Hubert Crackanthorpe: Selected Writings
Edited by William Greenslade and Emanuela Ettorre
Critical Texts 71 / Jewelled Tortoise 719 October 2020

  • ‘This is an informative, comprehensive, and detailed introduction to Crackanthorpe for those who know little about him. It is an illuminating companion edition for those already familiar with his dark vision of life in the 1890s, which his own life trajectory so much resembled.’ — Jad Adams, Volupté 5.1, 2022, 98–102 (full text online)
  • ‘A much-needed edition that successfully presents the range and importance of Crackanthorpe’s writing... Overall, Selected Writings is an accessible introduction to Crackanthorpe that makes proper consideration of his work alongside others of the ‘Tragic Generation’ possible. Highly recommended.’ — Jessica Gossling, Modern Language Review 118.4, October 2023, 604-06 (full text online)

Brute Meaning: Essays in Materialist Criticism from Dickens to Hitchcock
David Trotter
Selected Essays 928 September 2020

  • ‘Not a single essay here but is interesting in its own way. Many, as with ‘Dickens and Frith’ (Essay 4) take a minor topic and make something special from it. The essay on Middlemarch (Essay 5) seems a major contribution... All the essays are likeable and thoughtful, exhibiting an astonishingly wide reading.’ — Jeremy Tambling, Modern Language Review 117.3, July 2022, 474-76 (full text online)

Contemporary Fictions: Essays on American and Postcolonial Narratives
Judie Newman
Selected Essays 1228 September 2020

  • ‘Even without the witty, warm introduction in which Prof Newman considers her career with a wry and appealing sense of distance, the consistency of concern across these widely diverse essays is remarkable. As with any art form, a retrospective of critical thinking offers scope to identify perhaps unsuspected threads of continuity in a body of work covering almost half a century, and this is one of the great pleasures of Contemporary Fictions.’ — Clare Hayes-Brady, Review of English Studies advance publication online (full text online)

Francisca Wood and Nineteenth-Century Periodical Culture: Pressing for Change
Cláudia Pazos Alonso
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 3521 January 2020

  • ‘It is a rare pleasure to encounter such a meticulous, far-reaching, and at the same time, downright readable academic book as this (which, to its further merit, has an excellent, full Index). The author leaves no stone unturned in her painstaking exploration and rigorous analysis of Wood’s career and periodical culture in nineteenth-century Portugal. The book traverses intellectual biography, literary, social and cultural history, the history of ideas and, of course, the insightful textual analysis for which Pazos Alonso is so highly regarded. This excellent and ground-breaking monograph extends our understanding of the intellectual culture of 1860s Portugal, reaching well beyond the immediate subject matter at hand. It is an essential reference for scholars of nineteenth-century writers of any sex.’ — Rhian Atkin, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 2021 (full text online)
  • ‘Pazos Alonso vai mesmo mais longe celebrando Wood como um exemplo da primeira vaga de feminismo na Europa... A autora reconstrói uma rede de figuras, europeias e outras, defensoras dos direitos femininos, na qual insere Wood demontrando que, se era uma voz praticamente isolada em Portugal, não o era se colocada num contexto mais amplo situado para além das estreitas fronteiras culturais e políticas lusas.’ — Teresa Pinto Coelho, Revista de Estudos Anglo-Portugueses 29, 2020, 233-41
  • ‘Neste livro, Cláudia faz brilhantemente justiça a Francisca, prestando ao mesmo tempo um serviço à cultura nacional.’ — Ana Luisa Vilela, Colóquio-Letras 206, 2021, 276-279
  • ‘Pazos Alonso’s compelling and engaging study not only rescues a prime Portuguese journalist and intellectual from cultural oblivion, but also grants her a well-deserved transnational place in feminist and gender scholarship.’ — Leticia Villamediana González, Modern Language Review 117.3, July 2022, 508-09 (full text online)
  • ‘Succeeds admirably in its proposed aim to offer an overview of the Portuguese mid-nineteenth-century periodical press through the closer analysis of Francisca Wood’s career as editor of A Voz Feminina. It is a groundbreaking study, especially valuable for its extensive archival research that brings to light the figure of a forgotten Portuguese woman writer and pioneer feministas well as the results of her progressive efforts in both the Portuguese and international contexts.’ — Manuela Mourão, American Journal of Lusophone Studies 6.2, 2022, 209-11 (full text online)

Samuel Butler and the Science of the Mind: Evolution, Heredity and Unconscious Memory
Cristiano Turbil
Studies In Comparative Literature 4828 September 2020

