This is a revisionist study of the literary and visual representation of the nation in the century following the formation of the British state. It argues that the most engaging accounts of Great Britain subject their imagery to sustained artistic pressure, threatening to dismantle the national vision at the moment of its construction.

Utopia and Its Discontents traces literary representations of ideal communities from Plato to the 21st century. Each chapter offers close readings of key utopian and anti-utopian texts to demonstrate how they construct, challenge and explore the ideas and forms of earlier utopian writings and the social and political ideals of their own periods. In this original and insightful study, Sebastian Mitchell demonstrates how literary utopias are often as much about the past as they are ...

What do you do when the man you thought would be yours forever, never comes home?Serenity was prepared to wait years for Luca to get back from his military service, but after being wounded, his family shipped him to a rehabilitation facility away from home and Luca seemed to disappear off the face of the Earth.He hasn't called or texted in years and he even though he was released ages ago, Luca never came to see her.Determined to move on with her life, Serenity has ...

From Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author M. Robinson comes a second-chance standalone romance.We were together since we were fifteen, and we were supposed to be forever. But sometimes love isn't enough. I couldn't let her go without one last night, to remind her that every part of her body and soul still belonged to me - she belonged to me. For better or worse, she's mine. The day we go before the judge to make it official, I find...

From New York Times bestselling author Kristen Callihan comes a smart, emotional contemporary romance about finding love with the most unlikely of people.As kids, they hated each other. Macon Saint was beautiful, but despite his name, Delilah knew he was the devil. That he dated her slightly evil sister, Samantha, was no picnic either. When they broke up, it was a dream come true: Delilah never had to see him again.Ten years later, her old enemy se...

From New York Times Bestselling authors Vi Keeland and Penelope Ward, comes the first book in a new, sexy duet.How to kick off a great summer in the Hamptons:Snag a gorgeous rental on the beach. Check.Get a job at a trendy summer haunt. Check.How to screw up a great summer in the Hamptons:Fall for the one guy with a dark leather jacket, scruff on his face, and intense eyes that doesn't fit in with the rest of the tony lookin...

An all new angsty, dark, stand-alone Contemporary Romance in the Moments in Boston Series ...You never forget your first love … even when he becomes a memory.There was before.When we were together, when we were happy.When we had nothing but dreams.When not a single bad thing could ever happen because we were young and in love.And there was after.When the unthinkable occurs, how do you count time, knowing how ...

How should we live? That question was no less urgent for English men and women who lived between the early sixteenth and late eighteenth centuries than for this book's readers. Keith Thomas's masterly exploration of the ways in which people sought to lead fulfilling lives in those centuries between the beginning of the Reformation and the heyday of the Enlightenment illuminates the central values of the period, while casting incidental light on some of the perennial problems of human exist...

In her famous speech to rouse the English troops staking out Tilbury at the mouth of the Thames during the Spanish Armada's campaign, Queen Elizabeth I is said to have proclaimed, "I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king." Whether or not the transcription is accurate, the persistent attribution of this provocative statement to England's most studied and celebrated queen illustrates some of the contradictions and cultural anxieties that dom...

This volume offers an account of English literary culture in one of its most volatile and politically engaged moments. From the work of Milton and Marvell in the 1650s and 1660s through the brilliant careers of Dryden, Rochester, and Behn, Locke and Astell, Swift and Defoe, Pope and Montagu, the pressures and extremes of social, political, and sexual experience are everywhere reflected in literary texts: in the daring lyrics and intricate political allegories of this age, in the vitriol an...

This book offers a comprehensive, readable and authoritative introduction to the study of Shakespeare, by means of nineteen newly commissioned essays. An international team of prominent scholars provide a broadly cultural approach to the chief literary, performative and historical aspects of Shakespeare's work. They bring the latest scholarship to bear on traditional subjects of Shakespeare study, such as biography, the transmission of the texts, the main dramatic and poetic genres, the st...

The Irish novel has had a distinguished history. It spans such diverse authors as James Joyce, George Moore, Maria Edgeworth, Bram Stoker, Flann O'Brien, Samuel Beckett, Lady Morgan, John Banville, and others. Yet it has until now received less critical attention than Irish poetry and drama. This volume covers three hundred years of Irish achievement in fiction, with essays on key genres, themes, and authors. It provides critiques of individual works, accounts of important novelists, and h...