British and Irish Authors – serie

Keats is one of the most widely read and studied of the English poets, but there are few books about him for the student. Not surprisingly, most books give much space to the romantic life. Mr Mayhead resists the temptation: he writes only about the poems and the letters; and in this concise introduction he discusses them comprehensively and closely. The poems are discussed in broadly chronological order, with liberal quotation and much detailed analysis. This straightforward and businesslike study is also sensitive and sympathetic; it establishes more firmly in the reader's mind the nature of Keats's true achievement: the quality of the poetry.

Most people agree, perhaps without enthusiasm, that Wordsworth is 'great'; it is not easy to say why. Professor Durrant sets out to show this clearly, freshly and forcibly, with detailed reference to particular poems. He accepts that the great creative period of Wordsworth's life was from 1798 to 1805; that in those few years he produced the poems in which his genius was realised; that these poems express a particular vision, which later faded. The vision was of the life of man in the universe of Newtonian science, subject to its universal laws, finding poignancy, even tragedy, in this acquiescence, but winning strength from the acceptance. After a general introduction, individual chapters examine representative poems in close detail: particularly such lyrics as 'I wandered lonely as a cloud', 'Tintern Abbey' the 'Immortality' ode, 'The Prelude' and the sonnets. Professor Durrant builds up from the details of these poems a cumulative sense of Wordsworth's preoccupations, how his mind worked, his characteristic imagery, how original and successful he was and how relevant his poetry still is.

Mr Jones treats the main novels in chronological sequence examining with the aid of extensive quotation George Eliot's means of description and characterisation and the moral purpose of her fiction. He emphasises her appeal to the inner life of her readers, as exemplified in her frequent use of such phrases as 'Have we not all...' George Eliot assumes that no human act or emotion is entirely unconnected with what we have all done or felt at some time. Her sympathy with human weakness often carries her to the point where she has difficulty in reconciling her tolerance with her moral purpose. This book gives a useful introduction to George Eliot's novels. As in the other books in the series British Authors: Introductory Critical Studies, the author assesses his subject simply and clearly, using as a basis the internal evidence of the novels themselves rather than biographical detail.

A critical introduction to Jane Austen's writings, which considers in turn her letters, the minor works and the six complete novels, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion. Biographical material has been kept to a minimum. Contemporary criticism is referred to where useful, but the aim of the book is to direct new and old readers of Jane Austen to the structure and intentions of the works themselves, to the richness and subtlety of their language and to the record they provide of the writer's gradual achievement, through self-discipline and continuous experimentation, of artistic and emotional maturity. The books in the series British Authors: Introductory Critical Studies are aimed at the widest student readership and are all written by authors who have experience of university teaching outside Britain.

A critical introduction to William Blake's poetry, which concentrates on the most accessible of Blake's writings, but which also gives careful consideration to the longer prophetic works. Biographical material has been kept to a minimum, allowing a full concentration on the poetry itself. Professor Gillham maintains that The Songs should be viewed as a dramatic unity and that their interpretation is not aided by a study of the later prophetic works as has so often been maintained. He analyses Blake's lapse from the deceptively simple clarity of The Songs into the strained, obscure and abstract manner of the later poems in a way which, while helping the reader to a full appreciation of the early work, enables him at last to come to grips with the Prophecies.

A good deal of Scott's commercial writing is now of historical interest only. But there are important and valuable books, especially those where Scott is contemplating the detribalization of Scotland after the Jacobite rebellions, and the political and social stresses this brought about. This is a modern concern, since we live in the developed world with the long-term consequences, and, when this book was first published in 1973, similar processes were visible in developing countries. There is also a vein of shrewd moral wisdom in Scott, associated with the notions of justice and prudence. Mr Mayhead singles out Waverley, Heart of Midlothian, Guy Mannering and The Abbot as the works which embody these interests. He also looks at the poetry and criticism.

