Précis

I Précis I Jill Martyn University of North Carolina, Greensboro Anesko, Michael. Letters, Fictions, Lives: Henry James and William Dean Howells . New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 492 pp. $65.00 This collection of correspondence between Howells and James includes nearly all of the public and previously published correspondence between the two men, as well as critical commentaries and letters which this book makes newly available in print. Of the 151 letters included in this volume, 75 letters, all written by James, have never before been published. In addition to the letters, a biographical overview and parallel chronology of the men's lives is included. Anesko has also written an interpretive commentary on the correspondence to chart the development of the authors' friendship. Bidney, Martin. Patterns of Epiphany: From Wordsworth to Tolstoy, Pater, and Barrett Browning. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997. 235 pp. $34.95 Citing intensity, mystery, and expansiveness as the three most significant and encompassing criteria for epiphany in modern writing, Bidney sets out to analyze the structure of literary epiphany in the poems, novels, short stories, and essays of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Arnold, Tennyson, Pater, Carlyle, Tolstoy, and Barrett Browning. After tracing each writer's pattern of describing or "constructing" epiphany, and with a nod to French philosopher Gaston Bachelard , Bidney postulates that patterns frequently show characteristic elements , patterns of motion, and/or geometric shapes. But that's not all: he explores the implications of this analysis for other literary approaches, offering his Luther-like "Fifteen Theses," "to sum up the methodological principles and main finding of the book." Buckley, Margaret and Brian Buckley. Challenge & Renewal: Lawrence and the Thematic Novel. Warwickshire: Chrysalis Press, 1993;rpt. 1997. 150pp. Paper£12.00 The first four chapters of this book analyze the recurring themes in Lawrence 's work, paying particular attention to Women in Love and The Rainbow. These themes surround the exploration of factors which cause a breakdown in the ability to cope with life, as well as those which promote recovery. The re379 ELT 41 : 3 1998 maining six chapters compare the work of Hawthorne and Melville, Dickens and Dostoevsky, Conrad, Joyce, Huxley and Orwell, Ford Madox Ford, Waugh, Woolf, and Beckett, based on the assumption that their novels are thematic in similar ways, "each writer challenging and renewing the assumptions and achievements of his predecessors." In his introduction, Brian Buckley claims that the book was written for readers "for whom novels are areas of exploration and self-discovery." Chandler, John, ed. Thomas Hardy's Christmas. Phoemix Mill: Sutton Publishing, 1997. 152 pp. Paper £9.99 Hardy fans, have you ever wondered how Christmas and New Years were celebrated by your favorite author? Puzzle no more, for this anthology has thought of everything. In addition to the poetry and prose of Hardy and a few of his contemporaries , Thomas Hardy's Christmas includes excerpts from diaries, newspapers and letters, research on how shepherds and others coped with the long winters, and a number of illustrations drawn from engravings, photographs, documents, and portraits depicting "the scenes and surroundings of Hardy's life and work." In fact, given the variety of poetry, prose, copies of Hardy greeting cards, maps, and pictures—one a full-page image of Hardy's grandfather's grave—it seems that the title of this book may not be broad enough to encompass its subject. Titles of 21 poems and stories include "Yuletide in a Younger World," "The Thieves Who Couldn't Stop Sneezing," and "One Who Married Above Him." Conrad, Joseph. The Secret Sharer. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Daniel R. Schwarz, ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997. 268 pp. $35.00 More grist for the Conrad research mill. St. Martin's Press reprints the text of the 1924 edition by Doubleday together with five essays written from contemporary critical standpoints: "Psychoanalytic Criticism," "Reader-Response Criticism," "New Historicist Criticism," "Feminist and Gender Criticism," and "Deconstruction." For those not quite in the know on the latest in critical theory , each essay begins with an introduction to the history, principles, and practice , as well as a bibliography to further reading on that particular critical approach. Needless to say, there is also an introduction...