Biographies and Autobiographies in Modern Italy
Edited by Martin McLaughlin and Peter Hainsworth
Legenda (General Series) 23 February 2007

  • ‘Hainsworth and McLaughlin open the volume with a succinct, clear and meaty disquisition on the nature of biography and autobiography. Their Introduction furnishes, in lively prose, an overview of the state of such writing in Italy... A fascinating glimpse into the life histories, and the shaping of life histories, by an eclectic group of Italians. Its chapters provide useful information on the less-known and engrossing new insights into familiar canonical figures.’ — Risa Sodi, Biography 32.3, Summer 2009, pp. 562-65
  • ‘These pieces all share John Woodhouse's sentiment that the life lived and written by an author are "mutually illuminating" and that writing loses much when "seen solely within the terms of a textual universe".’ — unsigned, Forum for Modern Language Studies 46.1, January 2010, 107-08

Britain and Italy from Romanticism to Modernism: A Festschrift for Peter Brand
Edited by Martin McLaughlin
Legenda (General Series) 1 November 2000

  • ‘The book concludes with a useful bibliography of Peter Brand's work and offers a valuable résumé of work in the field since Brand's pioneering study.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies xxxix/1, 2003, 91
  • ‘This rich and varied collection of essays... a worthy homage to Peter Brand.’ — Carmine G. di Biase, Italica 79.4, 2002, 568-72
  • ‘A volume that, with its interlacing strands, very effectively offers a picture of the complex relationship between two cultures reciprocally illuminating each other in often unpredictable ways.’ — Laura Lepschy, Modern Language Review 98.2, 2003, 482-3 (full text online)
  • ‘Une présentation très claire, dans laquelle toutefois le titre peut paraïtre trompeur, car il resterait à explorer, pendant cette même période, ce qu'apporte précisément cet autre aspect de la culture moderne italienne qu'est par exemple sa production romanesque. On songe à Manzoni (1785-1873) dont l'èuvre reflète à bien des égards le passage du Romantisme au Modernisme.’ — Annie Dubernard Laurent, Revue de littérature comparée 3, 2002, 381-3

Victor Hugo, romancier de l'abîme: New Studies on Hugo's Novels
Edited by J. A. Hiddleston
Legenda (General Series) 1 May 2002

  • ‘This is a fascinating collection, revealing complexities and shifting sands in place of the stark dichotomies once associated with Hugo's novels... clearly demonstrates a rich seam of interest for the twenty-first-century reader. A thought-provoking volume indeed!’ — Monica Nurnberg, Modern Language Review 99.1, 2004, 204-5 (full text online)

From Art Nouveau to Surrealism: Belgian Modernity in the Making
Edited by Nathalie Aubert, Pierre-Philippe Fraiture and Patrick McGuinness
Legenda (General Series) 5 July 2007

  • ‘Discerning insights typify this volume, that sensitively examines sixty years of visual, literary, musical, and political avant-garde expression.’ — Silvano Levy, Modern Language Review 103.4, October 2008, 1130-31 (full text online)
  • ‘A welcome and wide-ranging picture of Belgian Modernity up to the Second World War.’ — Lénia Marques, Journal of Romance Studies 8.3, Winter 2008, 77-87
  • ‘This collection of fifteen essays is the first in English to present a wide-ranging overview of Belgian modernity between 1880 and 1950. The result is a richly detailed assessment of specifically Belgian cultural production and of its European context, divided into two sections, the first spanning 1880-1918, and the second the inter-war years... an invaluable study of a period whose cultural production the editors describe as "awkward and intractable, but also enriching and full of unexpected possibilities".’ — unsigned, Forum for Modern Language Studies 46.1, January 2010, 113

Image, Eye and Art in Calvino: Writing Visibility
Edited by Birgitte Grundtvig, Martin McLaughlin and Lene Waage Petersen
Legenda (General Series) 23 February 2007