While providing a critical introduction for the student of Samuel Beckett's work and for other readers and theatre-goers who have been influenced by it, this study also presents an original perspective on one of the twentieth century's greatest writers of prose fiction and drama. Andrew Kennedy links Beckett's vision of a diminished humanity with his art of formally and verbally diminished resources, and traces the fundamental simplicity and coherence of Beckett's work beneath its complex textures. In the section on the plays, Dr Kennedy stresses the humour and tragicomic humanism alongside the theatrical effectiveness; and in a discussion of the fiction (the celebrated trilogy of novels) he relates the relentless diminution of 'story' to the diminishing selfhood of the narrator. An introduction outlines the personal, cultural and specifically literary contexts of Beckett's writing, while a concluding chapter offers up-to-date reflections on his œuvre, from the point-of-view of the themes highlighted throughout the book. This study, complete with a chronological table and a guide to further reading, will prove stimulating for both new and advanced students of Beckett.

This introductory study provides a comprehensive and coherent account of all Andrew Marvell's poetry for those with no specialised knowledge of seventeenth-century literature and history. After a brief account of Marvell's career as student, private tutor, civil servant, and Member of Parliament, there follow six chapters dealing with the major body of lyrical poetry according to subject matter or thematic context. Since inexperienced readers often encounter difficulties with the allusive nature of Marvell's art, it is a particular feature of this book that it provides sufficient information on the literary, cultural and political context of the work without sacrificing an appreciation of the aesthetic qualities and the ironic wit and burnout for which Marvell's verse is celebrated. In the final chapter Dr Wilcher discusses the public writing in verse and prose which occupied Marvell's later years in relation to political developments under Oliver Cromwell and Charles II.

H. G. Wells wrote almost a hundred books, yet he is generally remembered for only a handful of them. He is known above all as a writer who heralded the future, yet throughout his life he clung to fixed attitudes from the Victorian past. He began his career as a draper's apprentice; by the age of forty-five he had secured an international reputation as the author of The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, Kipps and Tono Bungay; he went on to establish himself as an influential educator, polemicist and sage. In this book John Batchelor offers a readable introduction to Wells's huge and varied output as a writer and thinker. He guides the reader through the whole oeuvre, and argues persuasively that at his best Wells was a great artist: a man with a remarkable, restless imagination (not limited, as many critics have implied, merely to his early romances) and with a coherent and responsible theory of fiction.

This concise and lucid study provides an ideal introduction to the major work of Henry Fielding for all students. Fielding's stature as a great comic novelist is assured, but as Professor Varey illustrates, he was a remarkably versatile writer. In his day Fielding was one of England's leading dramatists and also pursued a career in law. He founded, edited, and contributed essays for four different periodicals, and wrote a political-satirical novel Jonathan Wild, in addition to a work of powerful social protest Amelia and his two outstanding contributions to the development of English prose fiction: Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews. Professor Varey clarifies and explains this varied body of writing, concentrating on Fielding's technique of combining opposites or apparently ill-matched elements - of language, character, narrative made, and even philosophical thought.

James Joyce holds a unique position in literature. No writer has a higher reputation, none attracts more ardent devotees, and none poses so many difficulties for the first-time reader. This book is an original and well-informed survey of the whole of Joyce's work. It offers close readings of his early writings such as Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and an extended examination of his masterpiece, Ulysses, as well as a stimulating introduction to that notoriously difficult work Finnegans Wake. Dr Parrinder stresses Joyce's ambivalent relationship to the Ireland of his youth, and his ability to incorporate the most banal and profane levels of experience and language into profound celebration of the human capacity for survival and regeneration. The Joyce who emerges is a writer of innocence and gusto as well as immense artistic cunning.

This book offers a critical assessment of the career of one of the most formidable figures of English literature, the most influential poet and dramatist of the early seventeenth century. Richard Dutton focuses on the greatest landmark of Jonson's career, the 1616 folio collection of his works with which he crowned his growing reputation as a man of letters, collecting together the majority of his most enduring works - including Every Man in his Humour, Volpone, The Alchemist; the tragedies Sejanus and Catiline; and the major masques and poems. The book relates these works (and another masterpiece, Bartholomew Fair, which belongs to the same period) to Jonson's tempestuous life and times, touching on such issues as his involvement with the Gunpowder Plot, his frequent confrontations with the political authorities, his emergence as Poet Laureate at Court and his often touchy relations with fellow authors like Shakespeare and Donne. But the principal aim throughout is to offer detailed critical analyses of Jonson's major works showing how, for all that they are rooted in the concerns of his own age, they are far more accessible and relevant to modern readers than is often assumed.

