Gadda and Beckett: Storytelling, Subjectivity and Fracture
Katrin Wehling-Giorgi
Italian Perspectives 29•1 November 2014

  • ‘Katrin Wehling-Giorgi’s comparative reading of the works of two giants of European literature is both enlightening and fascinating... The book is written in an elegant style and has the great merit of spelling out with admirable clarity the philosophical implications of Gadda’s and Beckett’s narrative projects.’ — Olivia Santovetti, Modern Language Review 112.1, January 2017, 225-27 (full text online)

Italy and the USA: Cultural Change Through Language and Narrative
Edited by Guido Bonsaver, Alessandro Carlucci and Matthew Reza
Italian Perspectives 44•30 December 2019

  • ‘A very holistic assessment of cultural change, even going beyond the disciplinary points of reference of language and narrative to the larger fields of politics and economics.’ — Anna Chichi, Modern Language Review 117.2, 2022, 303-04 (full text online)

A Taste for the Negative: Beckett and Nihilism
Shane Weller
Legenda (General Series) •4 February 2005

Anglo-German Interactions in the Literature of the 1890s
Patrick Bridgwater
Legenda (General Series) •1 August 1999

  • ‘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

Channel Crossings: French and English Poetry in Dialogue 1550-2000
Clive Scott
Legenda (General Series) •1 December 2002

  • ‘Crossing the boundary between the critical and the creative, Clive Scott continues the debate on the 'undecidable' in the meaning of art text and concomitant problems in the theory of translation.’ — Roger Pensom, Modern Language Review 99.1, 2004, 281-2 (full text online)
  • ‘The imaginative and sensitive essays explore the principles of translation and the notion of comparative literature... Stimulating arguments link all the essays, such as the celebration of the necessary difference between source and target texts, especially in poetry, where 'the' meaning remains defiantly unseizable.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies XL.1, 2004, 116
  • ‘Scott is a critic who can find the perfect critical expression for the tiniest little effect, who can describe microscopic modulations of thought and language, and thereby give them status in the reading process. He is also a critic with his eye on the big picture, who has produced a discipline-defining book, showing us where we have got to and suggesting where next we might profitably go. It richly deserved to win the Gapper Prize.’ — Patrick McGuinness, French Studies LVIII.3, 2004, 446-7

In(ter)discipline: New Languages for Criticism
Edited by Gillian Beer, Malcolm Bowie and Beate Perrey
Legenda (General Series) •14 December 2007

  • ‘Emerging from conferences organized between 2002 and 2006 within a research project New Languages for Criticism: Cross Currents and Resistances, this compendium addresses the question of the search within the modern humanities for new languages for criticism in the light of a broadening awareness of the increasingly interdisciplinary or intermedial nature of cultural production and research.’ — David Scott, French Studies 514-15
  • ‘The ambition, expertise and disciplinary breadth of this collection are exhilarating... Malcolm Bowie’s celebration of the ‘wonderfully impure acts of translation, of provocation, of risk-taking, and of abyssmanship that musical experience involves’ (p. 72) might equally describe this collection of essays. Often lyrical and innovative in their critical style, these essays by distinguished contributors... are also an important contribution to the definition and exploration of interdisciplinarity itself.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 48.1, 2012, 112

Phrase and Subject: Studies in Literature and Music
Edited by Delia da Sousa Correa
Legenda (General Series) •5 September 2006

  • ‘Largely devoted to questions of narrativity, a disputed area within musicology... An interesting but uneven collection.’ — Julian Rushton, Modern Language Review 103.3, July 2008, 810-11 (full text online)
  • ‘Well-structured and coherent... Building on the important, innovative work of one of the volume’s contributors, Lawrence Kramer, the excellent studies collected here represent a vital overview of fruitful lines of inquiry within a vibrant emerging discipline.’ — Forum for Modern Language Studies April 2009, 220)

Pinter and the Object of Desire: An Approach through the Screenplays
Linda Renton
Legenda (General Series) •1 May 2002

  • ‘Linda Renton's superb study of Pinter as screenwriter quotes him saying how natural the process seemed when he started to write for films in the early 1960s... A strong commitment to the power of the image runs through his screen work, however paradoxical this might seem in a writer famed for his sparring dialogue. Renton argues that the image was central to his approach to film, suggesting that there is an "an object of desire" at the heart of all Pinter's screenplays: one which is often barely visible - or even invisible - to the characters in the story.’ — Ian Christie, Sight & Sound June 2009, 33