  • ‘Andrea Battistini's chapter, finally, is one of the most enjoyable; it could be defined as the critical equivalent of Eco’s novel La misteriosa fiamma della regina Loana, in the sense that it shows quite convincingly how the "fantastic iconology of cartoons" and comic books is deeply rooted in Calvino's imagination and how this could be traced in his narrative style, also testifying to the extent of Calvino's engagement with the products of mass culture.’ — Pierpaolo Antonello, Modern Language Review 104.1, January 2009, 210-12 (full text online)
  • ‘These notes give but a hint of the richness of Image, Eye and Art in Calvino. This is a compelling volume for Calvino scholars; it should also have a strong appeal for those more generally interested in the relation between the verbal and the visual.’ — Luca Pocci, Angles on the English-Speaking World 8, 2008, 127-29
  • ‘A vital tool for further research not only into the works of Calvino but also into the contemporary cultural interweaving of literature and the arts.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 47.1, January 2011

Wilhelm Raabe: Global Themes - International Perspectives
Edited by Dirk Göttsche and Florian Krobb
Legenda (General Series) 17 July 2009

  • ‘Wenn die Zuschreibung von 'Internationalität' zuweilen etwas sehr allgemein und unkonkret bleibt, dann ist dies der gewiss gut gemeinten Absicht, aus einem nationalen Dichter einen Autor der Weltliteratur zu machen, geschuldet. Dass nun ein exzellentes Handbuch zu Raabe in englischer Sprache vorliegt, mag die Internationalität eines Autors und der Forschung zu seinem Werk eigentlich bereits hinreichend belegen. Somit bleibt nur zu hoffen, dass es die Übersetzung weiterer Werke Raabes ins Englische ebenso befördert wie die Publikation eines Raabe-Handbuchs in deutscher Sprache. Denn für letzteres liegt nun ein gelungenes Vorbild vor.’ — Lucas Marco Gisi, Jahrbuch der Raabe-Gesellschaft 2010, 137-43
  • ‘There is a potentially massive argument to be engaged here regarding the future of arts and humanities research. The editors of this book are to be congratulated for setting the terms of that debate and for showing a good deal of what might be done. It is a fine beginning to our oncoming work.’ — Thomas Docherty, Comparative Critical Studies 7.2–3, 2010, 401-04
  • ‘An excellent anthology of essays... Whether or not one agrees with Jeffrey L. Sammons’s contention that Wilhelm Raabe ‘was the major nineteenth-century novelist in the German language between Goethe and Fontane’..., one leaves this volume convinced that he was certainly one of the most attuned to the impact of Germany’s forays into the wider world on those who travelled abroad and even on those who remained at home.’ — Todd Kontje, Modern Language Review 106.2, April 2011, 584-86 (full text online)
  • ‘Whether the three volumes reviewed here represent the end of Raabe's rehabilitation or the beginning of a new phase, a global phase, of Raabe scholarship remains to be seen, but their publication is indeed equicklich - refreshing.’ — Robert L. Jamison, Monatshefte 103.1, 2011, 126-31

The Cervantean Heritage: Reception and Influence of Cervantes in Britain
Edited by J. A. G. Ardila
Legenda (General Series) 23 December 2008

  • ‘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

The Strange M. Proust
Edited by André Benhaïm
Legenda (General Series) 23 December 2008

  • ‘Reminding us again of the importance of close reading in Proust, Malcolm Bowie concludes that ‘it is perhaps in his handling of little local things that he is the most strange’. Certainly, in their attentiveness to detail, all of the articles in this volume provide exciting new insights into a much-studied text.’ — Sarah Tribout-Joseph, Modern Language Review 105.2, 2010, 569-70 (full text online)
  • ‘The eminent Proust scholars contribiting to this volume all propose readings of the Search that tease out paradoxes, the uncanny, and the subversive hidden in Proust's text through a variety of critical perspectives. Although the theme of 'strangeness' is broad, the chapters cohere remarkably well and are of a uniformly high caliber.’ — Patrick M. Bray, French Review 85.2, 2012, 168-69

