Literary Studies Book List ·

The Romance of William Morris

The Romance of William Morris traces the intellectual, emotional, and literary development of Morris, a representative Victorian, as he explores the classic themes of love, fate, and death-chiefly through the genre of romance.…

Duncan’s Colony

“During the nineteen sixties, following the missile crisis and during the Vietnam War, communitarian societies began to reappear in the United States. Those who were of an invincibly optimistic nature gathered together in agrarian or utopian communes reminiscent of the nineteenth century.…

Natural History of H. G. Wells

This new study offers a general reassessment of H. G. Wells as a writer and thinker. It concentrates upon the close relationship between Wells’ developing philosophy and his literary techniques. The early chapters examine Wells’ treatment of such subjects as confinement and escape, sex, the nature of human identity, the relationship of individual to race, human progress, and the importance of education.…

Alexander the Great

A Novel Tr. from the Greek by Theodora Vasils

Nikos Kazantzakis is no stranger to the heroes of Greek antiquity. In this historical novel based on the life of Alexander the Great, Kazantzakis has drawn on both the rich tradition of Greek legend and the documented manuscripts from the archives of history to recreate an Alexander in all his many-faceted images—Alexander the god; Alexander the descendant of Heracles performing the twelve labors; Alexander the mystic, the daring visionary destined to carry out a divine mission; Alexander the flesh-and-blood mortal who, on occasion, is not above the common soldier’s brawling and drinking.…

The Other John Updike

Poems, Short Stories, Prose, Play

John Updike has won a National Book Award and has earned both critical and popular acclaim. At the moment, his reputation rests largely on his novels, especially Rabbit, Run; The Centaur; Of the Farm; and The Coup.…

Poems Old and New, 1918-1978

Kenneth Rexroth wrote: “Janet Lewis uses reason to veil and adorn the flesh of feeling and intuition. This is the way the greatest poetry has always been written.”The poems in this collection range over a period of 60 years.…

The Tenth Muse

Classical Drama In Translation

Although classical drama has been translated before, this new collection is unique. The translations are modern in their poetry; the translations include poets as well as classicists; and the collection includes at least one example of every known type of ancient Greek and Latin drama.…

Antonin Artaud

Man of Vision

The extraordinary actor–director–writer who developed his talent for self-torture into art to become one of the most vital creative forces of the century.

Power of Blackness

Hawthorne, Poe, Melville

The Power of Blackness is a profound and searching reinterpretation of Hawthorne, Poe and Melville, the three classic American masters of fiction. It is also an experiment in critical method, an exploration of the myth-making process by way of what may come to be known as literary iconology.…

Shakespeare’s Typological Satire

Study of Falstaff-Oldcastle Problem

Shakespeare created a new and vibrant satire in his history plays by inverting the medieval mode of typology and applying it to old chronicle materials to make his historical characters “types” of the Elizabethans who were alive in England in his own day.…

Elegant Nightmares

The English Ghost Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood

Based on an enormous body of short fiction, Elegant Nightmares is a study of the ghost story in England from Sheridan Le Fanu to more recent figures such as Algernon Blackwood and L.P. Hartley.…

Short Story Theories

Although the short story has often been called America’s unique contribution to the world’s literature, relatively few critics have taken the form seriously. May’s collection of essays by popular commentators, academic critics, and short story writers attempts to assess the reasons for this neglect and provides significant theoretical directions for a reevaluation of the form.…

A Woman Speaks

The Lectures, Seminars, and Interviews of Anaïs Nin

In this book Anaïs Nin speaks with warmth and urgency on those themes which have always been closest to her: relationships, creativity, the struggle for wholeness, the unveiling of woman, the artist as magician, women reconstructing the world, moving from the dream outward, and experiencing our lives to the fullest possible extent.…

Awakening

The sharpness of Lucien Stryk’s poetry is made of simple things—frost on a windowpane at morning, ducks moving across a pond, an argument flailing in the distance, a neighbor's fuss over his lawn—set down in a language that is at once direct and powerful.…

The Movie at the End of the World

Collected Poems

For more than 30 years Thomas McGrath has held a special place among American poets. His lyric and rhapsodic strengths are unequalled. His use of rhetoric and of the sonorities of poetic speech have been compared to Hart Crane and Dylan Thomas.…

Midas of the Rockies

Story of Stratton & Cripple Creek

This reprint makes available again Frank Waters’ dramatic and colorful 1937 biography of Winfield Scott Stratton, the man who struck it rich at the foot of Pike’s Peak and turned Cripple Creek into the greatest gold camp on earth.…

Trial of Soren Qvist

The Wife of Martin Guerre

Set in 16th century France, this compelling story of Bertrande de Rols is the first of the Cases of Circumstantial Evidence.

Ghost of Monsieur Scarron

This third novel in the three Cases of Circumstantial Evidence provides an intimate portrayal of deception and corruption in one small poor Parisian family in the late 1600s. In contrast to the majesty of the court of Louis XIV and the bloodthirsty crowds of Paris at that time, the simple lives of Jean Larcher and his wife and son are pitiably ruined by the presence of a seducer and his political pamphlets.…

Under a Glass Bell

Under a Glass Bell is one of Nin's finest collections of stories. First published in 1944, it attracted the attention of Edmond Wilson, who reviewed the collection in The New Yorker. It was in these stories that Nin's artistic and emotional vision took shape.…