A big welcome to Trinity Term to everyone in the English Faculty and beyond! To kick-start your spring semester, we’ve picked out a few of our newly arrived books to put a spring in your step! As always, you can see our full catalogue over on LibraryThing.

Zora Neale Hurston. You Don’t Know Us Negroes: And Other Essays. 2022.

Zora Neale Hurston is beloved by Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison, and renowned for her contributions to American culture and the lives of African Americans. This books presents a collection of her best and most famous essays, alongside an introduction by Harry Louis Gates Jr. and Genevieve West, which highlights Hurston’s lifetime of work “to reclaim traditional Black folk culture from racist and classist degradations” and to share her “race pride” (Introduction).

Purchased through the E. H. W. Meyerstein bequest grant.

Peta Tait. Theory of Theatre Studies: Emotion. 2021.

This book is just one example in a whole series of titles just acquired by the EFL, each examining a different aspect of Theory for Theatre Studies. Other topics include Bodies, Space, Movement, Memory, and Sound. These volumes are aimed at undergraduates, highlighting case studies and unpacking the history and contemporary understanding of key terminology and theory for those in the disciplines of Theatre Studies and Performance Studies.

Purchased through the E. H. W. Meyerstein bequest grant.

Jenny Andersson and Sandra Kemp. Futures. 2021.

Future Studies is a growing discipline, and here, Andersson and Kemp are examining the multidisciplinary relationship between it and Literary Studies. Key issues include the concept of utopia, literary and political manifestos, scientific interests such as big data and climate modelling and – crucially – both the imagination of futures and future-making. Provocative and engaging, this book opens fresh debates around the subject of futures.

Purchased through the E. H. W. Meyerstein bequest grant.

Helena Lee (ed.). East Side Voices: Essays Celebrating East & Southeast Asian Identity in Britain. 2022.

Featuring voices from across the spectrum of East and Southeast Asian diaspora in Britain, this enlightening book contains essays and poetry that explore the breadth of cultural life for its writers. They discuss family legacies, racial identity, and assimilation and difference, to name just a few examples. Contributors include Andrew Wong, Catherine Cho, Gemma Chan, June Bellebono, and Mary Jean Chan, among others.

Purchased through the E. H. W. Meyerstein bequest grant.

Harold Bloom. Cleopatra: I Am Fire and Air. 2018.

Shakespearean Scholar Harold Bloom has turned his attentive eye to a number of the bard’s characters, putting them under an analytical, compassionate, and intimate lens. Cleopatra is a fascinating subject, one who has evolved a great deal over time and in the hands of actresses like Vivien Leigh, Janet Suzman, and Judi Dench. Bloom grapples with not only how our cultural understanding of Cleopatra has shifted over time, but how his own perception of her has changed with the decades. Cleopatra is both successful and victimised, both marvellous and tragic.

With Hilary Term all wrapped up, we’ve reached everyone’s favourite time of month again. That’s right, it’s time for your monthly highlights from the EFL’s new books list! Cosy down against the last of the winter chill with a good book. As always, you can find the complete collection over on LibraryThing.

James Naremore. Letter from an Unknown Woman. 2021.

One for the film scholars, here! What started in 1922 as a novel by Stefan Zweig was later adapted into a movie by Max Ophuls in 1948. In 2021, James Naremore published this nuanced analysis of the movie. Naremore looks at the film’s reception, its place in feminist theory and criticism, and what the blurb calls “the poetics of melodramatic recognition, in which the revelation of a character’s identity leads to crisis and political revolution.” This book was published as part of the BFI Film Classics Series.

Jessica Traynor. Pit Lullabies. 2022.

