With a writing career spanning over half a century and encompassing media as diverse as conferences, radio, journalism, fiction, theatre, film, and television, Tom Stoppard is probably the most prolific and significant living British dramatist. The critical essays in this volume celebrating Stoppard’s 75th birthday address many facets of Stoppard’s work, both the well-known, such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Shakespeare in Love, as well as the relatively critically neglected, including his novel Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon and his short stories, “The Story,” “Life, Times: Fragments,” and “Reunion.” The essays presented here analyze plays such as Arcadia, The Invention of Love, The Real Thing, and Jumpers, Stoppard’s film adaptation of J. G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun, his television adaptation of Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End, and his stage adaptations of Chekhov’s plays Ivanov, The Seagull, and The Cherry Orchard, as well as his own theatrical trilogy on Russian history, The Coast of Utopia (Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage). Also included is an interview with Tom Stoppard on the 16 November 1982 debut of his play The Real Thing at Strand Theatre, London, and a detailed account of the Stoppard holdings in the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. From his fascination with Shakespeare and other historical figures (and time periods) to his exploration of the connection between poetic creativity and scholarship to his predilection for word play, verbal ambiguity and use of anachronism, Stoppard’s work is at once insightful and wry, thought-provoking and entertaining, earnest and facetious. The critical essays in this volume hope to do justice to the brilliant complexity that is Tom Stoppard’s body of work.

Provides personality profiles, historical essays, and first-person reminiscences of the history of the University of Texas. Topics include recurring attacks on the school by politicians and regents, the institution's history of segregation and struggles to become a diverse university, the sixties' protest movements, and the Tower sniper shooting.

A middle aged author declining in popularity. An up and coming literary agent with an eye for genius. A partnership that would forge a prodigious legacy in American literature. Henry James was a middle-aged author who had established himself on a transatlantic scale when he employed James Brand Pinker as his literary agent in 1898. The changing preferences of a growing audience of readers along with James’s self-defeating practice of shifting from publisher to publisher, rather than adhering to the trade courtesy of remaining loyal to one house, were making the author’s efforts to keep his work in print increasingly difficult; bringing Pinker, who managed the literary business of over 100 authors including Stephen Crane, H.G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, and Jack London, into the picture made it possible for James to maintain a presence before the reading public to an extent that would have been impossible without the agent’s assistance. Pinker’s involvement was vital to the continuance of James’s career, as his later works and the New York Edition proved difficult material to place. The agent’s role as the mediator of conflict between the commercial writer and literary artist, positions that James had difficulty reconciling, had considerable influence on the shape of James’s later career and thus the way in which the author is remembered; James’s legacy is therefore clearly tied to Pinker’s efforts. Using correspondence between Pinker, James, and the primary publishers of James’s material from 1898 until Pinker’s death in 1922, along with secondary works addressing the agent’s endeavors during this period, this volume demonstrates the link between Pinker’s work and James’s continued presence in print, both during the author’s lifetime and after his death.

At a critical stage of the Texas Revolution a large Mexican army surrounded a makeshift fortification known locally as the Alamo. It was there that a small defensive force of mostly Texans had become holed up, and where they vowed to ‘never surrender or retreat’. After a siege lasting thirteen days, the Mexicans assaulted the fortification during the early hours of Sunday, 6 March 1836. Except for a few women and children, and one male slave, everyone inside was killed. All this is well known, and to this day the Alamo Mission is an American national monument sacred to the people of Texas. The Battle of Alamo sits alongside such dramatic last stands as Little Big Horn and Rorke’s Drift as one of the most heroic and sacrificial battles against the odds in military history. But what few realise is that a large number of those who fought and died for Texas at the Alamo were British. For the first time, the stories of these men, their lives and their deaths at the Alamo, are revealed. They include an Englishman named William Blazeby, who led a troop of New Orleans Greys; a Scotsman named John McGregor, who took to his bagpipes and accompanied Davy Crockett on the fiddle to keep up the spirits of the defenders; and an Irishman named Robert Evans, who, as Master of Ordnance was shot down while trying to set light to the gunpowder in the chapel when the battle was lost. Through men such as these, the full story of this iconic encounter in the history of the United States of America is told in detail by the author. The roles of the opposing commanders, the infamous General Santa Anna and Lieutenant Colonel William ‘Buck’ Travis, are also examined. At the same time, James Bancroft also investigates the death of James Bowie, renowned, of course, for his large hunting knife, and Davy Crockett. Exactly how the so called ‘King of the Wild Frontier’ met his end has been the subject of controversial debate ever since Texas fought off its Mexican shackles – thanks in no small measure to those Britons who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their American comrades on the crumbling walls of the Alamo more than 185 years ago.

Bringing together leading voices from across the globe, The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton represents state-of-the-art scholarship on the American writer Edith Wharton, once primarily known as a New York novelist. Focusing on Wharton's extensive body of work and renaissance across 21st-century popular culture, chapters consider: - Wharton in the context of queer studies, race studies, whiteness studies, age studies, disability studies, anthropological studies, and economics; - Wharton's achievements in genres for which she deserves to be better known: poetry, drama, the short story, and non-fiction prose; - Comparative studies with Christina Rossetti, Henry James, and Willa Cather; -The places and cultures Wharton documented in her writing, including France, Greece, Italy, and Morocco; - Wharton's work as a reader and writer and her intersections with film and the digital humanities. Book-ended by Dale Bauer and Elaine Showalter, and with a foreword by the Director and senior staff at The Mount, Wharton's historic Massachusetts home, the Handbook underscores Wharton's lasting impact for our new Gilded Age. It is an indispensable resource for readers interested in Wharton and 19th- and 20th-century literature and culture.

The present book is an effort to understand the role of masonry in the introduction of freedom of worship in Mexico. With erudition, the author leads us through the stages ending with the victory of the liberal republic, headed by Benito Juárez, and the establishment thereby of freedom of worship, which made possible the insertion of American protestant missions in Mexico. Many Protestants brought not only their faith, but Freemasonry as well. - Dr. Adolfo García de la Sienra Guajardo Director del Instituto de Filosofía - Universidad Veracruzana, México Presidente de la Sociedad Iberoamericana de Metodología Económica This is a scholarly study, well documented, analyzing one of the most controversial themes in the history of Mexico. In the work of Sara Frahm, Masonry ceases being mysterious, and is revealed as one of the strong components that shaped 19th century Mexico - María Eugenia Vázquez Semadeni, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of History, UCLA.

Tennyson experienced at first hand the all-pervasive nature of celebrity culture. It caused him to retreat from the eyes of the world. This book delineates Tennyson's reluctant celebrity and its effects on his writings, on his coterie of famous and notable friends and on the ever-expanding, media-led circle of Tennyson's admirers.

American women writers have long been creating an extraordinarily diverse and vital body of fiction, particularly in the decades since World War II. Recent authors have benefited from the struggles of their predecessors, who broke through barriers that denied women opportunities for self-expression. This reference highlights American women writers who continue to build upon the formerly male-dominated canon. Included are alphabetically arranged entries for more than 60 American women writers of diverse ethnicity who wrote or published their most significant fiction after World War II. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and includes:^L^DBLA brief biography^L^DBLA discussion of major works and themes^^DBLA survey of the writer's critical reception^L^DBLA bibliography of primary and secondary sources