Best of
British-Literature

1979

Poetry and Designs: Authoritative Texts, Illuminations in Color and Monochrome, Related Prose, Criticism


William Blake - 1979
    The spelling and punctuation have been modified for greater intelligibility to modern readers. Almost all of Blake's published writings are here, as well as most of his best shorter poems that remained in manuscript at his death, and much of his most energetic prose. Of Blake's major epics, Milton is printed in full, in its longest version; Jerusalem is represented by selection amounting to one third of the complete poem, and The Four Zoas by briefer excerpts. All the other poetic works are presented complete.

Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy


Rumer Godden - 1979
    It is about finding sin where we least expect it.” — Joan Chittister, from the introduction This haunting tale of disgrace and redemption centers on Lise Fanshawe, a prostitute and brothel manager in postwar Paris who, while serving time in prison for killing a man, finds God. Lise is helped by an order of Catholic nuns that includes former prostitutes and prisoners like her. She joins the order and is swept up in an unexpected and fateful encounter with people from her past life. Rumer Godden, author of the masterwork In This House of Brede, tells an inspiring and entirely convincing conversion story that shows how the mercy of God extends to the darkest human places. The Loyola Classics series connects today's readers to the timeless themes of Catholic fiction in new editions of acclaimed Catholic novels

Oliver Twist


Marian Leighton - 1979
    Pennyless and hungry, he runs away to London, only to fall into the clutches of a gang of thieves and pickpockets led by the master criminal, Fagin. Befriended by a man robbed by the gang, Oliver ultimately learns his true identity and gains a home, a fortune, and a family.

Tales of the Unexpected


Roald Dahl - 1979
    Among the unforgettable characters lurk the homicidal wife and her deadly leg of lamb, a conniving and lecherous wine connoisseur and the one-eyed brain at the mercy of his vengeful spouse. Tales of the Unexpected is an astonishing assortment of twisted treats from the master storyteller.

The Marriage of Meggotta


Edith Pargeter - 1979
    Set in England in the 13th century, among the nobles and aristocrats surrounding King Henry III, it tells the true story of the secret marriage of the Earl of Kent's ten-year-old daughter, and the tragic consequences that follow in its wake.

The Remains of Elmet


Ted Hughes - 1979
    Ted Hughes, who was born and brought up in the part of the world she has captured in these atmospheric studies, was inspired by them to provide a verse text, one of the most personal things he has written.

An Edwardian Season


John S. Goodall - 1979
    The fourth of these excursions into the Edwardian era follows the course of the London 'Season', a more fashionable and sophisticated milieu than those through which the boy and girl made their way in previous volumes.Besides the debutante's coming-out ball, we are privileged to visit sporting events at Henley, Ascot and Lord's and even taste a little night-life at Romano's and the stage-door of the Gaiety Theatre.Once again Mr Goodall has produced an enchanting evocation of a vanished age.

A Writer's Britain: Landscape in Literature


Margaret Drabble - 1979
    It also illuminates the way in which their work has changed our visual attitudes, our taste in landscape and our relation to nature.

Selected Letters of Oscar Wilde


Oscar Wilde - 1979
    When Sir Rupert Hart-Davis's magnificent edition of The Letters of Oscar Wilde was first published in 1962, Cyril Connolly called it "a must for everyone who is seriously interested in the history of English literature - or European morals." From this edition, long out of print, Hart-Davis has culled a representative sample of the letters from each period of Wilde's life, "giving preference," as he says in his Introduction, "to those of literary interest, to the most amusing, and to those that throw light on his life and work." The long letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, known as De Profundis is printed in its entirety.

Conrad in the Nineteenth Century


Ian P. Watt - 1979
    . . . One of the great critical works produced since the 1950s.”—New York Times

The Lady of the House of Love


Angela Carter - 1979
    He comes across a mansion inhabited by a vampiress who survives by enticing young men into her bedroom and feeding on them. She intends to feed on the young soldier but his purity and virginity have a curious effect on her.

Collected Poems, 1935-1992


F.T. Prince - 1979
    T. Prince. Often working in forms that are deceptively traditional, Prince has a special genius for the lost and often unseen details of experience. His presence has been felt by a succession of English and American poets who, despite their working in more open forms, often arrive at a terrain already occupied by him. Selected by Harold Bloom as part of his canon of world literature.

Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling, 1525-1700


Keith Wrightson - 1979
    It opens with a chapter establishing this small Essex parish in the national context of econmic and social change in the years between 1525 and 1700. Thereafter the chapters examine the economy of Terling; its demographic history; its social structure; the relationships of the villagers with the courts of the church and state; the growth of popular literacy; the impact of the reformation, and the rise in puritanism. The overall process of change is then characterized in a powerful interpretive chapter on the changing pattern of social relationships in the parish.This revised edition has a new chapter, 'Terling Revisited' which addresses the debate occasioned by the book, notably over kinship relations in early modern England, and the impact of puritanism on local society. In both cases a new interpretive synthesis is attempted and the argument of the first edition is defended, elaborated, and advanced in the light of subsequent research.

Divided Self: A Perspective on the Literature of the Victorians


Masao Miyoshi - 1979
    

Welsh Ghosts And Phantoms: A Collection Of Ghost Stories From Wales


Jane Pugh - 1979
    

A Married Man


Piers Paul Read - 1979
    Staying with his parents-in-law at their house in Norfolk, he reads Leo Tolstoy’s novella, The Death of Ivan Illych, and this precipitates a mid-life crisis. What has happened to his youthful ideals to do good in the world? What has happened that has made his marriage go stale? It is the period of strikes, political crisis and the `three-day week’: Strickland determines to stand as a Labour MP. His ambition is mocked by his wife and, blaming her for his life’s stagnation, he starts an affair with another woman.

Nothing; Doting; Blindness


Henry Green - 1979
    These three brilliant novels span Green’s career as a novelist and display his unique talents as a writer. Nothing is a tale of the merry-go-round of love, marriage and infidelity amid the ceaseless intergenerational tussle of innocence versus experience. Doting sets the middle-aged male infatuation with pretty girls against the comfortable affection of wives/old friends. In Blindness, a young man is blinded in a senseless accident but thereafter discovers new imaginative powers.