The Corn King and the Spring Queen

The Corn King and the Spring Queen
Author: Naomi Mitchison
Publisher: Canongate Books
Total Pages: 671
Release: 2010-07-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1847675123

Introduced by Naomi Mitchison. Set over two thousand years ago on the clam and fertile shores of the Black Sea, Naomi Mitchison’s The Corn King and the Spring Queen tells of ancient civilisations where tenderness, beauty and love vie with brutality and dark magic. Erif Der, a young witch, is compelled by her father to marry his powerful rival, Tarrik the Corn King, so becoming the Spring Queen. Forced by her father, she uses her magic spells to try and break Tarrik’s power. But one night Tarrik rescues Sphaeros, an Hellenic philosopher, from a shipwreck. Sphaeros in turn rescues Tarrik from near death and so breaks the enchantment that has bound him. And so begins for Tarrik a Quest – a fabulous voyage of discovery which will bring him new knowledge and which will reunite him with his beautiful Spring Queen. ‘This breathtaking recreation of life in the ancient world welds the power of myth and magic to a stirring plot.’ Ian Rankin

Men and Women Writers of the 1930s

Men and Women Writers of the 1930s
Author: Janet Montefiore
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2003-09-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1134915004

Men and Women Writers of the 1930s is a searching critique of the issues of memory and gender during this dynamic decade. Montefiore asks two principle questions; what part does memory play in the political literature of and about 1930s Britain? And what were the roles of women, both as writers and as signifying objects in constructing that literature? Montefiore's topical analysis of 1930s mass unemployment, fascist uprise and 'appeasement' is shockingly relevant in society today. Issues of class, anti-fascist historical novels, post war memoirs of 'Auden generation' writers and neglected women poets are discussed at length. Writers include: * George Orwell * Virginia Woolf * W.H. Auden * Storm Jameson * Jean Rhys * Rebecca West

Gendering Classicism

Gendering Classicism
Author: Ruth Hoberman
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 220
Release: 1997-04-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780791433362

Gendering Classicism explores the intersection of feminism, historical fiction, and modernism through the work of six writers, all of whom wrote historical novels set in ancient Greece or Rome: Naomi Mitchison, Mary Butts, Laura Riding, Phyllis Bentley, Bryher, and Mary Renault. As women gained access to higher education in the late nineteenth century, they gained access also to the classical learning that had for so long demarcated and legitimated the British ruling classes. Steeped in misogyny, the classical tradition presented educated women with a massive project: the recasting of that tradition in terms that acknowledged the existence of women - as historical agents and interpreters of the historical past.

Randall Jarrell and His Age

Randall Jarrell and His Age
Author: Stephen Burt
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2002
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780231125949

Amid the resurgence of interest in Randall Jarrell, Stephen Burt offers this brilliant analysis of the poet and essayist.".

Travel Light

Travel Light
Author: Naomi Mitchison
Publisher: Small Beer Press
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2005
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1931520143

A young woman is transformed by a magical journey.

The Blood Of The Martyrs

The Blood Of The Martyrs
Author: Naomi Mitchison
Publisher: Canongate Books
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2010-07-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1847674933

Introduced by Donald Smith. Set in Rome during Nero’s reign of terror, The Blood of the Martyrs is a disciplined historical novel tracing the destruction of one cell of the early church. With a cast of slaves, ordinary Roman people, exiles and entertainers, it is thorough in its historical interpretation and in its determination to make the past accessible and readable. Written in 1938-9, the novel contains many symbolic parallels to the rise of European fascism in the 1930s and the desperate plight of persecuted minorities such as the Jews and the left-wing activists with whom Naomi Mitchison personally campaigned at the time. With the invasion of Britain a real possibility, she felt compelled to write a testament to the power of human solidarity which, even faced with death, can overcome the worst that human evil can achieve. The Blood of the Martyrs is the least autobiographical of Mitchison’s major works of fiction, yet, with its implicit credo, is her most passionately self-revealing. ‘ . . . when a novelist is historically faithful in these treacherous waters of the human psyche, the results are tremendous. As a twentieth-century woman, it no doubt hurt Naomi Mitchison a good deal to describe the savagery of the early Christian persecution in The Blood of the Martyrs . . . But it is the pain that gives the history its lifeblood. The imagination that is a novelist’s fuel must be harnessed to serve history as history was, not as anyone wishes it had been.’ Joanna Trollope