Textual Wanderings: The Theory and Practice of Narrative Digression
Edited by Rhian Atkin
Legenda (General Series) 6 July 2011

German Women's Writing of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: Future Directions in Feminist Criticism
Edited by Helen Fronius and Anna Richards
Legenda (General Series) 26 August 2011

  • ‘The volume will be of great use to students and researchers alike, as a source of well-written critical scholarship and of pointers to severe deficits in current research. It offers productive methodologies for taking the enquiry forward in areas vital to a fuller, more nuanced understanding of the place of women writers as part of the whole picture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cultural history in the German-speaking lands.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 48.4 (October 2012), 489
  • ‘Thus the book’s structure, like its title, ultimately collapses: the future has not yet happened. Yet it is glimpsed here—and it will indeed necessarily entail killing off and reviving the female author and the female reader, undoing and redoing gender, sexuality, and herstory, embracing pluralism and firing the canon. And it will only have been achieved once the gatekeepers become contributors and all critics—including men—are doing feminist criticism.’ — Robert Gillett, Modern Language Review 109.2, April 2014, 547-48 (full text online)

Re-Contextualising East Central European History: Nation, Culture and Minority Groups
Edited by Robert Pyrah and Marius Turda
Legenda (General Series) 6 September 2010

  • ‘The essays in this collection are original and promise much for the future of scholarship on the region... Important matters are at stake here, including the professional historian’s relationship with the public and the memory industry (booming in East Central Europe), and the extent to which national narratives of heroism and victimhood obscure both the complexity of the past and the histories of minorities and non-national groups.’ — John Paul Newman, Modern Language Review 107.1, January 2012, 261-63 (full text online)
  • ‘A snapshot of the research interests of scholars who are producing genuinely innovative research on topics which have been largely overlooked in the existing English language scholarship... also contains an extensive selected bibliography of the key recent publications on the region that should be an invaluable resource.’ — Thomas A. Lorman, Central Europe 10.1, May 2012, 80-82
  • ‘The essays in this volume demonstrate the growing range and sophistication of Anglophone scholarship on East Central Europe, particularly in their presentation of minority experiences, based on rigorous research in multiple, often lesser-known languages.’ — Nathaniel D. Wood, Austrian History Yearbook 43, 2012, 200-01

Portuguese Modernisms: Multiple Perspectives on Literature and the Visual Arts
Edited by Steffen Dix and Jerónimo Pizarro
Legenda (General Series) 4 February 2011

Pessoa in an Intertextual Web: Influence and Innovation
Edited by David G. Frier
Legenda (General Series) 30 January 2012

  • ‘As its title suggests, [the book] provides Pessoan scholars and the general reader with a lot of thematic variety and in-depth insights. Some of the papers bring fresh perspectives on topics that had been critically broached before, but are here seen from enriching perspectives. Other papers provide refreshingly new arguments. These are two of the many reasons why one would wish to recommend this volume, both to the specialist and to the student who is starting out on the path to his or her own Pessoa.’ — Francisco Cota Fagundes, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 110.4, September 2013, 1058-59

Shandean Humour in English and German Literature and Philosophy
Edited by Klaus Vieweg, James Vigus and Kathleen M. Wheeler
Legenda (General Series) 4 March 2013

Women, Genre and Circumstance: Essays in Memory of Elizabeth Fallaize
Edited by Margaret Atack, Diana Holmes, Diana Knight and Judith Still
Legenda (General Series) 1 June 2012

  • ‘Like the woman to whom it pays tribute, and whose haunting gaze looks out at us from its cover, this volume of essays combines intellectual rigour with humanity, serious purpose with humour, depth of insight with lightness of touch.’ — Julia Waters, Modern and Contemporary France 20.4 (November 2012), 505-06
  • ‘A powerful and moving reminder of the lineaments and achievements of [Elizabeth Fallaize's] scholarly work. Equally, as critical explorations of a variety of nineteenth- and twentieth-century narrative artefacts and practices, [these essays] are a pleasure to read, combining to create a collection that is an academic delight and would certainly have delighted the woman to whom it is dedicated.’ — Alex Hughes, French Studies 67.2 (April 2013), 294-95
  • ‘The chapters which form this scholarly homage... keep the dialogue open with a scholar, teacher, feminist and mentor who spent her life engaging with French literature. Yet, each contribution, particularly those of Michèle le Doeuff, Ursula Tidd and Diana Holmes, offers intellectual stimulation in its own right.’ — France Grenaudier-Klign, New Zealand Journal of French Studies 34.2, 2014, 130-32

