Literature Criticism

Hardcover. Santa Barbara CA, Black Sparrow Press, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 59 pages. Edition of 750 copies. This is one of the unsigned copies. Quarter black cloth with paper title label. Printed boards. Acetate dust jacket with light soil.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, reprint, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn and lightly soiled dust jacket, unclipped with $4.50 price. Essays on a wide range of topics, including the assassination of Gandhi, Vassar, anti-Semitism, the Communist party, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, etc. No first printing indicated so assumed 2nd pr. No markings.

Hardcover. New York , Oxford University Press , 1st, 1957, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. brown cloth stamped in gilt, 120 pages. INSCRIBED BY LEACH on the front fly leaf. Originally published by Caxton in 1485, Paris & Vienne marked a change in the style of Literature being written in Europe at the time. Instead of tales of Knightly Romance & Chivalry a move was made towards more realistic down to Earth tales, closer to actual life. Clean, bright copy, no dust jacket.

Hardcover. University Press of Kentucky, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 338 pages. Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, author of nine collections of poetry and three volumes of influential essays, is regarded by many as the greatest Irish poet since Yeats. Passage to the Center is the most comprehensive critical treatment to date on Heaney's poetry and the first to study Heaney's entire body of work (including his recent volumes. It is also the first to examine the poems from the perspective of religion, one of Heaney's guiding preoccupations. According to Tobin, the growth of Heaney's poetry may be charted through the recurrent figure of "the center," a key image in the relationship that evolved over time between the poet and his inherited place, an evolution that involved the continual re-evaluation and re-vision of imaginative boundaries. In a way that previous studies have not, Tobin's work examines Heaney's poetry in the context of modernist and postmodernist concerns about the desacralizing of civilization and provides a challenging engagement with the work of a living master. Clean copy.

Softcover. Philadelphia, Owlswick Press, 1st pbk, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 180 pages. Foreword by L. Sprague de Camp, with essays, bibliography and index. Four b&w plates by Tim Kirk. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Syracuse University Press , 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 493 pages. Remainder line and foxing to top edge, light edgewear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Amherst MA, University of Massachusetts Press, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn and tanned dust jacket, 215 pages. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Longmans Green & Co., 1st US, 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a chipped, worn dust jacket, 303 pages."Charles Pierre Peguy (1873- 1914) was a noted French poet, essayist, and editor. His two main philosophies were socialism and nationalism, but by 1908 at the latest, after years of uneasy agnosticism, he had become a believing but non-practicing Roman Catholic. From that time, Catholicism strongly influenced his works. From his earliest years, he was influenced by socialism. He joined the Socialist Party in 1895. From 1900 until his death in 1914, he was the main contributor to and the editor of the literary magazine Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine, which at first supported the Socialist Party director Jean Jaures. However, Peguy ultimately ended this support after he began viewing Jaures as a traitor to the nation and to socialism. In the Cahiers, Peguy published not only his own essays and poetry, but also works by important contemporary authors such as Romain Rolland. His free-verse poem, "Portico of the Mystery of the Second Virtue", has gone through more than 60 editions in France."Charles Pierre Peguy (1873- 1914) was a noted French poet, essayist, and editor. His two main philosophies were socialism and nationalism, but by 1908 at the latest, after years of uneasy agnosticism, he had become a believing but non-practicing Roman Catholic. From that time, Catholicism strongly influenced his works. From his earliest years, he was influenced by socialism. He joined the Socialist Party in 1895. From 1900 until his death in 1914, he was the main contributor to and the editor of the literary magazine Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine, which at first supported the Socialist Party director Jean Jaures. However, Peguy ultimately ended this support after he began viewing Jaures as a traitor to the nation and to socialism. In the Cahiers, Peguy published not only his own essays and poetry, but also works by important contemporary authors such as Romain Rolland. His free-verse poem, "Portico of the Mystery of the Second Virtue", has gone through more than 60 editions in France.

Hardcover. Boston, Charles E. Goodspeed, 1st, 1901, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 71 pages, number 410 of a 500. French hand-made paper, printed by D. B. Updike at the Merrymount Press. Illustrated with one plate and two facsimiles of Thoreau's journal. Gray-green boards with a beige cloth spine with a paper label. Spine and covers darkening, light shelf wear.

Hardcover. Paris, Tchou, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 253 pages, b&w cartoon drawings by Copi. White cloth covers with black design. A collection of quotes from writers of the Surrealist movement in France. Long preface by Corvin. INSCRIBED BY BOTH AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR (HIS WITH A SKETCH OF A BIRD) to Roger Shattuck, author and chronicler of the period. Publishers complimentary card laid in. Small tan stain to cloth at top of front cover, otherwise very good.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 570 pages. Beneath his quiet, self-effacing persona as "archetypal librarian," English poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985) led a much more dramatic and troubled life than was commonly known. Raised by an arrogant father--a Nazi sympathizer who corresponded with Hitler's economics minister--and by an overprotective mother, Larkin harbored self-disgust and sexual confusion. He had a homosexual crush in college, avidly collected pornography and wrote two facetious would-be lesbian romances under the pseudonym Brunette Coleman. His 30-volume diary was destroyed after his death by his indulgent companion Monica Jones. Drawing on unpublished papers and letters, Motion, Larkin's friend and fellow poet, has produced the first biography of a poet who some rank with Auden and Eliot. This revealing, disquieting portrait limns "a selfish man" who played off one lover against another, and a reactionary strongly prejudiced against immigrants, students, unions and socialists. Snippets of poems, interspersed with the narrative, remind us of Larkin's genius.