Although Pope's reputation as a poet has never been higher among scholars and academics, changes in our attitudes to the writing of poetry and to traditional literary values and fashions in versification have created barriers between his genius and the general reader. Pope's poetry has to struggle against the assumptions that verse two centuries ago, filled with allusions to forgotten myths and contemporary personalities, can have little to say that is 'relevant'. Professor Gooneratne's study effectively shows how these barriers can be surmounted by the reader, allowing Pope's work to make its impact upon the imagination in its own way, as the expression of a powerful poetic personality which developed over forty years of continuous authorship. Every major poem in the Pope canon is fully and critically discussed, related to social circumstances that governed its composition and considered both as an example of generic writing and as an expression of personal feelings and convictions. Through detailed analysis of Pope's diction and poetic technique, Professor Gooneratne shows how his best and most deeply-felt verse expresses the living values of the Age of Enlightenment and demonstrates how a good writer can simultaneously extend and criticise the standards of his society.

Since E. M. Forster's death in 1970, his novel Maurice and a volume of short stories have been published for the first time. When it was published in 1976, this book was one of the first full-length critical introductions to Forster's fiction to include these posthumous works. Despite the fact that most of Forster's work deals with life before the First World War, Professor Martin sees him as an essentially modern writer concerned with one of the most fundamental and persistent psychological problems of our time: the gulf between man's spiritual needs and the demands and pressures of society. Professor Martin comments closely on the text and attempts to assess the significance of the travel theme in Forster's writing and the impact of his homosexuality on the content of his fiction: he also highlights important affinities between Forster's work and that of other early twentieth-century writers, including Joyce and D. H. Lawrence.

This study of Thomas Hardy provides a substantial introduction to his six major novels and his poems. It deals more briefly with the minor fiction. Hardy now seems a more important novelist and poet than at any previous time. This is only partly due to his capabilities as a social historian or provincial chronicler. Far more important is his faithful exploration of the daily trials and tragedies of men and women as feeling beings. Man and woman in love, man and woman 'up against it', are the central themes of his fiction and poetry. His ability to universalise his tragic material, in which he is akin to Shakespeare, is seen as his abiding achievement. Detailed analyses are made of some crucial passages in the major novels and a serious attempt is made to counter the proposition that Hardy 'wrote badly'.

Since his death in 1930, D. H. Lawrence has become not only one of the most controversial English novelists of the twentieth century, but also one of the most widely read and quoted writers in the language. In this new study of his major fiction, Alistair Niven revalues all the novels, tracing Lawrence's development through them, both as an artist and as a thinker. At the centre of the book Dr Niven discusses The Rainbow and Women in Love as the diverse products of a single creative intention, nothing less than an exploration of where modern man is going. Lawrence's early novels, The White Peacock and The Trespasser, receive exceptionally close scrutiny. There are also full-length chapters on Lawrence's well-known fiction of sexual self-discovery, Sons and Lovers and Lady Chatterley's Lover. The 'travel' novels - The Lost Girl, Aaron's Rod, The Plumed Serpent and especially the Australian novel Kangaroo, which the author believes has been seriously underestimated by previous critics - are given prominence as evidence of Lawrence's restless desire to find a superior set of values to those he believed had failed in England. Dr Niven's conclusions are derived solely from his close reading of the novels themselves and, when relevant, from Lawrence's correspondence and short stories. This study, with its unusually lively and commonsense approach, confirms Lawrence as not only a great novelist, but a central figure in the development of the modern mind.

Although the importance of Conrad's work has long been recognized, Jacques Berthoud attempts a full demonstration of the clarity, consistency, and depth of thought evident in the novels written during the first decade of this century. Instead of the standard versions of Conrad - from sceptical moralizer to 'metaphysician of darkness' - he offers a tragic novelist, engaged in a sustained exploration of the contradictions inherent in man's relations with his fellows; and from the perspective thus achieved, he is able to show why Conrad occupies a leading place among the creators of modern literature. This book will be of interest to specialists in English studies because it seeks to make a substantial contribution to the critical debate on the significance of Conrad's work. It will also appeal to any reader looking for guidance through the complexities of the major novels: the central issues have been presented as simply as the originality of Conrad's art and thought permits.

