Academic : Literature : English literature : Literary history and criticism

This book introduces students to the literature of Anglo-Saxon England, the period from 600 1066, in a collection of fifteen specially commissioned essays. The Companion is aimed at students encountering Old English Literature for the first time, and teachers who have no expertise in Old English but who require clear guidance in an unfamiliar field. more...

Price: $24.00

The CliffsComplete Macbeth is a revised and expanded study edition. It contains Shakespeare's original play, a glossary, and expert commentary in a unique, 2-column format. To enhance your learning, notes and definitions appear directly opposite the line in which they occur, and a review section follows the play. This edition also introduces you to the life, works, and times of William Shakespeare. more...

Price: $9.99

With a gift for irony, the limerick, and an understanding of children, Lewis Carroll set out to write a book of fantastic entertainment. The story has nothing didactic about it and functions solely as a comedy, making use of fantasy and the burlesque. Although written for children, it is entertaining to adults, too. more...

Price: $4.95

This Modern Library edition presents all ten histories--each complete and unabridged--in the Shakespearean canon, along with notes and glossary. Here are: King John Richard II Henry IV, Part I Henry IV, Part II Henry V Henry VI, Part I Henry VI, Part II Henry VI, Part III Richard III Henry VIII Included also are the Bard's great narrative poems: Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, the two works that first established Shakespeare's reputation, plus all 154 of his sonnets. more...

Price: $23.00

William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition arranged around scant facts. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself. Bryson documents the efforts of earlier scholars, from today's most respected academics to eccentrics like Delia Bacon, an American who developed a firm but unsubstantiated conviction that her namesake, Francis Bacon, was the true author of Shakespeare's plays. Emulating the style of his famous travelogues, Bryson records episodes in his research, including a visit to a bunkerlike room in Washington, D.C., where the world's largest collection of First Folios is housed. Bryson celebrates Shakespeare as a writer of unimaginable talent and enormous inventiveness, a coiner of phrases ("vanish into thin air," "foregone conclusion," "one fell swoop") that even today have common currency. His Shakespeare is like no one else's—the beneficiary of Bryson's genial nature, his engaging skepticism, and a gift for storytelling unrivaled in our time. more...

Price: $10.99