The inner torments of the poet, critic, & translator are revealed in his letters to his mother over the course of 33 years & ending just prior to his death at the age of 46. "The intimate & profoundly moving letters reveal the tragedy of a sensitive mind, reveal the heartbreaking bitterness & hope & struggle of a man unfitted to combat the implacabilities of life."--THE INDEPENDENT.

The Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography is the first comprehensive encyclopedia of world photography up to the beginning of the twentieth century. It sets out to be the standard, definitive reference work on the subject for years to come. Its coverage is global – an important ‘first’ in that authorities from all over the world have contributed their expertise and scholarship towards making this a truly comprehensive publication. The Encyclopedia presents new and ground-breaking research alongside accounts of the major established figures in the nineteenth century arena. Coverage includes all the key people, processes, equipment, movements, styles, debates and groupings which helped photography develop from being ‘a solution in search of a problem’ when first invented, to the essential communication tool, creative medium, and recorder of everyday life which it had become by the dawn of the twentieth century. The sheer breadth of coverage in the 1200 essays makes the Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography an essential reference source for academics, students, researchers and libraries worldwide.

Focusing on their conception and use of the notion of the mother, Modernism, Self-Creation, and the Maternal proposes a new interpretation of literature by modernist authors like Rousseau, Baudelaire, Poe, Rimbaud, Rilke, Joyce, and Beckett. Seen through this maternal relation, their writing appears as the product of an "anxiety" rising not from paternal influence, but from the violence done to their mother in their attempts at self-creation through writing. In order to bring to light this modernist violence, this study analyzes these authors in tandem with Derrida’s work on the gender-specific violence of the Western philosophical and literary tradition. The book demonstrates how these writer-sons wrote their works in a constant crisis vis-à-vis the mother’s body as site of both origin and dissolution. It proves how, if modernism was first established as a patrilineal heritage, it was ultimately written on the bodies of women and mothers, confusing them in order to appropriate their generative traits.

Baudelaire's Media Aesthetics situates Charles Baudelaire in the midst of 19th-century media culture. It offers a thorough study of the role of newspapers, photography, and precinematic devices in Baudelaire's writings, while also discussing the cultural history of these media generally. The book reveals that Baudelaire was not merely inspired by the new media, but that he played with them, using them as frames of perception and ways of experiencing the world. His writings demonstrate how different media respond to one another and how the conventions of one medium can be paraphrased in another medium. Accordingly, Baudelaire's Media Aesthetics argues that Baudelaire should be seen merely as an advocate of ?pure poetry,? but as a poet in a media saturated environment. It shows that mediation, montage, and movement are features that are central to Baudelaire's aesthetics and that his modernist aesthetics can be conceived of, to a large degree, as a media aesthetics. Highlighting Baudelaire's interaction with the media of his age, Baudelaire's Media Aesthetics discusses the ways in which we respond to new media technology, drawing on perspectives from Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben. Combining detailed research with contemporary theory, the book opens up new perspectives on Baudelaire's writings, the figure of the fl�neur, and modernist aesthetics.

A clear and concise survey of some of the most significant writers on photography who have played a major part in defining and influencing our understanding of the medium. It provides a succinct overview of writing on photography from a diverse range of disciplines and perspectives and examines the shifting perception of the medium over the course of its 170 year history. Key writers discussed include: Roland Barthes Susan Sontag Jacques Derrida Henri Cartier-Bresson Geoffrey Batchen Fully cross-referenced and in an A-Z format, this is an accessible and engaging introductory guide.