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Assembled here for the first time in book form are the very best occasional writings from the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.A selection of the very best of Doris Lessing's essays: articles on writers as diverse as Jane Austen, Muriel Spark, Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence and Mikael Bulgakov sit alongside autobiographical looks at the beliefs that have shaped Lessing’s thinking. There are adoring and adorable pieces on the beloved cats that she has allowed to share her life, and insightful looks at the Africa in which she grew up, and London and England, the place where she made her home.The range of subjects, cultures and periods within these essays is huge, but the collection is utterly consistent in one key regard: Doris Lessing’s clear-eyed vision and clearly expressed prose are present throughout. There is a huge amount of wisdom and entertainment in these pages, shot through with Lessing’s infectiously forthright, zestful and impish spirit.

A spirited defence of Tolkien’s mythological creation and its increasing relevance for the real world.Acclaimed by the largest readers’ survey ever conducted as ‘the greatest book of the century’, J.R.R.Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has cast the spell of its storytelling for over 40 years and continues to enthral new generations of readers. Yet it has also been widely labelled as reactionary and escapist by hostile critics.Patrick Curry’s book shows just how mistaken they are. He reveals Tolkien’s profound and subtle advocacy of community, ecology and spiritual values against the destructive forces of runaway modernity. Tolkien’s remedy, and the project implicit in his literary mythology, is a re-enchantment of the world. In helping us to realize that living nature, including humanity, is sacred, his writings draw on ancient magical mythology, but at the same time resonate closely with the ideas of contemprary radical ecology.Quoting extensively from Tolkien’s works, Patrick Curry argues that Tolkien addresses hard global realities and widely justified fears. In this way, his story has transcended its English roots to achieve universal relevance, and his imaginary world gives people everywhere hope for the future of the real world.

A sparkling collection of journalism from the critically acclaimed author of BAD BLOOD and MOMENTS OF TRUTH.This selection of the work of Lorna Sage spans the years 1972-2001, when she wrote for the London and New York literary papers and journals, and contains some of her very best pieces. From carefully worked interviews and profiles to the snappiest and deftest of weekly reviews, we can trace the often surprising development of that very distinctive voice and follow its sharpest critical reactions to the important authors and landmark publications of our times.From George Eliot, Laurence Sterne, Charles Dickens and Mary Shelley to Sylvia Plath, Angela Carter, Umberto Eco and Salman Rushdie, Sage's unmistakable voice is here: clever, hilarious, anarchic, sly, wise, kind, courageous, genial and serious.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HERMIONE LEEThe previously uncollected occasional prose of a great English writer – full of wit, feeling and illumination.Penelope Fitzgerald was a prolific letter writer. She avoided the phone if she could, never even contemplated the possibility of going online. Her warmth, humour and supreme storytelling abilities found their best forum here. Surprising, wonderfully funny, definitive, this is a major collection of Penelope Fitzgerald’s reviews, essays and autobiographical writings.This collection includes pieces on contemporary novelists Giles Foden, Anne Enright, Carol Shields, Rose Tremain, Roddy Doyle; on classic writers Muriel Spark, A.E. Housman, Rose Macaulay, M.R. James, Stevie Smith, Dorothy L. Sayers; on remembering her grandfather E.H. Shepard; on her love of Devon and Spain and William Morris: on writers in their old age; and witty and poignant recollections of her schooldays, her life on a Thames barge, her childhood in Hampstead and the ghost who lived next door but one.This is a fantastically funny book – as much of an entertainment as the Kingsley Amis letters.

