Everyone's favourite troublemaker is back in Richmal Crompton's William the Bad – with a fun and contemporary cover illustrated by Chris Garbutt and an introduction by writer Anne Fine. William doesn't understand why he's not invited to Robert and Ethel's fancy-dress party – what could possibly go wrong? Desperate for an invite, his search for the perfect costume causes mayhem. Somehow nothing ever goes to plan when William the Bad is around! There is only one William. This tousle-headed, snub-nosed, hearty, lovable imp of mischief has been harassing his unfortunate family and delighting his admirers since 1922. Enjoy more of William's adventures in William's Happy Days and William Again.
Walter de la Mare was a 20th century writer whose most famous work was actually a kid's book, which is ironic because most of his works consisted of psychological horror stories, most notably "Seaton's Aunt" and "Out of the Deep".
Acclaimed stories by the influential Modernist author include "Prelude," a reminiscence of her New Zealand girlhood, in addition to "The Garden Party," "How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped," "Bliss," and others.
Lucas Malet is one of a number of forgotten female writers whose work bridges the gap between George Eliot and Virginia Woolf. Malet’s writing was intrinsically linked to her passion for art. This is the first book-length study of Malet’s novels.
A “brilliant and provocative” (The New Yorker) celebration of Melville’s masterpiece—from the bestselling author of In the Heart of the Sea, Valiant Ambition, and In the Hurricane's Eye One of the greatest American novels finds its perfect contemporary champion in Why Read Moby-Dick?, Nathaniel Philbrick’s enlightening and entertaining tour through Melville’s classic. As he did in his National Book Award–winning bestseller In the Heart of the Sea, Philbrick brings a sailor’s eye and an adventurer’s passion to unfolding the story behind an epic American journey. He skillfully navigates Melville’s world and illuminates the book’s humor and unforgettable characters—finding the thread that binds Ishmael and Ahab to our own time and, indeed, to all times. An ideal match between author and subject, Why Read Moby-Dick? will start conversations, inspire arguments, and make a powerful case that this classic tale waits to be discovered anew. “Gracefully written [with an] infectious enthusiasm…”—New York Times Book Review
A Companion to the British and Irish Short Story provides a comprehensive treatment of short fiction writing and chronicles its development in Britain and Ireland from 1880 to the present. Provides a comprehensive treatment of the short story in Britain and Ireland as it developed over the period 1880 to the present Includes essays on topics and genres, as well as on individual texts and authors Comprises chapters on women’s writing, Irish fiction, gay and lesbian writing, and short fiction by immigrants to Britain
Willa Cather's Transforming Vision: New France and the American Northeast explores Cather's search for meaning and a domestic center, in particular as her search was influenced by her feelings for New France and the American Northeast. Including biography, critical overview, and primary research into both Cather's writing and some of her most unusual historical sources, this study focuses on Shadows on the Rock, while incorporating this pivotal novel into the larger pattern of Cather's growing need for belonging and order. Shadows on the Rock, set in the city of Quebec ("Kebec") at the end of the seventeenth century, is Cather's fullest expression of love for French culture and its adaptation to New World soil. But more than a mere extolling of what Mme. Auclair in Shadows proudly calls "our way" - a skill with all things domestic that, she boasts, renders the French "the most civilized people in Europe" - this novel is a statement of faith in the ability of both individuals and larger societal orders to work together for the creation of an all-encompassing whole. Writing at mid-life, after the recent illnesses and deaths of her parents, Cather could posit in her story of New France a familial order much larger than the domestic heart of her earlier masterpiece, My Antonia. In all of Quebec, as in the incomplete but fruitful home of the widowed apothecary Euclide Auclair and his daughter Cecile, life is sustained by a merging of gender and social roles, as a bishop can become the symbolic head of an entire church as well as of a troubled family, and a bellicose count can play as warm and nurturing a role as the gentlest of parents.
