Product Description: Widely recommended, this guide to Conrad offers a vivid and incisive account of his life and literary career, and gives detailed attention to the contexts, themes, problems and paradoxes of his works.   (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Discusses the life and work of John Keats in the social and political context of the world and time in which he lived.

Describes the indecision which leads to Hamlet's ruin, suggests a fresh interpretation, and discusses Shakespeare's themes and techniques

Product Description: Book by SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM

Product Description: Drawing out the distinctive thematic preoccupations and technical devices in Conrad's writing, Professor Watts explores Conrad's importance and influence as a moral, social and political commentator. He focuses in particular on Almayer's Folly, The Nigger of the Narcissus, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Nostromo and Chance...read more

Product Description: This book combines traditional and contemporary critical approaches in its survey of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet". It discusses scholarly problems raised by the text, analyzes the work's structure and themes, emphasizes the ironic interplay of characterization, and proceeds to stress the potent political influence of this highly popular drama...read more

Product Description: This critical essay explores the implications, themes, characterization, literary techniques and autobiographical features of Thomas Hardy's novel "Jude the Obscure".

Product Description: The "Shakespearean Originals" series aims to provide readers of modern drama with 16th- and 17th-century playtexts which have been treated as historical documents, and are reproduced as closely to their original printed forms as the conditions of modern publication will permit...read more

Providing a comprehensive introduction to the life and works of Graham Greene, this volume presents a biographical account which draws upon current research on Greene. It surveys the contexts of his writing including among others the religious and political contexts, and the influences that helped to shape Greene's work. The second part of the book examines in some detail the major themes that occur in Greene's works, his techniques and imaginative preoccupations. A detailed critical analysis of "Brighton Rock", "The Power and the Glory" and "The Third Man" are given in this section. A reference section concludes the work providing a gazeteer, biographical list, a bibliography, list of further reading and a list of films.

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This volume contains "Typhoon," "The Secret Sharer," "Falk," and "Amy Foster." "Typhoon", a story of a steamship and her crew beset by a tempest, is a masterpiece of descriptive virtuosity and moral irony, while "The Secret Sharer" excels in symbolic ambiguity. Both stories vividly present Conrad's abiding preoccupation with the theme of solidarity, challenged from without by the elements and from within by human doubts and fears. Conrad's experiences as a captain of the ship Otago in 1888 provided material for both "The Secret Sharer" and "Falk". "Amy Foster", written in 1901, is bleak and stark in its depiction of human isolation and incomprehension. In a range of tones extending from the sombre to the radiant, Conrad's central preoccupations are displayed at their best, strangest, and most plangent in this selection of stories.