First published in 1981, this book offers a study of British and American popular fiction in the 1970s, a decade in which the quest for the superseller came to dominate the lives of publishers on both sides of the Atlantic. Illustrated by examples of the lurid incidents that catapult so many books into the bestseller charts, this comprehensive study covers the work of Robbins, Hailey and Maclean, the 'bodice rippers', the disaster craze, horror, war stories and media tie-ins such as The Godfather, Jaws and Star Wars.

First published in 1982, The Sociology of Art considers all forms of the arts, whether visual arts, literature, film, theatre or music from Bach to the Beatles. The last book to be completed by Arnold Hauser before his death in 1978, it is a total analysis of the spiritual forces of social expression, based upon comprehensive historical experience and documentation. Hauser explores art through the earliest times to the modern era, with fascinating analyses of the mass media and current manifestations of human creativity. An extension and completion of his earlier work, The Social History of Art, this volume represents a summing up of his thought and forms a fitting climax to his life’s work. Translated by Kenneth J. Northcote.

First published in 1987, this is an introductory study of the most widely read Canadian women novelists of the 1970s and 1980s. At its centre lies the question of how the search for a distinctive cultural identity relates to the need for a national cultural identity in the post-colonial era. Coral Ann Howells argues that Canadian women’s fiction throughout the period of study represents how the Canadian cultural identity exceeds its geographical limits, and those traditional structures of patriarchal authority need revision if women’s alternative views are to be taken into account. Including short biographical sketches and a complete list of the books published by the authors under discussion, writers examined include Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, and Margaret Laurence.

From Frankenstein and Dracula to Psycho and The Chainsaw Massacre, horror fiction has provided our culture with some of its most enduring themes and narratives. Considering horror fiction both as a genre and as a social phenomenon, Joseph Grixti provides a theoretical and historical framework for reconsidering horror and the cultural apparatus that surrounds it. First published in 1989, this book looks at shifts in the genre’s meaning – its fascination with excess, its commentaries on the categories and boundaries of culture – and at interpretations of horror from psychology, psychoanalysis, sociology, cultural and media studies. Terrors of Uncertainty brings together a provocative range of perspectives from across the disciplines, which combine to raise important questions about the relationship between fiction and society, and the way in which we use fiction to resolve or evade our fears of uncertainty.

This essential guide and reference work provides a unique insight into over 100 years of publishing and reading as well as taking us on a journey into the heart of the British imagination.

First published in 1981, this book offers a study of British and American popular fiction in the 1970s, a decade in which the quest for the superseller came to dominate the lives of publishers on both sides of the Atlantic. Illustrated by examples of the lurid incidents that catapult so many books into the bestseller charts, this comprehensive study covers the work of Robbins, Hailey and Maclean, the 'bodice rippers', the disaster craze, horror, war stories and media tie-ins such as The Godfather, Jaws and Star Wars.