Best Gothic & Romantic Literary Criticism Books
Here you will get Best Gothic & Romantic Literary Criticism Books For you.This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
1. The Brothers Karamazov
Author: by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
English
824 pages
Winner of the Pen/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation PrizeThe Brothers Karamasov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the wicked and sentimental Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and his three sonsthe impulsive and sensual Dmitri; the coldly rational Ivan; and the healthy, red-cheeked young novice Alyosha.
Through the gripping events of their story, Dostoevsky portrays the whole of Russian life, is social and spiritual striving, in what was both the golden age and a tragic turning point in Russian culture. This award-winning translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky remains true to the verbalinventiveness of Dostoevsky’s prose, preserving the multiple voices, the humor, and the surprising modernity of the original.
It is an achievement worthy of Dostoevsky’s last and greatest novel.
2. The World of All Souls: The Complete Guide to A Discovery of Witches, Shadow of Night, and The Book of Life
Author: by Deborah Harkness
B074YL6Y8R
Viking (May 8, 2018)
May 8, 2018
A fully illustrated guide to Deborah Harkness’s #1 New York Times bestselling All Souls trilogy”an irresistible … Wonderfully imaginative grown-up fantasy” (People). Look for the hit TV series A Discovery of Witches, streaming on AMC Plus, Sundance Now and Shudder. Season 2 premieres January 9, 2021!
A Discovery of Witches introduced Diana Bishop, Oxford scholar and reluctant witch, and vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont. Shadow of Night and The Book of Lifecarried Deborah Harkness’s series to its spellbinding conclusion. In The World of All Souls, Harkness shares the rich sources of inspiration behind her bewitching novels.
She draws together synopses, character bios, maps, recipes, and even the science behind creatures, magic, and alchemy-all with her signature historian’s touch. Bursting with fascinating facts and dazzling artwork, this essential handbook is a must-have for longtime fans and eager newcomers alike.
3. Girlhood
Author: by Melissa Febos
Bloomsbury Publishing
English
336 pages
National BestsellerNamed a Most Anticipated Book by:The New York Times * Buzzfeed * Time.Com * OprahMag. Com * The Millions * The Rumpus * LitHub * Paperback Paris * The Lily (Washington Post) * Ms. * LAMBDA LiteraryA gripping set of stories about the forces that shape girls and the adults they become.
A wise and brilliant guide to transforming the self and our society. In her powerful new book, critically acclaimed author Melissa Febos examines the narratives women are told about what it means to be female and what it takes to free oneself from them.
When her body began to change at eleven years old, Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong.
Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she’d been told about herself and the habits and defenses she’d developed over years of trying to meet others’ expectations. The values she and so many other women had learned in girlhood did not prioritize their personal safety, happiness, or freedom, and she set out to reframe those values and beliefs.
4. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Author: by Simon Armitage
English
208 pages
0393334155
The classic story that inspired the film starring Dev Patel and Alicia VikanderA medieval romancebut also an outlandish ghost story, a gripping morality tale and a weird thriller. I couldn’t put down Simon Armitage’s compulsively readable… Energetic, free-flowing, high-spirited version.
Edward Hirsch, New York Times Book ReviewOne of the founding stories of English literature, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight narrates the strange tale of a green knight on a green horse who rudely interrupts Camelot’s Round Table festivities one Yuletide, casting a pall of unease over the company and challenging one of their number to a wager.
The virtuous Gawain accepts and decapitates the intruder with his own axe. Gushing blood, the knight reclaims his head, orders Gawain to seek him out a year hence, and departs. The following Yuletide, Gawain dutifully sets forth. His quest for the Green Knight involves a winter journey, a seduction scene in a dreamlike castle, a dire challenge answeredand a drama of enigmatic reward disguised as psychic undoing.
5. The Outlandish Companion (Revised and Updated): Companion to Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, and Drums of Autumn
Author: by Diana Gabaldon
Delacorte Press
English
608 pages
Perfect for readers of the bestselling Outlander novelsand don’t miss The Outlandish Companion Volume Two! #1 New York Times bestselling author Diana Gabaldon has captivated millions of readers with her critically acclaimed Outlander novels, the inspiration for the Starz original series.
From the moment Claire Randall stepped through a standing stone circle and was thrown back in time to the year 1743and into a world that threatens life, limb, loyalty, heart, soul, and everything else Claire hasreaders have been hungry to know everything about this world and its inhabitants, particularly a Scottish soldier named Jamie Fraser.
In this beautifully illustrated compendium of all things Outlandish, Gabaldon covers the first four novels of the main series, including: full synopses of Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, and Drums of Autumn a complete listing of the characters (fictional and historical) in the first four novels in the series, as well as family trees and genealogical notes a comprehensive glossary and pronunciation guide to Gaelic terms and usage The Gabaldon Theory of Time Travel, explained frequently asked questions to the author and her (sometimes surprising) answers an annotated bibliography essays about medicine and magic in the eighteenth century, researching historical fiction, creating characters, and more professionally cast horoscopes for Jamie and Claire the making of the TV series: how we got there from here, and what happened next (including My Brief Career as a TV Actor) behind-the-scenes photos from the Outlander TV series set For anyone who wants to spend more time with the Outlander characters and the world they inhabit, Diana Gabaldon here opens a door through the standing stones and offers a guided tour of what lies within.