This poetry collection is equal parts chilling and enthralling. The poems here lift the creatures of folklore – witches, changelings, spirits, and more – and uses them to deal with the unsettling human afflictions of death and illness. Delicate and sometimes grotesque, both delightful and disturbing, these poems explore themes such as parenthood, violence against women, and environmental destruction, and what the blurb describes as “the anxieties which plague us when night falls”. It’s no surprise that Jessica Traynor’s Pit Lullabies was given a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

Michelle Kelly and Claire Westall. Prison Writing and the Literary World: Imprisonment, Institutionality and Questions of Literary Practice. 2021.

Kelly and Westall use this book to take an international and interdisciplinary approach to the study of prison literature. They investigate aesthetics, values, censorship, institutionalisation, and criticism, looking at everything from political imprisonment to questions of building nations to theatre and writing in the prison environment. This wide-reaching and fascinating book sheds a light on an important facet of literature.

Purchased through the E. H. W. Meyerstein bequest grant.

Warsan Shire. Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in her Head. 2022.

This is the first full-length poetry collection by Warsan Shire, and it’s both tender and fearless. The poems explore the life of a girl struggling to find her way to womanhood without a guiding hand, touching on pop culture and the news as well as in-jokes and banter. The experiences of women – black women, refugees, immigrants, and teenagers – are examined in adoring and vivid detail between the pages and lines of this book. It’s an experience that places you – literally, by the cover design – inside the head of ‘the daughter’.

Christopher Isherwood. Christopher and His Kind. 2012.

This memoir follows the life of Christopher Isherwood from 1929-1939, when he lived in Berlin. The book explores Isherwood’s life there, in particular “the decadence of Berlin’s night scene and his route to sexual liberation” (blurb) – a choice that Isherwood made to refuse his own self-censorship and contribute to gay liberation. The memoir also follows the Nazi Party’s rise to power, and Christopher’s “struggle to save his partner Heinz from persecution” (blurb).

Purchased through the E. H. W. Meyerstein bequest grant.

Our new books display shelf at the EFL is getting busier and busier! We’re finally daring to put out more than ten books for the first time since the library first closed at the onset of the pandemic. We hope you’re enjoying the expanded selection – and to help you enjoy it, we’ve picked five new titles from the last month to discuss here in our blog. As always, you can see our full collection over on LibraryThing.

Roger Luckhurst. Gothic: An Illustrated History. 2021.

An unsettlingly gripping book even from the first flick-through, Luckhurst’s Gothic delivers chilling illustrations throughout the pages of a satisfyingly weighty hardback. This book breaks the gothic genre down to it’s core components and recurring tropes, examining each of them like a slice of history. Enticing examples include ‘Labyrinth’ (Architecture and Form), ‘Edgelands’ (The Lie of the Land), Planetary and Cosmic Horror (The Gothic Compass) and Formless (Monsters). Maybe don’t read this one just before bed…

Caleb Femi. Poor. 2020.

This poetry collection could boast a glittering array of prizes, short-listings, and long-listings, from the Forward Prize for the Best First Collection (winner!) to the Rathbones Folio Prize (shortlisted) to book of the year (according to the Guardian, the Observer, and the BBC). The book is in fact more than poetry; it’s a poetry collection meets photography folio that explores Peckham through the eyes of the young black boys that live there and crucially, that love their “troubled and enchanted world” (blurb). It is both honest and romantic, grief-ridden and spiritually ascending.

Purchased through the Drue Heinz Fund.

Alex Mermikides & Gianna Bouchard. Performance and the Medical Body. 2016.

In an intersection between science and the arts, Mermikides and Bouchard use this edited collection to examine the ways in which the performing arts explore medical and biomedical sciences, starting with the ‘biologization’ of theatre (Roger Kneebone asks you to consider, for example, the phrases ‘operating theatre’ or ‘performing surgery’). Thematic focuses include “patient narratives, identity, embodiment, agency, medical ethics, health and illness” (blurb). Crucially, this book also explores the capacity of performance practice to influence key debates around biomedical practice.

Jeremy Colangelo. Diaphanous Bodies: Ability, Disability, and Modernist Irish Literature. 2021.

