Akron Public Library

Publisher Marketing: "A radical reassessment of the famed Victorian author, revealing the true story behind the creator of some of literature's best-known novels. This dynamic new study of Charles Dickens will make readers re-examine his life and work in a completely different light. First, partly due to the massive digitalization of papers and letters in recent years, Helena Kelly has unearthed new material about Dickens that simply wasn't available...

Uncle Tom charts the dramatic cultural transformation of perhaps the most controversial literary character in American history. From his origins as the heroic, Christ-like protagonist of Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel, the best-selling book of the nineteenth century after the Bible, Uncle Tom has become a widely recognized epithet for a black person deemed so subservient to whites that he betrays his race. Readers have long noted that...

The granddaughters of the author Madeline L'Engle draw on previously unshared archival materials, including photographs, letters, and journal entries, to explore her literary life, legacy and impact on friends, fans, and family members.

"Co-Winner of the Etkind Prize, European University at St. Petersburg" "Awards for Frank's Dostoevsky Volumes: National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography 1984 - Los Angeles Times Book Prize - 2 James Russell Lowell Prizes - 2 Christian Gauss Awards" Joseph Frank is professor emeritus of Slavic and comparative literature at Stanford and Princeton. The five volumes of his Dostoevsky biography, published between 1976 and 2002, won...

As editor of the quarterly Salmagundi for the past fifty years, Robert Boyers has been on the cutting edge of developments in politics, culture, and the arts. Reflecting on his collaborations and quarrels with some of the twentieth century's most transformative writers, artists, and thinkers, Boyers writes a wholly original intellectual memoir that rigorously confronts selected aspects of contemporary society. Organizing his chapters around specific...

This title explores the creative works of US President Thomas Jefferson. Works analyzed include the Declaration of Independence, Notes on the State of Virginia, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, and The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson. Clear, comprehensive text gives background biographical information of Jefferson. The "You Critique It" feature invites readers to analyze other creative works on their own. A table of contents, timeline,...

"Biographical and critical essays on 18 British writers"--

In this groundbreaking compilation of first-person accounts of the runaway slave phenomenon, editors Devon Carbado and Donald Weise have recovered twelve narratives spanning eight decades—more than half of which have been long out of print. Told in the voices of the runaway slaves themselves, these narratives reveal the extraordinary and often innovative ways that these men and women sought freedom and demanded citizenship.

While "the male condition" is increasingly the focus of critical inquiry, the first images to come to most minds are those associated, ironically enough, with the resoundingly heterosexual men's movement - sweat lodges, primal screams, etc. As these images quickly become cliched, a more progressive and less primitivist movement continues to gather strength, namely one that examines the experiences and writings of homosexual men. In this groundbreaking...

A rich and varied collection of contemporary short stories, extracts from novels, and poetry that will go a long way toward informing the English-speaking world of the latest developments in Iranian literature. Since the Iranian revolution of 1979, we have been virtually cut off from that country's culture. Despite severe difficulties imposed by social, political, and economic upheaval, war, repression, and censorship, there has been a veritable cultural...