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The book outlines how class is single most important factor in understanding the British army in the period of industrialisation. It challenges the 'ruffians officered by gentlemen' theory of most military histories and demonstrates how service in the ranks was not confined to ‘the scum of the earth’ but included a cross section of ‘respectable’ working class men.Common soldiers represent a huge unstudied occupational group. They worked as artisans, servants and dealers, displaying pre-enlistment working class attitudes and evidencing low level class conflict in numerous ways. Soldiers continued as members of the working class after discharge, with military service forming one phase of their careers and overall life experience. After training, most common soldiers had time on their hands and were allowed to work at a wide variety of jobs, analysed here for the first time. Many serving soldiers continued to work as regimental tradesmen, or skilled artificers. Others worked as officers’ servants or were allowed to run small businesses, providing goods and services to their comrades. Some, especially the Non Commissioned Officers who actually ran the army, forged extraordinary careers which surpassed any opportunities in civilian life. All the soldiers studied retained much of their working class way of life. This was evidenced in a contract culture similar to that of the civilian trade unions. Within disciplined boundaries, army life resulted in all sorts of low level class conflict. The book explores these by covering drinking, desertion, feigned illness, self harm, strikes and go-slows. It further describes mutinies, back chat, looting, fraternisation, foreign service, suicide and even the shooting of unpopular officers.

Now enhanced with colour photographs and illustrations, this thoroughly revised fourth edition of Sedimentary Structures enhances its status as a major textbook in geology. Since its first publication in 1982, Sedimentary Structures has established and maintained itself as a pre-eminent resource that sets out a clear methodology and philosophy for understanding present-day sediments and sedimentary rocks as the product of dynamic processes.The fourth edition of this classic textbook introduces erosional, depositional and post-depositional sedimentary processes in an easily accessible way. It shows how sedimentary structures can be interpreted, across a wide range of scales, in terms of those processes.Sedimentary structures produced by erosion, deposition and post-depositional change are all clearly explained and related to the processes that formed them. Hydrodynamic and aerodynamic controls on the development of subaqueous and aeolian bedforms are discussed, as are the styles of deformation to which sediments can be subjected after deposition. Structures that characterize deposition caused by chemical and biologically influenced processes are explained and illustrated, along with the complex effects of chemical changes, and of animal and plant activity in modifying sediments after they have been deposited. The book ends with an introduction to the methods and principles of environmental interpretation, for which earlier chapters provide an invaluable basis.Sedimentary Structures is designed principally for use in undergraduate settings and will be invaluable to students reading geology, earth sciences, physical geography and environmental sciences throughout their degree studies. It will also appeal to enthusiastic students at colleges and schools, as well as to amateur geologists who want to gain an understanding of sedimentary processes and products. Furthermore, the book is also valuable as a reference for both academic researchers and industry professionals alike. The fourth edition covers all major recent developments in the subject. It is characterized by an abundance of informative illustrations and photographic examples, and introduces colour figures for the first time.This edition, the first prepared without the direct input of the late David Thompson, builds on a major re-write that paid particular attention to recent advances in the understanding of aeolian processes and bedforms, and in the interpretation of trace fossils. The introduction to environmental interpretation has been further developed to reflect recent advances in stratigraphic thinking, thereby enabling sedimentologists to more readily relate the occurrence of assemblages of sedimentary structures to likely environments of deposition. Sedimentary Structures emphasizes a practical, hands-on approach. It remains indispensable to those with a serious interest in the study of sedimentary structures, not only as fascinating features in themselves but also as key indicators in the reconstruction of past environments.

This edition of Daphnis and Chloe , the best known of the Greek romances, provides the first modern commentary in English on this intriguing work. This is the story of two young people growing up as goatherd and shepherdess, and their discovery of love, sex and their true selves. Beneath the charm of its deceptively simple surface, this novel explores perennial questions about the naturalness of conventional gender relations, about the roles of instinct and culture in love, about the pain and responsibilities involved in becoming an adult, and ultimately about the relationship between Art and Nature, Fiction and Truth. Morgan presents a sequential reading of the novel, using the tools of modern literary theory to explain how narrative articulates meaning, and exploring Longus' creative dialogue with the literary tradition. The Greek text and English translation are on facing pages.

