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Humanities Insights
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Scholarly Essays
Poetry
Jared Curtis presents an exceptional three-volume edition showcasing Wordsworth's poetry through carefully curated reading texts drawn from the extensive twenty-one volumes of the Cornell Wordsworth collection. The first volume encompasses notable works like "Adventures on Salisbury Plain," "The Borderers," the two-part "Prelude," "The Ruined Cottage," and "Home at Grasmere." It also includes Wordsworth's publications from 1797 to 1807, such as "An Evening Walk," "Descriptive Sketches," "Lyrical Ballads," "Peter Bell," and other poems.
Volume two of this edition contains the comprehensive thirteen-book "Prelude," "Benjamin the Waggoner," "The Tuft of Primroses," and additional poems crafted for the unfinished "Recluse." Additionally, it encompasses "The Excursion," "The White Doe," as well as translations from Chaucer and Virgil.
Within the third volume, readers will discover a collection of shorter poems composed between 1807 and 1820, the extensive fourteen-book "Prelude," and the complete set of eight sonnet series, including renowned pieces like "The River Duddon" and "Ecclesiastical Sketches." This volume also embraces poems stemming from Scotland and Italy in 1833 and 1837, along with the final poems spanning from 1821 to 1850.
Jared Curtis's masterful three-volume edition offers a rich and comprehensive exploration of Wordsworth's poetic journey, meticulously curated to bring the essence of his work to the forefront.
Symbiosis
Symbiosis: A Journal of Transatlantic Literary and Cultural Relations
Since its inception in 1997, Symbiosis has been on a mission to bridge the gap that has long existed between English literatures on both sides of the Atlantic. What was once an unrecognized divide, prevalent among creative writers and institutionalized within academia, is now being transformed by the pages of our journal.
Dedicated to the intricate exploration of transatlantic literary and cultural connections between the British Isles and the Americas, Symbiosis is your gateway to a realm of insights. We welcome a diverse range of genres, theoretical approaches, and historical periods, spanning from the earliest moments of a transnational and Anglophone America to the vibrant present.
Why Choose Symbiosis? Our journal stands as an unparalleled source of knowledge and thought leadership in the realm of transatlantic literatures in English. With a laser focus on this dynamic domain, Symbiosis proudly takes center stage, capturing an ever-evolving tapestry of cultural intrigue.
"Symbiosis is a force to be reckoned with, occupying a critical space in the landscape of transatlantic literatures. It's a trailblazer, inspiring fresh perspectives on the interplay between American and British influences." - Robert Weisbuch, acclaimed author of Atlantic Double-Cross: American Literature and British Influence in the Age of Emerson (1989).
Join us on a transformative journey as we reshape academic paradigms and illuminate the connections that enrich our literary and cultural tapestry. Explore Symbiosis today and embrace the unique and compelling narratives that define our shared heritage across the Atlantic.
American Insights
This collaborative audiobook derives from the 2006 Bristol University Conference on periodicals culture in the Romantic era.
Treats Troilus and Cressida as a masterpiece in tune with 20th Century attitudes to love and war, and with literary and dramatic forms which developed through the last century.
The thoroughly insightful and engaging study guide offers a detailed commentary on the poetry of Hopkins, exploring the significance of contemporary cultural issues and the poet's life as Catholic convert and Jesuit priest.
A Literature Insight on one of the supreme achievements of Victorian fiction, stressing the experimentalism of the dual narrative and its liberal feminist implications.
Now a critical classic, Coleridge the Visionary was first published in 1959 by Chatto & Windus. This much-cited book throws light on the intellectual organisation of Coleridge's poetry and the imaginative qualities implicit in his philosophy.
“The Subject of Politics” provides a new study of Slavoj Zizek's political philosophy. Focusing on the combination of psychoanalytic theory and philosophy, the book offers an overview of Zizek's analysis of contemporary society.
A critical guide to Adorno's books on Aesthetic Theory, The Culture Industry, Negative Dialectics and Philosophy of New Music.
A historically informed and informing audio study guide to Scott's four great novels of British India -The Jewel in the Crown, The Day of the Scorpion, The Towers of Silence, A Division of the Spoils - and of the popular coda, Staying On.
This audiobook provides background for an understanding of Plato's philosophy in both ancient and contemporary contexts.
Ian McDonald is a major SF writer, whose River of Gods (2004) won the British Science Fiction Association award for Best Novel, and was shortlisted for the corresponding Hugo, Arthur C. Clarke, and British Fantasy Society awards.
A collection of audible essays from Rescue! History, a group of historians concerned with the challenge of climate change - how we got here and where we go next.
