In 1763, The Ladies Complete Letter-Writer was the first manual exclusively for women in eighteenth-century Britain. It questioned pre-conceived ideas on women and their writing. Unedited since 1765, it is now presented with a new introduction and notes.
Ungrateful Daughters
Has the third wave of feminism spawned a literary movement? This book analyzes the fiction, memoirs, and anthologies of third wave writers like Rebecca Walker and Michelle Tea, defining a unique “third wave sensibility” and asking: does literary success help women’s liberation?
Interiors
These essays explore the borderland between interiors and exteriors. Where do we draw dividing lines? Can we afford not to distinguish between the inside and outside, between “us” and “them”? This volume presents a plethora of answers.
This volume investigates how accounts of the Arctic have shaped history. It examines the discourse of “Arcticism,” modelled on Orientalism, and intersecting narratives of imperialism, science, and indigeneity across a wide range of genres.
International scholars offer a varied picture of our changing world, discussing the shifting borders of convention in literature, culture, film, music, and art. These complex essays offer fresh views that will stimulate intellectual debate.
Twenty-first century crises demand a re-evaluation of modernism and postmodernism. This collection of essays by international scholars offers new perspectives on literature, film, art, and politics, navigating debates beyond the traditional dichotomy.
This book explores Banti’s Italian feminism, focusing on her interpretation of “equality” versus “sexual difference.” Through an analysis of her novels and short stories, it argues that Banti embraced a feminism of difference to preserve woman’s identity.
Educating the ‘Unconstant Rabble’
The English Revolution was a revolution in reading. While the state sought to restrict access to potentially dangerous ideas, key thinkers argued for the opposite: extending education to equip the emerging ‘reading public’ to take an active part in political life.
The Survival of Myth
What are myths? The Survival of Myth explores the continuing power of primal stories to inhabit our thinking. Contributors examine figures from the Bible to Cormac McCarthy to show how ancient stories give access to the unconscious and transform society.
This “Self” Which Is Not One
This collection examines women’s life-writing from across the Francophone world. Uniting postcolonial, psychoanalytic, and gender studies, it explores how female autobiographies from Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe write the self as a fragmented, plural construct.
This book examines how syndromes, disorders, and diseases appear in modern literature and film. Rather than being portrayed as a handicap, limitation becomes the hero, allowing previous outcasts into the mainstream to affirm their moral worth, skill and intelligence.
New essays examine Lord Byron’s bisexuality and its effect on his poetry and drama. This volume covers neglected aspects of his life, including his boyfriends and gender in *Don Juan*, and includes new editions of notorious poems with startling theories.
Winifred Holtby, “A Woman In Her Time”
This collection of critical essays sheds new light on Winifred Holtby, author of South Riding and a key figure of interwar Britain. It explores her novels, journalism, and passionate support for feminism, peace, and racial equality.
This book tackles cultural transformations across the English-speaking world in literature, painting, architecture, photography and film. It provides readers with tools to decipher these dynamic phenomena and understand the new life they infuse into cultures.
This collection explores our relationship with the natural world and how literature clarifies it in ways science and politics cannot. As we face environmental change, literature becomes equipment for living, helping us make sense of our world and decide how to act.
Creative Interventions
Who are “intellectuals”? Are they an endangered species? This collection of essays examines the changing role, function, and self-perception of Italian intellectuals since World War II, with comparative essays on their place in other Western cultures.
Shakespeare’s Double-Dealing Comedies
Are Shakespeare’s pure heroines secretly obscene? Is Henry V’s barbarism a hilarious parody? This book argues that when the Bard seems inept, he’s at his most subversive. Rethink what you know and discover the hidden satire in his greatest works.
Reclaiming Home, Remembering Motherhood, Rewriting History
This collection of essays examines how African American and Afro-Caribbean women writers reclaim home, motherhood, and history. Through their female characters, they create more inclusive concepts of community, gender, and history.
This collection of essays marks a different approach to Mark Twain. It explores how geography—from the Mississippi River to Europe and beyond—influenced his work. These essays use Twain’s concepts of space to help us understand his greatest masterpieces.
Narrative, Social Myth and Reality in Contemporary Scottish and Irish Women’s Writing
This book analyzes the link between myth, identity, and reality, examining how contemporary Scottish and Irish women writers reconfigure normative stories to create new possibilities for feminine identity and social order.