In 1959, at the age of 22, Joanna Russ published her first science fiction story, “Nor Custom Stale,” in The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy. In the forty-five years since, Russ has continued to write some of the most popular, creative, and important novels and stories in science fiction. She was a central figure, along with contemporaries Ursula K. Le Guin and James Tiptree, in revolutionizing science fiction in the 1960s and 1970s, and her 1970 novel The Female Man is widely regarded as one of the most successful and influential depictions of a feminist utopia in the entire genre. The Country You Have Never Seen gathers Joanna Russ’s most important essays and reviews, revealing the vital part she played over the years in the never-ending conversation among writers and fans about the roles, boundaries, and potential of science fiction. Spanning her entire career, the collection shines a light on Russ’s role in the development of new wave science fiction and feminist science fiction, while at the same time providing fascinating insight into her own development as a writer.

Women are conspicuously absent from the Jewish mystical tradition. Even if historically some Jewish women may have experienced mystical revelations and led richly productive spiritual lives, the tradition does not preserve any record of their experiences or insights. Only the chance survival of scant evidence suggests that, at various times and places, individual Jewish women did pursue the path of mystical piety or prophetic spirituality, but it appears that they were generally censured, and efforts were made to suppress their activities. This contrasts sharply with the fully acknowledged prominence of women in the mystical traditions of both Christianity and Islam. It is against this background that the mystical messianic movement centred on the personality of Sabbatai Zevi (1626 - 76) stands out as a unique and remarkable exception. Sabbatai Zevi addressed to women a highly original liberationist message, proclaiming that he had come to make them 'as happy as men' by releasing them from the pangs of childbirth and the subjugation to their husbands that were ordained for women as a consequence of the primordial sin. This unprecedented redemptive vision became an integral part of Sabbatian eschatology, which the messianists believed to be unfolding and experienced in the present. Their New Law, superseding the Old with the dawning of the messianic era, overturned the traditional halakhic norms that distinguished and regulated relations between the sexes. This was expressed not only in the outlandish ritual transgression of sexual prohibitions, in which Sabbatian women were notoriously implicated, but also in the apparent adoption of the idea - alien to rabbinic Judaism - that virginity, celibacy, or sexual abstinence were conducive to women's spiritual empowerment. Ada Rapoport-Albert traces the diverse manifestations of this vision in every phase of Sabbatianism and its offshoots. These include the early promotion of women to centre-stage as messianic prophetesses; their independent affiliation with the movement in their own right; their initiation in the esoteric teachings of the kabbalah; and their full incorporation, on a par with men, into the ritual and devotional life of the messianic community. Their investment with authority was such as to elevate the messiah's wife (a figure mostly absent from traditional messianic speculations) to the rank of full messianic consort, sharing in her husband's redemptive mission as well as his divine dimension. By the late eighteenth century, a syncretistic cult had developed that recognized in Eva - the unmarried daughter of Jacob Frank, one of Sabbatai Zevi's apostate messianic successors - an incarnate female aspect of the kabbalistic godhead, worshipped by her father's devotees as 'Holy Virgin' and female messiah. This was the culmination of the Sabbatian endeavour to transcend the traditional gender paradigm that had excluded women from the public arena of Jewish spiritual life.This work is translated by Deborah Greniman.

