The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov provides a concise introduction to the creative world of one of the twentieth century's most important writers. Fourteen individual essays cover such topics as Nabokov's storytelling techniques, his achievements as a short story writer, his evolution as a novelist, his relationship to the literary currents of his day, his world-view, and his lasting artistic legacy, particularly through Lolita, his most famous and controversial work. The volume also contains a chronology of his life and a guide to further reading.

Offering original perspectives from new amd established Auden critics and others, this volume brings together specially commissioned essays by some of the world's leading experts on the life and work of W.H. Auden, one of the major English-speaking poets of the twentieth century. The volume's contributors include prize-winning poets, Auden's literary executor and editor, and his most recent, widely acclaimed biographer. The Companion also examines his language, style and formal innovation, his prose and critical writing and his ideas about sexuality, religion, psychoanalysis, politics,...

Original essays by twelve distinguished international scholars offer critical overviews of the major genres, literary culture, and social contexts that define the current state of scholarship. This Companion also features a chronology of key events and publication dates covering the first half of the twentieth century in the United States. The introductory reference guide concludes with a current bibliography of further reading organized by chapter topics.

In this Companion, essays by outstanding scholars illuminate Charles Baudelaire's writing for the lay reader and specialist. In addition to a survey of his life and a study of his social context, the volume includes essays on his verse and prose, analyzing the extraordinary power and effectiveness of his language and style, his exploration of intoxicants like wine and opium, and his art and literary criticism. The volume also discusses the difficulties, successes and failures of translating his poetry and his continuing power to move his readers. It features a guide to further reading and a...

Edward Albee, perhaps best known for his acclaimed and infamous 1960s drama Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is one of America's greatest living playwrights. Now in his seventies, he is still writing challenging, award-winning dramas. The essays in this collection provide a comprehensive, multi-faceted survey of Albee's career. Written in an engaging and accessible way, this book should appeal equally to students, scholars, and general readers.

This collection of essays, each one by a recognized expert, provides lively and innovative readings of every aspect of Forster's wide-ranging career. It includes substantial chapters dedicated to his two major novels, Howards End and A Passage to India, and further chapters focus on A Room With a View and Maurice. Forster's connections with the values of Bloomsbury and the lure of Greece and Italy in his work are assessed, as is his vexed relationship with Modernism. Other essays investigate his role as a literary critic, the status of his work within the genres of the novel and the short...

Emile Zola is a towering literary figure of the nineteenth century. His main literary achievement was his twenty-volume novel cycle, Les Rougon-Macquart (1870 93). In this series he combines a novelist's skills with those of the investigative journalist to examine the social, sexual and moral landscape of the late nineteenth century in a way that scandalized bourgeois society. In 1898 Zola crowned his literary career with a political act, his famous open letter ('J'accuse ') to the President of the French Republic in defence of Alfred Dreyfus. The essays in this volume offer readings of...

A detailed introduction to Moliere and his plays, this Companion evokes his own theatrical career, his theatres, patrons, the performers and theatre staff with whom he worked, and the various publics he and his troupes entertained with such success. It looks at his particular brands of comedy and satire. L'Ecole des femmes, Le Tartuffe, Dom Juan, Le Misanthrope, L'Avare and Les Femmes savantes are examined from a variety of different viewpoints, and through the eyes of different ages and cultures. The comedies-ballets, a genre invented by Moliere and his collaborators, are re-instated to the...

Wilkie Collins was one of the most popular writers of the nineteenth century. He is best known for The Woman in White, which inaugurated the sensation novel in the 1860s, and The Moonstone, one of the first detective novels; but he wrote over 20 novels, plays and short stories during a career that spanned four decades. This Companion offers a fascinating overview of Collins's writing. In a wide range of essays by leading scholars, it traces the development of his career, his position as a writer and his complex relation to contemporary cultural movements and debates. Collins's exploration of...

This Companion provides a unique introduction and guide to the works and life of one of the key figures in English literary history. The source of endless familiar aphorisms, the compiler of the first great dictionary in English, the greatest of essayists, and one of the most distinctive characters and conversationalists in our literary culture, Johnson is here surveyed in his entirety. Chapters on the major works, his life, conversation, letters and critical reception appear alongside fresh thematic essays, a chronology and a guide to further reading.