Bestsellers: Popular Fiction since 1900 PDF Download

Author: C. Bloom
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9780333687420
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
This guide and reference work of all of the bestselling books, authors and genres since the beginning of the 20th century, provides an insight into over 100 years of publishing and reading as well as taking us on a journey into the heart of the British imagination.

Author: C. Bloom
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230287492
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
This guide and reference work of all of the bestselling books, authors and genres since the beginning of the 20th century, provides an insight into over 100 years of publishing and reading as well as taking us on a journey into the heart of the British imagination.

Author: Clive Bloom
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030791548
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 459

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Book Description
This book charts the publishing industry and bestselling fiction from 1900, featuring a comprehensive list of all bestselling fiction titles in the UK. This third edition includes a new introduction which features additional information on current trends in reading including the rise of Black, Asian and LGBTQIA+ publishing; the continuing importance of certain genres and up to date trends in publishing, bookselling, library borrowing and literacy. There are sections on writing for children, on the importance of audiobooks and book clubs, self- published bestsellers as well as many new entries to the present day including bestselling authors such as David Walliams, Peter James, George R R Martin and far less well known authors whose books s sell in their thousands. This is the essential guide to best-selling books, authors, genres, publishing and bookselling since 1900, providing a unique insight into more than a century of entertainment, and opening a window into the reading habits and social life of the British from the death of Queen Victoria to the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Author: Anna Faktorovich
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476615853
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
This book creates a taxonomy for the major bestselling fictional genres: romance (e.g., authors Heyer, Cartland, Woodiwiss and Roberts), religious and inspirational (Corelli and Douglas), mystery and detective (Conan Doyle, Christie and Mankell), and science fiction, horror and fantasy (Wells, Tolkien, Orwell, Niven, King and Rowling). Chapters look at a genre from its roots to its most recent works. The structural patterns in the plot, characters and setting of these genres are then explained. The book also provides a critique of currently popular hyper-formulaic, hack, unliterary writings that have multiplied in recent decades. Special topics such as the publishing oligopoly and the resulting homogeneity among bestselling works and the steady movement from literary to unliterary fiction are also examined.

Author: David Willbern
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786474505
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Through the perspectives of selected best-selling novels from the end of World War II to the end of the 20th century--including The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Godfather, Jaws, Beloved, The Silence of the Lambs, and Jurassic Park--this book examines the crucial issues the U.S. was experiencing during those decades. These novels represent the voices of popular conversations, as Americans considered issues of family, class, racism and sexism, feminism, economic ambition, sexual violence, war, law, religion and science. Through the windows of fiction, the book surveys the Cold War and anti-communism, the prefeminist era of the 1950s and the sexual revolution of the 1970s, forms of corporate power in the 1960s and 1980s, the traumatic legacies of slavery and Vietnam, the American fascination with lawyers, cops and criminals, alternate styles of romance in the era of late capitalism, our abiding distrust of science, and our steadfast wonder about the Great Mysteries.

Author: Kim Wilkins
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108639380
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
While the term 'bestseller' explicitly relates books to sales, commercially successful books are also products of individual creative work. This Element presents a new perspective on the relationship between art and the market, with particular reference to bestselling writers and books. We examine some existing perspectives on art's relationship to the marketplace to trouble persistent binaries that see the two in opposition; we break down the monolith of the marketplace by thinking of it as made up of a range of invested, non-hostile participants such as publishing personnel and readers; we articulate the material dimensions of creative writing in the industry through the words of bestselling writers themselves; and we examine how the existence of bestselling books and writers in the world of letters bears enormous influence on the industry, and on the practice of other writers.

Author: Christine Berberich
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474232582
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Guiding readers through key writers and genres, historical contexts and major theoretical approaches, this is a comprehensive introduction to the study of popular fiction. Charting the rise of commercial fiction from the 19th century to today, The Bloomsbury Introduction to Popular Fiction includes introductory surveys, written by leading scholars, to a wide range of popular genres, including: Science Fiction Crime Writing Romance and Chick Lit Adventure Stories and Lad Lit Horror Graphic Novels Children's Literature Part II of the book also includes case-study readings of key writers and texts, from the work of HG Wells, Ian Fleming and Raymond Chandler to more recent books such as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The book also includes a chapter covering "The Writer's Perspective" on popular publishing, while annotated guides to further reading and online resources throughout give students the tools they need to pursue independent study on their courses.