National Jewish Book Awards Finalistfor the Nahum N. Sarna Memorial Award for Scholarship, 2016.From its first appearance, theZohar has been one of the most sacred, authoritative, and influential books inJewish culture. Many scholarly works have been dedicated to its mysticalcontent, its literary style, and the question of its authorship. This bookfocuses on different issues: it examines the various ways in which the Zoharhas been received by its readers and the impact it has had on Jewish culture,including the fluctuations in its status and value and thevarious cultural practices linked to these changes. This dynamic and multi-layered history throwsimportant new light on many aspects of Jewish cultural history over the lastseven centuries.Boaz Husshas broken new ground with this study, which examines of the reception andcanonization of the Zohar as well as its criticism and rejection from itsinception to the present day. His underlying assumption is that the differentvalues attributed to the Zohar are not inherent qualities of the zoharic texts,but rather represent the way it has been perceived by its readers in differentcultural contexts. He therefore considers not only the attribution of differentqualities to the Zohar through time but also the people who were engaged inattributing such qualities and the social and cultural functions associatedwith their creation, re-creation, and rejection.For each historical period from the beginning of Zoharscholarship to the present, Huss considers the social conditions that stimulatedthe veneration of the Zohar as well as the factors that contributed to itsrejection, alongside the cultural functions and consequences of each approach.Because the multiple modes of the reception of the Zohar have had a decisiveinfluence on the history of Jewish culture, this highly innovative andwide-ranging approach to Zohar scholarship will have important repercussionsfor many areas of Jewish studies.

Scythians and Greeks focuses on the ancient history of the northern Black Sea region: a major 'new frontier' of Classical studies. The book presents a series of engagements with key themes bearing on cultural interactions within the region, from archaic Greek colonial settlement (approx. sixth century BC) down to the region's inclusion within the Roman imperial system (first century AD). By bringing together contributors from Russia, Ukraine and Georgia, the book makes available material and ideas which are either wholly new or known only to a very limited circle of specialists. The particular focus is on the relationships which developed, in peace and war, between the local peoples of the region (conventionally termed 'Scythians') and the cultures of the classical Graeco-Roman world.

Takashi Shimizu's Ju-on franchise was a principal instigator in the rise of contemporary Japanese horror and its international popularity at the turn of the millennium. Following the success of Hideo Nakata's Ringu (1998), the first cinematic release of Ju-on: The Grudge in 2002 crystallized Japanese horror's rise to prominence and outlined the new decade's thematic interest in supernatural technology and fear of contagions, while skillfully navigating domestic social concerns, such as Japan's growing elderly population and domestic violence.This Devil's Advocate explores the production roots of Ju-on The Grudge, followed by a critical reading of the film that highlights its essential themes and motifs, in addition to a section on cultural influences, before concluding with a section on Shimizu's continued involvement with the Ju-on franchise and its ongoing legacy. The book serves as an excellent primer for readers without prior knowledge of Japanese horror or the Ju-on film cycle, while providing fresh perspectives on the film that makes it equally appealing to J-horror aficionados.

Marcel Simon's classic study examines Jewish-Christian relations in the Roman Empire from the second Jewish War (132-5 CE) to the end of the Jewish Patriarchate in 425 CE. First published in French in 1948, the book overturns the then commonly held view that the Jewish and Christian communities gradually ceased to interact and that the Jews gave up proselytizing among the gentiles. On the contrary, Simon maintains that Judaism continued to make its influence felt on the world at large and to be influenced by it in turn. He analyses both the antagonisms and the attractions between the two faiths, and concludes with a discussion of the eventual disappearance of Judaism as a missionary religion. The rival community triumphed with the help of a Christian imperial authority and a doctrine well adapted to the Graeco-Roman mentality.

The Zohar is the fundamental work of Jewish mysticism. Isaiah Tishby’s classic and definitive Wisdom of the Zohar makes the world of the Zohar available to the English-speaking reader in all its complexity and poetry.The extended extracts are arranged by topic, each section being prefaced by introductory explanations and accompanied by copious notes. There is also a General Introduction on the complex symbolism of the Zohar and on its historical and literary background.The scholarly value of David Goldstein’s acclaimed translation is enhanced by an index expanded to include references to passages cited in the introduction and notes, and by the addition of a subject index and an index of biblical references.Isaiah Tishby was awarded the Bialik Prize 1972, the Israel Prize 1979, and the Rothschild Prize 1982, mainly for his work on The Wisdom of the Zohar. David Goldstein was awarded the Webber Prize 1987 for this translation.

