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Introduction
No full textBook synopsis: This anthology collects together some of the most famous examples of the Gothic tale in the 1890s, with stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Vernon Lee, Henry James and Arthur Machen, as well as some lesser known yet superbly chilling tales from the era. The introduction explores the many reasons for the Gothic revival, and how it spoke to the anxieties of the moment.
The only mainstream anthology to bring together the defining Gothic tales of the 1890s
Complements and deepens the context for the most enduring Gothic fiction of the period: Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Stoker's Dracula
Mixes well-known authors with the more obscure and brings together stories usually only available in obscure editions or in single-author collections
All texts derive from initial publication in the 1890s, rather than their subsequent, often revised, versions
Notes provide short biographies of the authors and the introduction explains the diverse reasons for the Gothic reviva
Introduction
No full textBook synopsis: A new selection of Lovecraft's core 'classic' fictions, bringing together in one volume his most representative and influential tales.
The first collection to provide a full contextual introduction which explores the meaning of 'weird fiction' and offers a balanced assessment of the place of the author in relation to the Gothic tradition and American fiction in the 1920s and 1930s.
Includes an extract from Lovecraft's important critical essay, 'Supernatural Horror in Literature'.
Includes a chronology, bibliography, and notes to provide additional contextual interest.
Lovecraft's influence extends from Jorge Luis Borges to Stephen King, the films of the Alien series and the fantasy cinema of Guillermo del Toro.
'Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men. A time will come - but I must not and cannot think!'
H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was a reclusive scribbler of horror stories for the American pulp magazines that specialized in Gothic and science fiction in the interwar years. He often published in Weird Tales and has since become the key figure in the slippery genre of 'weird fiction'. Lovecraft developed an extraordinary vision of feeble men driven to the edge of sanity by glimpses of malign beings that have survived from human prehistory or by malevolent extra-terrestrial visitations. The ornate language of his stories builds towards grotesque moments of revelation, quite unlike any other writer.
This new selection brings together nine of his classic tales, focusing on the 'Cthulhu Mythos', a cycle of stories that develops the mythology of the Old Ones, the monstrous creatures who predate human life on earth. It includes the Introduction from Lovecraft's critical essay, 'Supernatural Horror in Literature', in which he gave his own important definition of 'weird fiction'. In a fascinating contextual introduction, Roger Luckhurst gives Lovecraft the attention he deserves as a writer who used pulp fiction to explore a remarkable philosophy that shockingly dethrones the mastery of man
Introduction
No full textBook synopsis: Henry James's most popular novel, this new edition introduces Portrait as both a culmination of Victorian Realism and the beginnings of the emergence of a new 'Modernist' style that explores interior states of consciousness as well as the individual's place in society.
Thorough notes pay special attention to the numerous changes James made between the first edition and the revised New York Edition, reproduced here.
Excellent contextualizing introduction discusses the pivotal place of the novel in James's career and on the cusp of Modernism, its place in the tradition of the Bildungsroman, and James's famous literary style.
Up-to-date bibliography.
New chronology .
New to this edition
Introduction by Roger Luckhurst
Up-to-date bibliography
Chronology of the author
Explanatory Notes
Re-set text
'One ought to choose something very deliberately, and be faithful to that.'
Isabel Archer is a young, intelligent, and spirited American girl, determined to relish her first experience of Europe. She rejects two eligible suitors in her fervent commitment to liberty and independence, declaring that she will never marry. Thanks to the generosity of her devoted cousin Ralph, she is free to make her own choice about her destiny. Yet in the intoxicating worlds of Paris, Florence, and Rome, her fond illusions of self-reliance are twisted by the machinations of her friends and apparent allies. What had seemed to be a vista of infinite promise steadily closes around her and becomes instead a 'house of suffocation'.
Considered by many as one of the finest novels in the English language, this is Henry James's most poised achievement, written at the height of his fame in 1881. It is at once a dramatic Victorian tale of betrayal and a wholly modern psychological study of a woman caught in a web of relations she only comes to understand too late. This edition reproduces the revised New York Edition, with James's own Preface
Introduction
No full textBook synopsis: Henry James's most popular novel, this new edition introduces Portrait as both a culmination of Victorian Realism and the beginnings of the emergence of a new 'Modernist' style that explores interior states of consciousness as well as the individual's place in society.
Thorough notes pay special attention to the numerous changes James made between the first edition and the revised New York Edition, reproduced here.
Excellent contextualizing introduction discusses the pivotal place of the novel in James's career and on the cusp of Modernism, its place in the tradition of the Bildungsroman, and James's famous literary style.
Up-to-date bibliography.
New chronology .
New to this edition
Introduction by Roger Luckhurst
Up-to-date bibliography
Chronology of the author
Explanatory Notes
Re-set text
'One ought to choose something very deliberately, and be faithful to that.'
Isabel Archer is a young, intelligent, and spirited American girl, determined to relish her first experience of Europe. She rejects two eligible suitors in her fervent commitment to liberty and independence, declaring that she will never marry. Thanks to the generosity of her devoted cousin Ralph, she is free to make her own choice about her destiny. Yet in the intoxicating worlds of Paris, Florence, and Rome, her fond illusions of self-reliance are twisted by the machinations of her friends and apparent allies. What had seemed to be a vista of infinite promise steadily closes around her and becomes instead a 'house of suffocation'.