This book provides a valuable introduction for students and other readers of Tennyson's poetry and presents an account of its major themes and concerns. Elaine Jordan examines Tennyson's uneasy position as a writer of the male middle-class ascendancy and shows how his poetry reveals ambivalent attitudes towards manliness, war, and nineteenth-century scientific rationality. In his early Idylls she finds him experimenting with different political attitudes, investigating the relationship between individual happiness and general progress; in his monologues he is caught between motion and stasis, calling into question the Romantic quest to integrate the language of self with its object; in The Princess he addresses contemporary debates on the role and status of women; his In Memoriam explores loss and relationship through images of the body and questions of language; Maud deals with images of masculinity and femininity in relation to to violence and sexual love; and Idylls of the King, his most imperialist and most pessimistic poem, highlights his regard for intuition and vision in the face of scientific 'laws' of nature and society. The study introduces these themes and shows how they relate to each other.

Dryden has sometimes been regarded as a writer narrowly of his period, a Restoration satirist whose work is largely concerned with the personalities, debates, and tastes of his own age. In this study David Hopkins shows him to be both a man of his time and a writer for all times - a great philosophical poet, the author of penetrating and exhilarating verse of general and permanent interest about love, the natural world, and the laws of human life. Dr Hopkins also analyses the personal, commercial, political, literary, and religious influences on his writing, and discusses in detail his major poetry, prose, and drama - paying special attention to the often neglected verse translations of his old age. With its emphasis on Dryden as a poet - as opposed simply to topical commentator or controversialist - the book will prove an ideal introduction for students of his work.

This book provides a concise introduction to Richardson, by combining a close reading of Pamela, Clarissa and Sir Charles Gerandison with a discussion of their central themes. An outsider by birth, education and profession, Richardson found common cause with women in a world that needed change. Employing forms familiar to them, letters and tales of courtship and marriage, he urged his mainly female readers to train their powers of reason and morality by debating the issues of his novels. Dr Harris explores Richardson's vision that the relationship between men and women is as politically charged as that between monarch and subject. In Clarissa this relationship is imaginatively represented by means of the characters' archetypes - Evne, Lucretia and queen Elizabeth on the one hand, Sarah, don Juan, Fault and King on the other. In Grandison, Richardson shows men what they must be if they wish to marry women like Clarissa, and argues that marriage, then the necessary female destiny, can only thus be made to work to women's advantage.

Judith Woolf's elegantly written book introduces school and university students, as well as the interested general reader, to the major novels of Henry James (1843-1916), the American writer who became a great European novelist and died a naturalised Englishman. The principal novels in which James explored his central theme, the betrayal of innocence, are discussed in a lucid way which offers fresh intrepretations and communicates to the non-specialist reader the excitement rather than the difficulty of reading James. Difficulty is nonetheless often a feature of his work, and Judith Woolf does not shun important questions. She places him in the context of the history of the English novel (Fielding, Richardson, Dickens, and George Eliot), focusing on traditions of tragic and comic vision and on the subtleties of expression and perspective enabled by the narrative form. The book includes a short account of James's life, a list of his works and their dates, and a selected guide to further criticism.

This book is designed to provide a comprehensive and stimulating introduction to T. S. Eliot's poetry for those reading and studying it. The poems, as well as some of the poetic drama (particularly Sweeney Agonistes) and relevant sections of the prose criticism, are discussed in detail and placed in relation to the development of Eliot's œuvre, and more briefly to his life and a wider context of philosophical and religious enquiry. In sections devoted to each major poem or group of poems, Martin Scofield examines Eliot's techniques of personae or masks; his use of musical effects; the tension between fragmentation and cohesion in The Waste Land and other verse; the place in his work of symbolism and imagism, as well as less explored elements such as surrealism and comedy; the relevance to his poetry of concepts worked out in his critical writing; and the criticism of his 'poetic workshop', those essays on other poets which he saw as part of the development of his own verse. One recurring theme in the study is the poetic treatment of the relationship (often conflict) between experience in life and experience in art; another is the relation between Eliot's beliefs and his poetry, and between poetry and belief in general. Eliot in his finest poems is seen above all as a poet of what he called 'the first voice', 'oppressed by the burden which he must bring to birth'. The book concludes with a detailed and helpful study of Four Quartets: here as elsewhere Martin Scofield is concerned to look first of all at the texture of the verse and the qualities of the poetic 'surface', while clarifying obscurities and explaining allusions where appropriate. Both students and general readers will find his book informative and his commitment to the poetry infectious.