Best of
British-Literature

1989

Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights: Critical Studies


Rod Mengham - 1989
    Ideal for students as well as serious readers.

The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf


Virginia Woolf - 1989
    This collection of nearly fifty pieces brings together the contents of two published volumes, A Haunted House and Mrs. Dalloway’s Party; a number of uncollected stories; and several previously unpublished pieces. Edited and with an Introduction by Susan Dick.

House of Cards


Michael Dobbs - 1989
    He has his hands on every secret in politics - and is willing to betray them all to become Prime Minister. Mattie Storin is a tenacious young political correspondent. She faces the biggest challenge of her life when she stumbles upon a scandalous web of intrigue and financial corruption at the very highest levels. She is determined to reveal the truth, but she must risk everything to do so . . .

Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education


Sybille Bedford - 1989
    It picks up where A Legacy leaves off, leading us from the Kaiser's Germany into the wider Europe of the 1920s and the limbo between world wars. The narrator, Billi, tells the story of her apprenticeship to life, and of her many teachers: her father, a pleasure-loving German baron; her brilliant, beautiful, erratic English mother; and later, on the Mediterranean coast of France, the Huxleys, Aldous and Maria.

Climbers


M. John Harrison - 1989
    He hopes that by engaging with the hard realities of the rock and the fall he can grasp what is important about life. But as he is drawn into the obsessive world of climbing he learns that taking things to the edge comes with its own price.Retreating from his failed marriage to Pauline, Mike leaves London for the Yorkshire moors, where he meets Normal and his entourage, busy pursuing their own dreams of escape. Travelling from crag to crag throughout the country, they are searching for the unattainable: the perfect climb. Through rock-climbing, Mike discovers an intensity of experience - a wash of pain, fear and excitement - that obliterates the rest of his world. Increasingly addicted to the adrenaline, folklore and camaraderie of the sport, he finds, for a time, a genuine escape. But it is gained at a price...

A History of the World in 10½ Chapters


Julian Barnes - 1989
    Noah disembarks from his ark but he and his Voyage are not forgotten: they are revisited in on other centuries and other climes - by a Victorian spinster mourning her father, by an American astronaut on an obsessive personal mission. We journey to the Titanic, to the Amazon, to the raft of the Medusa, and to an ecclesiastical court in medieval France where a bizarre case is about to begin...This is no ordinary history, but something stranger, a challenge and a delight for the reader's imagination. Ambitious yet accessible, witty and playfully serious, this is the work of a brilliant novelist.

Remember Me When I Am Gone Away


Christina Rossetti - 1989
    With its message of simple remembrance without regrets, and its reassurance that it is better to 'forget and smile' than to 'remember and be sad', it brings help and comfort at a time when feelings of guilt and even bitterness can cloud the thoughts of the person left behind.The delicate pen and ink drawings by Sam Denley perfectly highlight the reflective nature of this masterpiece of sonnet writing.

Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales


Helen Cooper - 1989
    This second edition continues to offer the most comprehensive scrutiny of the Tales both as a whole and individually. In addition, Cooper incorporates themost significant recent scholarship and criticism, reflecting current research in the areas of Chaucer's historical and social context and developments in the interpretation of Chaucer's presentation of women.

People of the Black Mountains: The Beginning


Raymond Williams - 1989
    

Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History from the Restoration to the Present


Gary Taylor - 1989
    At the height of his career, he often performed in six different plays on six consecutive days. He stopped reinventing himself when he died on April 23, 1616, but, as Gary Taylor tells us in this bold, provocative, irreverent history of Shakespeare's reputation through the ages, we have been reinventing him ever since. Taylor, who sparked a worldwide controversy in 1985 by announcing his discovery of a new Shakespeare poem Shall I die?, presents a brilliantly argued, wryly humorous discussion of the ways in which society reinvents Shakespeare--and to some extent all great literature--to suit its own ends. He reveals how Shakespeare's reputation has benefited from such diverse and unpredictable factors as the dearth of new plays after the Restoration; the decline of tragedy in the eighteenth century, when, as Taylor puts it, Shakespeare was kept on the menu because he was the only serious dish [the repertoire companies] knew how to cook; the changing social status of women in the nineteenth century; England's longstanding rivalry with France, which turned Shakespeare into the great advocate of conservative British values; and the current trend in academia toward shockingly unorthodox views, which has turned Shakespeare into the great ally of radical Marxist and feminist critics. Through the centuries, critics have cited the same Shakespeare--often the very same play--as the supporter of a vast array of world views. Examining each period's method of invoking the Bard's greatness to support a series of conflicting values, Taylor questions what actually constitutes greatness. He insists on examining the criteria of each epoch on its own terms in order to demonstrate how literary criticism can often become the most telling form of social commentary. Reinventing Shakespeare offers nothing less than a major reevaluation of Shakespeare, his writing, his place in world history, and the very bases of aesthetic judgment.

Land of My Fathers (Coronet Books)


Alexander Cordell - 1989
    It is also the story of one man, Taliesin Roberts, robust, determined, passionate - and of a three-sided love that will never die.

The Vertical Plane


Ken Webster - 1989
    

Anne Brontë: The Other One


Elizabeth Langland - 1989
    A study of Anne Bronte dealing with her life and influences, this text forms part of a series which is designed to help in the reassessment of women's writing in the light of today's understanding.

Letters of Leonard Woolf


Leonard Woolf - 1989
    16 pages of photos.