Writing in the expanding field of literary disability studies, Colangelo uses this book to explore what he calls “the myth of the diaphanous abled body” (blurb). He unravels the concept of the binary of ‘abled’ and ‘disabled’ and places these as points on a fluid continuum. These ideas are explored through close examination of work by a handful of modernist Irish writers (Joyce, Beckett, Egerton, and Bowen) first focusing on the somatic experiences of the body, and then the question of how this overlaps with broader social trends.

Stella Panayotova. The Art & Science of Illuminated Manuscripts: A Handbook. 2020.

Written for “historians of art, culture and society, as well as conservators and manuscript scholars” (blurb), this gorgeous handbook is a delight to even just leaf through. It’s filled with pictures (830 illustrations, to be exact!) taken from various manuscripts to detail a variety of topics, from pigments to optical instruments to bindings. This gorgeous book is lovingly put together, and even has over 300 pages set aside just for case studies: detailed deep dives into the specifics of individual manuscripts.

Hilary Term is in full swing and the English Faculty Library is glad to have our readers back and our books flying off the shelves once again. That’s not to mention our new books flying on to the shelves. To kick-start your week, we’ve compiled a little list of some of the most intriguing titles from this month’s additions. As always, you can see our full catalogue over on LibraryThing.

Elif Shafak. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World. 2020.

This was our first book to hit the shelves in 2022! Elif Shafak’s book is an intimate and compassionate novel that looks in unflinching detail at the life and hardships of a woman named Leila from Istanbul, beginning with her death, weaving back through her life, and flourishing out to explore the experiences of her five closest friends. Shafak’s wordcraft is poetic and delightful, and the portrait she paints is both intensely political and unavoidably human. This was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2019, and was published in paperback in 2020.

Purchased through the Drue Heinz Fund.

Leo Boix. Ballad of a Happy Immigrant. 2021.

Supplied to the English Faculty Library through our Poetry Book Society subscription, Ballad of a Happy Immigrant is a evocative collection of poetry. Bilingual Latinx poet Leo Boix explores his paternal grandfather’s arrival in England as well as his own experiences of the same kind as a queer man. Using both Spanish and English language, his work is formally and linguistically innovative, delightful to read, and explores the internal struggle of themes such as “otherness and home” and “personal transformation” (blurb).

Purchased through the Drue Heinz Fund.

Monique Roffey. The Mermaid of Black Conch. 2020.

This novel was recognised not only as the Costa Book of the Year 2020, but was also picked as one of our Alumni Recommended titles as part of the Telling Our Stories Better Project – you can read more about this project on the Faculty of English website. It’s a story imbued with magic and romance, in which a woman is cursed to live as a mermaid by jealous wives, only to fall in love with a singing fisherman called David and be caught up in a fishing contest as a prize catch. The interweaving of love, transformation and jealousy makes for a rich and evocative modern tale that swims around themes of ecology, history, and migration.

Harry Josephine Giles. Deep Wheel Orcadia. 2021.

In Deep Wheel Orcadia, theatre performer and poet Harry Josephine Giles has blended science fiction and poetry into a flowing verse novel about a space station under cultural threat from rapid change. The book is written in Orkney dialect (Josie having hailed from Orkney herself) and is translated into English, presenting the two texts in parallel on every page. Their background as a theatre performer is evident in both the structure of the book (right down to a page listing ‘the people’) and the immediacy of the poetry (even from the opening line: “The chime o the tannoy is whit taks her back” (p.3)

Brent Hayes Edwards. Epistrophies: Jazz and the Literary Imagination. 2017.

Epistrophies is named after the composition by Thelonious Monk and Kenny Clarke (Epistrophy) and the poem by Amiri Karaka (Epistrophe), as well as the repetitive literary device. This is fitting, because the book looks at the intimate intersections of poetry, music, and wider art – how closely music sits to language, and how this inspiration breeds innovation and creativity for both forms and across black art. This, Edwards argues, creates “a unique – and uniquely African American – sphere of art-making and performance.” (blurb).