6. Frankenstein (Norton Critical Editions)
Author: by Mary Shelley
English
544 pages
0393927938
The best-selling student edition on the market, now available in a Second Edition. Almost two centuries after its publication, Frankenstein remains an indisputably classic text and Mary Shelley’s finest work. This extensively revised Norton Critical Edition includes new texts and illustrative materials that convey the enduring global conversation about Frankenstein and its author.
The text is that of the 1818 first edition, published in three volumes by Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, and Jones. It is accompanied by an expansive new preface, explanatory annotations, a map of Geneva and its environs, and seven illustrations, five of them new to the Second Edition.
Context is provided in three supporting sections: Circumstance, Influence, Composition, Revision, Reception, Impact, Adaptation, and Sources, Influences, Analogues. Among the Second Edition’s new inclusions are historical-cultural studies by Susan Tyler Hitchcock, William St. Clair, and Elizabeth Young; Chris Baldrick on the novel’s reception; and David Pirie on the novel’s many film adaptations.
7. The Outlandish Companion Volume Two: The Companion to The Fiery Cross, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, An Echo in the Bone, and Written in My Own Heart's Blood (Outlander)
Author: by Diana Gabaldon
Delacorte Press
English
656 pages
Perfect readers of the bestselling Outlander novelsand don’t miss the revised and updated first volume of The Outlandish Companion! More than a decade ago, #1 New York Times bestselling author Diana Gabaldon delighted her legions of fans with The Outlandish Companion, an indispensable guide to all the Outlander books at the time.
But that edition was just a taste of things to come. Since that publication, there have been four more Outlander novels, a side series, assorted novellas, and one smash-hit Starz original television series. Now Gabaldon serves up The Outlandish Companion, Volume Two, an all-new guide to the latest books in the series.
Written with Gabaldon’s signature wit and intelligence, this compendium is bursting with generous commentary and juicy insider details, including a complete chronology of the series thus far full synopses of The Fiery Cross, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, An Echo in the Bone, and Written in My Own Heart’s Blood recaps of the Lord John Grey novels: Lord John and the Private Matter, Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, Lord John and the Hand of Devils, and The Scottish Prisoner a who’s who of the cast of Outlander characters, cross-referenced by book detailed maps and floor plans a bibliographic guide to research sources essays on subjects as wide ranging as Outlandish controversies regarding sex and violence, the unique responsibilities of a writer of historical fiction, and Gabaldon’s writing process a guided tour of the clothes, food, and music of the eighteenth century a Scottish glossary and pronunciation guide personal photos from the author taken on the set of the Starz Outlander series As entertaining, sweeping, and addictive as the series itself, this second volume of The Outlandish Companion is a one (or two)-of-a-kind gift from an incomparable author.
8. Jane Eyre: The Original 1847 Edition With Illustrations (A Classic Illustrated Novel of Charlotte Brontë)
Author: by Charlotte Brontë
B0948LPG1Q
English
383 pages
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will. Charlotte Bront, Jane EyreThis Beautiful edition contains 15 illustrations. Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Bront. It was published on 16 October 1847 under the pen name “Currer Bell.” The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York.
Primarily of the bildungsroman genre, Jane Eyre follows the emotions and experiences of its title character, including her growth to adulthood, and her love for Mr. Rochester, the Byronic master of fictitious Thornfield Hall. In its internalisation of the action the focus is on the gradual unfolding of Jane’s moral and spiritual sensibility and all the events are coloured by a heightened intensity that was previously the domain of poetry Jane Eyre revolutionized the art of fiction.
Charlotte Bront has been called the ‘first historian of the private consciousness’ and the literary ancestor of writers like Joyce and Proust. The novel contains elements of social criticism, with a strong sense of morality at its core, but is nonetheless a novel many consider ahead of its time given the individualistic character of Jane and the novel’s exploration of classism, sexuality, religion, and proto-feminism.
9. The Conspiracy against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror
Author: by Thomas Ligotti
Penguin Books
English
272 pages
In Thomas Ligotti’s first nonfiction outing, an examination of the meaning (or meaninglessness) of life through an insightful, unsparing argument that proves the greatest horrors are not the products of our imagination but instead are found in reality.”There is a signature motif discernible in both works of philosophical pessimism and supernatural horror.
It may be stated thus: Behind the scenes of life lurks something pernicious that makes a nightmare of our world.”His fiction is known to be some of the most terrifying in the genre of supernatural horror, but Thomas Ligotti’s first nonfiction book may be even scarier.
Drawing on philosophy, literature, neuroscience, and other fields of study, Ligotti takes the penetrating lens of his imagination and turns it on his audience, causing them to grapple with the brutal reality that they are living a meaningless nightmare, and anyone who feels otherwise is simply acting out an optimistic fallacy.
At once a guidebook to pessimistic thought and a relentless critique of humanity’s employment of self-deception to cope with the pervasive suffering of their existence, The Conspiracy against the Human Race may just convince readers that there is more than a measure of truth in the despairing yet unexpectedly liberating negativity that is widely considered a hallmark of Ligotti’s work.
