Literature & literary studies

'Gay has an ability to blend the personal and political in a way that feels simultaneously gentle and brutal . . . you look at a cultural moment th...

Review World War Two saw a boom in literary writing in black-out Britain of which the brightest star was the magazine Horizon. Will Loxley has a d...

James Joyce is one of the most famous--and controversial--writers of the twentieth century. The myth of his difficulty has discouraged many readers...

Simon Weinberg is dead. And, on a November morning, six people gather at his funeral - brothers and a sister, lovers and in-laws. Mourning allows t...

Review A virtuoso global study of how nations were formed and constitutions written upends the familiar narrative at every turn ... As with al...

About the Author Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), Norwegian poet and playwright, was one of the shapers of modern theatre, who tempered naturalism with a...

Ten essays on how reading and meaningfully engaging with literature can help us live better, more purposeful lives. How do we live fully? How do we...

‘A lively picture of multiple operators scrambling to steal a march on the competition . . . Lavishly detailed’ FINANCIAL TIMES ‘This is Shakespear...

‘One of the greatest writers of our time.’ Toni Morrison ‘You Don’t Know Us Negroes adds immeasurably to our understanding of Hurston … her words m...

About the Author Previously an actor, Mike Packer's first play Card Boys was performed at The Bush in 1999. A Carpet, A Pony and A Monkey is his s...

June has a terrible secret. Gash has an outrageous plan. Leah is open to possibilities. And Joy is drinking to forget. When June's best friends un...

God is on fire - his fever is plague. All that was sweet is spilt and gone. The people of Thebes look to Oedipus to lift a terrible curse from the...

This seminal book, Eliot's first collection of literary criticism, appeared in London in 1920, two years before The Waste Land. It contains some of...

Product Description The first volume of Alan Ayckbourn's collected work contains his morality plays from the 1980s. It includes the plays A Chorus...

A play translated by Tom Stoppard which premiered at the Wyndham's Theatre, October 2005. Storyline - it's 1959 and three veterans from the first w...

In this entertaining and always stimulating collection of seven essays, Kundera deftly sketches out his personal view of the history and value of t...

Tickets, merchandise, money, drugs. All are just a phone call away. H is a Manc, Ray is a Scouser. They service the needs and exploit the chaos of ...

Celebrated children's writer Hans Christian Andersen arrives, unannounced, for a stay at Gad's Hill Place in the Kent marshes - home to Charles Dic...

About the Author Ruth Padel was born in London in 1947 and educated at Oxford. She lived several years in Greece and worked as a Greek scholar...

The Prime Minister and his cabinet have been assassinated and England's most treasured writers are being murdered one by one. Back at the universit...

This collection of Szymborska's work reveals her to be concerned with the unglamorized actualities of the human condition. She is one of a generati...

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions ...

About the Author David Hare has written over thirty stage plays and thirty screenplays for film and television. The plays include Plenty, Pravda (...

Fifteen years ago Una and Ray had a relationship. They haven't set eyes on each other since. Now, years later, she's found him again. Blackbird pr...

What happens when two sets of parents meet up to deal with the unruly behaviour of their children? A calm and rational debate between grown-ups abo...

Gathers all of Beckett's texts for theatre, from 1955 to 1984. This book includes both the major dramatic works and the short and more compressed t...

About the Author Martin Crimp was born in 1956. His play Attempts on Her Life (1997) established his international reputation. His other work for ...

About the Author Ted Hughes (1930-1998) was born in Yorkshire. His first book, The Hawk in the Rain, was published in 1957 by Faber & Faber an...

'We've got nothing to learn from anyone. We are who we are. We do what we do. No-one else can touch us' - except, that is, the horrific past of a c...