Moses Hayim Luzzatto (1707-1746), rabbi, mystic, teacher, poet, playwright, and writer of ethical works, gathered around him in his 'house of study' in Padua an inner circle of devout Jews who shared his belief in the imminent arrival of the messianic age and who privately identified members of their circle as divinely ordained to usher in the Redemption. To the rabbis of Venice and Frankfurt, however, Luzzatto was a heretic, whose claims to have written works at the dictation of a messenger from heaven could not be genuine. Under pressure from them he was obliged to withdraw a number of such works, and the manuscripts were either lost or destroyed. Yet his known works came to earn him admiration: as a literary figure among the adherents of the Enlightenment, as a great kabbalist and profound mystic by hasidim and even by some of their leading opponents, and as a great ethical teacher by all religious streams. Isaiah Tishby spent many years in the study of Luzzatto and his group, and succeeded in tracing a number of the lost manuscripts.In the essays in this volume translated by Morris Hoffman, he described and annotated the manuscripts which he found, giving the full text of some of the prose works and of all the poems. From these manuscripts and Luzzatto's published works, he was able to correct and add detail to the incomplete picture of Luzzatto and his mystical world which had been current among scholars. He showed how far the views of earlier kabbalists and messianists had been accepted or modified by Luzzatto, and found evidence that he had influenced the early hasidic movement, so lending weight to Hayim Nahman Bialik's description of Luzzatto as 'the father and first begetter' of the three main streams of Judaism in modern times. Tishby also clarified the messianic role for which, as the Padua group believed, certain of their members were destined under the leadership of Luzzatto. One of the most illuminating documents discovered by Tishby and reproduced here is Luzzatto's version of his ketubah or marriage contract.The phrases of the traditional contract are interspersed with a mystical commentary in which Luzzatto identifies himself with the biblical Moses and interprets his earthly marriage as a marriage with the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence or female element of the Godhead. Thus she would be rescued from exile among the forces of evil and the way would be cleared for the final redemption. A second key document is the personal, mystical diary which Luzzatto's second-in-command, Rabbi Moses David Valle, wrote in the margins of his own voluminous commentary on the Bible. The commentary itself, written in impersonal terms, yields autobiographical information, but the diary entries, in short and often enigmatic notes, record the personal mystical visions and experiences, encouragements, and disappointments of the man who saw himself and was seen in Luzzatto's group as the Messiah ben David.

The book is organised as a catalogue of "ship coins" according to the popular KM-numbering system. Coins that have a common design are grouped under separate headings. Included are both circulating coins and collector oriented commemoratives. The coin images represent the many different ways in which the ships are depicted. Volume II included over six hundred narratives, and follows on from the publication of "Volume I -- Europe, 1800-2005" (2007), acclaimed as a book that should be owned or at least read by every collector of world ship coins.

Sold as a multi-volume set – the individual volumes are not available for purchase.

Following his opposition to the establishment of a theatre in Geneva, Jean-Jacques Rousseau is often considered an enemy of the stage. Yet he was fascinated by drama: he was a keen theatre-goer, his earliest writings were operas and comedies, his admiration for Italian lyric theatre ran through his career, he wrote one of the most successful operas of the day, Le Devin du village, and with his Pygmalion, he invented a new theatrical genre, the Scène lyrique (‘melodrama’). Through multi-faceted analyses of Rousseau’s theatrical and musical works, authors re-evaluate his practical and theoretical involvement with and influence on the dramatic arts, as well as his presence in modern theatre histories. New readings of the Lettre à d’Alembert highlight its political underpinnings, positioning it as an act of resistance to external bourgeois domination of Geneva’s cultural sphere, and demonstrate the work's influence on theatrical reform after Rousseau’s death. Fresh analyses of his theory of voice, developed in the Essai sur l’origine des langues, highlight the unique prestige of Italian opera for Rousseau. His ambition to rethink the nature and function of stage works, seen in Le Devin du village and then, more radically, in Pygmalion, give rise to several different discussions in the volume, as do his complex relations with Gluck. Together, contributors shed new light on the writer’s relationship to the stage, and argue for a more nuanced approach to his theatrical and operatic works, theories and legacy.

