Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
autor
Look Closer
A joyful and enlightening masterclass in how reading attentively can change our lives
As an English literature professor, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst has delighted in sharing his love of reading with his students. Bringing together more than twenty years of teaching, Look Closer explores the iconic works of literature that have formed, sustained and entertained him, from timeless classics like Wuthering Heights and Dracula to modern masterpieces such as Normal People and The Handmaid's Tale, as well as children's books, poetry, plays, short stories and comics.
By revealing the simple techniques to slow down, take note and bring a text to life, Look Closer makes clear how literature works and why, in these turbulent times, reading is more relevant than ever. Funny, illuminating and personal, this book ultimately shows us how great writing can change a person's life. It is a celebration of the simple joy of reading, and how becoming more attentive readers can open up worlds and bring us closer to ourselves in delightful and unexpected ways.
The Turning Point
The year is 1851. It's a time of radical change in Britain, when industrial miracles and artistic innovations rub shoulders with political unrest, poverty and disease. It's also a turbulent time in the life of Charles Dickens, as he copes with a double bereavement and early signs that his marriage is falling apart. But this year will become the turning point in Dickens's career, as he embraces his calling as a chronicler of ordinary people's lives.
The Turning Point transports us into the foggy streets of Dickens's London, closely following the twists and turns of a year that would come to define him, and forever alter Britain's relationship with the world.
The Turning Point
From the award-winning author of Becoming Dickens and The Story of Alice comes a major new biography of Charles Dickens, tracing the year that would transform his life and times.
The year is 1851. It's a time of radical change in Britain, when industrial miracles and artistic innovations rub shoulders with political unrest, poverty and disease. It's also a turbulent time in the private life of Charles Dickens, as he copes with a double bereavement and early signs that his marriage is falling apart. But this formative year will become perhaps the greatest turning point in Dickens's career, as he embraces his calling as a chronicler of ordinary people's lives, and develops a new form of writing that will reveal just how interconnected the world is becoming.
The Turning Point transports us into the foggy streets of Dickens's London, closely following the twists and turns of a year that would come to define him, and forever alter Britain's relationship with the world. Fully illustrated, and brimming with fascinating details about the larger-than-life man who wrote Bleak House, this is the closest look yet at one of the greatest literary personalities ever to have lived.
