Books in the Texts and Contexts series

Featuring close readings of commonly studied texts, this book takes students of Children's Literature through the key works, their contexts and critical and popular afterlives. It begins by introducing key issues involved in the study of children's literature and its social, cultural and literary contexts.

Introduces students to the Victorian novel and its contexts, teaching strategies for reading and researching nineteenth-century literature. This book considers the Victorian novel as a product of the industrial age by focusing on popular texts including Dickens' "Oliver Twist", Gaskell's "North and South" and Hardy's "The Mayor of Casterbridge".

Adventurous, engaging and politically urgent, contemporary American novels have come to enjoy a particular prestige and, through university courses, film adaptations and cultural controversies, a global circulation. This book provides an introduction to the contemporary American novel focusing on contexts, key texts and criticism.

Introduces key issues involved in the study of postcolonial literature including diasporas, postcolonial nationalisms, indigenous identities and politics and globalization. This book also contains a chapter on afterlives and adaptations that explores a range of wider cultural texts including film, non-fiction and art.

Presents an introduction to the key texts and historical, cultural and critical contexts of medieval romance. This book introduces key issues and events that impacted on romance writing and its reception such as chivalric ideals, the Black Death, wars and 'Englishness' as well as key literary issues such as medieval manuscript production.