Books in the Literature in Context series

Short, lively, and eminently readable chapters, written by leading experts in early modern studies, illuminate various aspects of Donne's life, work, career, and reputation. These engaging chapters are supplemented by a chronology of Donne's life and works and a comprehensive bibliography.

Provides crucial biographical, critical, historical, and cultural context for the works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Britain's first feminist and political theorist. Leading scholars provide students and scholars of eighteenth-century feminism, literature, social, and political theory with essential background to understand Wollstonecraft's diverse writing.

Indispensable for understanding the historical, cultural and intellectual contexts of Nabokov's work for students of English, American and Russian literary and cultural studies. This book is also essential reading for established scholars wanting to keep up with the new approaches and methodologies in Nabokov studies which this collection showcases.

This book is for an academic readership in Latin American and world literatures. It offers unprecedented coverage of the principal contexts in which leading Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) read and wrote, including family and Argentine history, the Western cultural tradition, both learned and popular, and the Middle East.

This book guides readers through the global scope and prolific imagination of Pynchon's canonical work, providing the most up-to-date and authoritative scholarly analyses of his writing. It will be of interest to students, graduates and instructors studying and teaching Thomas Pynchon.

Brings together for the first time in one volume today's leading scholars of this major theatre tradition. The book provides a state-of-the-art survey of current thinking on the commedia and discusses both the early modern period and the reinvention of the commedia dell'arte in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

An introduction, in a series of short, accessibly written essays, to the key places, people, themes and intellectual frameworks most important to Yeats' development, as well as the production and reception of his work.

The forty-two new essays in this book tell 'the Bronte story' as it has never been told before, drawing on the latest research while offering new perspectives on the writings of the sisters. The works are explored in the context of social, political and cultural developments in early-nineteenth-century Britain.

William Wordsworth in Context offers thirty-five concise and readable chapters on the essential contexts for understanding all aspects of the leading English Romantic poet. It discusses Wordsworth's life, family and friendships, his critical reception, and key aspects of the cultural, historical, political, and scientific contexts in which he wrote.

In short, lively and eminently readable chapters, an unprecedented number of aspects of Samuel Johnson's world is covered. Richly illustrated, with a chronology of Johnson's life and works and an extensive bibliography, this book is a major new work of reference on eighteenth-century culture and the age of Johnson.

Joseph Conrad's international experience gave him a perspective unique among English writers of the twentieth century. This volume examines the biographical, historical, cultural and political contexts that fashioned his works. It will appeal to scholars as well as to those beginning their study of this extraordinary writer.

A fresh, multifaceted assessment of Robert Frost's life and works. Contributors include a number of influential scholars, but also such distinguished poets as Paul Muldoon, Dana Gioia, Mark Scott, and Jay Parini. Essays employ highly readable prose, offering scholars and students of Frost an accessible yet comprehensive reference and guide.

Prodigiously learned, alive to the massive social changes of her time, defiant of many Victorian orthodoxies, George Eliot is at once chronicler and analyst, novelist of nostalgia and monumental thinker. Her literary achievement is brought into focus by essays on its historical, intellectual, political and social contexts.

This collection sets Marlowe's plays and poems in their historical context, exploring his world and his wider cultural influence. Chapters by the most exciting critics writing on approaches to Marlowe's writings discuss both major and lesser-known works. Topics include history and politics, religion, modern film adaptations and Marlowe and Shakespeare.

Joseph Conrad's international experience gave him a perspective unique among English writers of the twentieth century. This volume examines the biographical, historical, cultural and political contexts that fashioned his works. It will appeal to scholars as well as to those beginning their study of this extraordinary writer.

This collection of essays reveals how Beckett entered into dialogue with important literary traditions and the realities of his time. The essays are designed to complement each other, building an overview that will allow students and scholars to come away with a better sense of Beckett's life, writings and legacy.

Covering a range of topics - biographical, social, literary, and intellectual - and addressing both the sources of his work and how he influenced later writers, this exploration of the world of John Keats (1795-1821) enriches our understanding of one of Britain's greatest poets and letter writers.

This collection of essays by leading scholars offers a comprehensive overview of contexts important for the study of Emily Dickinson's writings. The book is carefully designed to provide a clear and authoritative examination of those contexts essential to the full understanding of this challenging body of work.

Author of renowned works including The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton was one of America's most popular and prolific writers. Bringing together a team of international scholars, this text provides the first substantive volume focused on the social, literary, cultural and historical contexts that produced the writer and her career.

The forty-two new essays in this book tell 'the Bronte story' as it has never been told before, drawing on the latest research while offering new perspectives on the writings of the sisters. The works are explored in the context of social, political and cultural developments in early-nineteenth-century Britain.

This collection covers the range of Hardy's works and their social and intellectual contexts, providing a comprehensive introduction to Hardy's life and times. Featuring short, lively contributions from forty-four international scholars, the volume is a contextual reference for scholars of Victorian and modernist literature as well as the general reader.

Comprising thirty-two fresh essays and a detailed chronology, this collection presents Ralph Waldo Emerson in the philosophical, aesthetic, theological, scientific, familial, social and political contexts in which he thought and wrote, and surveys the popular and critical reception that made him a complex national and international icon.

This book of lively essays examines the life and writing of Auden by considering them in a variety of historical, social, cultural and literary contexts. Written by distinguished scholars and poets with a wide readership in mind, these essays offer helpful and informative models for engaging with Auden's poetry.

In short, lively and eminently readable chapters, an unprecedented number of aspects of Samuel Johnson's world is covered. Richly illustrated, with a chronology of Johnson's life and works and an extensive bibliography, this book is a major new work of reference on eighteenth-century culture and the age of Johnson.

Written by the leading experts in the field, the essays in this volume will appeal to scholars, students and interested readers alike. Encompassing biographical, historical, cultural and literary-critical approaches, this book offers a fresh, lively and accessible presentation of a great many of the facets of Proust's life and work.

Concise and illuminating articles explore the context within which Wilde's life and art took shape, proposing not one but many Oscar Wildes. Contributors discuss the ongoing influence and reception of Wilde and his work, from performance history to film and operatic adaptations, providing an enriched understanding of this complex individualist.

Charles Dickens, a man so representative of his age as to have become considered synonymous with it, demands to be read in context. This book illuminates the worlds - social, political, economic and artistic - in which Dickens worked.