Books by John Peck

"For my money, the best poet of my generation... as indifferent to academic fashions as he is to those of the poetry market."(Clive Wilmer) "Perhaps the most challenging-and one of the most rewarding-poets of his generation." (Robert Archambeau)

A lively introductory guide to English literature from Beowulf to the present day. The authors write in their characteristically lucid style and present the texts in relation to their social, political and cultural contexts. Clear and concise, the updated second edition now features a new final chapter on twenty-first century literature.

Avoiding the narrow identity - or group-specific viewpoint of some of his contemporaries, the author invites us to enter the larger humanscape and unearth with him unnoticed connections to our shared past and to one another.

Aimed at students wishing to improve their writing skills, this guide deals with the key basics of grammar, punctuation and spelling while also showing students how to construct a sentence, how to build a paragraph and how to structure an essay. This third edition includes an expanded 'Spot the Mistake' section.

Shows students how to make their writing effective and grammatically correct. Organised into mini units and easy to read, it deals with everyday tasks and problems. This second edition adds further guidance on common questions raised by students, for example 'When does one use italics and/or underlining?'

The collection as a whole, along with a clear introduction and a guide to Further Reading, also provides a fascinating sense of how criticism of the novel is a continuing debate, as critics take up and dispute received views - in the process, offering us an endlessly renewed and fresh sense of Middlemarch.

The new critical approaches that have swept through literary criticism in recent years have transformed our sense of David Copperfield and Hard Times.