guide to literary thinking. With a series of compact essays, the renowned literary critic John Sutherland--widely admired for his wit and clear reasoning--strips away the obscurity and pretension of literary study. His book offers concise definitions and clear examples of the fifty concepts that all book lovers should know.It includes basic descriptive terms (ambiguity, epic), the core vocabulary of literary culture (genre, style), and devices employed by authors (irony, defamiliarization). More broadly, How Literature Works explores the animating concepts behind literary theory (textuality, sexual politics), traces the forces that impact literature's role in the real world (obscenity, plagiarism), and grapples with the future of reading (fanfic, e-book). For any reader who wants to get the most out of the literature they read, Sutherland's short sharp book will both inform and delight.