The New Oxford Book Of Literary Anecdotes

Author : John Gross
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9780199543410

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The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes by John Gross Pdf

In The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, master anthologist John Gross brings together a delectable smorgasbord of literary tales, offering striking new insight into some of the most important writers in history. Many of the anecdotes here are funny, others are touching, outrageous, sinister, inspiring, or downright weird. They show writers from Chaucer to Bob Dylan acting both unpredictably and deeply in character. The range is wide--this is a book which finds room for Milton and Shakespeare, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, Kurt Vonnegut and P. G. Wodehouse, Chinua Achebe and Salman Rushdie, James Baldwin and Tom Wolfe. It is also a book in which you can find out which great historian's face was once mistaken for a baby's bottom, which film star experienced a haunting encounter with Virginia Woolf not long before her death, and what Agatha Christie really thought of her popular character Hercule Poirot. It is in short an unrivalled collection of literary gossip offering intimate glimpses into the lives of authors ranging from Shakespeare to Philip Roth--a book not just for lovers of literature, but for anyone with a taste for the curiosities of human nature.

Author : James Sutherland
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 1987
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:1407657158

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“The” Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes by James Sutherland Pdf

Author : Donald Hall
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 388 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 1983
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0195033884

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The Oxford Book of American Literary Anecdotes by Donald Hall Pdf

A companion volume to The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, this volume covers the whole range of American literary history from the 17th century to the present. Taken from biographies, letters, memoirs, and table-talk, the stories form an irreverent history of American literature.

Author : Walter Gratzer,Walter Bruno Gratzer
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 374 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 019860940X

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Eurekas and Euphorias by Walter Gratzer,Walter Bruno Gratzer Pdf

A collection of fascinating stories, entertainingly told, revealing the human face of science. Eurekas and Euphorias encompasses some 200 anecdotes brilliantly illustrating scientists in all their shapes: the obsessive and the dilettantish, the genial, the envious, the preternaturally brilliant and the slow-witted who sometimes see further in the end, the open-minded and the intolerant, recluses and arrivistes. Told with wit and relish by Walter Gratzer, here are stories to delight, astonish, instruct, and most especially, entertain the general reader, scientist and non-scientist alike.

Author : Robin Hanbury-Tenison
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 595 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : History
ISBN : 9780192805560

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The Oxford Book of Exploration by Robin Hanbury-Tenison Pdf

Selected by Robin Hanbury-Tenison, whom the Sunday Times called the 'greatest explorer of the last twenty years', this is a comprehensive anthology of the writings of explorers through the ages, now fully revised and updated. The ultimate in travel writing, these are the words of those who changed the world through their pioneering search for new lands, new peoples, and new experiences. Divided into geographical sections, the book takes us to Asia with Vasco da Gama, Francis Younghusband, and Wilfred Thesiger, to the Americas with John Cabot, Sir Francis Drake, and Alexander Von Humboldt, to Africa with Dr David Livingstone and Mary Kingsley, to the Pacific with Ferdinand Magellan and James Cook, and to the Poles with Robert Peary and Wally Herbert. Driven by a desire to discover that transcends all other considerations, the vivid writings of these extraordinary people reveal what makes them go beyond the possible and earn the right to be known as explorers.

Author : Joyce Carol Oates
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 788 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0195092627

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The Oxford Book of American Short Stories by Joyce Carol Oates Pdf

This volume offers a survey of American short fiction in 59 tales that combine classic works with 'different, unexpected gems', which invite readers to explore a wealth of important pieces by women and minority writers. Authors include: Amy Tan, Alice Adams, David Leavitt and Tim O'Brien.

Author : Theodore William Goossen
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 486 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780192803726

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The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories by Theodore William Goossen Pdf

Beginning with the first writings to assimilate and rework Western literary traditions, through the flourishing of the short story genre in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Taisho era, to the new breed of writers produced under the constraints of literary censorship, and the current writings reflecting the pitfalls and paradoxes of modern life, this anthology offers a stimulating survey of the entire development of the Japanese short story.

Author : Gyles Brandreth
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 511 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2020-10-08
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780191066528

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The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes by Gyles Brandreth Pdf

This is the ultimate anthology of theatrical anecdotes, edited by lifelong theatre-lover Gyles Brandreth in the Oxford tradition, and covering every kind of theatrical story and experience from the age of Shakespeare and Marlowe to the age of Stoppard and Mamet, from Richard Burbage to Richard Briers, from Nell Gwynn to Daniel Day-Lewis, from Sarah Bernhardt to Judi Dench. Players, playwrights, prompters, producers—they all feature. The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes provides a comprehensive, revealing, and hugely entertaining portrait of the world of theatre across four hundred years. Many of the anecdotes are humorous: all have something pertinent and illuminating to say about an aspect of theatrical life—whether it is the art of playwriting, the craft of covering up missed cues, the drama of the First Night, the nightmare of touring, or the secret ingredients of star quality. Edmund Kean, Henry Irving, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Ellen Terry, Edith Evans, Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren—the great 'names' are all here, of course, but there are tales of the unexpected, too—and the unknown. This is a book—presented in five acts, with a suitably anecdotal and personal prologue from Gyles Brandreth—where, once in a while, the understudy takes centre-stage and Gyles Brandreth treats triumph and disaster just the same, including stories from the tattiest touring companies as well as from Broadway, the West End and theatres, large and small, in Australia, India, and across Europe.

