Claire Harman

An explanation of the enduring popularity of Austen in modern culture.

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Georgia

How Jane Austen Conquered the World

Jane's Fame tells the fascinating story of Jane Austen's renown, from the years of rejection the author faced during her lifetime to the global recognition and adoration she now enjoys. Almost two hundred years after her death, Austen remains a hot topic, constantly open to revival and reinterpretation and known to millions of people through film and television adaptations as much as through her books. InJane's Fame, Claire Harman gives us the complete biography--of both the author and her lasting cultural influence--making this essential reading for anyone interested in Austen's life, works, and remarkably potent fame.

Jane's Fame

d9e033bb-e114-46e1-8dc6-7a412d0f5ddb-1

Fred C. Hobson

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

H. L. Mencken and the South

Serpent in Eden: H. L. Mencken and the South

Serpent in Eden

78f1cefb-2d63-4ddd-9ba6-5daa5e82987e-0

Natalie Tyler

Reid Boates

Jon Winokur

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

A Well-Mannered Introduction to a Lady of Sense and Sensibility

A celebration of the classic works of the nineteenth century British novelist includes trivia about the author, facts about Austen's life and times, and information on literary themes

The Friendly Jane Austen

09a563d4-bc87-45bf-a41a-dbee135bbaff-1

Michael Dirda

Colorado

Notes on Reading and Life

"As warm and stimulating as a library to which one returns again and again."
--Chicago Tribune (Editor's Choice)

While books contain insights into our selves and the world, it takes a conversation--between the author and the reader, or between two readers--to bring them fully to life. Drawing on sources as diverse as Dr. Seuss and Simone Weil, P. G. Wodehouse and Isaiah Berlin, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda shows how the wit, wisdom, and enchantment of the written word informs and enriches nearly every aspect of life, from education and work to love and death.

Organized by significant life events and abounding with quotations from great writers and thinkers, Book by Book showcases Dirda's capacious love for and understanding of books. Favoring showing as much as telling, Dirda draws us deeper into the classics, as well as lesser-known works of literature, history, and philosophy, always with an eye to how we might better understand our lives.

Book by Book

90792e84-feec-4e12-8083-e49fe1cdb25b-1

Ellen Moers

Paperback good condition very light shelf wear along edges of spine and one crease along front cover. Pages are lightly yellow and spine is square and intact. This was a reading copy. 

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Literary Women

dbb0abe0-a455-4b88-bfef-35e31ac93eef-1

Susan Cheever

Book and dust jacket in very good condition! Pages are a bit yellowed and there’s a black mark on the page block from a marker (see photos). Points sharp and spine is square and intact. 

Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work

A group portrait of five Concord, Massachusetts, writers whose works were at the center of mid-nineteenth-century American thought and literature evaluates their interconnected relationships, influence on each other's works, and complex beliefs. 50,000 first printing.

American Bloomsbury

915c24be-8246-4c89-bbb8-3ff4beba6a85-1

New York

Create Your Own Journal 

300 More Writing Prompts

Elizabeth Hardwick

Darryl Pinckney

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Texas

The first-ever collection of essays from across Elizabeth Hardwick's illustrious writing career, including works not seen in print for decades. A New York Times Notable Book of 2017 Elizabeth Hardwick wrote during the golden age of the American literary essay. For Hardwick, the essay was an imaginative endeavor, a serious form, criticism worthy of the literature in question. In the essays collected here she covers civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s, describes places where she lived and locations she visited, and writes about the foundations of American literature—Melville, James, Wharton—and the changes in American fiction, though her reading is wide and international. She contemplates writers’ lives—women writers, rebels, Americans abroad—and the literary afterlife of biographies, letters, and diaries. Selected and with an introduction by Darryl Pinckney, the Collected Essays gathers more than fifty essays for a fifty-year retrospective of Hardwick’s work from 1953 to 2003. “For Hardwick,” writes Pinckney, “the poetry and novels of America hold the nation’s history.” Here is an exhilarating chronicle of that history.

The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick

e42e6f2a-4baf-4d07-b322-b2d1f5e33b21-0

William Deresiewicz

How Six Novels Taught Me about Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter

Before Jane Austen, William Deresiewicz was a very different young man. A sullen and arrogant graduate student, he never thought Austen would have anything to offer him. Then he read Emma--and everything changed.

In this unique and lyrical book, Deresiewicz weaves the misadventures of Austen's characters with his own youthful follies, demonstrating the power of the great novelist's teachings--and how, for Austen, growing up and making mistakes are one and the same. Honest, erudite, and deeply moving, A Jane Austen Education is the story of one man's discovery of the world outside himself.

