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Summary
Summary
This 'little history' takes on a very big subject: the glorious span of literature from Greek myth to graphic novels, from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Harry Potter. John Sutherland is perfectly suited to the task. He has researched, taught, and written on virtually every area of literature, and his infectious passion for books and reading has defined his own life. Now he guides young readers and the grown-ups in their lives on an entertaining journey 'through the wardrobe' to a greater awareness of how literature from across the world can transport us and help us to make sense of what it means to be human.
Sutherland introduces great classics in his own irresistible way, enlivening his offerings with humor as well as learning: Beowulf, Shakespeare, Don Quixote, the Romantics, Dickens, Moby Dick, The Waste Land, Woolf, 1984, and dozens of others. He adds to these a less-expected, personal selection of authors and works, including literature usually considered well below 'serious attention' - from the rude jests of Anglo-Saxon runes to The Da Vinci Code. With masterful digressions into various themes - censorship, narrative tricks, self-publishing, taste, creativity, and madness - Sutherland demonstrates the full depth and intrigue of reading. For younger readers, he offers a proper introduction to literature, promising to interest as much as instruct. For more experienced readers, he promises just the same.
Author Notes
John Sutherland was born on October 9, 1938. After graduating from the University of Leicester in 1964, he began his academic career as an assistant lecturer in Edinburgh. He specializes in Victorian fiction, 20th century literature, and the history of publishing. He is Lord Northcliffe Professor Emeritus of Modern English Literature at University College, London and is currently teaching at the California Institute of Technology. He writes for The Guardian and is a well-known literary reviewer.
He is the author of more than 20 books including Stephen Spender: The Authorized Biography, How to Read a Novel: A User's Guide, The Boy Who Loved Books, Curiosities of Literature, 50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know, Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 294 Lives, and Magic Moments: Life-Changing Encounters with Books, Film, Music. He is also the co-author, with Stephen Fender, of Love, Sex, Death and Words: Tales from a Year in Literature.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Kirkus Review
A genial, enthusiastic guide leads a jaunt through literary history. As part of the publisher's Little History series, Sutherland (Emeritus, Modern English Literature/University College London; Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 294 Lives, 2012, etc.) distills into 40 chapters the big subject of world literature, from its beginnings in myth to its myriad current forms as e-books, graphic novels and interactive websites. Encouraging his audience to become readers and re-readers, Sutherland believes that a children's classic such as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe--no less impressive than T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land or Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children--"helps make sense of the infinitely perplexing situations in which we find ourselves as human beings." Many chapters focus on particular authors, mostly canonical favorites: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, Defoe, Austen, Dickens, etc. Sutherland groups 20th-century writers by theme: Kafka, Camus, Beckett and Pinter, for example, comprise "Absurd Existences"; Lowell, Plath, Larkin and Hughes represent "The Poetry of Breakdown." Sutherland's deftness is impressive. In a mere five pages, for example, he explicates unconventional narratives, from Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy to works by J.G. Ballard, Bret Easton Ellis, Julian Barnes, John Fowles, Italo Calvino, Paul Auster, Thomas Pynchon, Donald Barthelme and B.S. Johnson, whose novel The Unfortunates "was published as a boxed set of pages which the reader can put together in any order they please." Sutherland is confident in his assessment of great works, but he is open to the idea that "pearls" can be found among what some people call "the crud" of popular commercial fiction. His aim is not to draw a line between high art and low, but to share his prodigious joy of reading. A lively, informative book in which the author shows how literature "enriches life in ways that nothing else quite can."]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
The latest volume in Yale's Little Histories series is an entertaining sprint through Western, mostly English, literature by Sutherland, whose previous book was "Lives of the Novelists." With so little space for each subject (chapters include "The Book of Books," on the King James Bible; "The Sharpest Mind," on Jane Austen; and "Who's Best? Prizes, Festivals and Reading Groups"), the sprint is sometimes more of an egg-and-spoon race as Sutherland gamely conveys a single good idea in its six to eight allotted pages. The Bible chapter centers on William Tyndale, for example, imprisoned and executed for heresy, whose early translation of the New Testament, banned in England, would become the foundation for the King James Bible published in 1611: "It has been estimated that 80 percent of the King James Version is verbally unaltered from Tyndale's translation of 80 years earlier." Gaps in one's reading can be usefully patched with this little book, although it's best read at top speed, one egg after another.
Table of Contents
| 1 What is Literature? | p. 1 |
| 2 Fabulous Beginnings: Myth | p. 7 |
| 3 Writing for Nations: Epic | p. 13 |
| 4 Being Human: Tragedy | p. 20 |
| 5 English Tales: Chaucer | p. 26 |
| 6 Theatre on the Street: The Mystery Plays | p. 33 |
| 7 The Bard: Shakespeare | p. 40 |
| 8 The Book of Books: The King James Bible | p. 47 |
| 9 Minds Unchained: The Metaphysicals | p. 54 |
| 10 Nations Rise: Milton and Spenser | p. 61 |
| 11 Who 'Owns' Literature?: Printing, Publishing and Copyright | p. 68 |
| 12 The House of Fiction | p. 75 |
| 13 Travellers' Tall Tales: Defoe, Swift and the Rise of the Novel | p. 82 |
| 14 How to Read: Dr Johnson | p. 88 |
| 15 Romantic Revolutionaries | p. 94 |
| 16 The Sharpest Mind: Austen | p. 101 |
| 17 Books for You: The Changing Reading Public | p. 108 |
| 18 The Giant: Dickens | p. 114 |
| 19 Life in Literature: The Brontës | p. 121 |
| 20 Under the Blankets: Literature and Children | p. 128 |
| 21 Flowers of Decadence: Wilde, Baudelaire, Proust and Whitman | p. 134 |
| 22 Poets Laureate: Tennyson | p. 141 |
| 23 New Lands: America and the American Voice | p. 147 |
| 24 The Great Pessimist: Hardy | p. 154 |
| 25 Dangerous Books: Literature and the Censor | p. 161 |
| 26 Empire: Kipling, Conrad and Forster | p. 168 |
| 27 Doomed Anthems: The War Poets | p. 175 |
| 28 The Year that Changed Everything: 1922 and the Modernists | p. 182 |
| 29 A Literature of Her Own: Woolf | p. 188 |
| 30 Brave New Worlds: Utopias and Dystopias | p. 195 |
| 31 Boxes of Tricks: Complex Narratives | p. 202 |
| 32 Off the Page: Literature on Film, TV and the Stage | p. 208 |
| 33 Absurd Existences: Kafka, Camus, Beckett and Pinter | p. 214 |
| 34 The Poetry of Breakdown: Lowell, Plath, Larkin and Hughes | p. 221 |
| 35 Colourful Cultures: Literature and Race | p. 228 |
| 36 Magical Realisms: Borges, Grass, Rushdie and Márquez | p. 235 |
| 37 Republic of Letters: Literature Without Borders | p. 241 |
| 38 Guilty Pleasures: Bestsellers and Potboilers | p. 248 |
| 39 Who's Best?: Prizes, Festivals and Reading Groups | p. 254 |
| 40 Literature in Your Lifetime...and Beyond | p. 260 |
| Index | p. 267 |