Author : Max Hastings
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 530 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 1985
Category : History
ISBN : 9780195205282

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The Oxford Book of Military Anecdotes by Max Hastings Pdf

This colleciton of anecdotes is principally concerned with American and British conflicts. Hastings has sought stories that illustrate the military condition through the ages, both on the battlefield and in the barracks.

Author : John Gross
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2012-01-19
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 019963937X

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The Oxford Book of Parodies by John Gross Pdf

An unparalleled introduction to the parodist's art, The Oxford Book of Parodies includes parodies from Chaucer to the present day, ranging from imitations and spoofs to lampoons and pastiches, comical, scornful, witty, and subtle. It also takes in advertisements, legal rituals, political warfare and a scientific hoax.

Author : John Nichols
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 832 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 1814
Category : Authors, English
ISBN : PRNC:32101021587892

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Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century: Anecdotes by John Nichols Pdf

Author : Richard Ovenden
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2020-10-13
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780674241206

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Burning the Books by Richard Ovenden Pdf

The director of the famed Bodleian Libraries at Oxford narrates the global history of the willful destruction—and surprising survival—of recorded knowledge over the past three millennia. Libraries and archives have been attacked since ancient times but have been especially threatened in the modern era. Today the knowledge they safeguard faces purposeful destruction and willful neglect; deprived of funding, libraries are fighting for their very existence. Burning the Books recounts the history that brought us to this point. Richard Ovenden describes the deliberate destruction of knowledge held in libraries and archives from ancient Alexandria to contemporary Sarajevo, from smashed Assyrian tablets in Iraq to the destroyed immigration documents of the UK Windrush generation. He examines both the motivations for these acts—political, religious, and cultural—and the broader themes that shape this history. He also looks at attempts to prevent and mitigate attacks on knowledge, exploring the efforts of librarians and archivists to preserve information, often risking their own lives in the process. More than simply repositories for knowledge, libraries and archives inspire and inform citizens. In preserving notions of statehood recorded in such historical documents as the Declaration of Independence, libraries support the state itself. By preserving records of citizenship and records of the rights of citizens as enshrined in legal documents such as the Magna Carta and the decisions of the US Supreme Court, they support the rule of law. In Burning the Books, Ovenden takes a polemical stance on the social and political importance of the conservation and protection of knowledge, challenging governments in particular, but also society as a whole, to improve public policy and funding for these essential institutions.

Author : Ibn Abi Usaybi'ah,Geert Jan van Gelder
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2020-06-25
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9780198827924

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Anecdotes and Antidotes by Ibn Abi Usaybi'ah,Geert Jan van Gelder Pdf

To my knowledge...no one...has ever written a comprehensive book dealing with physicians through the ages and recounting their history in a coherent fashion. So wrote Syrian physician Ibn Abi Usaybi'ah, circa 1243, as he embarked on the first world history of medicine ever attempted. Many physicians served at the royal courts of their time and were firmly part of the intellectual and cultural scene, where the ability to write stylishly and entertain one's peers in both prose and verse was the basis of social credibility. The work Ibn Abi Usaybi'ah created contains over 432 biographical accounts of physicians from those of ancient Greece, such as Galen, through Avicenna and Maimonides, to the author's own colleagues of the 13th century. As such, his work includes important accounts of medical activity in medieval hospitals. Through this book, a window opens not only on to the origins of the medical profession, but also into the truly multi-cultural, multi-religious world of the medieval Middle East. Anecdotes and Antidotes is an abridged version of this world history of medicine. It comprises 103 biographies of physicians and philosophers, organized geographically and chronologically, from the 4th century BC to the 13th century, and includes seminal Muslim, Christian and Jewish figures. It contains vital medical and historical information, as well as revealing the cultural values, interests and concerns of the literary and intellectual elite of the time.

Author : James Runcieman Sutherland,James Sutherland
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 404 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 1987
Category : Humor
ISBN : 0192819364

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The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes by James Runcieman Sutherland,James Sutherland Pdf

A collection of nearly 500 stories covering 1300 years. Includes tall tales, portraits, and anecdotes about the men and women of English letters.

Author : D. J. Enright
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 351 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2008-10-01
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9780199556526

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The Oxford Book of Death by D. J. Enright Pdf

The inescapable reality of death has given rise to much of literature's most profound and moving work. D. J. Enright's wonderfully eclectic selection presents the words of poet and novelist, scientist and philosopher, mystic and sceptic. And alongside these 'professional' writers, he allows the voices of ordinary people to be heard; for this is a subject on which there are no real experts and wisdom lies in many unexpected places.