First ever critical study of Tolkien’s little-known essay, which reveals how language invention shaped the creation of Middle-earth and beyond, to George R R Martin’s Game of Thrones.J.R.R. Tolkien’s linguistic invention was a fundamental part of his artistic output, to the extent that later on in life he attributed the existence of his mythology to the desire to give his languages a home and peoples to speak them. As Tolkien puts it in ‘A Secret Vice’, ‘the making of language and mythology are related functions’’.In the 1930s, Tolkien composed and delivered two lectures, in which he explored these two key elements of his sub-creative methodology. The second of these, the seminal Andrew Lang Lecture for 1938–9, ‘On Fairy-Stories’, which he delivered at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, is well known. But many years before, in 1931, Tolkien gave a talk to a literary society entitled ‘A Hobby for the Home’, where he unveiled for the first time to a listening public the art that he had both himself encountered and been involved with since his earliest childhood: ‘the construction of imaginary languages in full or outline for amusement’.This talk would be edited by Christopher Tolkien for inclusion as ‘A Secret Vice’ in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays and serves as the principal exposition of Tolkien’s art of inventing languages. This new critical edition, which includes previously unpublished notes and drafts by Tolkien connected with the essay, including his ‘Essay on Phonetic Symbolism’, goes some way towards re-opening the debate on the importance of linguistic invention in Tolkien’s mythology and the role of imaginary languages in fantasy literature.

The first book to address everyone who relishes reading Proust and wants to know more about how his writing works.This is a matchless close reading of a literary masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time, and a lesson in how to read the Great Books profitably and pleasurably.‘Read this excellent book’ Stuart Jeffries, Guardian‘Very refreshing… a splendidly tough-minded and generous introduction’ Gabriel Josipovici, Independent‘Brilliant’ Peter Conrad, Observer‘A splendidly thought-filled book’ Eric Griffiths, Evening StandardA book that recalls that Proust’s novel is one of the great exercises in speculative imagining in the world’s literature; and that its originality lies first in the quality of Proust’s textual invention, page after page, line after line. Art, death, sex, politics, loss, guilt, morality – all Proust’s major themes are here in all their glory, but revealed close up.

Part of the outstanding biographical series – edited by Richard Holmes – that recovers the great classical tradition of English biography. Every book is a biographical masterpiece, still thrilling to read and vividly alive.In this pioneering series, Richard Holmes, the world’s leading Romantic biographer, sets out to recover the great forgotten tradition of English biographical writing. ‘I have had no time for dusty tomes,’ writes Holmes, ‘I have looked for brevity, intelligence and style. Above all, I have sought out great biographical writers: biographers with passion, biographers who have found a way to the heart and soul of a memorable subject.’Jack Sheppard was an 18th-century Houdini – a handsome young escape artist who broke out of his cell on Newgate’s grim Death Row three times. Jonathan Wild was the infamous Thief-Taker General who helped to recapture him and many other criminals, only to be tried and executed himself for racketeering, among scenes of mayhem at Tyburn.Daniel Defoe, the master of adventure fiction, was fascinated by ‘True Confessions’ and the workings of the criminal personality (including its daring, its stoicism and its humour). He was the first to retell these stories, based on personal interviews in Newgate, which also include a thrilling (sometimes hour by hour) reconstruction of events.

A comprehensive collection of letters spanning the adult life (1914-1973) of one of the world’s most famous storytellers.‘It is not possible even at great length to «pot» The Lord of the Rings in a paragraph or two. It was begun in 1936, and every part has been written many times… the labour has been colossal; and it must stand or fall, practically as it is.’J.R.R. Tolkien was one of the most prolific letter writers of this century. Over the years he wrote to his publishers, his family, to friends (including C.S. Lewis, W.H. Auden and Naomi Mitchison) and to fans of his books. The letters present a fascinating and highly detailed portrait of the man in many of his aspects: as storyteller, scholar, Catholic, parent and observer of the world around him. They also shed much light on his creative genius and grand design for the creation of a whole new world – Middle-earth.This collection will appeal not only to the legions of Tolkien fans, but will entertain anyone who appreciates the art of letter-writing, of which Tolkien was a master.‘I am nearly always written to as Tolkein (not by you): I do not know why, since it is pronounced by me always -keen.’