TheCambridge Introduction to Francophone Literature

Some of the most exciting and stimulating literature to appear during the last
few decades has beenwritten by men andwomen living in, or originating from,
former colonies of the various European powers. This is certainly true in the
case of France and francophone literature.While not quite matching the regularitywith
whichnon-metropolitan ‘English’ authors have carried off theMann
Booker prize in recent years, winners of the most prestigious French literary
prizes have included a significant number

TheCambridge Introduction to George Eliot

George Eliot’s life provides as compelling a narrative as any she ever invented.
Born the same year as Queen Victoria, the woman known successively asMary
Anne Evans, Marian Lewes, George Eliot and Mary Ann Cross lived through
dramatic personal and cultural changes that track those of the nineteenth
century. While George Eliot refused to sanction any biography during her
life, she showed a lively interest in the biographies of others. After reading
J. G. Lockhart’s Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott (1839), for example, she
wrote: “All biography is interesting

TheCambridge Introduction to Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s life mirrored that of many other white, middle-class
women of her generation. But her highly productive writing career set her
apart in a number of ways.While other nineteenth-century American women
authors like CatharineMaria Sedgwick, Fanny Fern (Sara Parton) and Frances
Harper also had notable success, Stowe was unusual in the range of genres she
helped shape and

TheCambridge Introduction to Hermann Melville

Traveling from Pittsfield,Massachusetts to Albany,New York oneNovember to
spend Thanksgiving with his family, HermanMelville, at eighteen, had time to
reflect on his personal situation. Born in New York City on 1 August 1819, he
had enjoyed a comfortable boyhood, but reverses in his father’s business during
Herman’s adolescence had forced the family to relocate to Albany, where his
father fared no better. Overambitious schemes and overextended credit took
their toll.He died a broken

TheCambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950--2000

The name that comes most readily to mind in a consideration of the state
and the novel is George Orwell. His two most famous political fables,
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), have
proved hugely significant in the post-war world, influencing many subsequent
literary dystopias, and also supplementing our use of language.
Terms like ‘Big Brother’, ‘doublethink’ and ‘unperson’ from Nineteen Eighty-
Four have become part of the contemporary political lexicon. It is also
possible to see the cautionary note of these novels as establishing a liberal