Précis

Précis I Michèle Bowman University of North Carolina, Greensboro Andrews, Bruce. Paradise and Method: Poetics and Praxis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996. vii + 275 pp. Cloth $59.95 Paper $19.95 As one of the pioneers of the language poetry movement, Bruce Andrews is an authority on one of our most ubiquitous contemporary developments in poetry. A poet himself, he addresses poetics from a practical perspective and contributes another angle to the eternal critical debate about language and meaning in poetry. Focusing on the exploration of language "as a material and social medium for restagings of meaning and power," and using essays, interviews and symposia materials, Andrews addresses such topics as "Writing Social Work & Political Practice," "Be Careful Now You Know Sugar Melts in Water (On Sexuality)," and "Italian Poetics Today." The work of many poets is discussed, including Ashbery, Oppen, Roland Barthes, and Susan Howe. Baker, William and Kenneth Womack, eds. Recent Work in Critical Theory, 1989-1995: An Annotated Bibliography. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996. xvii + 585 pp. $99.50 In one convenient volume, the editors have compiled thousands of entries in seven chapters: general criticism; semiotics, narratology, rhetoric, and language systems; postmodernism and deconstruction; reader-response and phenomenological criticism; feminist criticism and gender studies; psychoanalytic criticism; historical criticism. Two indexes, author and subject, make the volume easy to use. Baker, a professor at Northern Illinois University, and Womack, an English doctoral candidate there, offer a wide range of literary theory and criticism in this reference book. Their efforts make a valuable contribution to both the student and the seasoned scholar. Blamires, Harry. The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 1996. xvii + 253 pp. Paper $16.95 Perfect for the initiate, helpful to the graduate student, Blamires's New Bloomsday Book is now in its third edition. With references to three popular editions of Ulysses—Oxford's World Classics (1993), Penguin's Twentieth Century Classics (1992), and Gabler's "Corrected Text" (1986)—Blamires provides line-by-line explanation of the novel's intricate plot and myriad references. This remains one of the standard guides for those approaching Ulysses for the first (or second or third) time. Gillespie and Fargnoli's James 375 ELT 40:3 1997 Joyce A-Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Writings (now in paperback from OUP) is the ideal complement to Blamires. Bodenheimer, Rosemarie. The Real Life of Mary Ann Evans: George Eliot, Her Letters and Fiction. 1994; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. Second printing, xviii + 295 pp. Paper $15.95 Combining biography with literary criticism, Bodenheimer creates a study of the woman, Mary Ann Evans, who wrote and therefore lived behind the alias George Eliot. Approaching her subject with a psychoanalytic bent, Bodenheimer writes that she wishes "to suggest some ways in which George Eliot's works may be read autobiographically, as meditations on and transformations of the most intimate paradoxes of her very paradoxical experience." Boothby, Guy. A Bid for Fortune, or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta. John Sutherland, intro. Oxford Popular Fiction. 1895; New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. xx + 213 pp. Paper $9.95. John Sutherland introduces OUP's publication of Boothby^ popular novel, which is set in both of the author's homelands, England and Australia, in the 1890s. A classic of late Victorian crime fiction, A Bid for Fortune tells the story of the supremely evil Dr. Nikola masterminding the ultimate crime. Tb read it, says Sutherland, is "to be plunged back into the popular reading experience of the 1890s—its helter-skelter excitements, its addiction to pace, adventure, suspense, and simple escape-capture episodes." Burlingame, Roger. Of Making Many Books: A Hundred Years of Reading Writing and Publishing. 1946; University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. xxxiv + 347pp. Cloth $50.00 Paper $19.95 As one of the premier editors at Charles Scribner's Sons in the publishing house's early years, Roger Burlingame knew the inside scoop on the publishing business as the Scribners ran it. Established in 1846, the house celebrated its 150th anniversary last year with the reissuance of this classic on authors and editors. Burlington discusses some of Scribners'most famous authors, including Henry James...