MEDIA, CINEMA, FEMINISM, CULTURAL STUDIES 

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The Sacred Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky

Harry Potter: The Books, The FIlms, The Cultural Phenomenon

J.R.R. Tolkien

Liv Tyler

Media Hell: Explorations of Radio, Television and the Press

Detonation Britain: Nuclear War in the UK

Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva: The Jouissance of French Feminism

Julia Kristeva: Art, Love, Melancholy, Philosophy, Semiotics and Psychoanalysis

Luce Irigaray: Lips, Kissing, and the Politics of Sexual Difference

Helene Cixous I Love You: The Jouissance of Writing

Andrea Dworkin

Sex in Art: Pornography and Pleasure in Painting and Sculpture

Wild Zones: Pornography, Art and Feminism

The Erotic Object: Sexuality in Sculpture From Prehistory to the Present Day

Sexing Hardy: Thomas Hardy and Feminism

'Cosmo Woman': The World of Women's Magazines

Women in Pop Music

Maurice Sendak and the Art of Children's Book Illustration

Maurice Sendak in Close-Up

Sacred Gardens: The Garden in Myth, Religion & Art

Stepping Forward: Essays, Lectures and Interviews

Paul Bowles and Bernardo Bertolucci: Under Two Sheltering Skies

The Poetry of Cinema

An Open Letter to the BBC

Feminism and Shakespeare

Princess Diana in Culture, Media, Society, Feminism and the Arts

LIST OF SUBJECTS
ORDER INFO
 
 

by Jeremy Mark Robinson

A major new study of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986), director of seven feature films, including Mirror, Andrei Roublyov, Solarisand The Sacrifice.
Exploring every aspect of Andrei Tarkovskyís output, including scripts, budget, production, shooting, editing, camera, sound, music, acting, themes, motifs, and spirituality. His films are analyzed in depth, with scene-by-scene discussions.

This is an important addition to film studies, the most detailed study of Tarkovsky's work available. It contains 150 illustrations, of Tarkovskyís films, Tarkovsky at work, his contemporaries, and his favourite painters.
 

Jeremy Robinson's books include Glorification: Religious Abstraction in Renaissance and 20th Century Art (1990), Arthur Rimbaud (1992), Lawrence Durrell (1995) and Detonation Britain: Nuclear War in the UK (1997). He edits two magazines, Passion and Pagan America (a journal of American poetry).
 
 

Bibliography, notes, illustrations   720pp     NEW

Hardback     ISBN 1-86171-096-8      £60.00 / $120.00

Paperback     ISBN 1-86171-028-3      £30.00 / $60.00
 

Orders for this title to our distributor:

Gardners Books, 1, Whittle Drive,  Willingdon Drove, Eastbourne,  East Sussex, BN23 6QH, UK.
Tel: +44 (0)1323 525631 or +44 (0)1323 521777. GARDCALL: +44 (0)1323 521444. Fax: +44 (0)1323 521666.
Web: www.gardners.com. E-mail: sales@gardners.com.
 
 

by Jeremy Mark Robinson

A new critical study of Harry Potter, the Harry Potter cultural phenomenon, the Harry Potter books, the Harry Potter films and the Harry Potter franchise.
This new critical analysis explores the Harry Potter cultural phenomenon, the most remarkable event publishing of the past ten, twenty, thirty or more years. Since 1997, J.K. Rowling's books have sold nearly 200 million copies, selling more than Stephen King, John Grisham and J.R.R. Tolkien.
Topics studied include: the relation of Harry Potter to fantasy fiction, and to British literature and culture;   the history of children's literature and Harry Potter; Rowling's literary sources. Rowling's literary and narrative strategies;  the use of magic and witchcraft in the books; issues of gender, race, class and  psychology in Harry Potter;  analyses of each book;  the Harry Potter phenomenon in book publishin and the story of the publication of the books;  the Harry Potter films: the making of the films, the scripts, the adaption process, casting, production, critical reception; the relationship of the Harry Potter films to other contemporary Hollywood movies;  the economic and business aspects of the Harry Potter phenomenon;  the marketing of the Harry Potter franchise;  the audiences of Harry Potter products;   merchandizing, licensing, toys, etc;  J.K. Rowling as author (and celebrity).
This book is written for the general reader (and viewer) of Harry Potter.

