An Irish actor’s daughter, Sydney Owenson by dint of great charm and intelligence (as well as literary talent) not only became the wife of Sir Charles Morgan but a popular novelist and social critic in Regency and Early Victorian England. With her friends Byron and Shelley she shared a great love and interest in Italy. Her guide to Italy (ITALY, 1822) was a landmark of political empathy and understanding for a post Napoleonic Italy in the throes of repression.

James Joyce's Giacomo Joyce has generated considerable interest since its posthumous publication in 1968 and this new, ground-breaking work addresses that interest. Giacomo Joyce has provoked widely differing opinions amongst Joyce scholars. But while critical attention has increased, little if anything has been done to draw together the various commentaries, document and exegeses related to this work in anything like a coherent manner.

This research monograph breaks new ground in discussing (in English) the impact
of Washington Irving’s presence in Spain and the effect of his writings on Spanish
topics by Spain’s critics and general readership. Spanish critics, scholars and
translators were and are active in assessing Irving’s literary style, scholarly grasp and
cultural influence. This work seeks to examine Irving’s influence and his “discovery”
of Islamic Al-Andalus (Irving was the first American to seriously study Mahomet

“It has been said that idleness is the parent of mischief, which is very true; but
mischief itself is merely an attempt to escape from the dreary vacuum of idleness.”
George Borrow

First, the subtitle of this completely revised and newly augmented study of George
Borrow, “Misfit” implies not subscribing or submitting to normal, mainstream
middle-class values and habits. Borrow preferred the company of gypsies,
vagabonds, foreigners, horse-dealers and outsiders to the conformist, respectable
English person, whom he thought was sometimes incapable of understanding the

Experiences of twentieth century history and major literary trends are reflected in the excellent but little-known writings of the Austrian-Czech physician and novelist Ernst Weiss (1882-1940). Weiss was born in Moravia and studied medicine, in Vienna and Prague. One of many of Jewish exile writers who fled the Nazi regime, Weiss committed suicide in Paris when German troops entered the city in the summer of 1940. Weiss wrote one of the few novels about Adolf Hitler during the Fuehrer’s life.

Mary Elizabeth Hawker (1848-1908), who wrote from 1890 onwards under the
pseudonym of Lanoe Falconer, is remembered today primarily as the author of
two best-selling novellas (Mademoiselle Ixe and Cecilia de Noël), five brilliant
short stories (published under the title Hôtel d’Angleterre) and a slim volume
of wonderful reminiscences entitled Old Hampshire Vignettes. All of these will
be found in Collected Tales—but they are reinforced by eight additional short
stories, one additional novella (Shoulder to Shoulder) and one additional vignette.

This research monograph is an important contribution to the study of the author, Kurt Vonnegut and the great evolutionary scientist Charles Darwin. The book examines Darwin’s influence on the American culture that were Vonnegut's major focus and interest and the source of his importance as a major American writer of the later half of the 20th century.

Two major Dickens studies, each of them breaking fresh ground, vie for attention in this absorbing volume. The first explores the extent to which Charles Dickens inherited the mantle of Charles Lamb. It demonstrates how heavily, as a ‘hunter’, he drew upon his predecessor’s work for inspiration, adopting Elia’s themes and mannerisms and virtually taking his place on the English literary scene — even to the extent of inheriting John Forster as his closest friend and confidant.

“Speaking from the Margins: The Voice of the ‘Other’ in the Poetry of Carol Ann Duffy and Jackie Kay” studies Carol Ann Duffy and Jackie Kay as poets who identify and represent some key forms of “otherness” may take in the British society of the 1980s and the 1990s.

Richard Wright died 50 years ago and in that time there has been little research on the role of women in his powerful novels of African-American life in America. This research monograph fulfills that informational and interpretative need.