This Edexcel GCSE 9-1 English Language bundle has everything you need for catching up, studying and revising for your GCSE exams. There's a brilliant Revision Guide (9781782949503), clearly detailing the entire course with questions at the end of each section to test your knowledge, plus an Exam Practice Workbook (9781782949510), which gives you plenty of practice before the big day - all expertly rounded off with our Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar Workbook (9781782942191) and English Writing Skills Guide Read more

This bundle for GCSE English Literature has everything you need for catching up, studying or revising Willy Russell’s ‘Blood Brothers’.It contains our amazing ‘Blood Brothers’ Text Guide (9781782943112), brimming with clear, thorough notes and questions on the play. Our matching Workbook (9781782947813), packed with further exam-style questions on the plot, characters, context, themes and the writer’s techniques. Plus a pack of Revision Question Cards (9781789084726), with questions on the front and answers on the back, for unbeatable quick-fire practice, and handy revision and exam tips. Read more

Discover J. M. Barrie’s original unabridged edition from 1911, featuring 13 high-quality illustrations by F. D. Bedford and a fun quiz about the story of Peter Pan.Originally published in 1911 as Peter and Wendy, this classic children's novel follows the adventures of a mischievous young boy named Peter Pan. Refusing to grow up, Peter lives in the magical world of Neverland with pirates, fairies, and mermaids. With the help of the Lost Boys and the Darling children, Peter bravely battles the evil Captain Hook and his pirate crew in an endless chase around the magical island. This timeless tale of imagination, adventure, and friendship has captured the hearts of generations and remains a beloved classic to this day. The imaginative and enchanted world of Peter Pan calls readers of all ages on an unforgettable adventure that will teach them how to embrace their inner child and never stop dreaming.This beautiful edition includes:13 original, first-edition, high-quality illustrations by the legendary artist F. D. Bedford.A fun quiz about the story and characters of Peter Pan to complete at the end of the book.A beautifully designed cover to adorn your collection.Easy-to-read typesetting for the perfect reading experience for both children and adults.Peter Pan, one of the best classic novels for young boys and girls of all time, is the perfect gift for young book lovers that will become an unmissable part of your collection! Read more

The most trusted anthology for complete works and helpful editorial apparatus. The Tenth Edition supports survey and period courses with NEW complete major works, NEW contemporary writers, and dynamic and easy-to-access digital resources. NEW video modules help introduce students to literature in multiple exciting ways. These innovations make the Norton Anthology an even better teaching tool for instructors and, as ever, unmatched value for students. Read more

Sir Stanley Wells is one of the world's greatest authorities on William Shakespeare. Here he brings a lifetime of learning and reflection to bear on some of the most tantalising questions about the poet and dramatist that there are. How did he think, feel, and work? What were his relationships like? What did he believe about death? What made him laugh? This freshly thought and immensely engaging study wrestles with fundamental debates concerning Shakespeare's personality and life. The mysteries of how Shakespeare lived, whom and how he loved, how he worked, how he produced some of the greatest and most abidingly popular works in the history of world literature and drama, have fascinated readers for centuries. This concise, crystalline book conjures illuminating insights to reveal Shakespeare as he was. Wells brings the writer and dramatist alive, in all his fascinating humanity, for readers of today. Read more

The Cambridge Companion to Kazuo Ishiguro offers an accessible introduction to key aspects of the novelist's remarkable body of work. The volume addresses Ishiguro's engagement with fundamental questions of humanity and personal responsibility, with aesthetic value and political valency, with the vicissitudes of memory and historical documentation, and with questions of family, home, and homelessness. Focused through the personal experiences of some of the most memorable characters in contemporary fiction, Ishiguro's writing speaks to the major communitarian questions of our time – questions of nationalism and colonialism, race and ethnicity, migration, war, and cultural memory and social justice. The chapters attend to Ishiguro's highly readable novels while also ranging across his other creative output. Gathering together established and emerging scholars from the UK, Europe, the USA, and East Asia, the volume offers a survey of key works and themes while also moving critical discussion forward in new and challenging ways. Read more

“A perfect volume to initiate majors into the discipline and delight of carefully examining presumptions, priorities, language, and structures of both primary and secondary texts.” —Stephen R. Honeygosky, University of PittsburghThis Norton Critical Edition includes:• The Second Quarto text, edited by Robert S. Miola and accompanied by his footnotes, headnotes, and introductory materials.• Eighteen illustrations from 1604 to 2008, three of them new to the Second Edition.• The Actors’ Gallery, presenting actors—from Sarah Bernhardt and Ellen Terry to Kenneth Branagh and David Tennant, two of them new to the Second Edition—reflecting on their roles in major productions of Hamlet.• Seventeen critical interpretations, representing a wide range of historical and scholarly commentary.• Afterlives, featuring fifteen reflections on Hamlet—from David Garrick and Mark Twain to Margaret Atwood and Jawad al-Assadi.A Bibliography of print and online resources. Read more