It’s a new year and we at the English Faculty Library are here to bring you some of our new books to match! You’ll be pleased to know that we’re back open on Tuesday 4th January, ready for all your borrowing needs. In the mean time, here’s a little teaser of some of our newest materials. As always, you can check out our full catalogue of delightful new titles over on Library Thing: EFLOxford’s books | LibraryThing

Chibundu Onuzo. Sankofa. 2021.

Our first recommendation will be familiar to those of you who tune into Between the Covers on BBC Two (a favourite for me on dreary days). The novel follows the story of  Anna, alone and adrift, searching for the father she never knew (who may or may not be a dictator!) and exploring ideas about race, identity, and family along the way. The book weaves between Anna’s narrative and the diary of her father’s time in London, unfurling detail at an enticing pace. The concept of Sankofa, of going back for that which you’ve forgotten, carries a key message.

Purchased through the Drue Heinz Fund.

Catherine Davies. Whitman’s Queer Children: America’s Homosexual Epics. 2013.

One for the poets, here! Catherine A. Davies takes a look at twentieth century poets Hart Crane, Allen Ginsberg, James Merrill, and John Ashbury, all of whom are known to work in the epic tradition (and to queer the form). Davies follows this epic path all the way back to the canonical Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. In her own words: “Whitman’s epic-lyricism forms the foundations of the tradition I trace here, paving the way for Crane, Ginsberg, Merrill, and Ashbery to fashion new kinds of epic voices to speak with in their poetry.” (p.1)

Hilary Mantel. The Mirror and the Light. 2020.

Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light is the third and final book in the Wolf Hall Trilogy, detailing the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell – a controversial figure who served by the side of King Henry VIII. The enthralling writing in this final instalment creates a feeling of perilousness for the reader, knowing the inevitable outcome that’s already carved in history – Cromwell’s fall from favour and execution – but holding your breath to see how he stumbles into the trap he’s laid for himself.

Purchased through the E. H. W. Meyerstein bequest grant.

Joe Moshenska. Making Darkness Light: The Lives and Times of John Milton. 2021.

Moshenska uses this book to take John Milton off the lofty shelf of canonical poets, dust him off, and dig deeper into the complexities of the ‘grim puritan’, scholar, and propaganda-peddler for Cromwell (not Thomas, Oliver). Moshenska is particularly curious about Milton’s fascination with polar opposites (light and dark, Heaven and Hell, self and other) as seen in Paradise Lost. But the book becomes about more than just Milton – it’s about identity, influence, and crucially: why we read and what happens to us when we do.

Torrey Peters. Detransition, Baby. 2021.

Detransition, Baby is a novel with a lot going on: busy, funny, and at times chaotic but with a solid, beating heart at the centre of the narrative. The characters are messy and complicated individuals with a tendency towards self-destruction, but an unexpected pregnancy throws a spanner into all of their lives. With questions of co-parenting concepts, evolved definitions of motherhood, and a healthy dose of trans liberation and gender politics, this novel makes for a delightful, surprising, and dramatic read for all.

Purchased through the Drue Heinz Fund.

It’s the final week of Michaelmas term – congratulations, scholars, you’re almost there! With vacation loans now available, it’s time to think about what you want to read over the holidays. From our selection of newly acquired treats, I’ve picked out a handful of suggestions for some well-deserved quiet time with a book that will engage, excite, and whisk you away on a journey. You can check out the full selection over on LibraryThing: EFLOxford’s books | LibraryThing

Lisa Carey. The Stolen Child. 2017.

My first recommendation, The Stolen Child takes its reader to the isolated, wind-swept, and almost claustrophobic island of St Brigid’s off the west cost of Ireland. This is a place of myth and dwindling community, which is rumoured to be home to a hidden healing well. Part fairy-tale, part magical-realism, part gothic intrigue, this story explores the bonds between two local sisters – Rose and Emer – and a stranger searching for a miracle. Remember, dear reader, that everything comes at a price, and passion comes dearer than most.

