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Guy of Warwick and Other Chapbook Romances

Chapbooks formed the staple reading matter of ordinary people during the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth centuries; they were also read by children of the gentry. They included fiction, almanacs, religious guidance and radical political tracts, and were available throughout the British Isles and in colonial America.

The chapbook romances included in this volume derive from tales of chivalric adventure and courtly love current in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance. They have features in common with similar texts which were available all over Europe.

• First edition of chapbooks for the modern reader
• Invaluable teaching text on literature and cultural studies courses
• Introduction discusses the cultural and literary signficance of chapbooks
• Illustrated with woodcuts from original chapbooks

Market: Students, teachers and scholars of literature and cultural studies. Folklorists. The general reader, especially those with an interest in early literature and folklore.

Editor: John Simons is Head of the School of Humanities and Arts, Edge Hill College of Higher Education.

CONTENTS

Introduction
Commentary on the Illustrations
Note on the Texts
Guy of Warwick (Prose)
Guy of Warwick (Verse)
The Seven Champions of Christendome
Parismus
Valentine and Orson
The Seven Wise Masters of Rome
Bibliography

Romance in Marseille, and three short stories

Claude McKay was the author of the famous poem 'America', and along with Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer and Countee Cullen, was a pre-eminent figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Romance in Marseille includes a critical introduction by Richard Bradbury, who rediscovered the manuscript in New York.

• Long-lost novel by this pre-eminent figure from the Harlem Renaissance
• Will appeal to all those interested in African-American literature and Caribbean literature.

Market: Scholars and students of American studies, African-American studies, American literature, Caribbean literature. The general reader interested in American fiction and the Harlem Renaissance.

The West Country as a Literary Invention: Putting Fiction in its Place

• Discusses the work of Thomas Hardy, Charles Kingsley, R.D. Blackmore, Sabine Baring-Gould, Parson Hawker.
• Covers the interaction between places on the map and places in fiction
• Accessible to the general reader

Comparable Books: Regions of Imagination, W.J. Keith (University of Toronto Press), now out of print.

Author: Simon Trezise is a lecturer in literature at the University of Exeter and has worked as a Tutor-Counsellor for the Open University. He has lived and worked in many parts of the West Country. His current research interests include narrative in fiction, drama and film.

CONTENTS 
Chapter 1 Keywords: Region, Topography, Provincial, Landscape, Chronotope.
Chapter 2 Parson Hawker's Inventions: Trelawney, Cruel Coppinger and the Cornish King Arthur.
Chapter 3 Westward Ho! or Charles Kingsley's Inventions: Elizabethans Viewed through Victorian Spectacles.
Chapter 4 Tales from the Telling House: The Many Authors of Lorna Doone.
Chapter 5 From the West Country into Wessex: Thomas Hardy. Chapter 6 Sabine Baring-Gould: Novels and Folk Songs of Devon and Cornwall.
Chapter 7 Conclusion: From the Victorians to the Twentieth Century

The White Man's Burdens

"The title is from Kipling, of course, as is the epigraph, but it is Kipling footnoted by Wilfred Scawen Blunt, 'The White man's Burden is the burden of his cash'. In these days, when publishers seem eager to publish anthologies on every conceivable subject, and when the nature of the British Empire is a source of fascination and debate at academic and colour supplement and more popular levels as well, it is surprising that we have had to wait so long for this 'cross-section of British poetry in which the Empire was the burden of the song'. It was worth the wait. The expected and familiar are all here, the set-pieces and the party-pieces and those that (sometimes undeservedly) have become the stock of jokes and gibes. But there is much unfamiliar material here, and some interesting juxtapositions are created by the choice of arrangement by chronology, rather than by author or theme, which encourages the reading of each poem in the context of the historical moment of its production.This is a valuable source book, It is also a good read - I couldn't decide whether to keep it in the study or by the bed."
Terry Barringer Royal Commonwealth Society Collections, Cambridge University Library.
African Research and Documentation No. 78 1998

In 1898, notoriously, Kipling urged the imperialist nations to 'Take up the White Man's Burden' the following year, in Satan Absolved, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt angrily replied, 'The White Man's Burden, Lord, is the burden of his cash'. Such ideological conflicts - and a whole range of intermediate positions - feature in much of the poetry British writers produced about the British Empire over the four centuries of its rise and fall. The discourses of postcolonialism have drawn attention to the major and continuing significance of the cultural products of the period of Western imperialism. But, so far, they have concentrated largely upon fiction and upon the writings and experiences of those parts of the world that were subject to colonialism and imperialist oppression.

