Cedric Watts, Emeritus Professor of English at Sussex University, gathers here fifteen of his literary essays which were previously published in a diversity of locations. They include some of his most popular and controversial pieces, notably: ' The Semiotics of Othello'; 'Bakhtin's Monologism'; 'Haunting Conrad's Under Western Eyes'; and 'Jews and Degenerates in The Secret Agent'. Several of the essays concern Shakespeare and Conrad, but there are also discussions of Keats, Sterne, Kipling, D. H. Lawrence, and Edward FitzGerald's translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.