The Oxford Handbook of Lord Byron offers the latest in critical thinking about the poet that defined the Romantic era across Europe and beyond. The volume presents forty-four groundbreaking essays that enable readers to assess Lord Byron's central position in Romantic traditions and his profound and far-reaching influence on British, European, and world culture. The chapters are organized into five sections-'Works', 'Biographical Contexts', 'Literary and Cultural Contexts', 'After...

The Romantic Legacy of Paradise Lost offers a new critical insight into the relationship between Milton and the Romantic poets. Beginning with a discussion of the role that seventeenth and eighteenth-century writers like Dryden, Johnson and Burke played in formulating the political and spiritual mythology that grew up around Milton, Shears devotes a chapter to each of the major Romantic poets, contextualizing their 'misreadings' of Milton within a range of historical, aesthetic, and theore...

The Great Exhibition, 1851: A Sourcebook is the first anthology of its kind. It presents a comprehensive array of carefully selected primary documents, sourced from the period before, during and after the Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851. Drawing on contemporary newspapers and periodicals, the archives of the Royal Commission, diaries, journals, celebratory poems and essays, many of these documents are reproduced in their entirety, and in the same place, for the first time. The boo...

What are we to make of the Victorians’ fascination with collecting? What effect did their encounters with the curious, exotic and downright odd have on Victorian writers and their works? The essays in this collection take up these questions by examining the phenomenon of bric-Ã -brac in Victorian literature. The contributors to Literary Bric-Ã -Brac and the Victorians: From Commodities to Oddities explore sites of unusual concurrence (including museums, the home, art galleries, private col...

The Oxford Handbook of Lord Byron offers the latest in critical thinking about the poet that defined the Romantic era across Europe and beyond. The volume presents forty-four groundbreaking essays that enable listeners to assess Lord Byron's central position in Romantic traditions and his profound and far-reaching influence on British, European, and world culture.The chapters are organized into five sections—"Works," "Biographical Contexts," "Literary and Cultural Contexts...

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOKHere are two thousand years of London’s history and folklore, its chroniclers and criminals and plain citizens, its food and drink and countless pleasures. Blackfriar’s and Charing Cross, Paddington and Bedlam. Westminster Abbey and St. Martin in the Fields. Cockneys and vagrants. Immigrants, peasants, and punks. The Plague, the Great Fire, the Blitz. London at all times of day and night, and in all kinds of weather. In well-ch...

How the simple commodity of coffee came to rewrite the experience of metropolitan lifeWhen the first coffee-house opened in London in 1652, customers were bewildered by this strange new drink from Turkey. But those who tried coffee were soon won over. More coffee-houses were opened across London and, in the following decades, in America and Europe.For a hundred years the coffee-house occupied the centre of urban life. Merchants held auctions of goods, write...

'If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book.' William Godwin, the author's future husband, was not alone in admiring Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Wollstonecraft's most popular book during her lifetime. Not easy to categorize, it is both an arresting travel book and a moving exploration of her personal and political selves. Wollstonecraft set out for Scandi...

John Hollingshead (1827-1904) was an English journalist, writer and theatrical producer. Based on letters from the Morning Post, he published ‘Ragged London in 1861’ in the same year, capturing the essence of London’s bleak environment. in the novel, a correspondent travels through the underbelly of the metropolis, meeting and living with the very poorest and most desperate members of society. This is a must-read for fans of classic English fiction and 19th century history. Sections includ...

Originally written by Marjorie Howe as “The Commisioners of Rhyl” this book provides a fascinating insight into the establishment of early Rhyl as a town.From its first Commissioners to the formation of the Rhyl Urban District Council, this well researched book goes into some detail about how the town grew and prospered with the influx of visitors and the growing population.Many houses & buildings were planned & built during this great period of growth. New roads, a railway...

THIS book is for the lover of Dickens and of London, alike. The former without the memory of the latter would indeed be wanting, and likewise the reverse would be the case. London, its life and its stones, has ever been immortalized by authors and artists, but more than all else, the city has been a part of the very life and inspiration of those who have limned its virtues, its joys, and its sorrows,—from the days of blithe Dan Chaucer to those of the latest west-end society novelist. Lond...

Bradshaw's guide to London was published in a single volume as a handbook for visitors to the capital, and it includes beautiful engravings of London attractions, a historical overview of the city, and lots of other information relating to London theatres, Hackney carriages, omnibuses, London churches and even banks. There is also advice for tourists on coping with London smog, avoiding pickpockets, dealing with London's muddy streets and ferocious din, and many other topics - some just as...