10. Anna Karenina (Oxford World's Classics)
Author: by Leo Tolstoy
Oxford University Press
English
896 pages
At its simplest, Anna Karenina is a love story. It is a portrait of a beautiful and intelligent woman whose passionate love for a handsome officer sweeps aside all other ties – to her marriage and to the network of relationships and moral values that bind the society around her.
The loveaffair of Anna and Vronsky is played out alongside the developing romance of Kitty and Levin, and in the character of Levin, closely based on Tolstoy himself, the search for happiness takes on a deeper philosophical significance. One of the greatest novels ever written, Anna Karenina combines penetrating psychological insight with an encyclopedic depiction of Russian life in the 1870s.
The novel takes us from high society St Petersburg to the threshing fields on Levin’s estate, with unforgettable scenes at a Moscow ballroom,the skating rink, a race course, a railway station. It creates an intricate labyrinth of connections that is profoundly satisfying, and deeply moving.
Rosamund Bartlett’s translation conveys Tolstoy’s precision of meaning and emotional accuracy in an English version that is highly readable and stylistically faithful. Like her acclaimed biography of Tolstoy, it is vivid, nuanced, and compelling.
11. The Modern Myths: Adventures in the Machinery of the Popular Imagination
Author: by Philip Ball
English
368 pages
022671926X
“Impressive….Rich in cultural history and imagination…. To Ball, mythic writing is where the conditions of irrationality, superstition, and enchantment persist: forms of wonder that depend on the disconnect between what we know for sure and what we simply believe.
New York Times Book Review Myths are usually seen as stories from the depths of timefun and fantastical, but no longer believed by anyone. Yet, as Philip Ball shows, we are still writing themand still living themtoday. From Robinson Crusoe and Frankenstein to Batman, many stories written in the past few centuries are commonly, perhaps glibly, called modern myths.
But Ball argues that we should take that idea seriously. Our stories of Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Sherlock Holmes are doing the kind of cultural work that the ancient myths once did. Through the medium of narratives that all of us know in their basic outline and which have no clear moral or resolution, these modern myths explore some of our deepest fears, dreams, and anxieties.
12. The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Author: by William Anderson
B00ZP5WMTW
Harper
March 8, 2016
Available for the first time and collected in one volume, the letters of one of America’s most beloved authors, Laura Ingalls Wildera treasure trove that offers new and unexpected understanding of her life and work. The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder is a vibrant, deeply personal portrait of this revered American author, illuminating her thoughts, travels, philosophies, writing career, and dealings with family, friends, and fans as never before.
This is a fresh look at the adult life of the author in her own words. Gathered from museums and archives and personal collections, the letters span over sixty years of Wilder’s life, from 18941956 and shed new light on Wilder’s day-to-day life.
Here we see her as a businesswoman and authorincluding her beloved Little House books, her legendary editor, Ursula Nordstrom, and her readersas a wife, and as a friend. In her letters, Wilder shares her philosophies, political opinions, and reminiscences of life as a frontier child.
13. Dante: The Divine Comedy Volume 1
Author: by Mark Musa
0142437220
Penguin Group USA Inc.
English
An acclaimed translation of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy Volume 1: Inferno that retains all the style, power and meaning of the originalA Penguin Classic This vigorous translation of Inferno preserves Dante’s simple, natural style, and captures the swift movement of the original Italian verse.
Mark Musa’s blank verse rendition of the poet’s journey through the circles of hell recreates for the modern reader the rich meanings that Dante’s poem had for his contemporaries. Musa’s introduction and commentaries on each of the cantos brilliantly illuminate the text.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
14. The Heroine's Journey: For Writers, Readers, and Fans of Pop Culture
Author: by Gail Carriger
English
322 pages
1944751343
Tired of the hero’s journey? Frustrated that funny, romantic, and comforting stories aren’t taken seriously? Sad that the books and movies you love never seem to be critically acclaimed, even when they sell like crazy? The heroine’s journey is here to help.
Multiple New York Times bestselling author Gail Carriger presents a clear concise analysis of the heroine’s journey, how it differs from the hero’s journey, and how you can use it to improve your writing and your life. In this book you’ll learn: * How to spot the heroine’s journey in popular books, movies, and the world around you.
The source myths and basic characters, tropes, and archetypes of this narrative. A step-by-step break down of how to successfully write this journey. What do Agatha Christie, JK Rowling, and Nora Roberts all have in common? They all write the heroine’s journey.
Read this book to learn all about it. From Harry Potter to Twilight, from Wonder Woman to Star Wars, you’ll never look at pop culture the same way again. With over a dozen NYT and USA Today bestsellers, and over a million books in print, popular genre author and former archaeologist Gail Carriger brings her cheeky comedic tone and over a decade of making her living as a fiction author to this fascinating look at one of the most popular yet neglected narratives of our time.
15. The Great Gatsby (Scribner Classics)
Author: by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Scribner
English
176 pages
A true classic of twentieth-century literaturenominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers.
The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession, it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.