The Poems and Songs of Henry Hall of Hereford: A Jacobite Poet of the 1690s
Oliver Pickering
Legenda (General Series) •13 September 2022

  • ‘Pickering has documented and illuminated with great learning and skill a minor but nevertheless fascinating figure in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century English literary culture – for which all serious students of the period will be very grateful.’ — David Hopkins, Seventeenth Century 38.4, 2023, 720-22 (full text online)

The Sentinel: An Incomplete Early Novel by Rebecca West
Edited by Kathryn Laing
Legenda (General Series) •1 December 2002

  • ‘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

Saturn's Moons: W. G. Sebald — A Handbook
Edited by Jo Catling and Richard Hibbitt
Legenda (General Series) •6 July 2011

  • ‘An erudite and deeply engrossing Sebald compendium. It fits his oeuvre that in place of a formal biography we have this border-crossing miscellany in which comment may be free but facts are indeed sacred. Michael Hulse, his equally gifted translator before Anthea Bell, reprints the correspondence in which he asked Sebald to confirm that the quartet of exiles' testimonies so artfully braided into The Emigrants tell real stories about real people... The wonderful alchemy via which Sebald transmuted the found material of actual biography and history into fiction that kept faith with truth explains much of his appeal.’ — Boyd Tonkin, The Independent 2 December 2011, Books of the Week
  • ‘More than two-hundred pages are dedicated to a stunning bibliographic survey of Sebald... If the reader wants to see what Sebald said about, say, Theodor Adorno, Jane Austen, Henry Ford, Jean Genet, Gruppe 47, Ernest Hemingway, Adolf Hitler, Herman Melville, Virginia Woolf, animals, butterflies and moths, depression, irony, the Treblinka trials, or countless other names or topics, the index will direct you to the appropriate interviews. Two of my favorite topics in the index were: 'surgery, fear of' and 'greatest wish: to live outside of time'. Hats off to the crew who have given us this monumental bibliographic record!’ — Terry Pitts, Vertigo 24 September 2011
  • ‘Para aficionados como yo, es una Biblia.’ — William Chislett, El Imparcial 10 December 2011
  • ‘Un somptueux volume collectif – une somme de près de sept cents pages, la bible (plutôt que le modeste handbook annoncé) sur Sebald.’ — Norwich: du temps et des lieux 28 September 2011)
  • ‘Special mention should be made of Sheppard’s ‘index to interviews with Sebald’ and his chronology of Sebald’s life, which reconstructs in as much detail as possible the writer’s movements. As with so much of this volume (characterized by how many of its contributors knew Sebald personally), it is clear that these indexes and bibliographies are labours of love; they will stand scholarship in good stead in years to come... An invaluable resource for future research.’ — Ben Hutchinson, Modern Language Review 107.2, April 2012, 659-61 (full text online)
  • ‘Saturn’s Moons is the most significant publication on W. G. (Max) Sebald in recent time. Offering a quasi-Sebaldian reading experience of that peculiarly unorthodox kind to the general reader, it is also a tome of considerable scholarship, most particularly in the provision of two remarkable bibliographies which make it a sine qua non resource for scholars of Sebald’s work... A book which will underpin further work on his writing for decades to come.’ — Deane Blackler, German Quarterly 85.2, Spring 2012, 233-34
  • ‘How much to reveal about 'W. G. Sebald' is not a simple question. The degree to which he incorporated not just the texts, but also the lives of others into his fictions is greater than we can now... Although Sebald suggests that finding the solutions would be worthwhile, he is suspiciously vague about the effort involved. The Handbook's great value is that it does an immense amount of work for us without revealing too much.’ — Scott Bartsch, Journal of European Studies 42.2, June 2012, 210-11
  • ‘By far the most authoritative and complete guide to the literature owned, written and inspired by Sebald, and testament to some extraordinary detective work. It should immediately become the first port of call for anyone setting out to write on Sebald.’ — J. J. Long, Journal of European Studies 42.3, 2012, 17-18
  • ‘Besides essays in which Michael Hulse and Anthea Bell address the subject of translating Sebald's work and of collaborations between author and translator, readers of this journal should be intrigued by a hitherto unpublished interview conducted by Jon Cook... [Sebald] reflects on his decision to write in German rather than English.’ — Iain Galbraith, Translation and Literature 22.1 (Spring 2013), 137-42
  • ‘Und dennoch ist es nicht nur ein Buch von Freunden über einen verstorbenen Autor, sondern ein Handbuch im besten Sinne des Wortes. Auf höchstem Niveau gibt es Auskunft über Sebalds Kindheit im Allgäu und seinen akademischen Werdegang; über seine Arbeitsweise als Universitätslehrer und die polemische Stoßrichtung seiner wissenschaftlichen Veröffentlichungen; über Sebalds Umgang mit Photographien, die einen integralen Teil seines Werkes bilden; es bietet einen profunden Einblick in seine private Bibliothek und den Stellenwert, den bestimmte Autoren in ihr halten; führt in den Nachlass ein, der in Marbach liegt und verschwiegen ist wie Sebald selbst es war; gibt Schriftstellern und Dichtern das Wort, die Texte über Sebald geschrieben haben; druckt unveröffentlichte Stücke aus Sebalds Nachlass ab; enthält Bibliographien zu seinem Gesamtwerk und der dazu erschienenen internationalen Sekundärliteratur, die bis ins Jahr 2011 Anspruch auf Vollständigkeit erheben dürfen und 170 große, dichtbedruckte Se’ — Jakob Hessing, Arbitrium 34.2, 2016, 246-50
  • ‘The volume offers an abundance of previously unpublished textual and visual material — much of it from Sebald's literary estate but also photographs, letters, syllabi, and personal testimonies provided by friends and others — to offer glimpses into the author's personal and professional life and to contextualize and historicize further his work as a writer, teacher, academic, and critic.’ — Markus Zisselsberger, Monatshefte 104.4, 2012, 685-88

