Philip Davis – författare

The Literary Agenda is a series of short polemical monographs about the importance of literature and of reading in the wider world and about the state of literary education inside schools and universities. The category of ''the literary'' has always been contentious. What is clear, however, is how increasingly it is dismissed or is unrecognised as a way of thinking or an arena for thought. It is sceptically challenged from within, for example, by the sometimesrival claims of cultural history, contextualized explanation, or media studies. It is shaken from without by even greater pressures: by economic exigency and the severe social attitudes that can follow from it; by technological change that may leave the traditional forms of serious human communicationlooking merely antiquated. For just these reasons this is the right time for renewal, to start reinvigorated work into the meaning and value of literary reading.Reading and the Reader offers a defence of reading serious literature, where reading offers a place for inner contemplation, emotion, imagination, and thought-experiment through the energising booster-rocket of literature. It is argued that literature creates a holding-ground in which a dense sense of experience is registered. Such a place is vital to human well-being in the following respects: in sustaining the ability to use and not just suffer one''s experience; to be able to thinkone''s thoughts, even those that are customarily unadmitted or felt as anomalous or unworthy; to find room for a realm of speculation in between religions and secularization, in between literature and life. Reading and the Reader, one of the first volumes in the Literary Agenda series, exists to defend thevalue of reading, to narrow the gaps between the way writers and readers think, to bring literary thinking into the ordinary thinking of the world - especially at a time when the arts and humanities are under some threat. Literature is useful in terms of deep human needs. It offers a form of time-travel - across ages, countries, different minds - that provides alternatives to any conventional worldview.

The Literary Agenda is a series of short polemical monographs about the importance of literature and of reading in the wider world and about the state of literary education inside schools and universities. The category of ''the literary'' has always been contentious. What is clear, however, is how increasingly it is dismissed or is unrecognised as a way of thinking or an arena for thought. It is sceptically challenged from within, for example, by the sometimesrival claims of cultural history, contextualized explanation, or media studies. It is shaken from without by even greater pressures: by economic exigency and the severe social attitudes that can follow from it; by technological change that may leave the traditional forms of serious human communicationlooking merely antiquated. For just these reasons this is the right time for renewal, to start reinvigorated work into the meaning and value of literary reading.Reading and the Reader offers a defence of reading serious literature, where reading offers a place for inner contemplation, emotion, imagination, and thought-experiment through the energising booster-rocket of literature. It is argued that literature creates a holding-ground in which a dense sense of experience is registered. Such a place is vital to human well-being in the following respects: in sustaining the ability to use and not just suffer one''s experience; to be able to thinkone''s thoughts, even those that are customarily unadmitted or felt as anomalous or unworthy; to find room for a realm of speculation in between religions and secularization, in between literature and life. Reading and the Reader, one of the first volumes in the Literary Agenda series, exists to defend thevalue of reading, to narrow the gaps between the way writers and readers think, to bring literary thinking into the ordinary thinking of the world - especially at a time when the arts and humanities are under some threat. Literature is useful in terms of deep human needs. It offers a form of time-travel - across ages, countries, different minds - that provides alternatives to any conventional worldview.

Philip Davis tells the story of Bernard Malamud (1914-1986), the self-made son of poor Jewish immigrants who went on to become one of the foremost novelists and short-story writers of the post-war period. The time is ripe for a revival of interest in a man who at the peak of his success stood alongside Saul Bellow and Philip Roth in the ranks of Jewish American writers.Nothing came easily to Malamud: his family was poor, his mother probably committed suicide when Malamud was 14, and his younger brother inherited her schizophrenia. Malamud did everything the second time round - re-using his life in his writing, even as he revised draft after draft. Davis''s meticulous biography shows all that it meant for this man to be a writer in terms of both the uses of and the costs to his own life. It also restores Bernard Malamud''s literary reputation as one of the greatoriginal voices of his generation, a writer of superb subtlety and clarity.Bernard Malamud: A Writer''s Life benefits from Philip Davis''s exclusive interviews with family, friends, and colleagues, unfettered access to private journals and letters, and detailed analysis of Malamud''s working methods through the examination of hitherto unresearched manuscripts. It is very much a writer''s life. It is also the story of a struggling emotional man, using an extraordinary but long-worked-for gift, in order to give meaning to ordinary human life.

