What makes a reading experience »powerful«? This volume brings together literary scholars, linguists, and empirical researchers who tackle the question by investigating the effects and reader responses generated by selected extracts of literary prose. The twelve contributions theorize this widely-used, but to date insufficiently studied notion, and provide insights into the therefore still mysterious-seeming power of literary fiction. The collection explores a variety of stylistic as well as readerly and psychological features responsible for short- and long-term effects - topics of great interest to those interested or specialized in literary studies and narratology, (cognitive) stylistics, empirical literary studies and reader response theory.

Writing correct prose is one thing - writing powerful, persuasive prose quite another. F. L. Lucas, fellow of King's College, Cambridge and veteran of the Enigma team at Bletchley Park, wrote one of the 20th century's bestselling books on this second kind of writing. Lost for forty years, its dazzling and amusing advice is now back in print - and this eBook brings readers his brilliant essay on the same subject. A superbly condensed guide to the art of writing well, this eBook is the perfect introduction to the secrets of unforgettable English.

Liberty against oppression, right against wrong - a clear message has come down to us about the origins of the American War of Independence, one of the founding events of the modern world. As with so many legends, the truth is somewhat different. In this revealing account, Robert Harvey overturns most of our assumptions about the causes of the war. Both Britain and America were divided over the struggle, America violently so, while in Britain many favoured independence if it would avoid bloodshed. The war itself was vicious and confused, and marked by incompetence and bad faith on both sides. When it was over the Americans pushed out their French allies, while the British, who had encouraged black slaves to revolt, and Indians to attack, abandoned both to their fate. Yet after four years of misrule the Constitutional Convention imposed its own conservative counter-revolution, and out of bloodshed and suffering, cunning, idealism and courage, there emerged the infant nation that was to become the most powerful the world has ever seen. In this extraordinary and intensely readable book Robert Harvey tells the whole extraordinary story of its birth.

Now available in paperback for the first time, Jewish Writers of the Twentieth Century is both a comprehensive reference resource and a springboard for further study. This volume: examines canonical Jewish writers, less well-known authors of Yiddish and Hebrew, and emerging Israeli writers includes entries on figures as diverse as Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Tristan Tzara, Eugene Ionesco, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Arthur Miller, Saul Bellow, Nadine Gordimer, and Woody Allen contains introductory essays on Jewish-American writing, Holocaust literature and memoirs, Yiddish writing, and Anglo-Jewish literature provides a chronology of twentieth-century Jewish writers. Compiled by expert contributors, this book contains over 330 entries on individual authors, each consisting of a biography, a list of selected publications, a scholarly essay on their work and suggestions for further reading.