Proust and Joyce in Dialogue
Sarah Tribout-Joseph
Legenda (General Series) •25 July 2008

Thinking with Shakespeare: Comparative and Interdisciplinary Essays
Edited by William Poole and Richard Scholar
Legenda (General Series) •23 February 2007

  • ‘In his witty, deeply learned and humane "Last Word", Nuttall reminds us that the famous principle of economy in explanation, Ockham's Razor, when applied to Shakespeare's plays, should be renamed "Ockham's Beard", which prompts us to ask of any of Shakespeare's plays, "What else is going on?"... What makes this collection distinctive is that nearly all of these essays focus centrally on genre.’ — Paul Cefalu, Shakespeare Quarterly 59.3, Fall 2008, 345-48
  • ‘Frank Kermode once referred to Nuttall (who died in 2007) as "probably the most philosophically-minded of modern literary critics", and the volume reflects this emphasis... A stimulating collection of pieces, of relevance not just to Shakespeareans but also to anyone with an interest in questions of the nature of literary value.’ — unsigned, Forum for Modern Language Studies 46.1, January 2010, 118-19

John Ruskin's Correspondence with Joan Severn: Sense and Nonsense Letters
Edited by Rachel Dickinson
Legenda (General Series) •23 December 2008

  • ‘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) •23 December 2008

  • ‘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

Octavio Paz and T. S. Eliot: Modern Poetry and the Translation of Influence
Tom Boll
Legenda (General Series) •10 October 2012

  • ‘What has been missing from Paz scholarship so far are comparative studies that take a larger international approach to a poet who prided himself on his intellectual cosmopolitanism... Tom Boll’s Octavio Paz and T. S. Eliot is a welcome contribution in this direction. It presents a careful and impressively researched study of young Paz’s reflections on Eliot’s poetry, which the former repeatedly acknowledged as one of the most important influences on his early work and on his vision of modernity.’ — Rubén Gallo, Modernism/modernity 21.2, April 2014, 564-65

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

Uncharted Depths: Descent Narratives in English and French Children’s Literature
Kiera Vaclavik
Legenda (General Series) •6 September 2010

  • ‘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

The Near and Distant God: Poetry, Idealism and Religious Thought from Hölderlin to Eliot
Ian Cooper
Legenda (General Series) •3 October 2008