Against the backcloth of Euripides' The Bacchae, the most darkly anarchic and sexually disturbing drama in Greek literature, Caryl Churchill, author of Top Girls (Royal Court, 1982) and David Lan, author of Flight (RSC, 1986), working with Joint Stock Theater Group, have created a contemporary play of startling intensity combining drama and dance. Read more

This Element looks at the art of the actress in the eighteenth century. It considers how visual materials across genres, such as prints, portraits, sculpture, costumes, and accessories, contribute to the understanding of the nuances of female celebrity, fame, notoriety, and scandal. The 'art' of the actress refers to the actress represented in visual art, as well as to the actress's labor and skill in making art ephemerally through performance and tangibly through objects. Moving away from the concept of the 'actress as muse,' a relationship that privileges the role of the male artist over the inspirational subject, the author focuses instead on the varied significance of representations, reproductions, and re-animations of actresses, female artists, and theatrical women across media. Via case studies, the Element explores how the archive charts both a familiar and at times unknown narrative about female performers of the past. Read more

Bristol debates Shakespeare's cultural success and widespread notoriety, his achievement of contemporary celebrity and argues that Shakespeare's plays represent the pathos of our civilization with extraordinary force and clarity. Read more

Examining the racially white 'others' whom Shakespeare creates in characters like Richard III, Hamlet and Tamora – figures who are never quite 'white enough' – this bold and compelling work emphasises how such classification perpetuates anti-Blackness and re-affirms white supremacy. David Sterling Brown offers nothing less here than a wholesale deconstruction of whiteness in Shakespeare's plays, arguing that the 'white other' was a racialized category already in formation during the Elizabethan era – and also one to which Shakespeare was himself a crucial contributor. In exploring Shakespeare's determinative role and strategic investment in identity politics (while drawing powerfully on his own life experiences, including adolescence), the author argues that even as Shakespearean theatrical texts functioned as engines of white identity formation, they expose the illusion of white racial solidarity. This essential contribution to Shakespeare studies, critical whiteness studies and critical race studies is an authoritative, urgent dismantling of dramatized racial profiling. Read more

Theatre has a funny way of getting to the heart of who we are now and - particularly in the case of Connections - who we are going to be.Drawing together the work of nine leading playwrights, National Theatre Connections 2018 features work by some of the most exciting contemporary playwrights. Gathered together in one volume, the plays offer young performers an engaging selection of material to perform, read or study.From friends building bridges and siblings breaking down walls; girls making their voice heard and boys searching for home; and not forgetting a band of unlikely action heroes taking control of the weather.The anthology contains nine play scripts along with imaginative production notes and exercises, as well as a short introduction to the writing process for the tenth Connections play [ BLANK ] by Alice Birch.National Theatre Connections is an annual festival which brings new plays for young people to schools and youth theatres across the UK and Ireland. Commissioning exciting work from leading playwrights, the festival exposes actors aged 13-19 to the world of professional theatre-making, giving them full control of a theatrical production - from costume and set design to stage management and marketing campaigns. NT Connections have published over 150 original plays and regularly works with 500 theatre companies and 10,000 young people each year. Read more

This Element presents new cultural, social, and economic perspectives on the eighteenth-century London masquerade through an in-depth analysis of the classic domino costume. Constructing the object biography of the domino through material, visual, and written sources will bring together various experiences of the masquerade and expand the existing geographical, chronological, and socio-economic scope of the entertainment beyond the masquerade event itself. This Element will examine the domino's physical and figurative movements from the masquerade warehouse, through eighteenth-century fashionable society, and into print and visual culture. It will draw upon masquerade warehouse records, newspapers, manuscripts, prints, and physical objects to establish a comprehensive understanding of the domino and how it reflected contemporary experiences of the real and imagined masquerade. Analysing the domino through interdisciplinary methodologies illustrates the impact material and visual sources can have on reshaping existing scholarship. Read more

William Blake is a universal artist an inspiration to visual artists, musicians, poets and performers worldwide as well as everyone who aspires to the ideals of personal, spiritual and creative liberty. His heroic story has inspired and invigorated generations: his personal struggles in a period of political terror and oppression, his technical innovation, his vision and political commitment, are perhaps never more pertinent. This book presents Blake as a visual artist for the twenty-first century. Accompanying the first major survey of William Blake s work to be held since 2000, William Blake: the Artist presents a comprehensive overview of his work as a printmaker, poet and painter, foregrounding his relationship with the art world of his time and telling the stories behind some of the most iconic images in the history of British art. The chronological narrative and biographical focus helps the reader understand the life and the historical forces at work; and provides a framework for presenting up-to-date scholarship with an emphatically art historical (rather than literary) focus. Chapters include: 1. Blake, be an Artist! - Blake and the Academy, aspiring to history painting 2. Prophetic and Visionary art - Blake in the 1790s Illuminated Books, Songs of Innocence and Experience, America, Europe, Newton 3. Blake among the Civil Servants - Blake s patrons and their boring day jobs watercolours and paintings of 1790s and 1800s / Visions of Albion -1800-3, turning point in his career as a visionary artist, Milton and Jerusalem begun [this was two separate chapters but Martin and Amy plan to elide the two parts into one] 4. Fresco Painting Restored key exhibition and publication projects, 1808-1812 the failed 1809 exhibition Blake s aspirations as a public artist 5. Hidden Blake late works, retiring from the world but rediscovered by a new generation (Dante Illustrations, Jerusalem) Read more