Language and Social Structure in Urban France
Edited by Mari C. Jones and David Hornsby
Legenda (General Series) 4 December 2013

  • ‘From a variationist’s perspective, this is an insightful volume, methodical in its approach to the subject matter, and careful to consider existing research from across the social sciences. Its overarching aims are very well addressed, and the proposals outlined by the contributors will undoubtedly form an important part of future research on Metropolitan French. The volume’s undoubted strength and significant contribution comes from the break in the ‘reciprocal ignorance pact’ (Fishman 1991) that characterises the relationship between sociology and sociolinguistics. As Pooley rightly suggests (p. 209), it is this break in tradition that must now spearhead new avenues of research.’ — Jonathan R. Kasstan, Journal of French Language Studies 26.2, July 2016, 209-11

Form and Feeling in Modern Literature: Essays in Honour of Barbara Hardy
Edited by William Baker with Isobel Armstrong
Legenda (General Series) 4 March 2013

  • ‘The editors are to be congratulated on putting together a volume which maintains a consistently high quality, while ranging widely over a multitude of topics.’ — Leonee Ormond, George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies 64-65, October 2013, 99-100
  • ‘An excellent tribute to the work of Professor Hardy; however, the critical essays and their approach to fiction in the nineteenth century also make this collection of interest to scholars in the field who may not be as familiar with the work of Hardy.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 50.4, October 2014, 506

The Present Word: Culture, Society and the Site of Literature
Edited by John Walker
Legenda (General Series) 25 September 2013

Politics and the Individual in France 1930-1950
Edited by Jessica Wardhaugh
Legenda (General Series) 8 June 2015

  • ‘This collection offers stimulating insights into mid-twentieth century political life... More important, the contributions illustrate how the political polarization that preceded and followed the Second World War compelled many people to commit to a party or cause, even when this resulted in disrupted family life and professional life or class and ethnic identities, producing the competing memories of the period that persist today.’ — Rebecca Scales, European History Quarterly 46.2, May 2016, 413-15
  • ‘With its wide range of case studies, embracing a large number of different aspects of political engagement during the period between the 1930s and the 1950s, this book offers an interesting perspective on relationships between the individual and political movements, how this has been portrayed both at the time and in more recent analyses, and the limits of individual agency during these decades. As the conclusion states, much work remains to be done in this area. This book makes an important contribution towards achieving this aim.’ — William H. E. Rispin, French History 30.2, June 2016, 276-77

Lucidity: Essays in Honour of Alison Finch
Edited by Ian James and Emma Wilson
Legenda (General Series) 1 September 2016

  • ‘This carefully crafted volume offers subtle and sustained reflections on the theme of lucidity as it is manifested in a range of cultural forms and media... This volume of fine schol- arship is dedicated to Alison Finch. As such, it pays tribute to her writing, teaching, and personal qualities, and constitutes a fitting tribute to her own lucidity.’ — Shirley Jordan, French Studies 74.1, January 2020, 157 (full text online)

Decadence and the Senses
Edited by Jane Desmarais and Alice Condé
Legenda (General Series) 17 May 2017

