Why do we speak the way we do, and what do our voices tell others about us? What is the truth behind the myths that surround how we speak? Jane Setter explores these and other fascinating questions in an accessible and engaging account that will appeal to anyone interested in how we use our voices in daily life.

An interdisciplinary study of women and language in England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Speaking Volumes focuses on the connections that contemporaries made between speech and reading. It studies the period's discourses on 'woman's language' and contrasts them with the linguistic practices of individual women. The book also argues that the oral performance of literature was important in fostering domesticity and serving as a means for women to practise authoritative speech. Utilizing a range of evidence gleaned from language texts, schoolbooks, diaries, letters, conduct books, and works of literature (notably the novels of Jane Austen), the author shows how eighteenth-century English women strategically used the stereotype of 'woman's language' while insisting implicitly that gender was not always the most salient feature of their identities.

From a lineup of acclaimed literary talents, wide-ranging works centering on books and bibliophilia. Writing about writing itself and about the books that are home to the written word. A library of ideas about language and the book in all their forms, Speaking Volumes collects poetry, fiction, and narrative nonfiction on historic, forbidden, repurposed, mistranslated, imaginary, lost, and life-changing books—books of every ilk.

An eclectic mix of short stories and poetry from a range of genres. This anthology is a collaborative work by writers who share a passion for what they are doing, rise to new challenges with a smile and who want to raise money for charities.

How did a fishmonger’s son from Tyneside, growing up in the 1950s with a Geordie accent, become the person who recorded over 900 audiobooks and received an MBE from the Queen in the Birthday Honours of 2017? This ‘charming’, ‘entertaining’ and ‘heart-warming’ memoir answers that question. Reviews: AudioFile magazine “...not simply a reader but an artist of the spoken word...” “...Gordon Griffin, an entire acting company in one person...” “Witty and moving memoir of how a working-class boy becomes THE voice of the spoken word. Honest and vivid account plus excellent advice for those of us who work with words.” Miriam Margolyes

Ramona Koval has been praised as a master of the interview genre, renowned for engaging writers in conversations that are incisive, provocative, and often funny. In this new collection, Speaking Volumes: conversations with remarkable writers, she shares the most fascinating interviews from her 2005 book Tasting Life Twice, along with brand-new ones with some of the most important writers of our times. Through Koval, we are privy to the extraordinary minds of Joseph Heller, Joyce Carol Oates, Mario Vargas Llosa, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, David Malouf, P. D. James, John Mortimer, Ian McEwan, Amos Oz, Gore Vidal, Harold Pinter, John le Carré, Barry Lopez, Malcolm Bradbury, William Gass, Judith Wright, Les Murray, Fay Weldon, A. S. Byatt, Margaret Drabble, Martin Amis, Toni Morrison, André Brink, John Banville, Jeanette Winterson, Hanif Kureishi, and Anne Enright, among others.

When a mysterious child appears at the monastery of the Order of the Chronicles of Sorrowing, Brother Edik nurses her back to health. When he uncovers her dangerous secret, she is sent away into the world with a goat and a boy.