Published January 1995

The Poetics of Mockery: Wyndham Lewis's 'Apes of God' and the Popularization of Modernism
Mark Perrino
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 40

Published January 1996

Strategies of Reading: Dickens and After
Edited by Andrew Gurr
Yearbook of English Studies 26

Published November 1997

Breeches and Metaphysics: Thackeray's German Discourse
S. S. Prawer
Studies In Comparative Literature 1

  • ‘What Thackeray did not publish Professor Prawer has done for him in this welcome addition to the Thackeray literature.’ — unsigned notice, Times Literary Supplement 1997
  • ‘It is good to have a book of this kind that so thoroughly covers its subject. I have the distinct impression that Prawer has really hunted down and rounded up every last German reference there is in Thackeray and I am glad he has done it.’ — John R. Reed, Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography 11.4, 2000, 326-7
  • ‘Prawer's comprehensive analysis is thoroughly researched and convincing throughout. One of the strongest features of his monograph is the skilful mastery with which the author examines the interaction between the different discourses depicted above, as well as their function in Thackeray's oeuvre as a whole. An essential study for scholars in the field of Anglo-German literary relations and the wider domain of cultural transmission.’ — Susanne Stark, Modern Language Review 96.1, 2001, 298-9 (full text online)

Published August 1999

Anglo-German Interactions in the Literature of the 1890s
Patrick Bridgwater
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘The author is to be congratulated for shedding new light on a wide range of Anglo-German cross-currents... His study weaves a multi-faceted web of historical and inter-personal connections, and is at its best when it forges links between the approaches of different authors and diverse forms of art.’ — Susanne Stark, Modern Language Review 97.2, 2002, 523-4 (full text online)
  • ‘This well-documented volume provides new insights into the key social and cultural issues of the 1890s, including the truth and morality of artistic writing.’ — Crocker and Womack, The Year's Work in English Studies 2000, 532

Published January 2002

Children in Literature
Edited by Karin Lesnik-Oberstein
Yearbook of English Studies 32

Published December 2002

The Sentinel: An Incomplete Early Novel by Rebecca West
Edited by Kathryn Laing
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘It is the least surprising thing in the world that Rebecca West should have begun a novel when she was 17, and that parts of it should be very good. She was only 18, after all, when her stinging reviews first appeared in The Freewoman and The Clarion, and caused sleepy Fabian giants to sit up and take notice of this fiercely intelligent Edinburgh schoolgirl juggling axes in the air... Richly rewarding.’ — Claudia FitzHerbert, Daily Telegraph 1 February, 2003, 5
  • ‘Quite a coup... West's urgent descriptions of events and characterisations of key figures, from politicians to the Pankhursts, can hardly be bettered. But this is more of a social history than it might first appear, thanks to the journalistic observations woven into her storytelling. Her description of the Daily Mail as 'the encyclopaedia of vulgarity' retains a certain resonance today.’ — Harriet Griffey, Financial Times 22 February, 2003, 4
  • ‘An astonishing piece of juvenilia... It is easy to recognise the real women who belonged to the militant Women's Social and Political Union: Mary Gawthorpe, Emily Davidson, Dora Marsden, Emmeline Pankhurst. The rise of the New Woman writing of the 1890s and suffragette fiction of the early twentieth century challenged strict definitions of feminine experience only to replace them with equally rigid rules governing women's social and political roles. West questions such demarcations. Her women long for motherhood and some of the most important suffragists are men. The novel's message is that love is not only more important than political power, it is the source of such power in the modern world and the modern novel.’ — Rosalind Porter, Times Literary Supplement 28 February, 2003, 24
  • ‘Here is an emerging and well-read mind confronting public and private matters... Laing's scholarly introduction is a rich tool for reading this novel. Though unsophisticated and fragmentary as a novel, The Sentinel is nevertheless a richly worked resource; a readable and fascinating historical document that brings much of the time and its author to life.’ — Antonia Byatt, Times Higher Education Supplement 18 April, 2003, 28
  • ‘Not only the publication of The Sentinel, but the way it has been published, may represent a tidal change in the way its author's work is now received... Fascinating to readers interested in the development of West as a woman, because it is obsessively concerned not only with feminist politics but with sexuality, and with the compelling beauty of certain girls and women, pored over in erotic detail... The most striking passages, which foreshadow the vivid reportage of her maturity, are the accounts of suffragette marches, protests and riots... Carries in it the seeds of almost everything that was to preoocupy West throughout her writing life. Laing's treatment of The Sentinel may complete the transition of her fiction, and of her work as a whole, out of the overcrowded 20th-century mainstream and into the canon.’ — Victoria Glendinning, The Guardian 20 December, 2003, G2

Published January 2004

Nineteenth-Century Travel Writing
Edited by David Seed
Yearbook of English Studies 34