From 1787 to 1842, Wordsworth is preoccupied with the themes of loss and death, and with "natural piety" in the lives of people and nations. Beginning with his consciousness of the Bards and Druids of Cumbria, this book treats Wordsworth's oeuvre, including the "Gothic" juvenilia, The Ruined Cottage, Lyrical Ballads, Poems in Two Volumes, The Excursion, and the Poems of 1842, as unified by a Bardic vocation, to bind "the living and the dead" and to nurture "the kind".
Thomas Hardy is unique in English literature as a major novelist who is also a major poet. His collected poetry is among the most distinctive bodies of verse in the language, and includes such pinnacles of the lyric tradition as ‘The Darkling Thrush’ and the series of haunted love-elegies written in memory of his first wife Emma and such instantly recognizable titles as ‘Drummer Hodge’, ‘A Trampwoman’s Tragedy’, ‘Convergence of the Twain’. It is also among the most controversial.
This critical and contextual study guide by a very distinguished critic of Modernist literature sheds new light on Conrad's topical novel of espionage and terrorism.
A ground-breaking cultural history of Modernism and the First World War covering well-known fiction and soldiers' memoirs.
Dr. John Tanner analyses Brautigan’s fiction against the background of the cultural and literary upheavals from which it emerged and demonstrates that Brautigan is no mere Sixties curio but an innovative and vibrant American voice ignored for far too long.
This Audiobook will familiarize the reader with the basics of critical thinking and informal logic - deductive and inductive arguments, form and content, fallacies, and complex arguments.
This study guide to Imperialism by one of our most prolific historians offers a concise overview of Britain's role in Colonialism, the slavery issue, the British Raj and the scramble for Africa, and probes the motives for empire and continuing issues of post-colonialism.
This audiobook aims to introduce students (including those with little or no prior experience of the field) to the worlds of Shakespeare and his theatre revealed in King Lear.
Faulkner is notoriously a 'difficult' writer to study. This introductory study begins with three chapters clearly setting out the important facts of his life, mapping the people and history of his recurrent fictional setting, Yoknapatawpha County, and analysing the oddities and problems of his prose style.
Romantic Dialogues, first published in 2000, contributed to the modern recovery of a transatlantic dimension in literary studies.
An audiobook study of the social, political and literary thought underlying Blake's Songs and the Prophetic Books, culminating in Milton.
This Audiobook provides a stimulating and carefully structured introduction to Lawrence's short stories. It guides the reader to a deeper critical understanding of individual stories, but it also provides model commentaries on several of their most prominent narrative techniques.
The audiobook explains and discusses some key approaches in metaethics, and suggests that an account which is naturalist and objectivist might have more to commend it than is popularly allowed.
Comic novelist and critic Paul McDonald explores the philosophy of humour in a audiobook that will appeal to both philosophers and creative writers alike.
From its first publication in 1955 Nabokov's Lolita has been denounced as immoral filth, hailed as a moral masterpiece, and both praised and damned for stylistic excess. In this fresh appraisal John Lennard provides convenient overviews of Nabokov's life and of the novel (including both Kubrick's and Lyne's film-adaptations), before considering Lolita as pornography, as lepidoptery, as film noir, and as parody.
The aim of this study is to set Methodism in its historical context - theological, social and political. It examines the intellectual and ecclesiastical climate in which Methodism grew up, throws light on the motivation of John Wesley himself and illustrates the social impact of the movement under his leadership - and after his death.
This book explores connecting avenues of professional responsibility, management theory and traditional ethics, and encourages an understanding of the reasons for thinking ethically in business contexts.
This audiobook is the first in a new series of monographs entitled Contemporary American Literature.
Provides a basis for informed discussion of Richard III, one of Shakespeare’s most beautifully crafted plays, and the issues it raises – which are as ominously relevant to politics and people now as they were when it was new.
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Our Authors & Writers
Dr. Jennifer Rich was Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Writing Studies and Rhetoric at Hofstra University. Her research focused on feminist theory, rhetoric, pedagogy, and Shakespeare with teaching on courses in English, rhetoric, writing studies and women’s studies. Rich had a profound passion for teaching with a corresponding impact on her students. She did much to promote collaborative research between departments receiving a 2012 National Science Foundation grant in recognition of this and was a participant in the 2017 University Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series. In addition to her academic work Rich was also a dedicated musician and accomplished violinist having attended the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Her publications included includes essays on film, rhetoric, Shakespeare and composition, and Adorno: A Critical Guide (2015), An Introduction to Critical Theory (2010) and An Introduction to Modern Feminist Theory (2014).