Both an enhanced digital edition and a handsome print volume, The Norton Chaucer provides the complete poetry and prose, meticulously glossed and annotated specifically for undergraduate readers, with apparatus reflecting current scholarship―all at an unmatched value. Read more

In all six of its volumes The Broadview Anthology of British Literature presents British literature in a truly distinctive light. Fully grounded in sound literary and historical scholarship, the anthology takes a fresh approach to many canonical authors, and includes a wide selection of work by lesser-known writers. The anthology also provides wide-ranging coverage of the worldwide connections of British literature, and it pays attention throughout to issues of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation. It includes comprehensive introductions to each period, providing in each case an overview of the historical and cultural as well as the literary background. It features accessible and engaging headnotes for all authors, extensive explanatory annotations, and an unparalleled number of illustrations and contextual materials. Innovative, authoritative and comprehensive, The Broadview Anthology of British Literature has established itself as a leader in the field.The full anthology comprises six bound volumes, together with an extensive website component; the latter has been edited, annotated, and designed according to the same high standards as the bound book component of the anthology, and is accessible by using the passcode obtained with the purchase of one or more of the bound volumes.For the third edition of this volume a number of changes have been made. The Old English material has been substantially revised and expanded, including new translations by Roy Liuzza of “Deor,” “Wulf and Eadwacer,” and “The Battle of Brunanburh.” A selection from Adrienne Williams Boyarin’s new translation of “The Miracles of the Virgin” will be included, along with Sian Echard’s translation of selections from Y Gododdin. Matthieu Boyd’s translation of the first two branches of the Mabinogi is also new to this edition, together with several Early Irish lyrics.The “Love and Marriage” Contexts section has been expanded to include additional material by Christine de Pizan and excerpts from Holy Maidenhood, and the “Religious and Spiritual Life” Contexts section now includes excerpts from Wycliffite writings. The selection of material by Sir Thomas Malory has also been substantially revised and expanded. In addition, the online component of the anthology includes several new selections, including “The Gifts of Men,” “The Fortunes of Men,” “The Feast of Bricriu,” material by Robert Henryson, and a broader selection of medieval drama. Read more

Macbeth is arguably the world's most famous monarch. Both the historical king and the literary character have fascinated writers and audiences for centuries, beginning with the poets who recited their verses at the medieval monarch's court. Macbeth's legend began almost immediately after his death as medieval and Renaissance writers gradually replaced the king with a semi-literary character developed and embroidered to suit their own political and cultural agenda. The process of transformation culminated in playwright William Shakespeare's The Tragedie of Macbeth.Investigating the man and the legend, Benjamin Hudson traces the eleventh-century prince's rise to prominence from local warlord to international ruler. Battling Vikings, English, and his fellow Scots, Macbeth was involved in a Dano-Norwegian conflict, made a pilgrimage to Rome, and gave refuge to Norman knights. He was more than a mere warlord. With his queen, Gruoch, the widow of a man who killed Macbeth's father, he was a benefactor of churches. The historical prince was an important innovator who used new fighting tactics, developed an international outlook to government, and encouraged intellectual pursuits. Hudson also tracks the ways in which popularizers developed the women behind the fictional Lady Macbeth and the weird sisters. Drawing on centuries of Celtic and Scandinavian sources, popular entertainment, political theory, folklore, and art, Macbeth before Shakespeare recovers the genuine king from the historical record and shows how he was replaced by the legendary monster of ambition. Read more

Though we live in a world that dreams of ending that always seems about to give in something that will not acknowledge conclusion insists that we forever begin. So ends Brendan Kennelly’s poignant cry for renewal, ‘Begin’, the seed of this new collection of echoing poems. Kennelly has listened to the voices of poems written over forty years to assemble a living testament to the redeeming power of poetry, making connections across time in his work and with the world, setting up reverberations ‘where there was only the consolation of ordinary emptiness’. As in Cromwell and The Book of Judas, those voices include some we might not think we want to hear, from the likeable bus driver who’d been a Black-and-Tan to the man-mirroring evil of the man-obliterating bomb. In poems about ignorance and learning, the good and the bad, men and women, the Dubliners he’s known and the country people he grew up with, politicians and killers with causes, Kennelly hears echoes of violence, childhood, love, history, hurt and laughter, but with recurring hints of some hope in self-renewal – and with each poem setting off echoes of further echoes. Like all writers who take risks with life and language, he returns obsessively to saints and sinners, mad-ness and appearances, desolation and decency. For Brendan Kennelly, a lifelong teacher, echoes are a kind of education: ‘Education is as much a matter of crafty concealment and manipulation as it is of stylish accent and sophisticated expression. It’s amazing the way ignorance, hatred and prejudice endure and thrive under the educated skin. So much civilised living is an educated skin. We should be careful how and where we scratch.’ Read more