Rosanna Bruno and Anne Carson. The Trojan Women. 2021.

We don’t often get comic-books in the EFL, so I couldn’t resist highlighting this adaptation of Euripides’ classic tragedy from one of my favourite publishers, Bloodaxe Books. Troy has been left in ruins and its men are dead – but what about its women? Well, Hekabe and Andromache (and almost everyone else) are depicted as animals. And Kassandra? She’s in another world, of course. Poet and classicist Anne Carson has teamed up with artist Rosanna Bruno to create a book that is described as “both wacky and devastating”.

Travis Alabanza. Burgerz. 2018.

Burgerz is a performance art piece turned script, but it’s more than that. It’s an obsession playing out on pages and stages. It’s a response to an act of violence that depicts a culture of violence and complicity. Crucially, it’s a hopeful blue-print to exploration and reclamation for the trans and gender non-conforming community. Travis Alabanza explains it in their own words: “It is about telling you that this pain and that hurt exist and that society is complicit in this. But also, with that, I hope it is a text that reminds you of our resilience.” (Foreword)

Purchased through the Drue Heinz Fund.

Penelope Shuttle. Lyonesse. 2021.

Our next journey will take us into the depths of the ocean and the mists of history. Ever heard of Lyonesse? According to the myths, Lyonesse was once part of the Cornish coasts before it was swept under the sea during a Bronze Age inundation. It was a symbol for lost paradise in the Arthurian legends, but Shuttle uses it as a metaphorical springboard for the universality of loss, both human and mythic – Lyonesse as a paradoxical place. The book proceeds to a decidedly more hopeful note in it’s second part, New Lamps for Old, lighting a way through the darkness.

Purchased through the Drue Heinz Fund.

Alan Garner. Collected Folk Tales. 2011.

This collection holds eighteen previously unpublished folk stories and poems alongside some better known favourites. From the seemingly innocuous titles (The Adventures of Nera, Jack and his Golden Snuff-Box, and Baldur the Bright) to the disconcerting (A Voice Speaks from the Well, The Goblin Spider, and R.I.P) to the downright baffling ones (Vukub-Cakiz, Moowis, and Glooskap), any folklore, fairy tale, or mythology fan should find something to suit their fancy here. As Garner himself points out, “this book is not technical. It is for anyone that loves a story, whether the story be anecdote or epic.” (Introduction)

We have had a lot of books hit the shelves at the EFL this October (125 in total!) so this month has some ripe, juicy pickings for our new books display and blog. In the interest of celebrating Black History Month this October, we’ve picked out some thematically appropriate books by black authors and editors to highlight in this month’s blog! As always, you can see the full selection of our new titles over on LibraryThing: https://www.librarything.com/catalog/EFLOxford

Without further ado, let’s dig in…

Sojourner Truth (et al.). Ain’t I A Woman? 2021.

This miniature but brilliant book contains the speeches of Sojourner Truth (1797-1883), abolitionist and women’s rights advocate, as well as a select few speeches of those who came after her: Maria Stewart, Sarah Parker Remond, and Jennie Carter, among others. The written reproductions of these speeches have been thoughtfully chosen, mindful of the inaccuracies of dialect (which is often over-wrought, and thought unfair by Sojourner) and recorded in standardized English.

Purchased through the E. H. W. Meyerstein bequest grant.

Zora Neale Hurston. Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance. 2020.

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance. She wrote short stories through the 1920s and 30s and was considered by Toni Morrison to be “one of the greatest writers of our time”. Her stories explore love, migration, gender, race, and class. This particular collection includes her pieces that were considered to be “lost”, dug up from archives and periodicals deep in the literary dusts.

Purchased through the Drue Heinz Fund.

Nella Larson. Quicksand: Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism. 2020.

