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Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries
"[Tyson] tackles a great range of …with great humor, humility, and―most important―humanity." ―Entertainment WeeklyLoyal readers of the monthly "Universe" essays in Natural History magazine have long recognized Neil deGrasse Tyson's talent for guiding them through the mysteries of the cosmos with clarity and enthusiasm. Bringing together more than forty of Tyson's favorite essays, Death by Black Hole explores a myriad of cosmic topics, from what it would be like to be inside a black hole to the movie industry's feeble efforts to get its night skies right. One of America's best-known astrophysicists, Tyson is a natural teacher who simplifies the complexities of astrophysics while sharing his infectious fascination for our universe.
As I Lay Dying: A Norton Critical Edition (Norton Critical Editions)
“Michael Gorra approaches his second edition of As I Lay Dying with the scholarly care, attention, and intellectual suppleness typical of all his work. Not only does his introduction sparkle―navigating us with ease and fluency through the history and significance of a novel that precisely because of what Gorra rightly calls its formal “perfect[ion]” is often admired less than Faulkner’s other, more “monumental” and “difficult” texts. But Gorra’s choice of supplementary materials also reflects his commitment to presenting his readers with a full and unflinching view of Faulkner as an American writer with an increasingly contentious position within the very canon he helped to shape.” ―Pardis Dabashi, Bryn Mawr College“Place and time play a significant role in the literature of the American South, yet this Critical Edition of As I Lay Dying offers a way of engaging with the work of William Faulkner beyond the traditional boundaries of Southern literature. The accessible readings and criticism that are part of this book allow readers to recognize the ways As I Lay Dying―and all of Faulkner’s literary work―captured an idea of the American South while at the same time uncovering something universal and profound about the human condition.” ―W. Ralph Eubanks, University of MississippiThis Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1985 corrected text and is accompanied by newly updated and expanded explanatory annotations and an introduction by Michael Gorra.“Backgrounds and Contexts” is divided into three sections, each of which includes a concise introduction by Michael Gorra that carefully frames the issues presented, with particular attention to As I Lay Dying’s place in Faulkner’s literary life. “Contemporary Reception” includes a selection of seven reviews, including those by Julia K. W. Baker, Henry Nash Smith, and Valery Larbaud. “The Writer and His Work” examines Faulkner’s own claims regarding the composition of the novel and his changing opinions over time, sample pages from the manuscript, his Nobel Prize address, and additional writings by Faulkner on Yoknapatawpha County. “Cultural Context” reprints seven essays and advertisements―three selections new to the Second Edition―along with other materials that address questions of Southern motherhood, Agrarianism, and the Southern grotesque.“Criticism” begins with the editor’s introduction to As I Lay Dying’s critical history and scholarly reception. Eleven critical essays are included―five new to the Second Edition―by Olga W. Vickery, Cleanth Brooks, Eric Sundquist, Doreen Fowler, Dorothy J. Hale, Patrick O’Donnell, John T. Matthews, John Limon, Richard Godden, Susan Scott Parrish, and Erin E. Edwards.A chronology and a selected bibliography are also included.
THE WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
With an Introduction by Antonia Till.William Wordsworth (1771-1850) is the foremost of the English Romantic poets. He was much influenced by the events of the French Revolution in his youth, and he deliberately broke away from the artificial diction of the Augustan and neo-classical tradition of the eighteenth century. He sought to write in the language of ordinary men and women, of ordinary thoughts, sights and sounds, and his early poetry represents this fresh approach to his art.Wordsworth spent most of his adult life in the Lake District with his sister Dorothy and his wife Mary, by whom he had four children. His remarkable autobiographical poem 'The Prelude' was completed in 1805, but was not published until after his death, and it is included in this full edition of Wordsworth's poetry.
To the Lighthouse (Wordsworth Classics)
With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Nicola Bradbury, University of Reading.This simple and haunting story captures the transcience of life and its surrounding emotions.To the Lighthouse is the most autobiographical of Virginia Woolf's novels. It is based on her own early experiences, and while it touches on childhood and children's perceptions and desires, it is at its most trenchant when exploring adult relationships, marriage and the changing class-structure in the period spanning the Great War.
The Waves (Wordsworth Classics)
Introduction and Notes by Deborah Parsons, University of Birmingham.'I am writing to a rhythm and not to a plot', Virginia Woolf stated of her eighth novel, The Waves. Widely regarded as one of her greatest and most original works, it conveys the rhythms of life in synchrony with the cycle of nature and the passage of time. Six children - Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny and Louis - meet in a garden close to the sea, their voices sounding over the constant echo of the waves that roll back and forth from the shore.The subsequent continuity of these six main characters, as they develop from childhood to maturity and follow different passions and ambitions, is interspersed with interludes from the timeless and unifying chorus of nature. In pure stream-of-consciousness style, Woolf presents a cross-section of multiple yet parallel lives, each marked by the disintegrating force of a mutual tragedy.The Waves is her searching exploration of individual and collective identity, and the observations and emotions of life, from the simplicity and surging optimism of youth to the vacancy and despair of middle-age.