Published February 2005

A Taste for the Negative: Beckett and Nihilism
Shane Weller
Legenda (General Series)

Published January 2006

Victorian Literature
Edited by John Batchelor
Yearbook of English Studies 36.2

  • ‘This lively collection deserves to be read not only by specialists but by students in need of an accessible introduction to the breadth of canonical Victorian literature.’ — Matthew Beaumont, Times Literary Supplement 36.2, 2007, 24

Published January 2007

From Decadent to Modernist: And Other Essays
Edited by John Batchelor
Yearbook of English Studies 37.1

The Influence of Pre-Raphaelitism on Fin-de-Siècle Italy: Art, Beauty, and Culture
Giuliana Pieri
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 65

Published July 2008

Proust and Joyce in Dialogue
Sarah Tribout-Joseph
Legenda (General Series)

Published October 2008

The Near and Distant God: Poetry, Idealism and Religious Thought from Hölderlin to Eliot
Ian Cooper
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘This is an intellectually distinguished, engagingly written and outstandingly original book, which succeeds admirably in its aim of tracing the close and continuous connection of lyric poetry, philosophical idealism and religious thought from Hölderlin to Eliot... Its achievement is as relevant to theology as it is to German Studies and deserves the widest possible readership.’ — unsigned, Forum for Modern Language Studies 46.1, January 2010, 110
  • ‘A sophisticated example of how literary studies may benefit from approaches that are theologically and spiritually mindful.’ — Helena M. Tomko, Modern Language Review 105.2, 2010, 512-13 (full text online)
  • ‘This study is densely written (something that should be applauded rather than criticized!) and cogently argued... Intellectually highly rewarding.’ — Rüdiger Görner, Comparative Critical Studies 7.2–3, 2010, 405-08
  • ‘He avoids the pitfall of many comparable studies, in which poems are merely mined for their philosophical content--a fate that especially Holderlin, Rilke, and Eliot have frequently suffered in the past. His readings of the poems emphasize the process of writing and reading--in these processes, transcendence can be experienced, and the promise of community be enacted. Cooper's fine analytical skills give us many fresh perspectives on a series of major poems.’ — Johannes Wich-Schwarz, Christianity and Literature Autumn 2010
  • ‘What seems like a huge and bold undertaking is impressively achieved... compelling and, at times, beautiful writing.’ — Carly McLaughlin, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 248, 2011, 166-67
  • ‘Cooper succeeds in establishing the centrality of theology to the work of Hölderlin, and in tracing the afterlife of Hölderlin's poetic religiosity he expands our awareness of the prehistory of the high modernist struggle to come to terms with Spirit.’ — Nathaniel Davis, Journal of Modern Literature 35.1, Fall 2011, 196-99

Published December 2008

John Ruskin's Correspondence with Joan Severn: Sense and Nonsense Letters
Edited by Rachel Dickinson
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘This book is one of the most significant contributions to Ruskin scholarship in recent years. It is essential reading for anyone who wishes not merely to understand the relationship between Ruskin and his cousin, but also to understand how in those later decades he used the correspondence to empower himself ‘in the public sphere by disempowering himself in the private’; it corrects many misunderstandings along the way. It is a brave, challenging, discomforting, heartbreaking book, full of insight.’ — Alan Davis, The Ruskin Review and Bulletin Autumn 2009
  • ‘Once in a while a book comes along that you hadn’t known that you needed, but once read you wonder why no one ever took the subject matter in hand before ~ and this book is one of those rare delights.’ — Friends of Ruskin's Brantwood Autumn 2009)
  • ‘These letters are heretofore unpublished. Ruskin scholars have found these challenging, with their baby-talk, apparent nonsense, and unelaborated personal references, yet they contain important expressions of Ruskin’s opinions on travel, fashion, the ideal arts and crafts home, effective education, and other questions, and Ruskin often used his letters to Severn as a substitute for his personal diary.’ — The Year's Work in English Studies 2011, 699)

Adrian Stokes: An Architectonic Eye
Stephen Kite
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘This marvelous book, which is focused on Stokes's writings on the Renaissance, provides a full and highly original account of the writer's development. Clearly written and well illustrated, it tells the story accurately... All future readers of Stokes will be indebted to Kite's tactful and comprehensive commentary.’ — David Carrier, caa.reviews 4 February 2009
  • ‘Admirably clear in providing the first account of the architectural basis of Stokes’ journey toward beauty from the ugliness of Edwardian London as he remembered it after the First World War.’ — Janet Sayers, American Imago 68.3, 2011, 561–67