Considered by many as one of the finest novels in the English language, this is Henry James's most poised achievement, written at the height of his fame in 1881. It is at once a dramatic Victorian tale of betrayal and a wholly modern psychological study of a woman caught in a web of relations she only comes to understand too late. This edition reproduces the revised New York Edition, with James's own Preface.
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
Introduction
No full textBook synopsis: Henry James's most popular novel, this new edition introduces Portrait as both a culmination of Victorian Realism and the beginnings of the emergence of a new 'Modernist' style that explores interior states of consciousness as well as the individual's place in society
Introduction
No full textBook synopsis: A new edition of one of the greatest horror stories in English literature, the novel that spawned a myth and a proliferation of vampire franchises in film, television, graphic novels, cartoons, and teen fiction.
Includes a lively and fascinating Introduction that considers Stoker's Irish heritage, the Gothic genre and vampire legend, sexual allegory, and the social and cultural contexts that feed into the novel: the New Woman, new technology, race, immigration, and religion.
Chronology of Bram Stoker and Timeline of Vampire Literature before Dracula.
Comprehensive Explanatory Notes flesh out vampire mythology and historical allusions.
Includes an appendix featuring Stoker's short story, 'Dracula's Guest', an early draft or abandoned chapter that was not published as part of the novel.
New to this edition
Critically up-to-date Introduction by Roger Luckhurst.
Expanded Notes by Roger Luckhurst.
Timeline of Vampire Literature before Dracula.
Updated Select Bibliography.
Appendix: Bram Stoker's short story, 'Dracula's Guest'.
Newly typeset text of novel in larger typeface.
'it was butcher work...the horrid screeching as the stake drove home; the plunging of writhing form, and lips of bloody foam'
Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic shocker introduced Count Dracula to the world, an ancient creature bent on bringing his contagion to London, the very heart of the British Empire. Only a handful of men and women stand between Dracula and his long-cherished goal, but they are vulnerable and weak against the cunning and supernatural powers of the Count and his legions. As the horrifying story unfolds in the diaries and letters of young Jonathan Harker, Lucy, Mina, and Dr Seward, Dracula will be victorious unless his nemesis Professor Van Helsing can persuade them that monsters still lurk in the era of electric light.
The most famous of all vampire stories, Dracula is a mirror of its age, its underlying themes of race, religion, science, superstition, and sexuality never far from the surface. A compelling read, rattling along at break-neck speed, it is a modern classic. This new edition includes Stoker's companion piece, 'Dracula's Guest'
'From Scientific Romance to Science Fiction: 1870-1914'
No full textBook synopsis: Science fiction (SF) has existed as a popular genre for around 150 years. This book offers a survey of the genre from nineteenth-century pioneers to contemporary authors, introducing the plural versions of early SF across the world, before examining the emergence of the ‘scientific romance’ in the 1880s and 1890s. The ‘Golden Age’ of writers’ expansive SF pulp was concentrated in the 1930s, consolidated by best-selling writers like Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. The contributors to this volume also track the increasingly diverse forms SF took from the 1950s onwards.Leading international scholars, writing in an accessible style, consider SF as a ‘world’ literature, referencing works from diverse traditions in Latin America, Europe, Russia and the Far East. This book combines discussion of central figures of the tradition with a new global reach
Passages in the invention of the psyche: mind-reading in London 1881-4
No full textBook synopsis: Transactions and Encounters brings together essays by leading scholars exploring the complex interface of culture and science in the Victorian era.
Long before the so-called 'two-cultures' conflict, Victorians encountered science in unpredictable ways, being surprised and enchanted as much as threatened by emerging technologies or the claims of newly professional scientists. Transactions and Encounters examines a diverse range of such moments: the popular craze for microscopes; the uncanny possibilities of the telephone; the jostling for authority between literature and science, with scenes by and including Dickens and Lewes, Huxley and Gosse; the weird imaginary around androgynous barnacles; and the competing versions of a mind-reading act.
These essays combine to produce an invigorating and involving attempt to re-cast understandings of nineteenth-century encounters between the cultural and scientific spheres
Dracula and psychology
No full textBook synopsis: Bram Stoker's Dracula is the most famous vampire in literature and film. This new collection of sixteen essays brings together a range of internationally renowned scholars to provide a series of pathways through this celebrated Gothic novel and its innumerable adaptations and translations. The volume illuminates the novel's various pre-histories, critical contexts and subsequent cultural transformations. Chapters explore literary history, Gothic revival scholarship, folklore, anthropology, psychology, sexology, philosophy, occultism, cultural history, critical race theory, theatre and film history, and the place of the vampire in Europe and beyond. These studies provide an accessible guide of cutting-edge scholarship to one of the most celebrated modern Gothic horror stories. This Companion will serve as a key resource for scholars, teachers and students interested in the enduring force of Dracula and the seemingly inexhaustible range of the contexts it requires and readings it might generate
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