Anna Vaninskaya – författare

The great polymath William Morris and his contemporaries and followers - from H. Rider Haggard to H. G. Wells - are the focus of this study. Anna Vaninskaya draws upon a wide array of primary sources: from working-class fiction and articles in fringe socialist newspapers to historical treatises, autobiographies and diaries, in order to explore the many ways Victorians and Edwardians talked about community and modernity.Vaninskaya’s narrative moves from the realm of romance bestsellers and sniggering reviews to debates in weighty historical tomes, and then to the headquarters of revolutionary parties, to street-corners and shabby lecture halls. She demonstrates how in each domain the dream of community clashed with the reality of the modern state and market.Key Features* Brings together for the first time in one interdisciplinary study the worlds of fin de siècle literature, politics, and historiography* Redefines the terms of the critical debate about the late-Victorian romance revival* Puts into dialogue mainstream and marginal literary productions* Uncovers the full extent of the contemporary radical appropriations of nineteenth-century scholarship * Incorporates previously unexamined archival material

Translated anthology of 'London Letters' written by Russian foreign correspondents which makes available for the first time in English the Russian perspective on early twentieth-century London life.This anthology provides a unique window onto Britain's capital city as it existed more than a century ago in the minds of the Russian reading public. Russian foreign correspondents produced a substantial body of writing documenting London life in all its infinite variety, but their articles, published in Russian journals and newspapers, have not been accessible to English speakers until today. These articles, instrumental in forging Russian perceptions of London before the First World War, have now acquired a new interest as monuments of a vanished era and as records of the city's history in their own right.The selections in this anthology from Isaak Shklovsky, Korney Chukovsky, Samuil Marshak and Semyon Rapoport give just a taste of the riches that still lie hidden in the pages of old periodicals. The anthology is divided into four sections: 'Foreigners in London', focusing on the plight of immigrants in the city; 'London Labour and the London Poor', documenting the experiences of working-class Londoners; 'London at Home and at Leisure', depicting the domestic life and amusements of Londoners of all classes and ages; and 'London Streets and Public Life', covering elections, religious meetings, famous trials, jingoist celebrations and the funeral of Queen Victoria. The articles are accompanied by an in-depth introduction, illustrations and extensive annotations. This anthology will appeal to anyone interested in London history or in Anglo-Russian relations, as well as to scholars of Russian literature. Chukovsky and Marshak both became famous writers later in life, and many of Shklovsky's sketches have a distinct literary as well as historical value.

This book reveals the unique contribution made by the three founding fathers of British fantasy—Lord Dunsany, E. R. Eddison and J. R. R. Tolkien—to our culture’s perennial reassessment of the meanings of time, death and eternity. It traces the poetic, philosophical and theological roots of the striking preoccupation with mortality and temporality that defines the imagined worlds of early fantasy fiction, and gives both the form of such fiction and its ideas the attention they deserve. Dunsany, Eddison and Tolkien raise some of the oldest questions in existence: about the limits of nature, human and divine; cosmic creation and destruction; the immortality conferred by art and memory; and the paradoxes and uncertainties generated by the universal experience of transience, the fear of annihilation and the desire for transcendence. But they respond to those questions by means of thought experiments that have no precedent in modern literary history.This book has won the '2021 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award' for Myth and Fantasy Studies.