The Oxford Book of Comic Verse

The Oxford Book of Comic Verse
Author: John Gross
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 558
Release: 1994
Genre: Humor
ISBN:

Draws on a wide range of verse forms such as epigrams, street ballads, classical poetry, Augustan satire, and advertising jingles.

The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry

The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry
Author: Matthew Bevis
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 913
Release: 2013-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199576467

The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry offers an authorative collection of original essays and is an essential resource for those interested in Victorian poetry and poetics.

The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose

The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose
Author: Frank Muir
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 1162
Release: 2002
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780192803795

In this magisterial collection, Frank Muir guides the reader on a journey of discovery and delight through five centuries of humorous prose in the English language.Starting in London with William Caxton and a Preface written and printed in 1477, and ending with P. G. Wodehouse whose last novel was published in 1977, the route is meandering: from England to Ireland and Scotland, back to England again, on to America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. There areexamples chosen from humorous fiction, letters, and journalism written by over 200 authors and ranging from medieval jests to the New Yorker and Beachcomber; from Thomas Nashe and Tom Brown's galloping bawdy to Jane Austen and on to Garrison Keillor and Arthur Marshall; from the jokes in SamuelJohnson's Dictionary to Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim and his hangover. The great humorous writers such as Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and P. G. Wodehouse are given a kind of mini-anthology of their own so that the range and versatility of their work can be appreciated.The extracts are embedded in a commentary that sets the writers in their historical context with items of contemporary gossip and anecdotal biography.As tour leader of this enjoyable enterprise, there could be no one better than Frank Muir to entertain, inform, and above all amuse the reader in his own distinctive fashion.

The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes

The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes
Author: John Gross
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2008
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0199543410

In The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, master anthologist John Gross brings together a delectable smorgasbord of literary tales, offering striking new insight into some of the most important writers in history. Many of the anecdotes here are funny, others are touching, outrageous, sinister, inspiring, or downright weird. They show writers from Chaucer to Bob Dylan acting both unpredictably and deeply in character. The range is wide--this is a book which finds room for Milton and Shakespeare, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, Kurt Vonnegut and P. G. Wodehouse, Chinua Achebe and Salman Rushdie, James Baldwin and Tom Wolfe. It is also a book in which you can find out which great historian's face was once mistaken for a baby's bottom, which film star experienced a haunting encounter with Virginia Woolf not long before her death, and what Agatha Christie really thought of her popular character Hercule Poirot. It is in short an unrivalled collection of literary gossip offering intimate glimpses into the lives of authors ranging from Shakespeare to Philip Roth--a book not just for lovers of literature, but for anyone with a taste for the curiosities of human nature.

The New Oxford Book of English Prose

The New Oxford Book of English Prose
Author: John Gross
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 1064
Release: 1998
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

This is a unique anthology. Drawing on the full range of English prose, wherever it has been written, it illustrates the growth, development, and resources of the language from the legends of Sir Thomas Malory to the novels of Kashuo Ishiguro. In the process it reveals a variety ofachievements which no other language can match. The book represents an enormous diversity of men and women - from John Bunyan to John Updike, from Brendan Behan to Chinua Achebe, from Dorothy Wordsworth to Patrick White. As the centuries progress, American writers increase their presence, and by the twentieth century there are contributions fromIndia, Australia, Canada, Nigeria, the Caribbean and many other parts of the world. The selection is no less remarkable for its breadth in terms of subject-matter and treatment. Fiction is generously represented, but many other kinds of writing have also been drawn on: letters, diaries, and memoirs; history and philosophy; criticism and reportage; sermons and satire; travel-books;reflections on art, science, politics and sport. There are classic and well-loved passages, and also a great deal that is unfamiliar. John Gross has chosen with consummate skill to produce a volume that is both a testimonial to English prose and an endless source of pleasurable browsing.

The Penguin Book of British Comic Stories

The Penguin Book of British Comic Stories
Author: Patricia Craig
Publisher: Viking Adult
Total Pages: 552
Release: 1990
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN:

Anthology of twentieth-century short stories, presented chronologically, by authors ranging from Saki to Graham Greene, Angela Carter and Richard Crompton.

Mourt's Relation

Mourt's Relation
Author: Anonymous
Publisher: Applewood Books
Total Pages: 129
Release: 1986-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0918222842

Presents an account, first published in 1622, of the Pilgrim's journey to the new world.

The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry

The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry
Author: Matthew Bevis
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 913
Release: 2013-10-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0191653020

'I am inclined to think that we want new forms . . . as well as thoughts', confessed Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning in 1845. The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry provides a closely-read appreciation of the vibrancy and variety of Victorian poetic forms, and attends to poems as both shaped and shaping forces. The volume is divided into four main sections. The first section on 'Form' looks at a few central innovations and engagements—'Rhythm', 'Beat', 'Address', 'Rhyme', 'Diction', 'Syntax', and 'Story'. The second section, 'Literary Landscapes', examines the traditions and writers (from classical times to the present day) that influence and take their bearings from Victorian poets. The third section provides 'Readings' of twenty-three poets by concentrating on particular poems or collections of poems, offering focused, nuanced engagements with the pleasures and challenges offered by particular styles of thinking and writing. The final section, 'The Place of Poetry', conceives and explores 'place' in a range of ways in order to situate Victorian poetry within broader contexts and discussions: the places in which poems were encountered; the poetic representation and embodiment of various sites and spaces; the location of the 'Victorian' alongside other territories and nationalities; and debates about the place - and displacement - of poetry in Victorian society. This Handbook is designed to be not only an essential resource for those interested in Victorian poetry and poetics, but also a landmark publication—provocative, seminal volume that will offer a lasting contribution to future studies in the area.