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Outlining a series of contexts - biographical, historical and literary - as well as critical approaches to Wordsworth, this Introduction offers students ways to understand and enjoy Wordsworth's poetry and his role in the development of Romanticism in Britain.

This book offers a lively and accessible introduction to the wonderful diversity of Dickens for general readers, students, teachers, and academics. Covering key topics from Dickens and language to TV and film adaptations, it places the greatest English novelist in the context of the dizzying expansion of Victorian London.

Bringing together buildings, people and plays, this Introduction examines the features that characterise modern and current British theatre. These features include experimental performances under motorways alongside plays by Stoppard and Ayckbourn, amateur theatre and virtual spaces, the emergence of the director, the changing role of writers and political shows.

Designed to interest both students and scholars, The Cambridge Introduction to Victorian Poetry provides an accessible overview of British poetry from 1830 to 1901. It features a glossary of literary terms, a guide to further reading, and two examples of close readings of Victorian poems.

Designed for students and clearly written, this Introduction explains the preoccupations, styles and techniques that unite postmodern authors, including Beckett, Borges, Burroughs, Pynchon, Carter, Atwood, Morrison, Gibson, Auster, DeLillo and Ellis.

This accessible and stimulating introduction to Wharton's life and writings guides new readers through her work, to encourage more detailed exploration of her texts and contexts. With its clear structure, illustrations, and guide to further study, this book will form the ideal starting-point for students and for general readers.

This up-to-date survey of the writer's fiction and context is written accessibly for those new to his work. It includes detailed assessments of major works such as Disgrace. This Introduction will help new readers understand and appreciate one of the most important and challenging authors in contemporary literature.

An authoritative and comprehensive guide to the poetry, prose and autobiographical writings of Sylvia Plath. Accessibly written, this book will be of great use to students beginning their explorations of this important writer.

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a key text in African American literature and its author Zora Neale Hurston has become an iconic figure. This introductory book designed for students explores Hurston's artistic achievements, explores her life and analyses her major works and short stories.

This book provides a balanced overview of Poe's career and writings, resisting the tendency of many scholars to sensationalise the more enigmatic aspects of his life. Benjamin F. Fisher outlines Poe's experiments with a wide range of literary forms and genres and offers analyses of the major works.

This Introduction offers a reliable and stimulating account of Rhys's life, work, contexts and critical reception. Her masterpiece, Wide Sargasso Sea, is analyzed together with her other novels and short stories. Through close readings of the works, Elaine Savory reveals their common themes and connects these to different critical approaches.

Ideal for both students and teachers of theatre history, this Introduction provides a detailed analysis of the methods and challenges of historical research in the performing arts. An indispensable 'how to' guide, it covers all the essential areas, including archival research, developing historical descriptions, and writing reports and narratives.

A handy, clear and comprehensive guide to the work of one of the most important critics and public intellectuals of the last 40 years. McCarthy covers Said's life, his relationship to major intellectual and political trends of his time, his major works and their reception.

Robert Frost is one of the most popular American poets and remains widely read. This Introduction provides a comprehensive but intensive look at his remarkable oeuvre. The most accessible overview available, this book will be invaluable to students, readers and admirers of Frost.

This is a clear and informative introduction to Woolf's life, works, and cultural and critical contexts, covering the major works in detail, including To the Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway, The Waves and the key short stories. All students of Woolf will find this a useful and illuminating overview of the field.

This 2006 introduction to English theatre, including illustrative quotations and carefully selected visual images, guides the reader through the turbulent history of the stage from the restoration of Charles II to the death of Queen Victoria. A lively read, the book is ideal for students, teachers and lecturers alike.

Few thinkers of the twentieth century have so profoundly and radically transformed our understanding of writing and literature as Jacques Derrida (1930-2004). This book provides an accessible introduction to Derrida's writings on literature which presupposes no prior knowledge of his work.

Where did Shakespearean comedy come from? Where did it arrive? What makes it still relevant today? This comprehensive survey addresses these and many other questions, providing readers with a map of Shakespeare's comic styles, showing how he built on comedic conventions as he enriched the possibilities of the genre.

French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault is essential reading for students in departments of literature, history, sociology and cultural studies. This introductory book, written for students, offers in-depth critical and contextual perspectives on his work and is an ideal introduction to a famously complex, controversial and important thinker.

A lively and accessible introduction to Shakespeare's tragedies, this 2007 book begins with a discussion of tragedy before Shakespeare and considers each of Shakespeare's tragedies chronologically. It includes helpful text boxes and detailed chapters on Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello and King Lear, among other plays.

This lively and accessible 2007 introduction discusses each of Shakespeare's history plays, and their distinctive characteristics, in turn: the three early Henry VI plays; Richard III; King John; Richard II; Henry IV 1 and 2; Henry V; and Henry VIII. An invaluable guide to these fascinating and complex plays.

This introduction offers an overview of tragic drama from the ancient Greeks, through Shakespeare, Racine and Ibsen, and to the present day. It explores the definition of 'tragedy', as it has been discussed by philosophers, and includes chapters on the Greeks, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov, post-colonial drama, and Beckett.

This introduction explains in a readable, lively style how modernism emerged, how it is defined, and how it developed in different forms and genres. Illustrated with works of art and featuring suggestions for further study, this is the ideal introduction to understanding and enjoying modernist literature and art.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's reputation as a society figure of the 1920s continues to overshadow his art. This introduction shows readers why he deserves his preeminent place in literary history, for his masterpieces The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night, his finely drawn characters and plots, and his inimitable style.

This introduction delves behind the myth of the reclusive Emily Dickinson to present a poet who was deeply engaged with the issues of her day. Wendy Martin explores how Dickinson's personal struggles with love, faith, friendship and community shape her poetry.

Through the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe became one of the most famous and important authors in nineteenth-century America. This book provides a summary of Stowe's life and her long career as a professional author, as well as an overview of her writings in several different genres.

As the author of The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne has been established as a major writer of the nineteenth century. This book outlines his life and writings in a clear and accessible style. Students of nineteenth-century American literature will find this a rewarding and engaging introduction to this remarkable writer.

Walt Whitman is one of the most innovative and influential American poets of the nineteenth century. Focusing on his masterpiece Leaves of Grass, this book provides a foundation for the study of Whitman.

Despite its indifferent reception when it was first published in 1851, Moby Dick is now central to the American literary canon. Kevin J. Hayes provides comprehensive information about Melville's life and works in an accessible and engaging book that will be essential for students beginning to read this important author.

This wide-ranging introduction to the short story tradition in the United States traces the genre from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century with Irving, Hawthorne and Poe, via Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Faulkner to Raymond Carver and Flannery O'Connor.