  • ‘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

Decolonizing Modernism: James Joyce and the Development of Spanish American Fiction
José Luis Venegas
Legenda (General Series) •11 February 2010

  • ‘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

After Reception Theory: Fedor Dostoevskii in Britain, 1869-1935
Lucia Aiello
Legenda (General Series) •25 September 2013

  • ‘This new study complements a number of existing accounts of Dostoevsky reception in Britain and adds to our understanding of Anglo-Russian cul- tural exchange more generally. It also explores the current state of reception studies in the literary humanities (which it views rather pessimistically), creatively blurring the distinction between ques- tions of individual aesthetic reaction (‘reader response’) and patterns of transmission and cultural exchange.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 51.1, January 2015, 87
  • ‘This book calls attention to the complexity of reception and literary criticism, analyzes temporal and geographic context, and stresses the importance and nuances of the cultural context in which a work and its criticism arise. Aiello's study re-evaluates a familiar theoretical framework, providing a new perspective for scholars in the field.’ — Megan Luttrell, Slavic and East European Journal 58.4, Winter 2014, 722-24
  • ‘Fedor Dostoevskii once wrote in a letter to his brother, ‘Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled.’ Lucia Aiello’s new monograph traces the broad scope of social, psychological, and, most frequently, biographical criticism in Britain that has sought to unravel the mysteries of his major works.’ — Patrick Jeffery, Modern Language Review 111.2, April 2016, 600-601 (full text online)

The Spirit of England: Selected Essays of Stephen Medcalf
Stephen Medcalf, edited by Brian Cummings and Gabriel Josipovici
Legenda (General Series) •12 April 2010

  • ‘One of the more extraordinary scholars of the late twentieth century... The range of these essays is the more astonishing at a time when most critics prided themselves on their specialisms rather than their diversity. Medcalf wanted us to see things that could only be understood against the whole gamut of European literary history... Brian Cummings and Gabriel Josipovici are to be congratulated.’ — Stephen Prickett, Times Literary Supplement 26 November 2010
  • ‘A modern parable of birth and death, miraculous encounter and mysterious return, makes a fitting and beautiful conclusion to a book of which we can say, as we rarely can with such confidence, that it was written by a good and wise man.’ — Paul Dean, The New Criterion October 2010, 69-72
  • ‘Cummings and Josipovici have performed a 'mitzvah', a good deed, in editing these essays, which display a brilliant, humane mind at work. It is to be hoped that more Medcalf will be collected for the benefit of subsequent generations.’ — William Baker, Modern Language Review 106.3, July 2011, 871-73 (full text online)
  • ‘The value of this posthumous collection is that it acts as both a lament and a lantern of hope. All we have by way of a memorial are these esoteric essays – but what essays. They show a liberal humanism at its best, expansive learning worn lightly and a belief in teasing out the particularities of a panoply of works... In our bleak climate of fees and looming instrumentality for the humanities, such a voice as Medcalf’s, singing the value of thought and the non-paraphrasable nature of poetry, is as insightful as it is heartening.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 48.1, 2012, 115
  • ‘Von solchen und literarischen Wundern berichtet das Buch, es sollte in vielen Inklings-Bibliotheken stehen und durch die Hände vieler Freunde der englischen Kultur gehen.’ — Elmar Schenkel, Inklings-Jahrbuch 29, 2011, 378-79
  • ‘Medcalf’s reflections throw great light upon Kipling, Horace, and translation.’ — unsigned review, The Year's Work in English Studies 91, 2012, 765

The Libertine’s Nemesis: The Prude in Clarissa and the roman libertin
James Fowler
Legenda (General Series) •4 February 2011

  • ‘The beguiling cover of this Legenda volume is well matched by the book’s contents. Fowler’s thesis is an original and well-argued one: the establishment of a symbiotic relationship between the libertine and the prude in a number of key eighteenth-century texts... the argument is persuasive and elegant, and we are swept along by the author’s enthusiasm for his subject.’ — John Phillips, French Studies 66.3, July 2012, 402

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

A Cultural Citizen of the World: Sigmund Freud's Knowledge and Use of British and American Writings
S. S. Prawer
Legenda (General Series) •17 July 2009

  • ‘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)