Whilst the EFL is closed to readers, the library has been expanding its access to e-books. This post will explore some of the newest e-book acquisitions from the past month. The selection focused on are recent publications on a variety of subjects.

Alexandra Socarides. 2020. In Plain Sight: Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Poetry and the Problem of Literary History.
Recently acquired are several new e-books from the Oxford Scholarship Online series. From this series, Socarides’ In Plain Sight focuses on the erasure of female American poets from the nineteenth-century literary history. Socarides also explores why only Emily Dickinson’s work was remembered. The book analyses the conventions of American women’s poetry and how it was circulated, and how this influenced the erasure of their work.

Erin A. McCarthy. 2020. Doubtful Readers: Print, Poetry, and the Reading Public in Early Modern England.
Another new addition from the Oxford Scholarship Online series is McCarthy’s work Doubtful Readers. The work focuses on the print and publication of early modern poetry. It explores how publishers attempted to make work more accessible to readers who had been restricted by social circles in manuscript. McCarthy considers how poetry was shaped by printing traditions, and itself shaped by these traditions. The book demonstrates how the actions of publishers during this period had a longstanding impact on texts and literary histories.

Megan Cavell & Jennifer Neville (eds.). 2020. Riddles at work in the early medieval tradition: words, ideas, interactions.
Riddles at work features a variety of writers who examine the poetic tradition of riddles in Early Medieval England and its neighbours. Riddles are treated individually and as part of a larger culture. Through examining riddles both in Latin and Old English, new ways to consider riddles are highlighted. A variety of themes and approaches are considered in Riddles at work to demonstrate that there is no right way to read riddles, resultantly, there are many interesting approaches which can be taken.

Madeleine Callaghan & Anthony Howe (eds.) 2020. Romanticism and the letter.
Romanticism and the letter explores letter writing in Britain during the Romantic period. It contains essays from a range of contributors, who focus on a variety of topics including theories of letter writing, epistolary culture and specific authors including Wordsworth, Austen, Shelley and Byron. The work demonstrates how the usage of letters varies for individual writers and letters. It also shows how letters present interesting insights into the culture of the Romantic period.

Sandie Byrne. 2020. Poetry and class.
In this study, Byrne explores how class is represented in English poetry from the fourteenth century to present day through specific case studies. Byrne uses examples from all class levels, whilst also examining dialect and accent to explore how the role of class influenced production and reception of poetry. The work explores the factors which enable and obstruct the production of poetry such as patronage, print and education.

Barry Ahearn. 2020. Pound, Frost, Moore, and poetic precision: science in modernist American poetry.
Ahearn’s study examines the work of three American poets, Pound, Frost and Moore alongside the demand that poetry should aspire to maintain scientific precision. Through analysing the varying individual approach to this demand by each poet Ahearn explores how this influenced other areas of culture and twentieth-century modern American literature.

The full list of new e-books can be found on the new digital book display on the EFL LibraryThing catalogue which highlights the newest acquisitions: https://www.librarything.com/catalog/EFLOxford. The digital display is updated regularly with links through to the e-books, and the list can be refined by topics and series. In addition, you can continue to recommend and request books using our form at: https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/english/collections/recommendations.