Discusses Waugh's major works, his achievement as a satiric novelist, and his command of style.

Twayne's United States Authors, English Authors, and World Authors Series present concise critical introductions to great writers and their works. Devoted to critical interpretation and discussion of an author's work, each study takes account of major literary trends and important scholarly contributions and provides new critical insights with an original point of view. An Authors Series volume addresses readers ranging from advanced high school students to university professors. The book suggests to the informed reader new ways of considering a writer's work. Each volume features: -- A critical, interpretive study and explication of the author's works -- A brief biography of the author -- An accessible chronology outlining the life, the work, and relevant historical context -- Aids for further study: complete notes and references, a selected annotated bibliography and an index -- A readable style presented in a manageable length

Although recognized by her Victorian peers as among the finest of living poets, Christina Rossetti has earned the dubious distinction of having her life prove more fascinating than her art. Her association with the Pre-Raphaelites, of which her brother Dante Gabriel was a major exponent, and her strong religious convictions have contributed to a pervasive image of the poet as a saintly and reclusive neurotic. Rossetti's literary reputation rests largely on "Goblin Market" and a few short, melancholy lyrics, but like many Victorians she was a prolific writer, producing well over a thousand poems. In her lifetime she published six volumes of poetry that, in turn, provided material for two collected editions of her work, and also six volumes of devotional prose, two collections of fiction, and a juvenile novella. In revisiting the copious works of Christina Rossetti, Sharon Smulders focuses on the poet's versatility as a writer. Smulders sees Rossetti as a writer interested in fostering and sustaining possibilities for feminine self-expression; she carefully observes the way the poet engaged in a range of formal experiments in both prose and verse and frequently resisted or dislocated established generic conventions to achieve her ends. Smulders also sees Rossetti as a writer very much of her time: her attitudes toward contemporary social, religious, and aesthetic issues inform the thematic and formal preoccupations of her work.

In this astute and learned analysis of McCarthy's fiction, Robert Jarrett looks at all seven of the novels published to date and responds to much of the current (and proliferating) critical thought about McCarthy. After an introductory biographical chapter, Jarrett addresses what he considers the two phases of McCarthy's fiction: as a regional writer of the Appalachian South, whose work mixes modernist and realistic techniques and merges contemporary fiction with the tradition of Southern literature (as in The Orchard Keeper [1965], Outer Dark [1968], Child of God [1973], and Suttree [1979]), and as a bold experimenter in form and style, with a keenly rendered postmodern esthetic (as in Blood Meridian [1985], All the Pretty Horses, and The Crossing [1994]). Jarrett regards McCarthy's early novels as attempts to write a modern fiction of the twentieth-century Tennessee hill country, comparable to what local-color realists or regionalists accomplished in the nineteenth century and to what William Faulkner accomplished in his mixture of modernism and regionalism in his Yoknapatawpha fiction. It is during his second phase, Jarrett points out, that the locales of McCarthy's novels shift to the Southwest, and any appearance they give of being popular westerns becomes only a disguise. In the final chapter Jarrett stresses three distinctive aspects of McCarthy's fiction: the diverse and idiosyncratic style of the narrative discourse, the central theme of the quest undertaken through a visionary landscape, and the role of interpolated tales. Drawing keenly on literary theory to synthesize the various strands of McCarthy's unique narrative voice, Jarrett concludes that while the author's tales -often steeped in violence - may not tell us what we want to hear, the enduring pleasure of his novels lies in their imaginative and stylistic power.

Following a brief biographical introduction the author assesses the style, characterizations, and symbolism of the English mystery writer.