The Cervantean Heritage: Reception and Influence of Cervantes in Britain
Edited by J. A. G. Ardila
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘Resulta reconfortante para cualquier investigador interesado en los textos de Miguel de Cervantes comprobar que, tras la explosión de estudios surgidos en torno a las celebraciones del año 2005, cuarto centenario de la publicación del Quijote, el cervantismo está más vivo que nunca. De hecho, es precisamente ahora, tras el paso del ciclón de publicaciones que trajo consigo dicho aniversario, cuando surge la oportunidad de realizar análisis nacidos más al calor de la curiosidad real y el rigor y menos de la oportunidad o el oportunismo. Este libro supone una muy valiosa aportación para el campo de los estudios cervantinos pero también para el estudio de la literatura británica, y especialistas de ambos campos encontrarán en él material ineludible y original con el que ganar en conocimiento y sobre todo, una herramienta con la que continuar avanzando en el no siempre bien conocido ni estudiado campo de las relaciones literarias y culturales hispano-británicas.’ — Ana M. Rodríguez-Rodríguez, Iberoamericana IX.36, 2009, 189-91
  • ‘Rather than emanating from the Cervantesmania that has informed most of the book-length studies on Cervantes's influence on English-speaking writers [since the 2005 anniversary year], the present volume benefits from the fact that its contributors come from among the pre-2005 generation of critics, who have drawn on their experience of digging out Cervantes's actual influence on British literature.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 47.1, January 2011

Henry James and the Second Empire
Angus Wrenn
Studies In Comparative Literature 14

  • ‘The first sustained account of what are now regarded, fairly, as lesser writers of the Second Empire... and of their significance for James’s developing art. Wrenn offers an excellent analysis of the house journal for these writers, the Revue des deux mondes, a publication enthusiastically read by James.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 47.1, January 2011

Published July 2009

A Cultural Citizen of the World: Sigmund Freud's Knowledge and Use of British and American Writings
S. S. Prawer
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘This magisterial survey of British and American intellectual history from the sixteenth century to the present, as viewed through the lens of the creator of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, confirms once more that Prawer remains one of our discipline’s leading spokesmen and luminaries.’ — Robert K. Weninger, Comparative Critical Studies 7.2–3, 2010, 395-401
  • ‘Based on an intensive study of the original German text of Freud’s writings, letters, and journals. This is the first book to make a full and systematic map of Freud’s use of English literature. Freud was fascinated by writings from many nations and languages, and his use of English shows the great range of his reading... Though he was a reader par excellence, he was also a case study in how world literature can be used by men and women who are not professional literary scholars or critics - and of how much it can come to mean to them, and to their sense of who they are.’ — The Year's Work in English Studies 2011, 691)
  • ‘Shows the remarkable range of reading and the gift for lively and attractive expression that characterized all his work... The result is much the fullest study of Freud’s Anglophilia that has yet been written.’ — Ritchie Robertson, Modern Language Review 108.4, October 2013, 1262-64 (full text online)

Published January 2010

The Arts in Victorian Literature
Edited by Stefano Evangelista and Catherine Maxwell
Yearbook of English Studies 40.1/2

Published February 2010

Decolonizing Modernism: James Joyce and the Development of Spanish American Fiction
José Luis Venegas
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘There is something delightfully Joycean and Cortazarian about the volume which demands our close collaboration and participation as we jump around to consult the original texts, dipping into Ulysses and Rayuela, for example, then back to the study in question, not necessarily in chronological order. In this sense, I felt like the quintessential lector cómplice. This review is the final step in my literary contribution.’ — John Walker, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 88.6, September 2011, 929-30
  • ‘Among the many valuable assets of Venegas's cohesive study are its painstaking research and its suggestive ways of interpreting the presence of Joyce in Latin American fiction... A significant contribution to the critical debate over the nature of modernism.’ — Alberto Lázaro, James Joyce Literary Supplement 26.1, Spring 2012, 5-6
  • ‘An impeccably researched and systematic study which has much to offer to the 'planetary' dimension of Joyce scholarship.’ — Patricia Novillo-Corvalán, James Joyce Broadsheet 88, February 2011
  • ‘An insightful and illuminating intertextual analysis... takes a refreshing approach by rejecting the notion of a cultural or intellectual ‘centre’ informing the periphery, or, in Latin American terms, the civilized educating the barbaric. Instead, both Joyce and those he influenced (directly or indirectly) are seen as the creators of ‘an alternative literary history’.’ — Victoria Carpenter, The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies 72, 2012, 247
  • ‘In this book, José Luis Venegas takes existing debates on James Joyce's influence on modern Spanish American fiction decisively further... Thanks to its balanced focus on theory, criticism and literary analysis, the book is comprehensive in its approach yet highly readable. With quotations given in both English and Spanish, this comparative study is a valuable research tool not only for Hispanists but also for critics of English literature working on Joyce.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 49.2 (2013), 226-27
  • ‘Must be greeted as a new study that further enriches previous critical revisions of monolithic views of 'canonical' modernism... By relocating Joyce as a 'peripheral' modernist writer in the literary map of Latin America, Decolonizing Modernism offers an innovative and alternative reinterpretation of both European and Spanish-American literary histories that eschews the restrictions of national boundaries and canonical readings and opens untrodden paths for the emergence of (even) more revisionary studies of modernism in the future.’ — M. Teresa Caneda Cabrera, James Joyce Quarterly 48.4 (2011), 772-75
  • ‘A concise but eloquent demonstration of the potential of truly non-Eurocentric comparative studies between Latin American and European literatures... At the center of Decolonizing Modernism lies the belief in an intimate relationship between literary form and structure and specific history and geography, a relationship that asks for a critical approach that combines the analysis of formal as well as historical aspects.’ — Paulo Moreira, Hispanófila 168 (May 2013), 174-75

