Iris Murdoch's first novel is set in a part of London where struggling writers rub shoulders with successful bookies, and film starlets with frantic philosophers. Its hero, Jake Donaghue, is a drifting, clever, likeable young man who makes a living out of translation work and sponging on his friends. A meeting with Anna, an old flame, leads him into a series of fantastic adventures. Jake is captivated by a majestic philosopher, Hugo Belfounder, whose profound and inconclusive reflections g...

'The most perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing in the world' Percy Bysshe ShelleyShakespeare's bleak and brutal tragedy begins when an ageing king, seeking a successor, rejects the young daughter who loves him and misplaces his trust in her malevolent sisters. In return they strip him of his power and condemn him to a wretched wasteland of horror and insanity. Set in a pitiless universe, King Lear is a towering, elemental masterpiece of fierce poetry and vast imag...

This ground-breaking book reveals the prophetic, revolutionary vision that drives Shakespeare's tragedies, tracing its unbroken development from its beginnings in the Henry VI plays and Shakespeare's first tragedy, Titus Andronicus, right through to his last, Coriolanus. The four full-length studies at the heart of the book focus in depth on Shakespeare's four greatest tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. Shak...

First published to critical acclaim in 1989, this book is now recognised as one of the most original and influential critical studies of Shakespeare to have appeared in recent times.For this brand-new edition, Kiernan Ryan has not only revised and updated the text throughout, but he has also added a great deal of new material, expanding the book to twice the size of the first edition. The section on Shakespearean comedy now includes an essay on Shakespeare's first scintillating expe...

Through close readings of a wide range of plays and poems, Kiernan Ryan's compelling polemic sets out to reclaim the idea of Shakespeare's timeless universality from reactionary and radical critics alike. Its argument is driven throughout by the belief that at this moment in history the need to recognise and activate the revolutionary potential of Shakespeare's drama is more urgent than ever.The volume has been shortlisted for the European Society for the Study of English 2016 Priz...

This is the first collection of criticism on Shakespeare's romances to register the impact of modern literary theory on interpretations of these plays. Kiernan Ryan brings together the most important recent essays on Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, the greatest of the `last plays', staging a dynamic debate between feminist, poststructuralist, psychoanalytic and new historicist views of the masterpieces Shakespeare wrote at the close of his career.

Brought to you by Penguin.VINTAGE CLASSICS MURDOCH: Funny, subversive, fearless and fiercely intelligent, Iris Murdoch was one of the great writers of the twentieth century. To celebrate her centenary Vintage Classics presents special editions of her greatest and most timeless novels'This is real life, Jake,' she said. 'You'd better wake up.'Jake is clever, lazy and scraping by in London as a hack translator. Jake loves Anna. Anna is an elu...

Brought to you by Penguin.VINTAGE CLASSICS MURDOCH: Funny, subversive, fearless and fiercely intelligent, Iris Murdoch was one of the great writers of the twentieth century. To celebrate her centenary Vintage Classics presents special editions of her greatest and most timeless novelsA lay community of thoroughly mixed-up people is encamped outside Imber Abbey, home of an enclosed order of nuns. A new bell, legendary symbol of religion and magic, is rediscov...

The third and least political novel of the Palliser series, The Eustace Diamonds concerns the beautiful pathological liar Lizzie Greystock. Determined to marry into wealth, Lizzie snares the ailing Sir Florian Eustace and quickly becomes a widow. Despite the brevity of their marriage, Lizzie still inherits according to the generous terms of Sir Florian’s will, which include the Eustace diamonds. When the Eustace family solicitor, Mr. Camperdown, begins to question her legal claim ...

Ten years ago, Tom Drury's groundbreaking debut, The End of Vandalism, was serialized in the New Yorker, was compared to the work of Sherwood Anderson and William Faulkner by USA Today, and was named a Best Book of the Year in multiple publications.Welcome to Grouse County—a fictional Midwest that is at once familiar and amusingly eccentric—where a thief vacuums the church before stealing the chalice, a lonely woman paints her toenails in a drafty farmhou...

Nicholas Urfe, a young British graduate, runs away from his monotonous life to take up a teaching post on the small Greek island of Phraxos. There he meets the enigmatic figure of Maurice Conchis, and slowly gets drawn into a world full of strange encounters and psychological tricks on Conchis's estate at Bourani.When Conchis introduces Nicholas to the enchanting and mysterious Lily Montgomery, reality and illusion begin to intertwine. But what strange game is Conchis playing with ...

From the bestselling and award-winning author of ‘An English Affair’, a dazzlingly original thematic biography which throws fresh light on the greatest economist of the twentieth century.John Maynard Keynes saved Britain from financial crisis twice over the course of two World Wars, and instructed Western industrialised states on how to protect themselves from revolutionary unrest, economic instability, high unemployment and social dissolution. In the wake of the recent global fina...