"This study focuses on the role of the philosophical novel--a genre that favors abstract concepts, or 'thinking about thinking,' over style, plot, or character development--and the role of philosophy more broadly in the intellectual life of the African...

"Reflections on a lost poem and its rediscovery by contemporary poets. Gilgamesh is the most ancient long poem known to exist. It is also the newest classic in the canon of world literature. Lost for centuries to the sands of the Middle East but found...

A comparative history of the practices, technologies, institutions, and people that created distinct literary traditions around the world, from ancient to modern timesLiterature is such a familiar and widespread form of imaginative expression today that...

One of the finest literary critics of her generation, Maud Ellmann synthesises her work on modernism, psychoanalysis and Irish literature in this important new book. In sinuous readings of Henry James, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, she examines the...

This Word-Book is presumably the only work of Jonathan Swift's not in print, until now. Since the 1690s, Swift had been formulating a list of words and definitions for his protégé Esther Johnson, beginning with terms from the Book of Common Prayer. His...

Over the last twenty years, critics and historians of the late Eighteenth-century have developed a multidisciplinary approach to the history of culture. This dialogue between literary critics and theorists, art historians and social historians is...

Mimi Schwartz’s father was born Jewish in a tiny German village thirty years before the advent of Hitler when, as he’d tell her, “We all got along.” In her original memoir, Good Neighbors, Bad Times, Schwartz explored how human decency fared among...

Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for BiographyLonglisted for The Orwell Prize for Political WritingAn electric portrait of the artist as a young woman that asks how a writer finds her voice in a society that prefers women to be silent, from the...

“One of our smartest, most inventive humor writers, Ortberg combines bathos and the devotional into a revelation.” —Jordy Rosenberg, The New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of Texts From Jane Eyre and Merry Spinster,...

Leo Bersani’s career spans more than fifty years and extends across a wide spectrum of fields—including French studies, modernism, realist fiction, psychoanalytic criticism, film studies, and queer theory. Throughout this new collection of essays that...

One of the most anticipated books of 2017: Boston Globe, New York Times Book Review, New York's "Vulture", The Week, Bustle, BookRiotAn NPR Best Book of 2017An AV Club Favorite Book of 2017A Barnes & Noble Best Book of 2017A Goodreads Choice Awards...

A timely, nuanced work that dissects the thorny debate around cultural appropriation and the literary imagination.How do we properly define cultural appropriation, and is it always wrong? If we can write in the voice of another, should we? And if so,...

In Recollections of My Life as a Woman, Diane di Prima explores the first three decades of her extraordinary life. Born into a conservative Italian American family, di Prima grew up in Brooklyn but broke away from her roots to follow through on a...

A compilation of the best essays written by the father of transcendentalism, with selections from Emerson’s lectures on history, art, politics, and moreIn the words of Harold Bloom, “Emerson's prose is his triumph, both as eloquence and as insight. After...

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • "A memoir in essays about so many things—growing up in an abusive cult, coming of age as a lesbian in the military, forced out by homophobia, living on the margins as a working class woman and what it’s like to grow into the...

Explore 2,000 years of conspiracy in fiction.Outstanding Academic Title, ChoiceFascination with the arcane is a driving force in this comprehensive survey of conspiracy fiction. Theodore Ziolkowski traces the evolution of cults, orders, lodges, secret...

A New York Times Notable BookA revised collection with thirteen essays, including six new to this edition and seven from the original edition, by the “star in the American literary firmament, with a voice that is courageous, honest, loving, and...

A study of the first years of Poetry Magazine and editor Harriet Monroe.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • One of the most gifted and innovative writers of our time discloses a private life every bit as unique and fascinating as his bestselling novels.“Superb memoir...a moving account of [Amis’s] coming of age as an artist and a man.”...

The first-ever collection of essays by one of our most distinguished and distinctive poets, Pulitzer Prize-winner and former Poet Laureate of the United States, Kay Ryan Synthesizing Gravity gathers for the first time a thirty-year selection of Kay...