10 books found
With over 900 biographical entries, more than 600 novels synopsized, and a wealth of background material on the publishers, reviewers and readers of the age the Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction is the fullest account of the period's fiction ever published. Now in a second edition, the book has been revised and a generous selection of images have been chosen to illustrate various aspects of Victorian publishing, writing, and reading life. Organised alphabetically, the information provided will be a boon to students, researchers and all lovers of reading. The entries, though concise, meet the high standards demanded by modern scholarship. The writing - marked by Sutherland's characteristic combination of flair, clarity and erudition - is of such a high standard that the book is a joy to read, as well as a definitive work of reference.
No previous author has attempted a book such as this: a complete history of novels written in the English language, from the genre's seventeenth-century origins to the present day. In the spirit of Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets, acclaimed critic and scholar John Sutherland selects 294 writers whose works illustrate the best of every kind of fiction—from gothic, penny dreadful, and pornography to fantasy, romance, and high literature. Each author was chosen, Professor Sutherland explains, because his or her books are well worth reading and are likely to remain so for at least another century. Sutherland presents these authors in chronological order, in each case deftly combining a lively and informative biographical sketch with an opinionated assessment of the writer's work. Taken together, these novelists provide both a history of the novel and a guide to its rich variety. Always entertaining, and sometimes shocking, Sutherland considers writers as diverse as Daniel Defoe, Henry James, James Joyce, Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Woolf, Michael Crichton, Jeffrey Archer, and Jacqueline Susann. Written for all lovers of fiction, Lives of the Novelists succeeds both as introduction and re-introduction, as Sutherland presents favorite and familiar novelists in new ways and transforms the less favored and less familiar through his relentlessly fascinating readings.
An engaging guide to a rich literary heritage, The Stanford Companion presents a fascinating parade of novels, authors, publishers, editors, reviewers, illustrators, and periodicals that created the culture of Victorian fiction. Its more than 6,000 alphabetical entries provide an incomparable range of useful and little-known source material, its scholarship enlivened by the author's wit and candor.
by George Wyndham, John William Mackail, Guy Percy Wyndham