Orlando (Wordsworth Classics)
With an Introduction and Notes by Merry M. Pawlowski, Professor and Chair, Department of English, California State University, Bakersfield.Virginia Woolf's Orlando 'The longest and most charming love letter in literature', playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. Spanning three centuries, the novel opens as Orlando, a young nobleman in Elizabeth's England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces his experience with first love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost.At the midpoint of the novel, Orlando, now an ambassador in Costantinople, awakes to find that he is a woman, and the novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th and 19th centuries.As the novel ends in 1928, a year consonant with full suffrage for women. Orlando, now a wife and mother, stands poised at the brink of a future that holds new hope and promise for women.
Mrs Dalloway (Wordsworth Collector’s Editions)
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia WoolfVirginia Woolf's singular technique in Mrs Dalloway heralds a break with the traditional novel form and reflects a genuine humanity and a concern with the experiences that both enrich and stultify existence.Society hostess, Clarissa Dalloway is giving a party. Her thoughts and sensations on that one day, and the interior monologues of others whose lives are interwoven with hers gradually reveal the characters of the central protagonists. Clarissa's life is touched by tragedy as the events in her day run parallel to those of Septimus Warren Smith, whose madness escalates as his life draws toward inevitable suicide.
Mrs Dalloway
Virginia Woolf's singular technique in Mrs Dalloway heralds a break with the traditional novel form and reflects a genuine humanity and a concern with the experiences that both enrich and stultify existence. Society hostess, Clarissa Dalloway is giving a party. Her thoughts and sensations on that one day, and the interior monologues of others whose lives are interwoven with hers gradually reveal the characters of the central protagonists. Clarissa's life is touched by tragedy as the events in her day run parallel to those of Septimus Warren Smith, whose madness escalates as his life draws toward inevitable suicide.
The Years / Between the Acts (Wordsworth Classics)
This volume brings together Virginia Woolf's last two novels, The Years (1937) which traces the lives of members of a dispersed middle-class family between 1880 and 1937, and Between the Acts (1941), an account of a village pageant in the summer preceding the Second World War which successfully interweaves comedy, satire and disturbing observation.Rewriting the traditional family saga and the pageant, these unsettling novels provide extraordinary critiques of Englishness and English identity while pursuing compelling existentialist and psychological themes such as the nature of time, memory, personal relationships and sexual desire. Their tightly constructed narratives enable the reader to experience the fragmented lives of their characters and the difficulties that they have in communicating with each other and even understanding themselves. Read together, these novels illuminate each other in ways that will engage both the student and the general reader.
A Room of One’s Own & the Voyage Out (Wordsworth Classics)
A Room of One's Own (1929) has become a classic feminist essay and perhaps Virginia Woolf's best known work: The Voyage Out (1915) is highly significant as her first novel. Both focus on the place of women within the power structures of modern society.The essay lays bare the woman artist's struggle for a voice, since throughout history she has been denied the social and economic independence assumed by men. Woolf's prescription is clear: if a woman is to find creative expression equal to a man's, she must have an independent income, and a room of her own. This is both an acute analysis and a spirited rallying cry: it remains surprisingly resonant and relevant in the 21st century.The novel explores these issues more personally, through the character of Rachel Vinrace, a young woman whose 'voyage out' to South America opens up powerful encounters with her fellow-travellers, men and women. As she begins to understand her place in the world, she finds the happiness of love, but also sees its brute power. Woolf has a sharp eye for the comedy of English manners in a foreign milieu: but the final undertow of the novel is tragic as, in some of her finest writing, she calls up the essential isolation of the human spirit.
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Wordsworth Collector’s Editions)
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar WildeWilde's only novel, first published in 1890, is a brilliantly designed puzzle, intended to tease conventional minds with its exploration of the myriad interrelationships between art, life, and consequence. From its provocative Preface, challenging the reader to believe in 'art for art's sake', to its sensational conclusion, the story self-consciously experiments with the notion of sin as an element of design.Yet Wilde himself underestimated the consequences of his experiment, and its capacity to outrage the Victorian establishment. Its words returned to haunt him in his court appearances in 1895, and he later recalled the 'note of doom' which runs like 'a purple thread' through its carefully crafted prose.
Picture of Dorian Gray
Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde's only novel, first published in 1890, is a brilliantly designed puzzle, intended to tease conventional minds with its exploration of the myriad interrelationships between art, life, and consequence. From its provocative Preface, challenging the reader to believe in 'art for art's sake', to its sensational conclusion, the story self-consciously experiments with the notion of sin as an element of design. Yet Wilde himself underestimated the consequences of his experiment, and its capacity to outrage the Victorian establishment. Its words returned to haunt him in his court appearances in 1895, and he later recalled the 'note of doom' which runs like 'a purple thread' through its carefully crafted prose.