'No literary form is more revealing, more spontaneous or more individual than a letter.' – P.D. JamesThis inspiring and fascinating book is the first truly comprehensive study of women's letters ever published. Organised by subject matter, and covering a wide range of topics from politics, work and war, to childhood, love and sexual passion, 800 Years of Women's Letters reveals the depth, breadth and diversity of women's lives through the ...

From the private papers of Jane Austen and Mozart to those of Anne Boleyn and Nelson, Love Letters of Great Men and Women collects together some of the most romantic letters in history.For some of these great men, love is a ‘delicious poison’ (William Congreve); for others, ‘a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music’ (Charles Darwin). Love can scorch like the heat of the sun (Henry VIII), or penetrate the depths of one’s heart like a cooling rain (Flaubert...

The life and mind of C. S. Lewis have fascinated those who have read his works. This collection of his personal letters reveals a unique intellectual journey. The first of a three-volume collection, this volume contains letters from Lewis's boyhood, his army days in World War I, and his early academic life at Oxford. Here we encounter the creative, imaginative seeds that gave birth to some of his most famous works.At age sixteen, Lewis begins writing to Arthur Greeves, a boy his ag...

A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas bring together Virginia Woolf's most sustained meditations on women, literature, education, and power. The first essay, poised between fiction, lecture, and critical argument, invents a supple, ironic narrative voice to expose the material conditions behind literary production. The second, more polemical and documentary in method, links patriarchy, professional exclusion, nationalism, and war. Together they stand at the center of modernist feminist pro...

In "The English Novel," George Saintsbury offers a comprehensive and critical exploration of the evolution of the English novel from its inception to the late 19th century. Saintsbury employs a rich, analytical style that interweaves literary criticism with historical context, providing readers with a nuanced understanding of the genre's development. The work delves into the contributions of significant authors, examining their artistic techniques and thematic concerns against the backdrop...

The combination of Mary Wollstonecraft works, with her efforts to live a revolutionary inner and outer life has no equal. In her richly detailed, all-encompassing biography of the first major feminist in England, Mary Wollstonecraft, Janet Todd highlights her intellectual and sexual dilemmas, her glamorous and tumultuous life and loves.Since the first publication of Mary Wollstonecraft: A revolutionary Life in2000, further historical evidence has been discovered – ...

‘Dazzling…full of special delights. Harman excels in the vivid presentation of scenes, the selection of detail…[a] marvellous and beautifully written book.’ Elspeth Barker, Independent on SundayAt the age of fifteen, Fanny Burney made a bonfire of all her works, ‘with the sincere intention to extinguish for ever in their ashes her scribbling propensity’. She was anxious that she might turn into an author, a fate incompatible – for a woman – with respectability.Her hope was ...

Brilliant young historian Ben Wilson explores a time when licentious Britain tried to straighten out its moral code, ridding itself of its boisterous pastimes, plain-speaking and drunkenness - raising uncomfortable but fascinating parallels with our own age. Decency and Disorder is about the generation who grew up during the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars, and some of its most exciting figures.

'Now the sport begins!' An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting is the first English book on the craft of nagging. A bitingly funny social satire, it is also an advice book, a handbook of anti-etiquette, and a comedy of manners. Collier describes methods for 'teasing and mortifying' one's intimates and acquaintances in a variety of social situations by taking advantage of their affections and goodwill. Written primarily for wives, mothers, and the mistresses of servants, The Art sugg...

How very delightful Grego's drawings are! For all their mad perspective and crude colour, they have indeed the sentiment of style, and they reveal, with surer delicacy than does any other record, the spirit of Mr. Brummell's day. Grego guides me, as Virgil Dante, through all the mysteries of that other world. He shows me those stiff-necked, over-hatted, wasp-waisted gentlemen, drinking Burgundy in the Café des Milles Colonnes or riding through the village of Newmarket upon their fat cobs or g...