Philip Davis tells the story of Bernard Malamud (1914-1986), the self-made son of poor Jewish immigrants who went on to become one of the foremost novelists and short-story writers of the post-war period. The time is ripe for a revival of interest in a man who at the peak of his success stood alongside Saul Bellow and Philip Roth in the ranks of Jewish American writers.Nothing came easily to Malamud: his family was poor, his mother probably committed suicide when Malamud was 14, and his younger brother inherited her schizophrenia. Malamud did everything the second time round - re-using his life in his writing, even as he revised draft after draft. Davis''s meticulous biography shows all that it meant for this man to be a writer in terms of both the uses of and the costs to his own life. It also restores Bernard Malamud''s literary reputation as one of the greatoriginal voices of his generation, a writer of superb subtlety and clarity.Bernard Malamud: A Writer''s Life benefits from Philip Davis''s exclusive interviews with family, friends, and colleagues, unfettered access to private journals and letters, and detailed analysis of Malamud''s working methods through the examination of hitherto unresearched manuscripts. It is very much a writer''s life. It is also the story of a struggling emotional man, using an extraordinary but long-worked-for gift, in order to give meaning to ordinary human life.

Reading for Life is an anthology of poems and of extracts from prose fiction, related to a series of case-histories of individuals carefully reading, discussing their reading lives, and thinking about the relation of literature to their existence. It enables readers to gain increased imaginative access to the works in question through seeing how they have intensely affected equivalent readers—a novelist, a poet, a doctor, a teacher, an anthologist, butalso non-specialists, ordinary people within shared reading groups in many different settings, finding help from literary texts in times of often painful personal need. It is the story of the work done by Philip Davis'' research unit, the Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society (CRILS), at theUniversity of Liverpool, in a ten-year partnership with the outreach charity The Reader, taking serious literature to often neglected communities and struggling individuals through the shared reading—alive and aloud—of literature from all ages.Reading for Life is a detailed account of what reading literature can do for a wide variety of individuals in relation to a wide variety of texts: it will be of interest to serious readers in the wider world as much as to scholars working within literary studies, and to all those involved in thinking about the therapeutic interactions of literature and life in psychology, medicine, and mental health support settings.

Reading for Life is an anthology of poems and of extracts from prose fiction, related to a series of case-histories of individuals carefully reading, discussing their reading lives, and thinking about the relation of literature to their existence. It enables readers to gain increased imaginative access to the works in question through seeing how they have intensely affected equivalent readers—a novelist, a poet, a doctor, a teacher, an anthologist, butalso non-specialists, ordinary people within shared reading groups in many different settings, finding help from literary texts in times of often painful personal need. It is the story of the work done by Philip Davis'' research unit, the Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society (CRILS), at theUniversity of Liverpool, in a ten-year partnership with the outreach charity The Reader, taking serious literature to often neglected communities and struggling individuals through the shared reading—alive and aloud—of literature from all ages.Reading for Life is a detailed account of what reading literature can do for a wide variety of individuals in relation to a wide variety of texts: it will be of interest to serious readers in the wider world as much as to scholars working within literary studies, and to all those involved in thinking about the therapeutic interactions of literature and life in psychology, medicine, and mental health support settings.

This volume in the 21st Century Oxford Authors series offers students and readers a comprehensive selection of the work of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861). Accompanied by full scholarly apparatus, this authoritative edition enables students to study Barrett Browning''s work within the rich context of her life and writing career. The revaluation of Elizabeth Barrett Browning''s work by feminist scholars has made her an established author in university syllabuses in Britain and in America. Yet the reception of Barrett Browning as a writer within an explicitly female tradition has tended to limit the appreciation of her wider contribution to English literary culture in the nineteenth century, just as her popular image as a ringleted romantic heroine served sentimentally to eclipse her role as a literary pioneer. This edition complements or corrects these emphases by being the first edition dedicated to witnessing the progress and growth of the poet''s creative direction--from her juvenilia through to her major achievements and beyond. The selection of works presented here appear in the order in which they were originally published, enabling students and readers to experience the contours of Barrett Browning''s poetic career. Thus, following selections from published juvenilia, The Battle of Marathon (1820) and ''An Essay on Mind'' and Other Poems (1826) and from ''Prometheus Bound'' and Miscellaneous Poems (1833), there are more extensive selections from ''The Seraphim'' and Other Poems (1838), from Poems 1844 and from Poems 1850 including the full text of Sonnets from the Portuguese. Substantial excerpts from Casa Guidi Windows (1851) is followed by the full text of Aurora Leigh (1857) and by selections from the posthumous Last Poems (1862). These individual sections are supplemented by careful selections (also chronologically ordered) from the correspondence, including the courtship letters with Robert Browning, and, where applicable, from poetry unpublished in the nineteenth century.Explanatory notes and commentary are included, to enhance the study, understanding, and enjoyment of these works, and the edition includes an Introduction to the life and works of Barrett Browning, and a Chronology.

