Julio Cortazar (Bloom's Modern Critical Views)

(1914-1984) Agentinian novelist and short story writer whose works include the novel Hopscotch and the often anthologised short stories Blow-up and End of the Game.

Tennessee Williams (Bloom's Modern Critical Views)

Tennessee Williams is recognized as one of America's greatest dramatists, and as an innovator of post-World War II theater. He looked for a mechanism for portraying the truth in theater at a time when traditional approaches no longer worked. Bold with form as well as subject matter, Williams confronted audiences with what had been taboo topics - sexuality, societal constraints, alcoholism, and brutality. His notable contributions to literature include "The Glass Menagerie", "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", and "A Streetcar Named Desire". 

Jose Saramago (Bloom's Modern Critical Views)

Portuguese novelist and winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. Bloom has written he is " the most gifted novelist alive in the world today".

The Companion to Shakespeare's History Plays

This volume provides an accessible, wide-ranging and informed introduction to Shakespeare's history and Roman plays. It is attentive throughout to the plays as they have been performed over the centuries since they were written. The first part offers accounts of the genre of the history play, of Renaissance historiography, of pageants and masques, and of women's roles, as well as comparisons with history plays in Spain and the Netherlands. Chapters in the second part look at individual plays as well as other Shakespearean texts which are closely related to the histories. The Companion offers a full bibliography, genealogical tables, and a list of principal and recurrent characters.

A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Britain

"A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Britain" presents 33 essays by expert scholars on all the major aspects of the political, social, economic, and cultural history of Britain during the late Georgian and Victorian eras. It makes sense of the fascinating new perspectives on this era that have been generated in recent years while not losing sight of broader, more enduring themes.