An expatriate Englishman has a weekend of self-discovery in Manitoba: he falls in love, and realizes that he must become less introspective. The protagonist, Geoff Tavistock, visits a small town in rural Manitoba in 1907. Tavistock believes he is on a divinely inspired mission - to reconcile man with God once and for all

A first-rate thriller from one of Canada's pioneer abstract painters.A cult leader announces a miracle will take place and she will rise to heaven. A medium prophesies the date, publicity gets to work, and all of America hums with anticipation. On the appointed day, she disappears and scientist Mortimer Hood, there to verify the miracle, must investigate how—and whether—the whole thing is a hoax, or if the priestess has been murdered.Originally published in...

Bertram Brooker won the country's first Governor General's Award for literature in 1936 for his novel Think of the Earth, and his explosive, experimental paintings hang in every major gallery in the country. He was Canada's first multidisciplinary avantgardist, successfully experimenting in literature, visual arts, film, and theatre. Brooker brought all of his experimental ambitions to his short fiction and prose. The Wrong World presents a rich sampling of his prose work...

Over 120 years after Oscar Wilde submitted The Picture of Dorian Gray for publication, the uncensored version of his novel appears here for the first time in a paperback edition. This volume restores material, including instances of graphic homosexual content, removed by the novel’s first editor, who feared it would be “offensive” to Victorians.

The 700-year history of the novel in English defies straightforward telling. Geographically and culturally boundless, with contributions from Great Britain, Ireland, America, Canada, Australia, India, the Caribbean, and Southern Africa; influenced by great novelists working in other languages; and encompassing a range of genres, the story of the novel in English unfolds like a richly varied landscape that invites exploration rather than a linear journey. In The Novel: A Biography,...

How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain asks how our culture came to frown on using books for any purpose other than reading. When did the coffee-table book become an object of scorn? Why did law courts forbid witnesses to kiss the Bible? What made Victorian cartoonists mock commuters who hid behind the newspaper, ladies who matched their books' binding to their dress, and servants who reduced newspapers to fish 'n' chips wrap?Shedding new light on novels by Thack...

A Bibliophile's Journey: Revisiting the Books That Shaped UsIs a book the same book—or a reader the same reader—the second time around? In this witty and poignant collection, seventeen renowned authors, including Sven Birkerts, Allegra Goodman, Vivian Gornick, Patricia Hampl, Phillip Lopate, and Luc Sante, revisit the books that made a deep impression in their youth. From Pride and Prejudice to Sue Barton, Student Nurse, and even the lyrics on the back of the Sgt. ...

A page-turning collection of essays and literary criticism on topics ranging from books, writers, poker, cars, faith, and the American libido—from one of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit series."[Updike is] one of the best essayists and critics this country has produced in the last century."—The Los Angeles TimesHere Updike considers many books, some in introductions—t...

Some of the most innovative and spell-binding literature has been written for young people, but only recently has academic study embraced its range and complexity. This Companion offers a state-of-the-subject survey of English-language children's literature from the seventeenth century to the present. With discussions ranging from eighteenth-century moral tales to modern fantasies by J. K. Rowling and Philip Pullman, the Companion illuminates acknowledged classics and many more neglected w...

Amory Blaine, intent on rebelling against his staid, Midwestern upbringing, longs to acquire the patina of Eastern sophistication. In his quest for sexual and intellectual enlightenment, he progresses through a series of relationships, until he is cast out into the real world.

A National Book Award nominee: Hortense Calisher's autobiography captures the making of a distinct literary voiceAlthough Hortense Calisher's fiction often draws on autobiographical elements, Herself is a disciplined documentation of the award-winning author's life and work. She surveys the various decades and landscapes she has inhabited, mining her family's Jewish lineage, discussing her children, exploring her greatest artistic influences, and describin...

'to write it took three months; to conceive it - three minutes; to collect the data in it - all my life' F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise tells the story of Amory Blaine as he grows from pampered childhood to young adulthood, and learns to know himself better. At Princeton he becomes a literary aesthete and makes friends with other aspiring writers. As he moves out into the world and tries to find his true direction he falls in love with a succession of beautiful yo...