Discusses the life and work of William James, a founder of the study of psychology.William James (1842-1910) was elder brother to the novelist Henry James and a founder of the study of psychology. But he was also a thinker who sought to work across conventional boundaries, and did not believe in separate disciplines or over-professionalized ways of thinking. James was above all interested in those moments when thoughts suddenly come into being, ''hot'' and ''alive''. William James is for anyone who has experienced the personal need for such thinking and feels the excitement of ideas. It concerns the personal experience of reading James, involving extensive quotation from his work in relation to Philip Davis'' own inner life and the lives of other readers of James--a thinker who is defiantly convinced of the fundamental validity of the inner life in the making of the Real. This book is about William James''s life-writing, writing for the sake of existence, that puts together a mix of literature, psychology, philosophy, and biography in the search for purpose and human flourishing, in place of formal religion. It includes James'' interest in his brother''s novels and in Shakespearean drama, as well as Thomas Hardy''s pessimistic challenge to James. Davis is a reader of literature who feels that readers of novels and poems also need the help of psychology and philosophy, to get the thinking out, to make it into a working part of a life. His book is for readers, especially readers of literature, seeking to create, like William James, a literary way of thinking outside the realm of literature.

Discusses the life and work of William James, a founder of the study of psychology.William James (1842-1910) was elder brother to the novelist Henry James and a founder of the study of psychology. But he was also a thinker who sought to work across conventional boundaries, and did not believe in separate disciplines or over-professionalized ways of thinking. James was above all interested in those moments when thoughts suddenly come into being, ''hot'' and ''alive''. William James is for anyone who has experienced the personal need for such thinking and feels the excitement of ideas. It concerns the personal experience of reading James, involving extensive quotation from his work in relation to Philip Davis'' own inner life and the lives of other readers of James--a thinker who is defiantly convinced of the fundamental validity of the inner life in the making of the Real. This book is about William James''s life-writing, writing for the sake of existence, that puts together a mix of literature, psychology, philosophy, and biography in the search for purpose and human flourishing, in place of formal religion. It includes James'' interest in his brother''s novels and in Shakespearean drama, as well as Thomas Hardy''s pessimistic challenge to James. Davis is a reader of literature who feels that readers of novels and poems also need the help of psychology and philosophy, to get the thinking out, to make it into a working part of a life. His book is for readers, especially readers of literature, seeking to create, like William James, a literary way of thinking outside the realm of literature.

Discusses the life and work of William James, a founder of the study of psychology.William James (1842-1910) was elder brother to the novelist Henry James and a founder of the study of psychology. But he was also a thinker who sought to work across conventional boundaries, and did not believe in separate disciplines or over-professionalized ways of thinking. James was above all interested in those moments when thoughts suddenly come into being, 'hot' and 'alive'. William James is for anyone who has experienced the personal need for such thinking and feels the excitement of ideas. It concerns the personal experience of reading James, involving extensive quotation from his work in relation to Philip Davis' own inner life and the lives of other readers of James--a thinker who is defiantly convinced of the fundamental validity of the inner life in the making of the Real. This book is about William James's life-writing, writing for the sake of existence, that puts together a mix of literature, psychology, philosophy, and biography in the search for purpose and human flourishing, in place of formal religion. It includes James' interest in his brother's novels and in Shakespearean drama, as well as Thomas Hardy's pessimistic challenge to James. Davis is a reader of literature who feels that readers of novels and poems also need the help of psychology and philosophy, to get the thinking out, to make it into a working part of a life. His book is for readers, especially readers of literature, seeking to create, like William James, a literary way of thinking outside the realm of literature.