L’historiographie regroupe traditionnellement sous l’étiquette de ‘radicalisme’ les tenants de la réforme du parlement anglais à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, au risque de placer dans la même catégorie des figures aussi différentes que Richard Price, le pasteur ami du genre humain, et John Cartwright, le réformateur animé par l’amour de la patrie. Qu’ont en commun les divers groupes désignés comme radicaux? Telle est la question posée par Rémy Duthille dans cet ouvrage qui apporte une contribution originale aux débats actuels sur la nature du radicalisme dans l’Angleterre des années 1768 à 1789.En se fondant sur les comptes rendus et les publications des deux principales sociétés radicales londoniennes ainsi que sur les écrits de Cartwright et Price, Rémy Duthille décortique les stratégies rhétoriques et politiques du milieu radical qui visaient à limiter l’influence royale et à encourager la participation politique du peuple. Pendant la Guerre d’indépendance américaine, ces hommes sont écartelés entre leur soutien aux insurgés et leur fidélité à la constitution anglaise. A la fois Anglais et citoyens du monde, les radicaux prétendent concilier patriotisme et universalisme: fidélité à une tradition nationale et défense d’idéaux universels. Cette tension constitutive imprègne leur conception de l’identité nationale britannique et leurs rapports avec les réformateurs écossais et les révolutionnaires américains, puis français. Rémy Duthille démontre que la cohérence du discours radical britannique résulte de la tension entre deux traditions philosophiques convoquées conjointement: le droit naturel hérité de Locke et le constitutionnalisme anglais. Plutôt que d’intégrer les radicaux à un seul courant de pensée, Rémy Duthille analyse le caractère rhétorique et polémique du discours radical dans sa diversité, en montrant comment ces réformateurs transforment les discours et idées de leur temps en armes au service de leur combat politique.

Co-Winner of theModern Language Association’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for ItalianStudies, 2018.The rediscovery of the thought of Giambattista Vico (1668-1774) – especially his New science – is a post-Revolutionary phenomenon. Stressing the elements that keep society together by promoting a sense of belonging, Vico’s philosophy helped shape a new Italian identity and intellectual class. Poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) responded perceptively to the spreading and manipulation of Vico’s ideas, but to what extent can he be considered Vico’s heir?Through examining the reasons behind the success of the New science in early nineteenth-century Italy, Martina Piperno uncovers the cultural trends, debates, and obsessions fostered by Vico’s work. She reconstructs the penetration of Vico-related discourses in circles and environments frequented by Leopardi, and establishes and analyses a latent Vico-Leopardi relationship. Her highly original reading sees Leopardi reacting to the tensions of his time, receiving Vico’s message indirectly without a need to draw directly from the source. By exploring the oblique influence of Vico’s thought on Leopardi, Martina Piperno highlights the unique character of Italian modernity and its tendency to renegotiate tradition and innovation, past and future.

Véritable ‘Strabon français’ pour ses contemporains, Jean-Baptiste d’Anville est considéré comme l’un des plus grands géographes des Lumières. Ce livre, fruit du travail d’analyse d’une dizaine de spécialistes internationaux, fondé sur des sources nombreuses et souvent inédites, est la première monographie à lui être consacrée.Comment cet inconnu, fils de tailleur parisien, se retrouve-t-il à vingt-deux ans géographe du roi et précepteur du jeune Louis XV? C’est ce parcours extraordinaire que retracent les auteurs de cet ouvrage, en reconstituant le réseau qu’il a su se créer tout en s’assurant la protection des ducs d’Orléans sur trois générations et l’intérêt de la couronne portugaise. Au fil des chapitres se révèle l’impressionnante habileté intellectuelle de d’Anville, capable de satisfaire les exigences de ses mécènes sans trahir ses sources, conservant son intégrité de savant malgré la pression des enjeux diplomatiques. Sans quitter son cabinet parisien, par le seul exercice d’une critique aiguisée et d’un croisement systématique des sources (textes anciens, récits de voyage, mesures astronomiques, informations orales...), d’Anville remodèle les contours du monde ancien et moderne, avec une exactitude qui sera validée par les mesures de terrain a posteriori.Ce livre dresse un portrait tout en nuances d’un géographe de cabinet au siècle des Lumières. Penché derrière l’épaule du savant, le lecteur découvre comment il élabore très tôt une rigoureuse méthodologie de travail, bâtit sa carrière, constitue l’une des plus grandes collections de cartes du XVIIIe siècle, et influence jusqu’à nos jours la représentation du monde et de ses frontières.