Mary Shelley and Europe: Essays in Honour of Jean de Palacio
Edited by Antonella Braida
Studies In Comparative Literature 5528 September 2020

  • ‘A wonderful selection of essays which discusses an aspect of Mary Shelley’s life that was so important to her art and yet is perhaps under-emphasised in discussing her work.’ — Jacqueline Mulhallen, Women's Writing 6 March 2022

The First English Translations of Molière: Drama in Flux 1663-1732
Suzanne Jones
Transcript 1328 September 2020

The Foreign Connection: Writings on Poetry, Art and Translation
Jamie McKendrick
Transcript 1728 September 2020

  • ‘This book might have been written for my pleasure. Many readers of this journal will surely feel the same.’ — Chris Miller, PN Review 28.3, January/February 2022
  • ‘There is a natural clemency at work, throughout the entire volume, which has nothing to do with fuzzy-mindedness – quite the contrary, but it means that McKendrick will never deliver the frenzied hatchet-job some poets (whom he admires) can execute, apparently with sangfroid. This intelligence – by definition an ironic intelligence in that it can simultaneously entertain different positions – is what makes him such a trustworthy guide. One feels also that humour, that saving resource, is always within reach... His astute use of quotation to illustrate a point is a fiduciary of sound judgement. Above all, Jamie McKendrick reminds us that there is no substitute for patient looking and listening. This close attention, this authentic love of the art, is rare in our day. These writings are to be prized.’ — Stephen Romer, The London Magazine February/March 2022, 77-84
  • ‘A welcome marker to remind us, if we needed reminding, of how much human beings need, and gain from, dialogue with other cultures and languages. The apparently foreign, as Jamie McKendrick demonstrates so well here, in fact shows us a threshold, a door.’ — Hilary Davies, Times Literary Supplement 19 May 2023, p. 8
  • ‘What Jamie McKendrick so finely details about Tom Lubbock’s English Graphic is an entirely apt description for his own collection of brief reviews, introductions, and essays, on literature and art: ‘The constraints of the form proved exceptionally viable and liberating for his procedures. Providing a “wiry outline”, the form itself allowed for wit, aperçu, mental calisthenics, provocation, aphorism, meditation and surprisingly sustained argument’.’ — George Kalogeris, Essays in Criticism 73.1, 2023, 130-31 (full text online)

Plutarch in English, 1528–1603: Volume 1: Essays
Edited by Fred Schurink
Tudor and Stuart Translations 2/1 of 218 December 2020

  • ‘The really significant contribution to scholarship is Schurink’s General Introduction. Here we see his command of the subject, and can trace the logic and the evidence that results in the inescapable conclusion that we really should take Plutarch more seriously... there is much about these two volumes that makes them important material for anyone seeking to understand English literature in the sixteenth and, indeed, the seventeenth centuries.’ — Freyja Cox Jensen, Translation and Literature 30, 2021, 384-390 (full text online)

Plutarch in English, 1528–1603: Volume 2: Lives
Edited by Fred Schurink
Tudor and Stuart Translations 2/2 of 218 December 2020

  • ‘The really significant contribution to scholarship is Schurink’s General Introduction. Here we see his command of the subject, and can trace the logic and the evidence that results in the inescapable conclusion that we really should take Plutarch more seriously... there is much about these two volumes that makes them important material for anyone seeking to understand English literature in the sixteenth and, indeed, the seventeenth centuries.’ — Freyja Cox Jensen, Translation and Literature 30, 2021, 384-390 (full text online)

William Barker, Xenophon's 'Cyropædia'
Edited by Jane Grogan
Tudor and Stuart Translations 1320 March 2020

  • ‘Barker’s Cyropaedia can further our understanding of Xenophon, as well as its own literary and cultural moment. Grogan’s exemplary edition, marrying rigorous scholarship to a user-friendly text, will facilitate both.’ — Carla Suthren, Translation and Literature 30, 2021, 231-37 (full text online)

Thomas May, Lucan's Pharsalia (1627)
Edited by Emma Buckley and Edward Paleit
Tudor and Stuart Translations 187 December 2020

  • ‘This edition of Thomas May’s translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia forms a very welcome addition to the excellent MHRA series of Tudor and Stuart Translations... this admirably well-conceived edition certainly opens up May’s version – and Lucan himself – for today’s readers.’ — David Norbrook, Translation and Literature 31, 2022, 92-94 (full text online)

Petrarch's Triumphi in English
Edited by Alessandra Petrina
Tudor and Stuart Translations 2720 August 2020

Back to the Twenties: Modernism Then and Now
Edited by Paul Poplawski
Yearbook of English Studies 5015 July 2020