Author: Sarah Churchwell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1441195130
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
What is it about certain books that makes them bestsellers? Why do some of these books remain popular for centuries, and others fade gently into obscurity? And why is it that when scholars do turn their attention to bestsellers, they seem only to be interested in the same handful of blockbusters, when so many books that were once immensely popular remain under-examined? Addressing those and other equally pressing questions about popular literature, Must Read is the first scholarly collection to offer both a survey of the evolution of American bestsellers as well as critical readings of some of the key texts that have shaped the American imagination since the nation's founding. Focusing on a mix of enduring and forgotten bestsellers, the essays in this collection consider 18th and 19th century works, like Charlotte Temple or Ben-Hur, that were once considered epochal but are now virtually ignored; 20th century favorites such as The Sheik and Peyton Place; and 21st century blockbusters including the novels of Nicholas Sparks, The Kite Runner, and The Da Vinci Code.

Author: Steven Philip Jones
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786478969
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
The author of more than 50 books--125 million copies in print--Clive Cussler is the current grandmaster of adventure literature. Dirk Pitt, the sea-loving protagonist of 22 of Cussler's novels, remains among the most popular and influential adventure series heroes of the past half-century. This first critical review of Cussler's work features an overview of Pitt and the supporting characters and other heroes, an examination of Cussler's themes and influences, a review of his most important adventures, such as Raise the Titanic! and Iceberg, and a look at adaptations of his work in other media. Cussler joins the pantheon of such as Rudyard Kipling, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Fleming, and this overdue volume demonstrates that beneath Cussler's immense popularity lies a literary depth that well merits scholarly attention.

Author: Jay Parini
Publisher:
ISBN: 0195156536
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 2273

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Book Description
This set treats the whole of American literature, from the European discovery of America to the present, with entries in alphabetical order. Each of the 350 substantive essays is a major interpretive contribution. Well-known critics and scholars provide clear and vividly written essays thatreflect the latest scholarship on a given topic, as well as original thinking on the part of the critic. The Encyclopedia is available in print and as an e-reference text from Oxford's Digital Reference Shelf.At the core of the encyclopedia lie 250 essays on poets, playwrights, essayists, and novelists. The most prominent figures (such as Whitman, Melville, Faulkner, Frost, Morrison, and so forth) are treated at considerable length (10,000 words) by top-flight critics. Less well known figures arediscussed in essays ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 words. Each essay examines the life of the author in the context of his or her times, looking in detail at key works and describing the arc of the writer's career. These essays include an assessment of the writer's current reputation with abibliography of major works by the writer as well as a list of major critical and biographical works about the writer under discussion.A second key element of the project is the critical assessments of major American masterworks, such as Moby-Dick, Song of Myself, Walden, The Great Gatsby, The Waste Land, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Death of a Salesmanr, or Beloved. Each of these essays offers a close reading of the given work,placing that work in its historical context and offering a range of possibilities with regard to critical approach. These fifty essays (ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 words) are simply and clearly enough written that an intelligent high school student should easily understand them, but sophisticatedenough that a college student or general reader in a public library will find the essays both informative and stimulating.The final major element of this encyclopedia consists of fifty-odd essays on literary movements, periods, or themes, pulling together a broad range of information and making interesting connections. These essays treat many of the same authors already discussed, but in a different context; they alsogather into the fold authors who do not have an entire essay on their work (so that Zane Grey, for example, is discussed in an essay on Western literature but does not have an essay to himself). In this way, the project is truly "encyclopedic," in the conventional sense. These essays aim forcomprehensiveness without losing anything of the narrative force that makes them good reading in their own right.In a very real fashion, the literature of the American people reflects their deepest desires, aspirations, fears, and fantasies. The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature gathers a wide range of information that illumines the field itself and clarifies many of its particulars.