This invaluable book not only assesses the life and work of one of Europe's most important and innovative writers, it also casts revealing light on crucial areas of French cultural, social, and political history.

Providing a close examination of Milton's wide-ranging prose and poetry at each stage of his life, Barbara Lewalski reveals a rather different Milton from that in earlier accounts.

• Provides a close analysis of each of Milton's prose and poetry works.
  
• Reveals how Milton was the first writer to self consciously construct himself as an 'author'.
  
• Focuses on the development of Milton's ideas and his art.

W. B. Yeats is widely regarded as the greatest English-language poet of the twentieth century. This new critical biography seeks to tell the story of his life as it unfolded in the various contexts in which Yeats worked as an artist and as public figure.

Each chapter in this intriguing book by one of the world's leading authorities on Henry Fielding begins with an annotated chronology of the known facts, followed by analyses of the important issues. Paulson's account must be essential reading to all admirers and serious students of Fielding and his work.

The Life of Daniel Defoe examines the entire range of Defoe's writing in the context of what is known about his life and opinions.

• Features extended and detailed commentaries on Defoe's political, religious, moral, and economic journalism, as well as on all of his narrative fictions, including Robinson Crusoe
• Places emphasis on Defoe's distinctive style and rhetoric
• Situates his work within the precise historical circumstances of the eighteenth-century in which Defoe was an important and active participant
• Now available in...

The Life of William Shakespeare is a fascinating and wide-ranging exploration of Shakespeare's life and works focusing on oftern neglected literary and historical contexts: what Shakespeare read, who he worked with as an author and an actor, and how these various collaborations may have affected his writing.

• Written by an eminent Shakespearean scholar and experienced theatre reviewer
• Pays particular attention to Shakespeare's theatrical contemporaries and the ways in which they influenced his writing
• Offers an intriguing account of the life and...