Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader. Noted essayist Alberto Manguel moves from this essential moment to explore the 6000-year-old conversation between words and that magician without whom the book would be a lifeless object: the reader. Manguel lingers over reading as seduction, as rebellion, as obsession, and goes on to trace the never-before-told story of the reader's progress from clay tablet to scroll, codex to CD-ROM.

    Coming almost entirely from Davies? own files of unpublished material, these twenty-four essays and lectures range over themes from "The Novelist and Magic" to "Literature and Technology," from "Painting, Fiction, and Faking," to "Can a Doctor Be a Humanist?" and "Creativity in Old Age." For devotees of Davies and all lovers of literature and language, here is the "urbanity, wit, and high seriousness mixed by a master chef" (Cleveland Plain Dealer)?vintage delights from an exquisite literary menu. Davies himself says merely: "Lucky writers. . .like wine, die rich in fruitiness and delicious aftertaste, so that their works survive them." Viking will publish Robertson Davies? Happy Alchemy in July 1998Many fine works by Robertson Davies are available from Penguin including The Deptford Trilogy, The Cornish Trilogy, and The Salterton Trilogy

    Photographs of fifty-five prominent writers at their desks are accompanied by the writers' own comments on their working lives and workplaces.

    He understood how politics is shaped by the clash of men with various colorings of self-interest and idealism, how violence breeds violence, how fragile human beings create masks and disguises for protection, how schemers do the same for advancement, how love can grow out of hate and hate out of love.Dare anyone say that these insights are irrelevant to living in the real world? For many in an older generation, the Bible and the Collected Shakespeare were the two indispensable books, and thus their sense of life and history was shaped by the best and best-told stories. And they were the wiser for it.Literature abstracts from the complex events of life (just as we all do in everyday life) and can reveal patterns that are like the patterns of events in the real world. Studying literature can give us sensitivity to those patterns. This sensitivity to the rhythm of life is closely connected with what the Bible calls wisdom.

    The Signature of God argues that God has indeed revealed Himself in the pages of the Bible through a staggering number of divine proofs: the incredible precision of prophecies fulfilled, ancient inscriptions that validate the Exodus events, the name of Jesus encoded in the Old Testament, and much more. In The Handwriting of God, Jeffrey unveils the truth about the controversial "Bible codes" while revealing new code discoveries hidden in the Scriptures. Throughout, he shows that though the Bible was written thousands of years ago, it still speaks reliably and authoritatively to modern man. Comprehensive and convincing, this two-in-one collection is a must-have for every concerned believer.

    For Grades K-6

    A biography that looks at how Wilde's formative years in Ireland had a significant impact on his life and writings.

    This ambitious and exciting book focuses on writers and works that are intimately bound up with a place and a time, capturing a town, a city, a region, in its literary heyday.

    Using texts ranging from local newspapers to medical tomes belonging to the Brontes, Sally Shuttleworth explores Victorian constructions of psychology, sexuality and insanity, and traces the ways in which Charlotte Bronte's texts operate in relation to this complex framework. Shuttleworth offers a reading of Bronte's fiction informed by a new understanding of the psychological debates of her time.

    A source of inspiration to many great painters, such as Titian, Rembrandt, and Manet, printmaking has established its own criteria of aesthetic excellence as well as its own expressive language, both of which are explored here. Scholars and print collectors will find in this well-written and generously illustrated book a valuable reference, students a lucid survey, and art lovers an informative introduction to the history of the print in Europe and America.    More than 700 illustrations, forty-nine of them in color, show the evolution of the relief, intaglio, planographic, and stencil processes through the centuries. Giving detailed treatment to the work of five master printmakers—Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Francisco Goya, Pablo Picasso, and Jasper Johns—the book also discusses in depth numerous other artists, such as Martin Schongauer, Andrea Mantegna, Hendrik Goltzius, Jacques Callot, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, William Hogarth, Honoré Daumier, Edouard Manet, Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch, Käthe Kollwitz, Max Ernst, and Andy Warhol. Although its primary focus is the fine-art original print, The Print in the Western World also addresses in detail the reproductive tradition in printmaking that reached its peak in the eighteenth century and touches on book illustrations, posters, political satires, and vernacular prints such as chromolithographs.    Author Linda C. Hults emphasizes the meaning and historical context of prints, the consequences of the print's accessibility to many strata of society, and the relationship among artist, context, subject matter, and technique. The volume includes a glossary of basic printmaking terms, as well as full bibliographies at the end of each chapter, giving readers access to a wide range of recent scholarship on prints.