Reading for Life is an anthology of poems and of extracts from prose fiction, related to a series of case-histories of individuals carefully reading, discussing their reading lives, and thinking about the relation of literature to their existence. It enables readers to gain increased imaginative access to the works in question through seeing how they have intensely affected equivalent readers—a novelist, a poet, a doctor, a teacher, an anthologist, but also non-specialists, ordinary people within shared reading groups in many different settings, finding help from literary texts in times of often painful personal need. It is the story of the work done by Philip Davis' research unit, the Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society (CRILS), at the University of Liverpool, in a ten-year partnership with the outreach charity The Reader, taking serious literature to often neglected communities and struggling individuals through the shared reading—alive and aloud—of literature from all ages.Reading for Life is a detailed account of what reading literature can do for a wide variety of individuals in relation to a wide variety of texts: it will be of interest to serious readers in the wider world as much as to scholars working within literary studies, and to all those involved in thinking about the therapeutic interactions of literature and life in psychology, medicine, and mental health support settings.

Written in the form of a back-and-forth dialogue between the two authors, this book is about the relationship between feeling and thinking in Dickens's novels. It presents Dickens as a psychological thinker, whose generative thought may be conscious, unconscious, half-conscious, or in transit between one state and another. This Dickens is always in live process, improvizing from one monthly number to the next, subtly revizing as he goes, shifting moods, tenses, and tones from one paragraph or sentence to the next, as what he writes sparks off what he suddenly, newly, thinks. The chapters approach this inquiry through close readings of chosen passages, including studies of telling revisions in Dickens's manuscripts that reveal the power of his deepened second thoughts. They also draw on selected moments from his personal letters and prefaces when these more casual writings prove to be sketches or rehearsals for thoughts and feelings that achieve new life when they are transformed into fiction. The book concentrates on four novels of his great middle period: Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, and Little Dorrit, while making excursions into earlier and later Dickens novels, notably A Tale of Two Cities and Our Mutual Friend. The experiment of intense but informal conversation between the authors also models the relationship between feeling and thinking in the act of reading and responding to powerful moves in fiction.

Written in the form of a back-and-forth dialogue between the two authors, this book is about the relationship between feeling and thinking in Dickens''s novels. It presents Dickens as a psychological thinker, whose generative thought may be conscious, unconscious, half-conscious, or in transit between one state and another. This Dickens is always in live process, improvizing from one monthly number to the next, subtly revizing as he goes, shifting moods, tenses, and tones from one paragraph or sentence to the next, as what he writes sparks off what he suddenly, newly, thinks. The chapters approach this inquiry through close readings of chosen passages, including studies of telling revisions in Dickens''s manuscripts that reveal the power of his deepened second thoughts. They also draw on selected moments from his personal letters and prefaces when these more casual writings prove to be sketches or rehearsals for thoughts and feelings that achieve new life when they are transformed into fiction. The book concentrates on four novels of his great middle period: Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, and Little Dorrit, while making excursions into earlier and later Dickens novels, notably A Tale of Two Cities and Our Mutual Friend. The experiment of intense but informal conversation between the authors also models the relationship between feeling and thinking in the act of reading and responding to powerful moves in fiction.

Written in the form of a back-and-forth dialogue between the two authors, this book is about the relationship between feeling and thinking in Dickens''s novels. It presents Dickens as a psychological thinker, whose generative thought may be conscious, unconscious, half-conscious, or in transit between one state and another. This Dickens is always in live process, improvizing from one monthly number to the next, subtly revizing as he goes, shifting moods, tenses, and tones from one paragraph or sentence to the next, as what he writes sparks off what he suddenly, newly, thinks. The chapters approach this inquiry through close readings of chosen passages, including studies of telling revisions in Dickens''s manuscripts that reveal the power of his deepened second thoughts. They also draw on selected moments from his personal letters and prefaces when these more casual writings prove to be sketches or rehearsals for thoughts and feelings that achieve new life when they are transformed into fiction. The book concentrates on four novels of his great middle period: Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, and Little Dorrit, while making excursions into earlier and later Dickens novels, notably A Tale of Two Cities and Our Mutual Friend. The experiment of intense but informal conversation between the authors also models the relationship between feeling and thinking in the act of reading and responding to powerful moves in fiction.