Hardcover. NY, Viking Press, 1st, 1933, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket, 111 pages. A comprehensive analysis of the works of the famous British author, D. H. Lawrence. The book delves deep into Lawrence's literary career, examining his novels, poems, and essays, and exploring the themes that are central to his writing. Horace Gregory, a renowned literary critic and poet, provides a detailed analysis of Lawrence's works, exploring the author's unique style and his use of language, imagery, and symbolism. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Port Washington NY, Kennikat Press, 1ST, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brown covers with yellow and green lettering on front and spine and green sports figures on front. 112 pages. A Critical Look at Game, Sport, and Survival in Contemporary American Fiction. Clean copy.

Softcover. Boston, Beacon Press, Reprint, 1971, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 212 pages. Softcover. Light pencil marking to a few pages. Overall clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin , 1st, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, unclipped dust jacket, 204 pages. Analyzes the nature and power of poetry and the different responses of Yeats, Dickinson, Keats, and Rimbaud to the world. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 676 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Nice copy.

Hardcover. NY, Humanities Press, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 276 pages. George Lukacs on Appearance and Essence, Erwin Pracht on Socialist Realism, S. Petrov on Realism, Robert Weimann on point of view in fiction, B. G. Zhantieva on Joyce's Ulysses, Werner Mittzenzwei on the Brecht-Lukacs debate, and five other major essays. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, New Directions, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In English at last, Borges's erudite and entertaining lectures on English literature from Beowulf to Oscar Wilde. Writing for Harper's Magazine, Edgardo Krebs describes Professor Borges: "A compilation of the twenty-five lectures Borges gave in 1966 at the University of Buenos Aires, where he taught English literature. Starting with the Vikings' kennings and Beowulf and ending with Stevenson and Oscar Wilde, the book traverses a landscape of 'precursors,'cross-cultural borrowings, and genres of expression, all connected by Borges into a vast interpretive web. This is the most surprising and useful of Borges's works to have appeared posthumously." Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton University Press, 1st, 1956, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth covers with gilt and black title on spine, 353 pages. WITH THE AUTHOR'S INSCRIPTION pasted to front fly leaf. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Twayne Publishers, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 177 pages. Perhaps the most significant and influential figure in this century's wave of American realism, Raymond Carver (1938-1988) is credited not only with reviving the short story as an artistically legitimate form, but also with perfecting minimalist fiction. Moving chronologically through Carver's complete short fiction canon and examining key stories in depth, Ewing Campbell traces the author's development through and beyond literary minimalism, into the tradition of tragic allegory. He explores Carvers persistent use of myth and archetype; motifs of the grotesque; religious iconography; and oppressed, spiritually paralyzed characters. From the earliest stories through the latest, Campbell illuminates Carvers constant fascination with the way individuals connect or fail to connect with one another. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a violet dust jacket with light fading to spine, 232 pages. A collection of essays exploring all aspects on a controversial English poet, the 17th century libertine, The Earl of Rochester. Different sections focus on sexual politics, on the poetry of intellect, and on Rochester and his contemporaries. Name, date and light pencil notations on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Los Angeles, The Augustan Reprint Society , reprint, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 12 page introduction by Peter Sabor plus a 56 page facsimile reprint of Sarah Fielding's (Henry"s sister) criticism of Samuel Richardson's novel. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Madison WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket with fading to the spine. "Cary Nelson performs an invaluable service to the reader by recovering the work of dozens of forgotten poets, especially women, blacks, and writers on the left, while making it clear that the texts we recover inevitably gain new meaning from their positioning within contemporary culture." Nicely illustrated in b&w and some color, mostly book jackets and title pages of books discussed. Some light pencil marking in margins.

Hardcover. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on the title page. What motivates us to reread literary works? How is our pleasure, interpretation, involvement, and evaluation different when we read a literary work and when we reread it? This fascinating book by Matei Calinescu is the first to focus on the implications of rereading for critical understanding. Drawing on literary theory, cultural anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and previous theories of reading, Calinescu describes the dynamics of rereading and explores the sometimes complementary, sometimes sharply conflicting relationships between reading and rereading. Calinescu analyzes fictional works by Borges, Nabokov, Proust, Robbe-Grillet, and Henry James, among others, explaining how reading texts is related both to symbolic play or make-believe and to games with rules. He reviews the history of reading in modern times, discussing, for example, how the Reformation led to rereadings of Scripture and how the proliferation of books during the Enlightenment led to a shift from "intensive reading" to "extensive reading." Calinescu looks at the distinctions between reading and rereading from the perspectives of the age, situation, and gender of the individual reader. He discusses the problems raised by secret or oblique languages and codes - devised to evade censors, communicate with a select audience of "secret sharers," or play games of hide-and-seek with the reader - and shows that they naturally lead to rereading a text. Calinescu argues persuasively that an understanding of rereading is useful in formulating both analytic strategies of practical criticism and a poetics of reading. Clean, bright copy.