    Here is a selection of libraries from across America, presented with intriguing shifts of perspective that are the trademark of Roxie Munro’s acclaimed Inside-Outside series.

    the hero is not a sword-wielding barbarian, bent only upon establishing his own fame; such fame-seekers (including some famous medieval literary figures) might even fall outside the definition of the Germanic hero, the real value of whose deeds are given meaning only within the political construct. Individual prowess is not enough. The hero must conquer the blows of fate because he is committed to the conquest of chaos, and over all to the need for social stability. Brian Murdoch discusses works in Old English, Old and Middle High German, Old Norse, Latin and Old French, deliberately going beyond what is normally thought of as 'heroic poetry' to include the German so-called 'minstrel epic', and a work by a writer who is normally classified as a late medieval chivalric poet, Konrad von Wurzburg, the comparison of which with Beowulf allows us to span half a millennium.

    Shonagon's protagonist is recast as Nogiko, a beautiful young writer. As a child, Nogiko was affected by two seminal experiences--her father writing on her face each birthday, and her mother reading to her from a thousand-year-old "pillow book," a diary kept by its author (also a woman named Nogiko) in the drawer of a wooden pillow. As a grown woman, the contemporary Nogiko is obsessed with finding lovers to write on her body. After each physical encounter with a lover, Nogiko painstakingly transcribes what he has written, even if it means using mirrors to decipher those characters on parts of her body such as the small of the back or the eyelid. Nogiko's efforts to preserve her lovers' writings and her need to continue the tradition illustrate the physical and sensual power of literature. This book includes Greenaway's original screenplay (before the final movie edit), color stills from the film, and Greenaway's illuminating notes on the story.

    The book is both a biography and exploration of the British India of yesterday and the India and Sindh of today.

    In this much expanded revision of his 1996 book, veteran author Michael Cart shows how the best of contemporary YA lit has evolved to tackle such daunting subjects without resorting to sensationalism. He brings his historical survey of this category fully up to date, covering its explosive growth in the past decade, and advocating that librarians and teachers look beyond romance and horror when advising young adults. This survey helps YA librarians who want to freshen up their readers' advisory skills, teachers who use novels in the classroom, and adult services librarians who increasingly find themselves addressing the queries of teen patrons by covering the following: Reading habits of today's teens, Influence of new technologies and formats, New YA lit awards, This insightful and often humorous work presents the evolution of YA lit in an appealing way, making it equally useful for students of literary studies. You'll definitely update your recommended "to read" lists after a spin through Cart's advisory.

    A point of issue occurs when a change is made in a book during its production of the first printing of the first edition without that change being noted as a changr elsewhere in the book.

    do most heartily approve of the project about to be inaugurated for the establishment of A Free Library in this City, and do pledge to the same our hearty and united support." With these words, an idea was born in San Francisco, an idea that eventually - well over a century later - achieved its apotheosis in the building of the New Main Public Library. This state-of-the-art cultural institution now stands as a tribute to all those who had the vision to conceive the idea and the energy to nourish this - through eras of triumph and tragedy. With masterful insight, Peter Booth Wiley narrates the fascinating story of this idea, tracing the concept of the library back to the origins of writing and human history itself, through the ages of antiquity to the first American libraries and beyond ... to San Francisco. Embroidered into the thread of the main narrative are 25 specially commissioned essays from the Bay Area's leading literary figures, accompanied by original artwork by noted local illustrators.

    Diane Ass+(c)o Griliches has photographed libraries all over the world, from the grand reading room in the Biblioth+ que Nationale in Paris, to the humble remodelled train depot that serves as the library in Cleveland, Mississippi. Libraries are inhabited by books and people. Diane Griliches has photographed not only the magnificent walls of books and tables full of students at the Biblioteca Marucelliana in Florence, and the library in Sarajevo, which has since been destroyed, but also the homeless seeking shelter, children using their library cards for the first time, patient librarians, lovers in the stacks, and a wealth of other human dramas that take place inside libraries."