 

A Jane Austen Education

ed064315-6102-4ed4-ac0f-189c652e5cb0-1

Sarah J. Makowski

Have you ever recognized Mrs. Elton in an office colleague? Or caught a glimpse of Lady Catherine de Bourgh in the neighborhood crank? Have you spotted a young Emma Woodhouse in your teenage daughter's clique? Over two hundred years after their creation, Jane Austen's mean girls are still alive and kicking.

Bitches in Bonnets explores parallels between Austen's world and our own, showing how modern social and behavioral scientists are just beginning to document and quantify what the author knew instinctively. Interweaving modern research and sociological experiments, author and Austen scholar Sarah Makowskilooks beyond Austen's texts for the sources of female aggression both during the Regency and today. Despite incredible advances in gender equality, women still face discrimination and bullying from creche to career. The cruelest assaults are those that are least expected – from other women. Hardly a woman alive has not experienced a false friend whose opinions and affection bring both positive and destructive consequences. The very ordinariness of Austen's stories leaves room for us to identify with her flawed heroines and make peace with their enemies.

Virginia

Life Lessons from Jane Austen's Mean Girls

Bitches in Bonnets examines how six novels of quiet English life, penned by parochial Regency spinster Jane Austen, still provide insight on female relationships after all these years and how Austen's writing - and our reading of it - offers solace to millions of fans worldwide.

Bitches in Bonnets

81d4468f-6a5d-415c-ad12-a992058ffa09-0

Reed Martin

Austin Tichenor

The Complete Guide for the Attention-Impaired (Abridged)

From the theater troupe whose sidesplitting production The Complete Works of William Shakespeare [Abridged] is the longest-running comedy in London's history comes an openly hysterical, yet surprisingly informative, guide to everything you ever wanted to know about the Bard of Avon

Love Shakespeare? You'll like this book. Hate Shakespeare? You'll love this book. From the theatrical company that has been cutting the Bard down to size for more than a dozen years comes a single volume boasting everything you always wanted to know about William Shakespeare's life and work--but couldn't be bothered to ask.

In one slim volume, Reduced Shakespeare delivers the plays, the life, and the legend in twelve easy pieces. What's the theme of Hamlet? Poop or get off the pot. What's essential preparation for an evening of outdoor Shakespeare? Bring lots of coffee . . . and use the bathroom before the show. Liberally sprinkled with lists, definitions, quizzes, essential vocabulary, and the Reduced Shakespeare Company's trademark irreverence and wit, this "reduced" handbook will delight enthusiasts, skeptics, and fledgling fans alike.

Reduced Shakespeare

17338461-96b8-4bba-987b-516307946562-1

Italo Calvino

Tim Parks

Patrick Creagh

Martin McLaughlin

William Weaver

Alaska

Why Read the Classics? is an elegant defence of the value of great literature by one of the finest authors of the last century. Beginning with an essay on the attributes that define a classic (number one - classics are those books that people always say they are 'rereading', not 'reading'), this is an absorbing collection of Italo Calvino's witty and passionate criticism.

Why Read the Classics?

ba9be7d6-c3cd-4374-853b-ae5dddc15f1a-0

Claire Dederer

Nebraska

A Fan's Dilemma

'How rare and nourishing this sort of roaming thought is and what a joy to read' MEGAN NOLAN, Sunday Times 'An exhilarating, shape-shifting exploration of the perilous boundaries between art and life' JENNY OFFILL Pablo Picasso beat his partners. Richard Wagner was deeply antisemitic. David Bowie slept with an underage fan. But many of us still love Guernica and the Ring cycle and Ziggy Stardust. And what are we to do with that love? How are we, as fans, to reckon with the biographical choices of the artists whose work sustains us? Wildly smart and insightful, Monsters is an exhilarating attempt to understand our relationship with art and the artist in the twenty-first century. 'An incredible book, the best work of criticism I have read in a very long time' NICK HORNBY 'Part memoir, part treatise, and all treat' New York Times 'Clever and provocative' Daily Telegraph

Monsters

13ec4d6f-4ee0-469e-95bb-ceb6b918a8a5-1

Jessica Hooten Wilson

Jacob Stratman

Wisdom from the Great Hearts and Minds That Came Before





Discover the Good Life as you learn from the wise voices of the past.