In the age of Enlightenment the concept of night evolved from being a time of dread to a time for pleasure. Between the start of the Régence (1715-1723) and the French Revolution the nocturnal and the erotic became intrinsically connected: shadows and darkness were reconfigured as the object of the philosophes’ fascination, while night was increasingly experienced as the realm of the self. Nowhere is this paradigmatic shift better recorded than in French libertine literature of the long eighteenth century.Marine Ganofsky delves into the night scenes of libertine fiction to analyse how the idea of night was reimagined and represented by writers ranging from Crébillon to Sade. Her original analysis of erotic encounters in pornographic novels, gallant stories and sensual fairy tales reveals how they capture the period’s emancipation from superstitions and traditions. The nocturnal settings of these libertine narratives were the primary means of staging men and women’s hitherto hidden sexual encounters and innermost fantasies, and ultimately illustrate the conquest of night-time terrors in favour of social encounters and amorous intimacy.Libertine nocturnal scenes reflect above all the Enlightenment’s re-invention of shadows less as an obstacle than an incentive to discover the mysteries they harbour. Through her innovative research Marine Ganofsky presents the erotic nights of libertine fiction as a sign that the siècle des Lumières, free to enjoy the charms to be found in, or under, the cover of darkness, was also the siècle de la nuit.

De récents travaux ont remis sur le devant de la scène cet auteur inclassable qu’est Jean Potocki (1761-1815). Réunissant une vingtaine de contributions transdisciplinaires, cet ouvrage envisage son œuvre sous l’angle de la trace, afin de brosser le portrait d’un voyageur qui est aussi historien, romancier, conteur, dramaturge, et qui par là même appréhende le monde selon une approche tantôt expérimentale, tantôt théorique, tantôt esthétique.Une première partie est consacrée aux traces que Potocki suit inlassablement en tant que voyageur et historien, celles des civilisations et des peuples anciens, mais aussi celles de son passage et de ses recherches dans différents pays. Chez lui, tout vestige – monument, ruine, vocabulaire, graffiti – est consigné, comparé, analysé, et devient un facteur déterminant de connaissance. La deuxième partie de l’ouvrage s’attache à exhumer les traces que Potocki laisse dans son œuvre de fiction: le jeu avec l’intertextualité lui permet d’interroger les codes et les formes canoniques de la littérature pour mieux les détourner et créer une instabilité herméneutique. Enfin, une dernière partie se fonde sur sa correspondance, et notamment sur des lettres inédites ici reproduites. L’étude de la trace dans l’œuvre de Potocki confirme la modernité d’un auteur qui entretient un rapport foncièrement ambigu au réel.

This new study of Andrew Marvell offers a state-of-the-art guide to one of the most intriguing and elusive poets of the seventeenth century. Hero to the eighteenth century for his published defences of parliamentary government and religious toleration, Marvell was friend and defender of Milton, underground author of satires against the Restoration court, paradoxically, promoted by T.S. Eliot for a diametrically opposite set of qualities and achievements – poise, detachment, an ethos both world-excluding and hypercivilised, not to mention the most perfect poems we have on “the figure in the landscape”. Annabel Patterson, known for her ability to make serious scholarship engaging, explains how Marvell’s complex personality and beliefs produce these contradictory responses. The book provides comprehensive introductions to Marvell’s different self-representations, and places the most famous poems, such as The Garden and Horatian Ode, in the dialectic they lose when read only in anthologies.