Published April 2010

Aestheticism and the Philosophy of Death: Walter Pater and Post-Hegelianism
Giles Whiteley
Studies In Comparative Literature 20

  • ‘Scholars have long been aware of the importance of acknowledging Pater’s debt to Hegelian philosophy. And many critics of Pater have performed almost obligatory nods towards Hegel’s influence, conceptualized in vague terms, without formulating an understanding of its precise forms. Such critics will now have to engage seriously with Aestheticism and the Philosophy of Death, which contains the most scholarly and detailed account of Pater’s Hegelianism to date.’ — Stefano Evangelista, Modern Language Review 106.4, 2011, 1133-34 (full text online)
  • ‘In this meticulously researched monograph Giles Whiteley sets himself the expansive task of reading Pater’s entire intellectual project as an extended conversation with Hegel... the case is well made that Pater should be considered a proto-poststructuralist thinker.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 48.3, June 2012, 361

Rethinking the Concept of the Grotesque: Crashaw, Baudelaire, Magritte
Shun-Liang Chao
Studies In Comparative Literature 22

  • ‘There is much to admire in this stimulating and well-researched study, not least its invitation to reconsider the significance not only of the grotesque itself, but also of other influential and related aesthetic terms such as the sublime, the uncanny, and the fantastic.’ — Damian Catani, Modern Language Review 106.4, 2011, 1129-31 (full text online)
  • ‘Succeeds in its aims to define the grotesque, give insight into its use of visual and verbal media, and demonstrate its progression through time... a well-reasoned and well-researched book that is a welcome contribution to the study of the Grotesque, as well as to the literature on Crashaw, Baudelaire and Magritte.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 48.3, June 2012, 357-58

Turning into Sterne: Viktor Shklovskii and Literary Reception
Emily Finer
Studies In Comparative Literature 18

  • ‘In [Finer's] own inventive readings, the impact of Sterne and English eighteenth-century narrative experiments is dominant in Shklovskii’s journalism and fiction of the mid 1920s. The overt play with convention evident in his non- fiction, as in his novels, exemplifies in a double sense the khod konia — both the knight’s move of artistic indirection and the hobby horse of Shandean digressions.’ — Dale E. Peterson, Slavonic and East European Review 89.4, October 2011, 720-21 (full text online)
  • ‘Emily Finer’s first monograph represents a significant advance on any other coverage of Viktor Shklovskii (1893–1984) and his work in literature to date... An outstanding study for those interested in early twentieth-century Soviet culture, comparative literature and literary reception, close readings of English literature in Russian translation, and the publication and dissemination of English literature in Russia and the Soviet Union.’ — Rosemari Baker, Slavonica 17.1, April 2011, 54-55

Yeats and Pessoa: Parallel Poetic Styles
Patricia Silva McNeill
Studies In Comparative Literature 19

  • ‘A very worthwhile study which demonstrates how two poets from small, peripheral European nations reflected the Zeitgeist of their times in poetry which posterity has come to regard as among the most important produced in either nation or language.’ — Jean Andrews, Modern Language Review 106.3, July 2011, 840-41 (full text online)

Published September 2010

Uncharted Depths: Descent Narratives in English and French Children’s Literature
Kiera Vaclavik
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘Seeks to draw new attention to the complexity and critical importance of nineteenth-century writing for children, and, indeed, to defend children’s literature more generally as a serious object of study... The volume’s moves through Homer, Virgil, and Dante are very rewarding.’ — Emma Wilson, French Studies 65.3, July 2011, 410-11
  • ‘This strong study leaves very little to be desired... The precision and the originality of Vaclavik’s views opens up a wide-range of new questions.’ — Nicole Biagioli, International Research Society for Children's Literature online
  • ‘By the end of the book it is clear that when we look at the role of the Underworld in children’s literature, we are in no way descending in status. Rather, we are reminded not only of the vital role played by children’s books in shaping the Homers, Virgils and Dantes of successive generations, but also of the fact that, to date, children’s literature has been a significant lacuna in the reception studies of these authors. Vaclavik’s elegant book plays an admirable role in filling that gap.’ — Fiona Cox, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2012.07.25