Dooley provides background information for each of the interviews, along with a thorough index.

Eight prominent scholars consider whether Louis Hartz's interpretation of liberalism in his classic 1955 book should be repudiated or updated, and whether a study of America as a "liberal society" is still a rewarding undertaking.

John Fowles had gained great popularity as a contemporary novelist on both sides of the Atlantic. In this comprehensive study of his work, originally published in 1982, Peter Conradi relates his work to his life, his ideas and his place in contemporary English fiction at the time. Conradi sees him as both realist and experimental, and in detailed analyses of The Magus and The French Lieutenant’s Woman illuminates Fowles’s use of literary genres – the romance (in particular), the detective story, the thriller, the Victorian novel, the tale of courtly love – to exploit and explode the conventions of that particular genre. Seduction, erotic quest, capture and betrayal are among the most important themes in Fowles’s work to be considered here.

Drawing on some 3,000 published interviews with contemporary authors, Authors on Writing: Metaphors and Intellectual Labor reveals new ways of conceiving of writing as intellectual labor. Authors' metaphorical stories about composing highlight not interior worlds but socially situated cultures of composing and apparatuses of authorship. Through an original method of interpreting metaphorical stories, Tomlinson argues that writing is both an individual activity and a collective practice, a solitary activity that depends upon rich, sustained, and complex social networks, institutions, and beliefs. This new book draws upon interviews with writers including: Seamus Heaney, Roald Dahl, Samuel Beckett, Bret Easton Ellis, John Fowles, Allen Ginsburg, Alice Walker and Gore Vidal.

Originally published in 1984, Iris Murdoch, widely regarded as one of the major British novelists of her generation at the time, was undoubtedly one of the most popular and prolific, having published twenty-one novels since 1954 (she went on to write many more). But the course of her fiction-writing career was regarded with unease by some of her readers in that it seemed marked by an increasing conservatism of approach which could not have been foreseen in her earliest published fiction. She was acknowledged as one of Britain’s leading moral philosophers and although this study is careful to respect the distinctive integrity of her fiction-writing and her philosophy, it none the less assumes her active presence in contemporary debate as one of the most powerful and original theorists of fiction writing at the time. In this study, Richard Todd systematically, but discriminatingly, surveys all her fiction to date, and attempts to show how her fundamental theme, the interplay between the roles of artist and saint, is developed and expressed in her fiction.

Essays of critical interpretation portray views of Doris Lessing's work, including The Golden Notebook, Marriages, and The Grass is Singing..

As the first book-length study of Nicholas Mosley, "The Paradox of Freedom" combines a discussion of the author's incredible biography with an investigation of his writing, nearly all of which is published by Dalkey Archive Press. The son of Oswald Mosley (the leader of Britain's fascistic Blackshirts), a British Lord, a Christian convert, a war veteran, a voracious reader, and an important thinker, Nicholas Mosley has, this book argues, employed all of these experiences and ideas in novels and memoirs that seek to describe the paradoxical nature of freedom: how can man be free when limiting structures are necessary? Can it be achieved, and how? The answer lies in the books themselves, in the ways telling and re-telling stories allows one to escape the seemingly logical bounderies of life and discover new meanings and possibilities. This is a much-needed companion to the work of one of Britain's most important post-War writers.

Discusses the overlooked works of Bradbury and Lodge in terms of their critical reception, Bakhtin's theory of the dialogical novel, and their relation to British literature and contemporary literature in general. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

How do women writers use science fiction to challenge assumptions about the genre and its representations of women? To what extent is the increasing number of women writing science fiction reformulating the expectations of readers and critics? From Mary Shelley onwards, women writers have played a central role in the shaping and reshaping of this genre, irrespective of its undeniably patriarchal image. Essays on the work of writers such as Doris Lessing and Ursula Le Guin, Katherine Burdekin, C. L. Moor, Suzette Elgin, Gwyneth Jones, Maureen Duffy and Josephine Saxton demonstrate that science fiction remains as particularly well-suited to the exploration of woman as 'alien' or 'other' in our culture today, as it was with the publication of Frankenstein in 1818.