For the first time, The White Man's Burdens offers a cross-section of British poetry in which the Empire was the burden of the song. The material, much of it previously uncollected, is drawn from a broad cultural spectrum that includes narrative poetry, heroic verse, patriotic ballads, music hall monologues, and poems from Punch. A substantial Introduction sets the poems in the context of the economic, political, and ideological development of British imperial rule, and headnotes historicize the poems themselves, which are presented chronologically - from George Chapman's 'De Guiana: Carmen Epicum' of 1596 to Fred D'Aguiar's 'At the Grave of the Unknown African' of 1993.

The result is a poetic summary of the changing attitudes of an imperialist nation to its own imperialism, attitudes which range from jingoism and racism, through religious idealism and liberal anxiety, to outright disgust at the whole enterprise.

Readership: Undergraduates studying literature and imperialism, colonial and postcolonial writings and culture, colonial history. The General reader interested in poetry.

CHRIS BROOKS is Senior Lecturer in Victorian Studies, University of Exeter. He is also national Chair of the Victorian Society and a Trustee of the Albert Memorial. PETER FAULKNER is Reader in Modern English Literature, University of Exeter. He is currently editor of the Journal of the William Morris Society.

William Morris Centenary Essays

The essays have two main foci: the revaluation of Morris in the context of his own time, and the revaluation of his legacy.  The strength of the book as a whole is that it answers to those two concerns admirably well.  The editors risked analytical depth in deciding to print so many (eighteen) essays touching not just on, say, Morris’s literary accomplishments, but also on his work as a designer, as a politician, and as a businessman.  But here too, the book succeeds, because nearly all of the essays are grounded by one overarching issue: Morris’s own relationship to history.  These pieces are concerned not only with his interest in the past, but also with his vigorous engagement with his historical present.
Utopian Studies, 30 June 2000

"William Morris: Centenary Essays should be regarded by Morrisian scholars as an essential source, now and for many years to come. The scope, variety and mostly high-sometimes outstanding-quality of the essays make it worthy of wider attention too. Expertly edited and attractively produced, moreover, the actual book truly befits its subject. Peter Faulkner, Peter Preston and the University of Exeter Press deserve congratulations and thanks."
The David Jones Journal, 1999

This well illustrated book celebrates every aspect of the wide-ranging achievements of William Morris - writer, designer, cultural critic, revolutionary socialist - with particular emphasis on their relevance to our own times. The book makes available up-to-date Morris scholarship in accessible form.

Written by a group of international scholars who took part in a conference marking the centenary of the death of Morris in 1896, the book has sections devoted to Morris and Literature (covering texts from The Earthly Paradise to the late romances); Morris, the Arts & Crafts and the New World (including discussions of his influence in Rhode Island, Boston, Ontario and New Zealand); and Morris, Gender and Politics (with fresh consideration of his relation to Victorian ideas of manliness and of the particular qualities of his anti-statist politics). The latter section also draws attention to a hitherto unknown play by Morris's daughter May and concludes with an account of his biographer, the late E.P. Thompson.

• Original contributions from international scholars

   

• No other volume covers such a wide range of topics

   

• Subjects include literature, arts & crafts, environmentalism, sexual politics

Market: Scholars of literary and cultural studies, gender and women's studies, design history. Academic libraries. The general reader with an interest in William Morris, design history, women's studies.

Editors: Peter Faulkner is Reader in Modern English Literature, University of Exeter and is Honorary Secretary of the William Morris Society. He has written and edited a number of books on William Morris, and was general editor of the Thoemmes Press's William Morris Library. Peter Preston is Senior Lecturer in Literature, University of Nottingham, and was formerly Honorary Secretary of the William Morris Society and Editor of its Newsletter.

CONTENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS

MORRIS AND LITERATURE

MORRIS, THE ARTS & CRAFTS AND THE NEW WORLD

MORRIS, GENDER AND POLITICS

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