Walter Pater (1839-94) was an active participant in the literary marketplace as an academic, journalist, critic, writer of short stories, and novelist at a time of the rise of English and of journalism, university reform, and the professionalisation and separating out of literature from journalism. He was also a classicist whose interest in Greek studies coincided with a commitment to explore in his writings the scope of male homosexual discourse. This critical study of a key figure in Victorian literary society examines Pater’s work on art history, literature and Greek studies, as well as analysing the roles of gender and journalism in shaping his writing. Laurel Brake approaches Pater’s writings from the prospective of cultural history – including publishing and the politics of literature and gender – and covers his key works, including Studies in the History of the Renaissance, Style, Imaginary Portraits, Marius the Epicurean, and Greek Studies.

This original study of Elizabeth Gaskell places the woman and her writings within their full Victorian context. Recent critical appraisal has focused both on her role as a novelist of industrial England, and on her awareness of the position of women and the problems of the woman writer in that society. Kate Flint’s perceptive book shows that for Elizabeth Gaskell the condition of women was inseparable from the broader issues of social change. Books such as Mary Barton, Cranford, North and South and Wives and Daughters continually analyse and interrogate questions of power, authority and the expression and transmission of human values, and challenge many widely-held pre-conceptions of the age. Dr Flint shows how recent feminist criticism and theories of narrative work together to illuminate the radical and experimental nature of Mrs Gaskell’s fiction.

The four volumes of John Clare’s poetry that were published during his tragic life were so brutally edited, and sometimes even wilfully censored for political reasons that his work invited mainly curiosity and condescension from the literary world. Now that readers have a chance to re-evaluate Clare’s poetry, the “peasant poet”, “illiterate”, “quaint” and “rustic” is emerging as a radical thinker and writer. John Lucas’s unique volume reveals a knowing and articulate poet writing as an essentially oral artist – out of a subtle tradition of song as much as of poetry. Lucas champions Clare’s art in a vital and fascinating book which tells of the collision between the cultural orthodoxy of print and the poet whose work was demeaned and damaged by the forces of the literary establishment.

Dr Davies’ stimulating study covers the full range of Donne’s poetry, from the early satires and elegies to the Songs and Sonnets and Divine Poems, and includes thoughtful analysis of parts of his memorable sermons. Questioning the traditional critical approach which relates the writer’s life and work, she emphasises instead the Renaissance scepticism which brought all belief – including the concept of the “self” – into doubt. Close, sensitive readings of individual poems, which make room for personal reactions to their profound emotion, are balanced by a wider exploration of the cultural, religious and political context conditioning the poet’s mind. Raising a feminist challenge to the “virility” of his writing, Davies exposes the poet’s misogyny and the emotional conflict and vulnerability which it reveals. This powerful book will offer new directions for the study of Donne’s turbulent and brilliant intelligence.

Tolstoy’s art as represented in his greatest novels: War and Peace and Anna Karenina continues to absorb, fascinate and delight modern readers despite the lack of appeal of much of his later convictions. His great works continue to exercise a profound influence on the best imaginative writing. In our own time Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, clearly inspired by War and Peace, has deservedly become a world best seller. John Bayley concentrates in this short introductory study on Tolstoy’s two great works and the ancillary texts and tales that relate to them. In elucidating the power and originality which are alive in those masterpieces Professor Bayley makes a compelling case for a return to the originals which will continue to captivate readers and draw them irresistibly into a uniquely spacious and complex world.

William Hazlitt was a brilliant and perceptive essayist and critic in the early 19th Century whose critical impressions of his contemporaries and their work gave a sense of an age and the leading figures who populated it in a particularly vivid way.

T.S. Eliot considered George Herbert one of the liveliest and most profound of English poets with whose work he felt an instinctive accord. Describing The Temple as … ‘not simply a collection of poems but … a record of the spiritual struggles of a man of intellectual power and emotional intensity who gave much toil to perfecting his verses …’ T.S. Eliot considered Herbert’s religious verse above John Donne’s and placed him firmly in the ranks of the great English poets. Peter Porter’s new introduction gives a fresh perspective on the poetry of Herbert and on Eliot’s study itself.