Willa Cather's novels do not behave like other novels. Indeed, her art is famously uncategorizable. She is not much interested in plots; she works instead by juxtaposition, leaving it up to the reader to feel the vibrations between one situation and another. Nor is she interested in creating consistent character in the usual sense; her people are quite fluid as they appear and reappear in different phases of their stories. But she is deeply interested in the long-term trajectory of lives. Written back and forth in dialogue between Rosemarie Bodenheimer and Philip Davis, this innovative book explores the many ways that Willa Cather's radical originality is quietly manifest, without fanfare or explanation. Nearing middle age when she began her life as a novelist, Willa Cather thought of lives as long arcs of change, in which success and failure are equally fraught, and one might shift quickly into the feeling of the other. Bodenheimer and Davis discover and celebrate Cather's subtle shifts of mood and perspective, as they appear in her numinous landscapes of light, and are registered in her characters' minds. Working within her own terms, In Conversation with Willa Cather puts the odd shapes and silences of her books in conversation with her letters, interviews, and other writings about the art of fiction.

Willa Cather's novels do not behave like other novels. Indeed, her art is famously uncategorizable. She is not much interested in plots; she works instead by juxtaposition, leaving it up to the reader to feel the vibrations between one situation and another. Nor is she interested in creating consistent character in the usual sense; her people are quite fluid as they appear and reappear in different phases of their stories. But she is deeply interested in the long-term trajectory of lives. Written back and forth in dialogue between Rosemarie Bodenheimer and Philip Davis, this innovative book explores the many ways that Willa Cather's radical originality is quietly manifest, without fanfare or explanation. Nearing middle age when she began her life as a novelist, Willa Cather thought of lives as long arcs of change, in which success and failure are equally fraught, and one might shift quickly into the feeling of the other. Bodenheimer and Davis discover and celebrate Cather's subtle shifts of mood and perspective, as they appear in her numinous landscapes of light, and are registered in her characters' minds. Working within her own terms, In Conversation with Willa Cather puts the odd shapes and silences of her books in conversation with her letters, interviews, and other writings about the art of fiction.

Willa Cather's novels do not behave like other novels. Indeed, her art is famously uncategorizable. She is not much interested in plots; she works instead by juxtaposition, leaving it up to the reader to feel the vibrations between one situation and another. Nor is she interested in creating consistent character in the usual sense; her people are quite fluid as they appear and reappear in different phases of their stories. But she is deeply interested in the long-term trajectory of lives. Written back and forth in dialogue between Rosemarie Bodenheimer and Philip Davis, this innovative book explores the many ways that Willa Cather's radical originality is quietly manifest, without fanfare or explanation. Nearing middle age when she began her life as a novelist, Willa Cather thought of lives as long arcs of change, in which success and failure are equally fraught, and one might shift quickly into the feeling of the other. Bodenheimer and Davis discover and celebrate Cather's subtle shifts of mood and perspective, as they appear in her numinous landscapes of light, and are registered in her characters' minds. Working within her own terms, In Conversation with Willa Cather puts the odd shapes and silences of her books in conversation with her letters, interviews, and other writings about the art of fiction.

Heralding a new era in literary studies, the Oxford English Literary History breaks the mould of traditional approaches to the canon by focusing on the contexts in which the authors wrote and how their work was shaped by the times in which they lived. Each volume offers a fresh, ground-breaking re-assessment of the authors, their works, and the events and ideas which shaped the literary voice of their age. Written by some of the leading scholars in the field, under the general-editorship of Jonathan Bate, the Oxford English Literary History is essential reading for everyone studying, teaching, and researching in English literature.This volume covers the flowering of Victorian literature, from the decade when Tennyson started writing In Memoriam and Darwin embarked on the Beagle to the publication of Hardy's first great novels and the death of George Eliot. The Victorian era produced a literature of diversity and experimentation, engaged with powerful controversies and heartfelt arguments that lie at the centre of the formation of the modern world. It has often been misrepresented, either as an age of dull and rigid certainty or one of anxious and depressive morbidity, but what distinguishes the writing of the period - from its origins in the 1830s to its crisis point around 1880 - is its power of serious inquiry. It poses questions about the relation between society and the individual, the rival claims of market and morality, the form and function of democracy, and, above all, the existence or non-existence of God and the purposes of human life. Such concerns make this a time in which literature has a new urgency and vitality, and lies close to the heart of a culminating crisis of the Western conscience.less tied to the canonical authors and much more interested in placing both canonical and non-canonical writings in their historical context. These are books that every serious student and scholar of the period will need on their shelves.