Dr. Michael Cotsell is an Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Delaware. With a strong focus on Victorian and American modernist literature, he has significantly contributed to literary scholarship. Dr. Cotsell was the Associate Editor of the Dickens Companions series and edited The Companion to Our Mutual Friend. He also served as General Editor for the series English Literature and the Wider World, editing Creditable Warriors. His editorial work includes critical essays on Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities. Notably, he authored Barbara Pym and The Theater of Trauma, exploring American modernist drama and psychiatry. Dr. Cotsell's expertise includes American and Victorian literature, and the works of Paul Bowles and Barbara Pym. His ongoing research continues to delve into the intersections of psychiatry and American modernism.
Michael Hattaway was educated at Victoria University of Wellington and Cambridge University. He taught at Kent, British Columbia, Massachusetts, and New York University in London. He was Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Sheffield. His publications included Shakespeare in the New Europe (1994), Renaissance and Reformations (2005), studies of Hamlet (1987) and Richard II (2008), editions of Henry VI Parts I, II, and III (1990-1993), As You Like It (2009), and A New Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture (2010).
Stuart Andrews is now Librarian of Wells & Mendip Museum, UK, after more than 30 years of teaching at Clifton College. His special interest is the way propaganda shapes public perceptions of events. Among his publications are The British Periodical Press and the French Revolution 1789-99 (2000), Irish Rebellion: Protestant Polemic 1798-1900 (2006), Methodism and Society (2007) and Lenin’s Revolution (2007).
Chris Ackerley earned his BA and MA at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and his PhD at the University of Toronto. He has taught at the University of Otago since 1976 and is now Emeritus Professor. Specialising in annotation, particularly of Malcolm Lowry and Samuel Beckett, his books include A Companion to Under the Volcano (1984), Demented Particulars: The Annotated Murphy (2004), The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett (2006), and Obscure Locks, Simple Keys: The Annotated “Watt” (2005).
Dr. Andrew Harrison specialises in D.H. Lawrence studies. He is the founding editor of the Journal of D.H. Lawrence Studies and serves on the Editorial Board of Katherine Mansfield Studies. As Director of the D.H. Lawrence Research Centre, he plays a pivotal role in Lawrence scholarship. He is also a council member of the D.H. Lawrence Society of Great Britain and a member of the D.H. Lawrence Society of North America. His works include D.H. Lawrence and Italian Futurism (2003) and Sons and Lovers essays (2005).
Petros Stefaneas is an associate professor of logic and formal methods in computer science at the Department of Mathematics of the National Technical University of Athens, Greece.
Neil Wenborn has published widely both in Britain and in the United States. His works include biographies of Haydn, Stravinsky and Dvořák.
Stephen Siddall was Head of English at The Leys School in Cambridge for 31 years and has taught Shakespeare courses for university students and for the University of Cambridge International Summer School in Shakespeare.
John Tanner was born in South Wales, graduated from Swansea University, and worked as a journalist on regional and national newspapers before becoming a corporate executive with a publishing group.
Jared Curtis, Professor Emeritus of English at Simon Fraser University, is the editor of Poems, in Two Volumes and Other Poems, 1800-1807, Last Poems, 1821-1850, and co-editor with Carol Landon of Early Poems and Fragments, 1785-1797, all in the Cornell Wordsworth.
John Lennard took his B.A. and D.Phil. at Oxford University, and his M.A. at Washington University in St Louis. He has taught for the Universities of London, Cambridge, and Notre Dame, and for the Open University, and was Professor of British and American Literature at the University of the West Indies—Mona 2004–09.
Charles Moseley teaches English and Classics in the University of Cambridge, and was formerly Programme Director of the University's International summer Schools in Shakespeare and English Literature.
Dr. Paul McDonald was a Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Course Leader for Creative Writing at the University of Wolverhampton, with his research largely focusing on comedy. He is the author of twelve books, including three poetry collections and three comic novels.
W. J. B. Owen's scholarly work included his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1957), Wordsworth as Critic (1969), Wordsworth's Literary Criticism (1974) and his edition of The Fourteen-Book Prelude for the Cornell Wordsworth (1985).
Laura Vivanco has a PhD from the University of St Andrews and is an independent scholar of romance fiction including both modern popular romance and mediaeval Hispanic literature.
The founder of Humanities ebooks. Dr. Richard Gravil taught at the University of Victoria, B.C., the University of Lodz, Poland and the University of Otago, New Zealand. He concluded his teaching career as Course Leader of the University of Exeter MA in Anglo-American Literary Relations.
Professor John Bernard Beer, M.A., Ph.D., Litt.D., FBA, Coleridge scholar, Emeritus Fellow of Peterhouse, and former Research Fellow of St John’s College.
Sandra L. Dwyer, Ph.D. is Lecturer in the department of philosophy at Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia. She coordinates graduate student teachers who teach critical thinking and business ethics for the departments of philosophy and religious studies.
Awards & Accolades
