Since the late 1980s, queer studies and theory have become vital to the intellectual life of the U.S. This has been, to no small degree, due to the popularity of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's critically acclaimed Epistemology of the Closet. Working from classic texts of European and American writers--including Herman Melville, Henry James, Marcel Proust, and Oscar Wilde--Sedgwick delineates a historical moment in which sexual identity became as important a demarcation of personhood as gender had been for centuries. Sedgwick's literary analysis, while provocative and often startling (you will never read Billy Budd or The Picture of Dorian Gray the same way again), is simply the basis for a larger project of examining and analyzing how the categories of "homosexual" and "heterosexual" continue to shape almost all aspects of contemporary thought. Epistemology of the Closet is a sometimes-dense work, but one filled with wit and empathy. Sedgwick writes with great intelligence and an eye for irony, but always makes clear that her theories and critical acumen are in the service of a politic that seeks to make the world a better and more humane place for everyone. An extraordinary book that reshapes how we think about literature, sexuality, and everyday life. --Michael Bronski

"It's the spring of 1938 and no longer safe to be a Jew in Vienna. Nineteen-year-old Elise Landau is forced to leave her glittering life of parties and champagne to become a parlour maid in England."-- Back cover.

Gordon Lish's first novel tells the story of a serial killer who wants Truman Capote to write his biography. In the letter the killer writes to Capote, the details of his life and his modus operandi are revealed.

Traces the evolution of the Romantic approach to literary criticism and compares it to the other methods which prevailed in the early nineteenth century.

Harold Brodkey's masterful first volume of short fiction, with two never-before anthologized stories. When originally published in 1958, First Love and Other Sorrows won Harold Brodkey widespread acclaim and announced a brilliant new arrival on the literary scene. Brodkey was hailed as an "unusually gifted writer" (The Atlantic) and a "rich talent" (San Francisco Chronicle), whose stories read like "murmured confidences, highly personal yet carefully contrived" (Chicago Tribune). In First Love and Other Sorrows, the young Brodkey chronicles the world of the educated and affluent middle class of the 1950s, at leisure and in love. He establishes the themes that would appear throughout his career--the painful uncertainties of childhood, the halting intimacies of social life--with rare terness, humor, and haunting insight. Two new stories, never before collected, from Brodkey's early writings join the original volume to complete a much-loved classic.

"The author explores this tradition in depth and defines it with a breadth of vision, a dynamic vigor and freedom rarely paralleled today....His method, flexible, generous, humane in the best sense of the word, eschews pedantry, dogma, useless theorizing and scholastic argumentation."--The New York Times Book Review. "I wish to make it clear that The Gates of Horn represents an outstanding critical accomplishment."--Saturday Review. In the Odyssey, Homer describes two gates of the one of ivory through which fictitious dreams pass, and the other of horn, through which nothing but the truth may pass. Realism is the type of literature that passes through the horn, and in this significant study of the genre Levin examines a major form of Realism--the French novel--and focuses on five of its masters--Stendahl, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, and Proust. Now available in paperback, Levin's study is a veritable reconstruction of the artistic and intellectual life of a nation.

Murder, marriage, and metaphysics link the bizarre series of events in this high-spirited comedy, winner of the Evening Standard's Best Play Award. George Moore is an aging professor of moral philosophy whose quest to compose a lecture on "Man--Good, Bad, or Indifferent?" is put on hold while he ponders the existence of his sock. He is joined by his youthful wife, Dotty, a former musical star on a downward spiral whose charm may explain the corpse in the next room; George's specially trained hare, Thumper; and a chorus of poorly trained gymnasts whose exploits set the stage for this topsy-turvy world. --from Amazon

This grand old (1938) musical was revived in London in 1984 and came to New York in 1986. The late Viscount Hareford had a youthful, unfortunate marriage – and kept discreetly out of sight was a son and heir. The Hareford Hall set are despondent when the family solicitor finds the legitimate heir in the less than desirable Lambeth area of London. When Bill is brought to Hampshire, he is forced to decide if he should fit in with high society and lose his Cockney roots and his girlfriend.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the [postwar] period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. ... Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. ... Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn t know it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn t happening. It didn t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis. Pinter s depictions of the ravages of the American Empire since 1945 [is unrivalled]. It.[comes as] one searing rhetorical lightening bolt. It will go into the history books, alongside such imperishable excoriations of empire as the speeches Thucidides put into the mouths of the Melians, and Tacitus into the mouth of Calgacus. Alexander Cockburn

THE STORY: AFTER MISS JULIE transposes August Strindberg's 1888 play about sex and class to an English country house on the eve of Labour's historic landslide in 1945.