This volume in the 21st Century Oxford Authors series offers students and readers a comprehensive selection of the work of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861). Accompanied by full scholarly apparatus, this authoritative edition enables students to study Barrett Browning's work within the rich context of her life and writing career. The revaluation of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's work by feminist scholars has made her an established author in university syllabuses in Britain and in America. Yet the reception of Barrett Browning as a writer within an explicitly female tradition has tended to limit the appreciation of her wider contribution to English literary culture in the nineteenth century, just as her popular image as a ringleted romantic heroine served sentimentally to eclipse her role as a literary pioneer. This edition complements or corrects these emphases by being the first edition dedicated to witnessing the progress and growth of the poet's creative direction--from her juvenilia through to her major achievements and beyond. The selection of works presented here appear in the order in which they were originally published, enabling students and readers to experience the contours of Barrett Browning's poetic career. Thus, following selections from published juvenilia, The Battle of Marathon (1820) and 'An Essay on Mind' and Other Poems (1826) and from 'Prometheus Bound' and Miscellaneous Poems (1833), there are more extensive selections from 'The Seraphim' and Other Poems (1838), from Poems 1844 and from Poems 1850 including the full text of Sonnets from the Portuguese. Substantial excerpts from Casa Guidi Windows (1851) is followed by the full text of Aurora Leigh (1857) and by selections from the posthumous Last Poems (1862). These individual sections are supplemented by careful selections (also chronologically ordered) from the correspondence, including the courtship letters with Robert Browning, and, where applicable, from poetry unpublished in the nineteenth century.Explanatory notes and commentary are included, to enhance the study, understanding, and enjoyment of these works, and the edition includes an Introduction to the life and works of Barrett Browning, and a Chronology.

Reading for Life is an anthology of poems and of extracts from prose fiction, related to a series of case-histories of individuals carefully reading, discussing their reading lives, and thinking about the relation of literature to their existence. It enables readers to gain increased imaginative access to the works in question through seeing how they have intensely affected equivalent readers--a novelist, a poet, a doctor, a teacher, an anthologist, but also non-specialists, ordinary people within shared reading groups in many different settings, finding help from literary texts in times of often painful personal need. It is the story of the work done by Philip Davis' research unit, the Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society (CRILS), at the University of Liverpool, in a ten-year partnership with the outreach charity The Reader, taking serious literature to often neglected communities and struggling individuals through the shared reading--alive and aloud--of literature from all ages. Reading for Life is a detailed account of what reading literature can do for a wide variety of individuals in relation to a wide variety of texts: it will be of interest to serious readers in the wider world as much as to scholars working within literary studies, and to all those involved in thinking about the therapeutic interactions of literature and life in psychology, medicine, and mental health support settings.

Reading George Eliot's work was described by one Victorian critic as like the feeling of entering the confessional in which the novelist sees and hears all the secrets of human psychology—'that roar which lies on the other side of silence'. This new biography of George Eliot goes beyond the much-told story of her life. It gives an account of what it means to become a novelist, and to think like a novelist: in particular a realist novelist for whom art exists not for art's sake but in the exploration and service of human life. It shows the formation and the workings of George Eliot's mind as it plays into her creation of some of the greatest novels of the Victorian era. When at the age of 37 Marian Evans became George Eliot, this change followed long mental preparation and personal suffering. During this time she related her power of intelligence to her capacity for feeling: discovering that her thinking and her art had to combine both. That was the great ambition of her novels—not to be mere pastimes or fictions but experiments in life and helps in living, through the deepest account of human complexity available. Philip Davis's illuminating new biography will enable you both to see through George Eliot's eyes and to feel what it is like to be seen by her, in the imaginative involvement of her readers with her characters.

Discusses the life and work of William James, a founder of the study of psychology.William James (1842-1910) was elder brother to the novelist Henry James and a founder of the study of psychology. But he was also a thinker who sought to work across conventional boundaries, and did not believe in separate disciplines or over-professionalized ways of thinking.James was above all interested in those moments when thoughts suddenly come into being, 'hot' and 'alive'. William James is for anyone who has experienced the personal need for such thinking and feels the excitement of ideas. It concerns the personal experience of reading James, involving extensive quotation from his work in relation to Philip Davis's own inner life and the lives of other readers of James- a thinker who is defiantly convinced of the fundamental validity of the inner life in the making of the Real.This book is about William James's life-writing, writing for the sake of existence, that puts together a mix of literature, psychology, philosophy, and biography in the search for purpose and human flourishing, in place of formal religion. It includes James's interest in his brother's novels and in Shakespearean drama, as well as Thomas Hardy's pessimistic challenge to James. Professor Davis is a reader of literature who feels that readers of novels and poems also need the help of psychology and philosophy, to get the thinking out, to make it into a working part of a life. His book is for readers, especially readers of literature, seeking to create, like William James, a literary way of thinking outside the realm of literature.