We've lost ourselves. Disconnected from the past and uncertain about the future, we are anxious about what our lives will be and troubled by a nagging sense of meaninglessness. Adrift in the world, many Christians have their identity completely wrapped up in work, and their definition of the "good life" is financial success. Fewer of are staying committed to the Christian faith, finding it difficult to reconcile their experience with their longings and desires. With so much uncertainty, where can we find a true vision of "the Good Life"

Learning the Good Life speaks to this malaise with a curated collection of voices from the past, inviting Christians into an ages-old dialogue with some of history's wisest and most reflective minds. Featuring thought-provoking writings from a diverse lineup of over 35 writers and thinkers:

 * From the classic--including Confucius, Augustine, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Henry David Thoreau, and Frederick Douglass;
 * To the modern--including W.E.B. DuBois, Flannery O'Connor, T.S. Eliot, and Simone Weil;
 * To the contemporary--including Wendell Berry, David Foster Wallace, and Marilynne Robinson.

Together these sages, writers, philosophers, and poets address important issues such as virtue, beauty, community, wonder, suffering, and meaning.

Each of these texts are introduced by experts from a variety of Christian colleges and universities to help provide a richer narrative in which Christians can participate. Each text is also accompanied by discussion questions to provoke further thought and contemplation and to facilitate discussion when used in groups.

Learning the Good Life is ideal for any Christian seeking a deeper connection to the wisdom of the past and wanting a more cohesive vision of the good life. Though not all these writers were themselves Christians, they all have a message for you. All of them are calling you to die to yourself, to your habits of indulgence, to your pride and ambition--and to dedicate your time to learning, thinking, and loving.

Learning the Good Life

d6b48091-8e4b-4078-9daa-1063c7847a7e-1

Amanda Montell

Alabama

The Language of Fanaticism

The author of the widely praised Wordslut analyzes the social science of cult influence: how cultish groups from Jonestown and Scientology to SoulCycle and social media gurus use language as the ultimate form of power. What makes "cults" so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we're looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join--and more importantly, stay in--extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell's argument is that, on some level, it already has . . . Our culture tends to provide pretty lame answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of "brainwashing." But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear--and are influenced by--every single day. Through juicy storytelling and cutting original research, Montell exposes the verbal elements that make a wide spectrum of communities "cultish," revealing how they affect followers of groups as notorious as Heaven's Gate, but also how they pervade our modern start-ups, Peloton leaderboards, and Instagram feeds. Incisive and darkly funny, this enrapturing take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of "cultish" everywhere.

Cultish

78146fda-71de-4235-9f95-d31e8081c38f-1

Thomas C. Foster

A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

A thoroughly revised and updated edition of Thomas C. Foster's classic guide—a lively and entertaining introduction to literature and literary basics, including symbols, themes, and contexts—that shows you how to make your everyday reading experience more rewarding and enjoyable. While many books can be enjoyed for their basic stories, there are often deeper literary meanings interwoven in these texts. How to Read Literature Like a Professor helps us to discover those hidden truths by looking at literature with the eyes—and the literary codes—of the ultimate professional reader: the college professor. What does it mean when a literary hero travels along a dusty road? When he hands a drink to his companion? When he's drenched in a sudden rain shower? Ranging from major themes to literary models, narrative devices, and form, Thomas C. Foster provides us with a broad overview of literature—a world where a road leads to a quest, a shared meal may signify a communion, and rain, whether cleansing or destructive, is never just a shower—and shows us how to make our reading experience more enriching, satisfying, and fun. This revised edition includes new chapters, a new preface, and a new epilogue, and incorporates updated teaching points that Foster has developed over the past decade.

How to Read Literature Like a Professor Revised Edition

1672e7e2-fd95-4319-94cd-44f239bb8c58-1

J. Hecht

The Next Arms Race

Beam Weapons examines the directed-energy weapons that became a central part of the Reagan Administration's Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as "Star Wars." First published in 1984, it describes the science and technology behind directed energy weapons, the state of the art at the time Reagan launched the program, and the military issues involved. The first full-length book published on the topic, it exhaustively documents the technical and military realities and uncertainties.

Beam Weapons

42c28d42-c44f-4433-ad7c-26794995b886-0

Tennessee

SYMPHONY
Negro Literature in America

Simone Weil

Rachel Bespaloff

Mary McCarthy

Christopher Benfey

Crease on front cover. Pages are excellent. 

