'The Oxford Guide to Plays' provides information on the 1000 best-known, best-loved, and most important plays in world theatre. Each entry includes details of title, author, dates of composition and first performance, genre, setting, the composition of the cast, synopsis of the plot, brief commentary, and more.

Diaries keep secrets, harbouring our fantasies and fictional histories. They are substitute boyfriends, girlfriends, spouses and friends. But in this age of social media, the role of the diary as a private confidante has been replaced by a culture of public self-disclosure. 'The Private Life of the Diary' is an elegantly-told story of the evolution - and perhaps death - of the diary. It traces its origins to 17th-century naval administrator, Samuel...

Classical music for everyone - an inspirational piece of music for every day of the year, celebrating composers from the medieval era to the present day, written by BBC Radio 3's Clemency Burton-Hill.

Jo Walton is an award-winning author of, inveterate reader of, and chronic re-reader of science fiction and fantasy books. 'What Makes This Book So Great' is a selection of the best of her musings about her prodigious reading habit.

This is a general survey of the entire history of travel literature with illustrations reproduced from manuscripts and books in the Bodleian Library's collections. Written in a clear and accessible style, it highlights over 100 texts spanning more than 3,000 years from the ancient world to the present day.

This edition includes around 80 new and over 200 substantially revised entries. It explores authors and topics at the heart of contemporary debate on literature including Kafka, Kleist, Christa Wolf, Jelinek, Peter Handke and Gunter de Bruyn.

A one-volume survey of the literature of Greece & Rome, this volume begins around 700 B.C. with Homer & concludes six centuries later with Augustine. It highlights the continuing interest & value in classical literature.

Clive James is one of our finest critics and best-loved cultural voices. He is also a prize-winning poet. Since he was first enthralled by the mysterious power of poetry, he has been a dedicated student. In fact, for Clive, poetry has been nothing less than the occupation of a lifetime, and in this book he presents a distillation of all he's learned about the art form that matters to him most.

Carrington will take you to the great literature of the English language, ready to discover or rediscover the best that has been written. In short and clearly structured sections, all the major writers are presented in order of their birth, giving the unfolding history of English literature from Beowulf to Heaney.