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From the acclaimed Beat Generation author of On the Road and The Dharma Bums come eight extended poems in which he reflects on the urban settings he finds himself in. Best known for his novels, Jack Kerouac is also an important poet. In these poems, Kerouac writes from the heart of experience in the music of language, employing the same instrumental blues and jazz forms that he used in another book of poems, Mexico City Blues.

Thieves! Spies! Abolitionists! Ghosts! If we ever truly believed Jane Austen to be a quiet spinster, scholar Devoney Looser puts that myth to rest at last in Wild for Austen. These, and many other events and characters, come to life throughout this rollicking book. Austen, we learn, was far wilder in her time than we’ve given her credit for, and Looser traces the fascinating and fantastical journey her legacy has taken over the past 250 years.

A gripping and revealing new biography of one of the greatest of modern poets, the queer, Greek-Egyptian Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933), whose admirers have ranged from E M Forster, T S Eliot and Virginia Woolf to Jackie Onassis, Leonard Cohen and Stephen Fry.

Drawing together the mythology and tales of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, this book is a comprehensive collection of the fascinating gods, goddesses, heroes, and monsters that make up the compendium of Celtic myths and legends. Celtic Mythology offers an accessible exploration of the rich tapestry of stories and characters that define Celtic culture and have fascinated people for centuries.

In 17th century Paris, a group of women who called themselves conteuses (female storytellers) came together to weave the very first fairy tales. One of them, Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, actually coined the term ‘fairy tale’ and some of these stories contain many familiar (and well-loved) elements that appear in tales like Rapunzel and Beauty and the Beast. Unfortunately, these women, and their tales, have mostly been forgotten to history. Women of the Fairytale Resistance uncovers seven of these writer’s biographies—and retells 12 of their original stories.

Virginia Hamilton (1936-2002) was not only one of the most magnificent writers who ever lived — winning honors such as the Newbery Medal, Newbery Honor, National Book Award, and the Coretta Scott King Award for classics like The House of Dies Drear, The People Could Fly, M. C. Higgins the Great, and Her Stories — she was one of the greatest thinkers we ever had on children's literature.

Fanny Price, in Mansfield Park, tells her persistent suitor that 'we have all a better guide in ourselves...than any other person can be'. Sometimes, however, we crave external guidance: and when this happens we could do worse than seek it in Jane Austen's own subtle novels. Written to coincide with Austen's 250th birthday, this approachable and intimate work shows why and how—for over half a century—Austen has inspired and challenged its author through different phases of her life.

Colette (1873-1954) is one of the most widely read and critically acclaimed French writers of the twentieth century. The Cat first serialised then published in volume form in 1933) is one of her short novels. This story of a middle-class couple in 1920s Paris follows the familiar romantic structure of the 'eternal triangle', with the unexpected twist that the female rival is not a woman but a cat. The novel displays her capacity to conjure up a vibrantly physical world and a particular social moment, her radical yet nuanced view of gender roles, and her empathy with non-human creatures.

In thirteen iconoclastic essays, Slavoj Žižek disrupts the death-grip that neoliberalists, Trumpian populists, toxic self-improvement industries and accelerationists alike have established on the idea of progress. Anatomizing what is lost when opponents of the future are allowed to define it, Žižek ruthlessly exposes what different visions of progress exclude or sacrifice and the dynamics of desire, denial and disavowal at work in Hollywood blockbusters, Buddhist economics, decolonization movements and other engines of vision.

ひと針、ひと針、他愛のない日々が紡ぎ出す〈希望の物語〉人生が愛おしくなる珠玉のエッセイベルリン、ラトビア、モンゴル、鎌倉......転がり込んだ見知らぬ土地で変化する、幸せの尺度。母親との確執を乗り越え辿りついた、書くことの原点。デビュー10年の節目、赤裸々に綴られた人気作家の素顔。

A juicy and revelatory history of the Romantic poets that restores them to their fullest context by examining the impact of the transatlantic slave system on their lives and work, by a brilliant young, Whiting award-winning Black scholar.

Most known for his creative fictions that tackle literary questions of authorship as well as more philosophical notions such as multiverse theory, Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges has captivated scholars from a variety of disciplines since his emergence on the international scene. However, much of the scholarship surrounding Borges does not focus on the reception of Borges's works in the fields of philosophy, the visual arts, film, political science, media theory, mathematics, and law, nor does it consider how his affiliations and interests changed over the course of his long life.

In Driving Lessons, Christopher B. Strain sets out on a quintessential American road trip, exploring not just the roads and byways of the country but the road trip's place in American culture. Strain dives into the well of American travel writing, illuminating fascinating aspects of the road trip, such as how race, class, and gender shape the experiences of road trippers.

No one knows whether Homer was a real person, but there is no doubt that the epic poems assembled under his name are foundations of Western literature. The Iliad and the Odyssey—with their tales of the Trojan War, Achilles, Odysseus and Penelope, the Cyclops, the beautiful Helen of Troy, and the petulant gods—have inspired us for over two and a half millennia and influenced writers from Plato to Virgil, Pope to Joyce, and Dante to Margaret Atwood.

This superb book is borne of Marina Warner’s work with the project Stories in Transit, which organises storytelling workshops in the UK and in Palermo, bringing young migrant students together with artists, writers and musicians. What is sanctuary for those who have been displaced? Why do people flee different situations and conflicts worldwide, and what would a perfect version of sanctuary for those forced out of their homes look like? How can art, which has always recorded and reflected the worst experiences of humanity, also be a salve, an escape or a route to somewhere new.

In Too Good to Be Altogether Lost, Wilder expert Pamela Smith Hill dives back into the Little House books, closely examining Wilder's text, her characters, and their stories. Hill reveals that these gritty, emotionally complex novels depict a realistic coming of age for a girl in the American West. This realism in Wilder's novels, once perceived as a fatal flaw, can lead to essential discussions not only about the past but about the present—and the underlying racism young people encounter when reading today.

A debut essay collection by the inimitable cultural critic Maris Kreizman—an introspective, searing account of the life experiences that have pushed this former “good Democrat” even further to the political left.

The Oxford Handbook of George Orwell offers a wide-ranging reconsideration of Orwell's life and work, focusing on the extensive connections between his novels, essays, diaries, columns, letters, and reviews. Sections on Orwell's professional activities, his main literary influences, his politics, his intellectual fixations, his literary contemporaries, and his legacies structure the book, which moves thematically and topically through the full scope of his output.

At the turn of the twentieth century, sleep began to be seen not merely as a passive state but as an active, dynamic process crucial to our understanding of consciousness and identity. In Sleep Works, cultural historian and literary scholar Sebastian P. Klinger explores the intriguing connections between scientific inquiry and literary expression during an era when sleep was both a scientific mystery and a cultural fascination.

Agatha Christie is renowned for her captivating plots and creative ways of killing off ill-fated victims. And what better way to add intrigue to a story than poison? The surreptitious ways they can be administered and the characteristic symptoms they produce make these killer chemicals the ideal method of murder in a ‘whodunit’. Christie perfected the use of poisons in her plots; her deft and varied use of toxic substances is one of her great strengths as a writer. But how is it that some compounds prove so fatal, and in such tiny amounts?