Nella Larson’s 1928 literary debut (originally titled Cloudy Amber) from the Harlem Renaissance is presented in this Norton Critical Edition with a whole host of extra features: an introduction and annotations by Carla Kaplan, contemporary biographical and cultural contexts, a chronology and bibliography, and related writings by Larson herself. That’s not even mentioning the critical accompaniments from academics such as Ann duCille, Deborah E. McDowell, and Cherene Sherrard-Johnson.

Purchased through the Drue Heinz Fund.

Una Marson. Selected Poems. 2011.

The eagle-eyed Bodleian blog reader may have spotted a post that recently went up on the Oxford Libraries Graduate Trainee blog also celebrating Black History Month! If you’re keen to know more about Una Marson (1905-1965), I’d suggest beginning your search there. For now, this selection contains poems from all four of Marson’s published collections, as well as a few poems that went unpublished too. Editor Alison Donnell, who’s written about Marson on multiple occasions, has chosen a fascinating selection of work that demonstrates the breadth of an often underappreciated poet.

Ayanna Thompson. Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage. 2008.

Ayanna Thompson, Director of the Arizona Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, has used this book to delve into the relationship between depictions of race and performances of torture in Early Modern Theatre. Her work draws on Antonin Artaud’s manifesto for the Theatre of Cruelty before delving into specific examples through titles such as Titus Andronicus, The Indian Emperor, and Amboyna. Her interest goes beyond mere analysis – with an emphasis on recovering these plays from their past.

A new academic year is upon us, and a whole host of new books have arrived at the English Faculty Library. We’ve cherry-picked a few of our fresh, shiny favourites to share with you all, but you can check out the full list over on Library Thing: https://www.librarything.com/catalog/EFLOxford/efl

Jessica Glueck (ed.). 2021. Wykehamist Pattern Poems 1573-1618.

This delightfully surprising book was anonymously donated to the English Faculty Library.  Within its pages are an assortment of ‘Frivolous Boyishe Grammer Schole Trickes’ (p.1) – a collection of pattern poems written in Latin by pupils, teachers, and alumni of Winchester College. Rendered in their original image with transcriptions, translations, and commentary, these charming and challenging poems shed a light on a scholarly past.

Caroline Magennis. 2021. Northern Irish Writing After the Troubles: Intimacies, Affects, Pleasures.

Magennis uses feminist theory to explore how Northern Irish Writers have engaged with intimacy, the body, and pleasure in the period since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 and even since the Covid-19 pandemic. This book features pieces from Lucy Caldwell, Jan Carson, and Bernie McGill to present a contemporary and timely examination of Northern Irish identity as well as community.

Teresa Zackodnik (ed.). 2021. African American Literature in Transition: 1850-1865.

This book is just one of five African American Literature in Transition books to line the shelves of the English Faculty Library this month. The chapters in this book explore a diversity of topics, from Semi-Citizenship, to Black Romanticism, to Antislavery Activist Networks. As Zackonik says, “we read not for event but for multiple conditions productive of and for Black literature.” (p.6)

Matthew Sussman. 2021. Stylistic Virtue and Victorian Fiction: Form, Ethics, and the Novel.

Aristotle first described the concept of stylistic virtue. Sussman’s book attempts to unearth this largely forgotten element of rhetoric and aesthetics from its Victorian heyday, before delving into an analysis of how stylistic virtue alters our understanding of Thackeray, Trollope, and Meredith.

Andrew Murphy. 2021. Shakespeare in Print: A History and Chronology of Shakespeare Publishing. Second Edition.

We’ve got a treat here for the publishing, printing, and editing fans. The second edition of this gorgeous, hard-back bibliographical book is revised and expanded. New additions include a carefully-mapped history of digital editions of Shakespeare, fresh material in every chapter, and an expanded chronological appendix. Murphy’s entertaining narrative draws out the enlightening social, cultural, and biographical editing of Shakespeare’s work.