  • ‘I found Maxwell’s discussion of the tuberose, and more speci cally Walter Pater’s conscription of that flower to describe his own rarefied prose style, to be particularly interesting, as Pater’s writing is so often considered the acme of Decadent prose. It seems that the orchid that famously reminded Dorian Gray of the seven deadly sins should, perhaps, have been a tuberose. Equally interesting is Angela Dunstan’s suggestion that Theodore Watts-Dunton’s roman-à-clef Aylwin became for readers a means of owning the celebrity of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, or the notion extended by Liz Renes that John Singer Sargent’s Madame X should be considered a meditation on the white, sculptural body and its changing role in modern art.’ — Jamie Horrocks, English Literature in Translation 61.4, 2018, 525-28
  • ‘It is perhaps fitting that the unity of a book on Decadent literature should be best experienced ‘decomposed’ to give place to the independence of each chapter. There is no doubt, however, that the high quality of its constituent parts forms a significant contribution to Sensory Studies and that the collection is a ‘must-read’ for any student of Decadence at the fin de siècle and beyond.’ — Patricia Pulham, Modern Language Review 114.1, January 2019, 128-29 (full text online)
  • ‘Desmarais and Condé have done an enormous service by opening up this can of repulsive worms.’ — Dennis Denisoff, Victorian Studies 61.2, Winter 2019, 554-56

Cognitive Confusions: Dreams, Delusions and Illusions in Early Modern Culture
Edited by Ita Mac Carthy, Kirsti Sellevold and Olivia Smith
Legenda (General Series) 13 February 2017

  • ‘Cognition-centered scholarship is here, and Dreams, Delusions and Illusions in Early Modern Culture is a welcome new contribution... I found myself wanting to dialogue with each of these writers... they enter into essential new investigations into the diversity of our cognitive experiences.’ — Donald Beecher, Renaissance Quarterly 71.1, 2018, 267-69
  • ‘Sustained and intensive collaboration is evident in the collection, where every chapter displays a profound and fruitful engagement with cognitive psychology and philosophy that illuminates both early modern literary texts and contemporary science... These essays are thought-provoking, rigorous, and inventive themselves, and as exemplary models of properly collaborative research should interest early modernists, literary scholars, and other researchers into cognition.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 54.3, July 2018, 372

The Made and the Found: Essays, Prose and Poetry in Honour of Michael Sheringham
Edited by Patrick McGuinness and Emily McLaughlin
Legenda (General Series) 25 May 2017

  • ‘Micky’s words return here in all their felicity. His appetite, brilliance, and distinct sensibility are intensely present. The editors speak of Micky ‘drawn by what was accidental, unsystematic, eccentric’ (p. ix). They see him glorying in ‘the overspill of things’. They speak of Micky as their ‘friend and colleague’ and this book is a beautiful act of camaraderie.’ — Emma Wilson, French Studies 72.3, July 2018, 485-86 (full text online)
  • ‘This starry roster of writers, working in English and French, often operate along lines of creative interplay between chance and choice, the map and serendipity, walking and writing, celebrating the transition from noticing to noting and from there maybe even into actually making poetry.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 54.3, July 2018, 375
  • ‘The Made and the Found is a rich volume that will be of interest to friends of the late Michael Sheringham as well as to all those wanting to study the relation between French culture, language and the everyday.’ — Verena Andermatt Conley, H-France 18.214, November 2018

Freedom and the Subject of Theory: Essays in Honour of Christina Howells
Edited by Oliver Davis and Colin Davis
Legenda (General Series) 14 May 2019

Gravity and Grace: Essays for Roger Pearson
Edited by Charlie Louth and Patrick McGuinness
Legenda (General Series) 25 February 2019

  • ‘A core series of contributions offers a remarkably sustained and rich reflection on the interplay between the aesthetic and ethical notions of gravity and grace.’ — Scott M. Powers, H-France 20, June 2020, no. 92
  • ‘Works of art function by allowing something to happen, rather than by making something happen, and are nothing without our active participation. The prescriptive weightiness of words in practical discourse is not what poetry, especially, puts in play. That certainly makes this book a fitting tribute to the wonderful work of Roger Pearson, whose own writing is never heavy, never pedantic, but always invites and inspires the reader to continue thinking beyond the page.’ — Peter Dayan, Modern Language Review 116.1, 2020, 188-89 (full text online)