War and the Iliad is a perfect introduction to the range of Homer's art as well as a provocative and rewarding demonstration of the links between literature, philosophy, and questions of life and death. Simone Weil's The Iliad, or the Poem of Force is one of her most celebrated works--an inspired analysis of Homer's epic that presents a nightmare vision of combat as a machine in which all humanity is lost. First published on the eve of war in 1939, the essay has often been read as a pacifist manifesto. Rachel Bespaloff was a French contemporary of Weil's whose work similarly explored the complex relations between literature, religion, and philosophy. She composed her own distinctive discussion of the Iliad in the midst of World War II--calling it "her method of facing the war"--and, as Christopher Benfey argues in his introduction, the essay was very probably written in response to Weil. Bespaloff's account of the Iliad brings out Homer's novelistic approach to character and the existential drama of his characters' choices; it is marked, too, by a tragic awareness of how the Iliad speaks to times and places where there is no hope apart from war. This edition brings together these two influential essays for the first time, accompanied by Benfey's scholarly introduction and an afterword by the great Austrian novelist Hermann Broch.

War and the Iliad

0364ae90-9022-4aab-a92c-4d781a0913bd-0

Vivian Gornick

Massachusetts

The Art of Personal Narrative

A guide to the art of personal writing, by the author of Fierce Attachments and The End of the Novel of Love

All narrative writing must pull from the raw material of life a tale that will shape experience, transform event, deliver a bit of wisdom. In a story or a novel the "I" who tells this tale can be, and often is, an unreliable narrator but in nonfiction the reader must always be persuaded that the narrator is speaking truth.

How does one pull from one's own boring, agitated self the truth-speaker who will tell the story a personal narrative needs to tell? That is the question The Situation and the Story asks--and answers. Taking us on a reading tour of some of the best memoirs and essays of the past hundred years, Gornick traces the changing idea of self that has dominated the century, and demonstrates the enduring truth-speaker to be found in the work of writers as diverse as Edmund Gosse, Joan Didion, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, or Marguerite Duras.

This book, which grew out of fifteen years teaching in MFA programs, is itself a model of the lucid inteligence that has made Gornick one of our most admired writers of ninfiction. In it, she teaches us to write by teaching us how to read: how to recognize truth when we hear it in the writing of others and in our own.

The Situation and the Story

19173954-b5cb-4c41-a39d-878130bebce2-1

Taisia Kitaiskaia

New Jersey

A Celebration of Magical Women Writers

Celebrate the witchiest women writers with beautiful illustrations and imaginative vignettes. Literary Witches draws a connection between witches and visionary writers: both are figures of formidable creativity, empowerment, and general badassery. Through poetic portraits, Taisia Kitaiskaia and Katy Horan honor the witchy qualities of well-known and obscure authors alike, including Virginia Woolf, Mira Bai, Toni Morrison, Emily Dickinson, Octavia E. Butler, Sandra Cisneros, and many more. Perfect for both book lovers and coven members, Literary Witches is a treasure and a source of inspiration. Kitaiskaia and Horan bring fresh insights on your most beloved authors, suggest enchanting new writers, and invite you to rediscover the magic of literature.

Literary Witches

3c3ec7a6-667c-4792-839d-abb4c41a80de-1

Browse by categories

Save this search

Claire Harman

Jane's Fame

Fred C. Hobson; Fred C. Hobson

Serpent in Eden

Fred C. Hobson; Fred C. Hobson

Serpent in Eden

Natalie Tyler; Reid Boates; Jon Winokur

The Friendly Jane Austen

Michael Dirda

Book by Book

Ellen Moers

Literary Women

Susan Cheever

American Bloomsbury

Unknown

Create Your Own Journal

Unknown

300 More Writing Prompts

Elizabeth Hardwick; Darryl Pinckney

The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick

William Deresiewicz

A Jane Austen Education

Sarah J. Makowski

Bitches in Bonnets

Reed Martin; Austin Tichenor

Reduced Shakespeare

Italo Calvino; Tim Parks; Patrick Creagh; Martin McLaughlin; William Weaver

Why Read the Classics?

Claire Dederer

Monsters

Jessica Hooten Wilson; Jacob Stratman

Learning the Good Life

Amanda Montell

Cultish

Thomas C. Foster

How to Read Literature Like a Professor Revised Edition

Thomas C. Foster

How to Read Literature Like a Professor Revised Edition

J. Hecht

Beam Weapons

James A. Emanuel and Theodore L. Gross

SYMPHONY Negro Literature in America

Simone Weil; Rachel Bespaloff; Mary McCarthy; Christopher Benfey

War and the Iliad

Vivian Gornick

The Situation and the Story

Taisia Kitaiskaia

Literary Witches