Inaugurating a major new series, successor to the Oxford History of English Literature but excitingly new in its emphasis on 'literary history', this volume covers the flowering of Victorian literature, from the decade when Tennyson started writing In Memoriam and Darwin embarked on the Beagle to the publication of Hardy's first great novels and the death of George Eliot.The Victorian era produced a literature of diversity and experimentation, engaged with powerful controversies and heartfelt arguments that lie at the centre of the formation of the modern world. It has often been misrepresented, either as an age of dull and rigid certainty or one of anxious and depressive morbidity, but what distinguishes the writing of the period - from its origins in the 1830s to its crisis point around 1880 - is its power of serious inquiry. It poses questions about the relation between society and the individual, the rival claims of market and morality, the form and function of democracy, and, above all, the existence or non-existence of God and the purposes of human life. Such concerns make this a time in which literature has a new urgency and vitality, and lies close to the heart of a culminating crisis of the Western conscience.The series will enlighten and inspire not only everyone studying, teaching, and researching in English Literature, but all keen readers of English fiction.

Philip Davis tells the story of Bernard Malamud (1914-1986), the self-made son of poor Jewish immigrants who went on to become one of the foremost novelists and short-story writers of the post-war period. The time is ripe for a revival of interest in a man who at the peak of his success stood alongside Saul Bellow and Philip Roth in the ranks of Jewish American writers. Nothing came easily to Malamud: his family was poor, his mother probably committed suicide when Malamud was 14, and his younger brother inherited her schizophrenia. Malamud did everything the second time round - re-using his life in his writing, even as he revised draft after draft. Davis's meticulous biography shows all that it meant for this man to be a writer in terms of both the uses of and the costs to his own life. It also restores Bernard Malamud's literary reputation as one of the great original voices of his generation, a writer of superb subtlety and clarity. Bernard Malamud: A Writer's Life benefits from Philip Davis's exclusive interviews with family, friends, and colleagues, unfettered access to private journals and letters, and detailed analysis of Malamud's working methods through the examination of hitherto unresearched manuscripts. It is very much a writer's life. It is also the story of a struggling emotional man, using an extraordinary but long-worked-for gift, in order to give meaning to ordinary human life.

'Human nature may be easy to see through, but it is very hard to understand.'The ageing Catherine Vernon, jilted in her youth, has risen to power in a man's world as head of the family bank. She thinks she sees through everyone and rules over a family of dependents with knowing cynicism. But there are two people in Redborough who resist her. One is Hester, a young relation with a personality as strong as Catherine's, and as determined to find a role for herself. The other is Edward, Catherine's favourite, whom she treats like a son. Conflict between young and old is inevitable, and in its depiction of the complex relationships that develop between the three principal characters, Publishing October 2003 (exact date?)Margaret Oliphant is one of the great Victorian novelists, and this edition establishes her rediscovered importance. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Philip Davis tells the story of Bernard Malamud (1914-1986), the self-made son of poor Jewish immigrants who went on to become one of the foremost novelists and short-story writers of the post-war period. The time is ripe for a revival of interest in a man who at the peak of his success stood alongside Saul Bellow and Philip Roth in the ranks of Jewish American writers. Nothing came easily to Malamud: his family was poor, his mother probably committed suicide when Malamud was 14, and his younger brother inherited her schizophrenia. Malamud did everything the second time round - re-using his life in his writing, even as he revised draft after draft. Davis's meticulous biography shows all that it meant for this man to be a writer in terms of both the uses of and the costs to his own life. It also restores Bernard Malamud's literary reputation as one of the great original voices of his generation, a writer of superb subtlety and clarity. Bernard Malamud: A Writer's Life benefits from Philip Davis's exclusive interviews with family, friends, and colleagues, unfettered access to private journals and letters, and detailed analysis of Malamud's working methods through the examination of hitherto unresearched manuscripts. It is very much a writer's life. It is also the story of a struggling emotional man, using an extraordinary but long-worked-for gift, in order to give meaning to ordinary human life.