100 Must-read Historical Novels

100 Must-read Historical Novels
Author: Nick Rennison
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2009-09-21
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1408136066

Historical fiction is a hugely popular genre of fiction providing fictional accounts or dramatizations of historical figures or events. This latest guide in the highly successful Bloomsbury Must-Reads series depicts 100 of the finest novels published in this sector, with a further 500 recommendations. A wide range of classic works and key authors are covered: Peter Ackroyd, Margaret Attwood, Sarah Waters, Victor Hugo and Robert Louis Stevenson to name a few. If you want to expand your reading in this area, or gain a deeper understanding of the genre - this is the best place to start! Inside you'll find: - An extended Introduction to historical fiction - 100 titles highlighted A-Z by novel with 500 Read-on recommendations - Read-on-a-theme categories - Award winners and book club recommendations

Unbelief in Interwar Literary Culture

Unbelief in Interwar Literary Culture
Author: Suzanne Hobson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2022-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0192846477

This volume offers a new account of the relationship between literary and secularist scenes of writing in interwar Britain. Organized secularism has sometimes been seen as a phenomenon that lived and died with the nineteenth century. But associations such as the National Secular Society and the Rationalist Press Association survived into the twentieth and found new purpose in the promotion and publishing of serious literature. This book assembles a group of literary figures whose work was recommended as being of particular interest to the unbelieving readership targeted by these organisations. Some, including Vernon Lee, H.G. Wells, Naomi Mitchison, and K.S. Bhat, were members or friends of the R.P.A.; others, such as Mary Butts, were sceptical but nonetheless registered its importance in their work; a third group, including D.H. Lawrence and George Moore, wrote in ways seen as sympathetic to the Rationalist cause. All of these writers produced fiction that was experimental in form and, though few of them could be described as modernist, they shared with modernist writers a will to innovate. This book explores how Rationalist ideas were adapted and transformed by these experiments, focusing in particular on the modifications required to accommodate the strong mode of unbelief associated with British secularism to the notional mode of belief usually solicited by fiction. Whereas modernism is often understood as the literature for a secular age, Unbelief in Interwar Literary Culture looks elsewhere to find a literature that draws more directly on secularism for its aesthetics and its ethics.

Gendering the Nation

Gendering the Nation
Author: Whyte Christopher Whyte
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2019-08-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 147447358X

Too often seen as a ghost from the past, nationalism has resurfaced as a major factor in European politics and culture. A powerful commitment to national autonomy has marked Scottish writing throughout the twentieth century. How has the emergence of new voices from feminist, gay and lesbian critics transformed that commitment? How critical and pluralistic can the new nationalisms be? This collection serves notice that the tradition is being read in new and disruptive ways. Five women and four men examine the relationship between gender and nationality, how male and female authors portray women, the treatment of sexuality in Scottish writing, the construction of Scottish masculinity and its relation to class and homophobia. Covering modern fiction and theatre, poetry, film and television, it is a provocative reassessment of the gender and culture of a 'stateless nation'.

Solution Three

Solution Three
Author: Naomi Mitchison
Publisher: Feminist Press at CUNY
Total Pages: 188
Release: 1995
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781558610965

As a fast-paced novel about a future shaped by feminist ideals of sexual and racial equality, "solution three" at first seems to be a peaceful answer to the world's problems. Homosexuality as an international norm and reproduction by cloning have minimized aggression and overpopulation. The sexes have equal rights and status, racial tension has been eliminated through genetic intermixing, and scientists work closely with the governing body, the Council, to keep an eye on the food supply and to heal the earth of prior environmental terrorism. Originally published in 1975, Solution Three presents a future society in which reproductive control and homosexuality shape a more equitable life for all, eradicating aggression and racism, curbing overpopulation, and providing a dependable food supply. But there are those who are rebelling in this peaceful world: Miryam, a geneticist, secretly married, is rearing her own children; Lilac, a surrogate mother chosen to carry a Clone baby, is delaying her son's seizure for social conditioning; and even the carefully conditioned Clones are behaving unexpectedly. This novel asks the courageous question: What is the cost to women of new models of reproducing life, regardless of the intentions behind the goal?