Thomas Penman is the acclaimed autobiographical debut novel by Oscar-winning screenwriter Bruce Robinson, the author of "Withnail and I". This is the story of a dysfunctional family. It is about a boy and his grandpa, life and death, sex and hate, dog's meat and cancer. It is also about pornography, enemas, Morse codes, puberty, secrets, God and loathing. It is also about love.

Two middle aged men were brought as children out of Nazi Germany and parted from their parents forever. One forgets all memories while the other is a damaged person, a man of sorrows.

"Conrad in Quest of His Youth" by Leonard Merrick: a charming romantic comedy set in the vibrant theatrical world of early 20th-century London. This delightful story explores the exuberance of young love and the often-humorous trials of finding one's place in the world. Subtitled "An Extravagance of Temperament," Merrick's work captures the spirit of a bygone era with wit and warmth. A classic of British literature, this tale of youthful passion and self-discovery resonates with timeless appeal. Rediscover this literary gem, meticulously prepared for print republication, and be swept away by the enduring charm of "Conrad in Quest of His Youth." A perfect blend of literary fiction, romance, and humor. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Paul Cantor provides a new and clearly structured introduction to Shakespeare's most famous tragedy. Hamlet's status as tragic hero and the central enigma of the delayed revenge are seen in the light of the play's historical place in the Renaissance at the crossroads of the Christian and the classical traditions. The dramatic and poetic techniques used in the play are discussed, and a final chapter deals with the uniquely varied reception of Hamlet on the stage and in literature generally, from the seventeenth century to the present day.

More than most novelists, Virginia Woolf benefits by an introducer. She is never, either by intention or equipment, the expected novelist. She chose the novel to adapt it deliberately and progressively to be the vehicle of her own subtle perception. Behind this study of the novels is an intense interest in the person revealed in the novelist. The criticism is warm as well as acute and the whole study is felt to be a tribute reasoned and justified - to a woman sensitive, compassionate, passionately honest and eager only for truth; to an artist quite unsparing of her own labour, finely gifted, self-effacing, serious and humourous. Mrs Bennett added two chapters on A Writer's Diary and on Virginia Woolf's critical essays for the second edition. Both can help our understanding of Virginia Woolf the novelist; the Diary by the insight it gives into her creative process and the fuller understanding we can gain of technical problems, the essays because they are about novels and novelists.

Paperback. One or two minor marks on exterior; the lightest of wear to spine ends. A very good copy. TS

Doctors becoming ill, the shortcomings of opera, phoning Larkin from America, the peer with the Harold Wilson pin-up, the etiquette of poetry readings, this is Abse on the human race and, as his grandson corrects him, the egg-and-spoon race of life too. Witty, pointed, tender, gently self-mocking, Intermittent Journals is a stimulating, sometimes argumentative set of contemplations provoking both outright laughter and pause for serious thought.

Isaac D'Israeli's Amenities of Literature was published in 1841, when the author was seventy-five years old. The title was adopted to connect it with two preceding volumes, Curiosities of Literature and Miscellanies of Literature . As the author writes in the preface, this book was intended to form a portion of a much larger work that was never completed. "A history of our vernacular literature has occupied my studies for many years. It was my design, not to furnish an ari

"A blistering, brilliant novel from the Booker-shortlisted author, elegantly reflecting his Geoffrey Faber Memorial award-winning story collection The Quantity Theory of Insanity. In The Quantity Theory of Morality, Will Self 's unconventional new novel, his pen remains dipped in vitriol and elegance as ever. In this dark yet hilariously satirical "state-of-an-era novel," Self 's target is a collective morality that is nothing more or less than pure sociability. His middle-class, middle-English characters appear trapped in a timeless go-round of polite chitchat in dinner parties that refract like a hall of mirrors as the novel progresses, until one day someone says something to the effect of, "This way to the gas chamber, please, ladies and gentlemen." The Quantity Theory of Morality finally solves the equation of time and money that dominates our lives, in a way that is simultaneously deranging, destabilizing, and hilarious. With recurring-if defeated-appearances from now-canonical characters like Zack Busner, the repetition of each chapter, or "Proposition," shows Will Self to be both a master of satire and slapstick humor and a sublime and thoughtful critic of the alienation of modern life. With The Quantity Theory of Morality, Self provides the sequel to his award-winning debut of thirty-four years ago: The Quantity Theory of Insanity. That literary psycho-surgery proved there wasn't enough sanity to go around-now he's established what many of us fear to be the absolute truth: there isn't enough good to go around, either"-- Provided by publisher.