Reading George Eliot's work was described by one Victorian critic as 'the feeling of entering the confessional in which she sees and hears all the secrets of human psychology--that roar which lies on the other side of silence'. This new biography of George Eliot goes beyond the much-told story of her life. It gives an account of what it means to become a novelist, and to think like a novelist: in particular a realist novelist for whom art exists not for art's sake but in the exploration and service of human life. It shows the formation and the workings of George Eliot's mind as it plays into her creation of some of the greatest novels of the Victorian era.When at the age of 37 Marian Evans became George Eliot, it followed long mental preparation and personal suffering. During this time she related her power of intelligence to her capacity for feeling: discovering that her thinking and her art had to combine both. That was the great ambition of her novels--not to be mere pastimes or fictions but experiments in life and helps in living, through the deepest account of human complexity available. Philip Davis's illuminating new biography will enable you both to see through George Eliot's eyes and to feel what it is like to be seen by her, in the imaginative involvement of her readers with her characters.

The Barret Browning volume in the 21st Century Oxford Authors series offers a comprehensive selection of the works of one of the nineteenth-century's most famous poets. The revaluation of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's work by feminist scholars has made her an established (indeed standard) author in university syllabuses in Britain and in America. Yet the emphasis upon her contribution to a female tradition has tended to rigidify Barrett Browning's contribution to English literary culture in the nineteenth century, just as her popular image as ringleted-invalid-turned-romantic-heroine served sentimentally to eclipse her role as a literary pioneer. This edition complements or corrects these emphases by being the first edition dedicated to witnessing the progress and growth of the poet's creative direction - from her juvenilia through to her major achievements and beyond. In keeping with the aims of the series, the selection honours the original sequencing of the published works as the best means of indicating the contours of Barrett Browning's poetic career. Thus, following fairly limited selections from published juvenilia, The Battle of Marathon (1820) and 'An Essay on Mind' and Other Poems (1826) and from 'Prometheus Bound' and Miscellaneous Poems (1833), there are more extensive selections from 'The Seraphim' and Other Poems (1838), from Poems 1844 and from Poems 1850 including the full text of Sonnets from the Portuguese. Substantial excerpts from Casa Guidi Windows (1851) is followed by the full text of Aurora Leigh (1857) and by selections from the posthumous Last Poems (1862). These individual sections are supplemented by careful selections (also chronologically ordered) from the correspondence, including the courtship letters with Robert Browning, and, where applicable, from poetry unpublished in the nineteenth century. The edition comes with full scholarly apparatus (introduction, chronology, explanatory notes), though it follows the series policy of recording only significant variants between editions.

The Literary Agenda is a series of short polemical monographs about the importance of literature and of reading in the wider world and about the state of literary education inside schools and universities. The category of 'the literary' has always been contentious. What is clear, however, is how increasingly it is dismissed or is unrecognised as a way of thinking or an arena for thought. It is sceptically challenged from within, for example, by the sometimes rival claims of cultural history, contextualized explanation, or media studies. It is shaken from without by even greater pressures: by economic exigency and the severe social attitudes that can follow from it; by technological change that may leave the traditional forms of serious human communication looking merely antiquated. For just these reasons this is the right time for renewal, to start reinvigorated work into the meaning and value of literary reading.Reading and the Reader offers a defence of reading serious literature, where reading offers a place for inner contemplation, emotion, imagination, and thought-experiment through the energising booster-rocket of literature. It is argued that literature creates a holding-ground in which a dense sense of experience is registered. Such a place is vital to human well-being in the following respects: in sustaining the ability to use and not just suffer one's experience; to be able to think one's thoughts, even those that are customarily unadmitted or felt as anomalous or unworthy; to find room for a realm of speculation in between religions and secularization, in between literature and life. Reading and the Reader, one of the first volumes in the Literary Agenda series, exists to defend the value of reading, to narrow the gaps between the way writers and readers think, to bring literary thinking into the ordinary thinking of the world - especially at a time when the arts and humanities are under some threat. Literature is useful in terms of deep human needs. It offers a form of time-travel - across ages, countries, different minds - that provides alternatives to any conventional worldview.