Jeremy Robinson's books include Glorification: Religious Abstraction in Renaissance and 20th Century Art (1990), Arthur Rimbaud (1992), Lawrence Durrell (1995) and Detonation Britain: Nuclear War in the UK (1997). He edits two magazines, Passion and Pagan America (a journal of American poetry).
 
 

Bibliography, notes, illustrations   142pp  ISBN 1-861-058-5  £15.99 / $25.00
 
 
 
 

    'You never told him? Never told him what was in the letter Dumbledore left fer him? I was there! I saw Dumbledore leave it, Dursley! An' you've kept it from him all these years?'
    'Kept what from me?' said Harry eagerly.
    'STOP! I FORBID YOU!' yelled Uncle Vernon in panic.
    Aunt Petunia gave a gasp of horror.
    'Ah, go boil yer heads, both of yeh,' said Hagrid. 'Harry - yer a wizard.'
    There was silence inside the hut. Only the sea and the whistling wind could be heard.
    'I'm a what?'
    'A wizard, o' course,' said Hagrid, sitting back down on the sofa, which groaned and sank even lower, 'an' a thumpin good'un, I'd say, once yeh've been trained up a bit. With a mum an' dad like yours, what else would yeh be?' An' I reckon it's abou' time yeh read yer letter.'

(J.K. Rowling, from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone)
 
 

by Jeremy Mark Robinson

A new cultural analysis of J.R.R. Tolkien, creator of Middle-earth and author of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and other books.
This new critical study explores Tolkien's major writings (The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Beowulf: The Monster and the Critics, The Letters, The Silmarillion and The History of Middle-earth volumes), Tolkien and fairy tales, the mythological, political and religious aspects of Tolkien's Middle-earth, the critics' response to Tolkien's fiction over the decades, the Tolkien industry (merchandizing, toys, role-playing games, posters, Tolkien societies, conferences and the like), Tolkien in visual and fantasy art, the cultural aspects of The Lord of the Rings (from the 1950s to the present), Tolkien's fiction's relationship with other fantasy fiction, such as C.S. Lewis and Harry Potter, and the TV, radio and film versions of Tolkien's books, including the new Hollywood interpretations of The Lord of the Rings. The 2001-03 Hollywood films are discussed in great detail, with a scene-by-scene analysis of each film.

This new book draws on contemporary cultural theory and analysis and offers a sceptical but sympathetic and illuminating account of the Tolkien phenomenon. This book is designed to appeal to the general reader (and viewer) of Tolkien: it is written in a clear, jargon-free and easily-accessible style.

Jeremy Robinson's books include Glorification: Religious Abstraction in Renaissance and 20th Century Art (1990), Arthur Rimbaud (1992), Lawrence Durrell (1995) and Detonation Britain: Nuclear War in the UK (1997). He edits two magazines, Passion and Pagan America (a journal of American poetry).
 
 

820pp    Illustrations, bibliography, notes

ISBN 1-86171-057-7   ISBN-13 9781861710574    £30.00 / $60.00
 
 
 
 

When Bilbo, son of Bungo, of the respectable family of Baggins prepared to celebrate his seventy-first birthday there was some little talk in the neighbourhood, and people polished up their memories. Bilbo had once had some brief notoriety among the hobbits of Hibbiton and Bywater - he had disappeared after breakfast one April 30th and had not reappeared until lunch-time on June 22nd in the following year. A very odd proceeding, and one for which he had never accounted satisfactorily. He wrote a book about it, of course: but even those who had read it never took that seriously.

(J.R.R. Tolkien, from an early draft of the first chapter of The Lord of the Rings)
 

More Info

To read extracts from the J.R.R. Tolkien book, click here

by Thomas A. Christie

A new study of the films of Hollywood star Liv Tyler, charting all of her film career up to the present - including Armageddon (1998), Cookie's Fortune (1999), One Night at McCool's (2001) and the Lord of the Rings movies (2001-03).

This is the only in-depth exploration of Liv Tyler's films available anywhere.
 
 

Thomas Christie's pioneering account of Liv Tyler's film career to date is a truly impressive product, combining a wide-ranging knowledge of the film world with a strong, readable narrative style. His meticulous approach has resulted in a work that is factually informative, while his judgements and opinions are scrupulously fair and even-handed. For anyone looking for an authoritative account of Liv Tyler's film career, drawn from an impressively wide-ranging selection of international sources, moving easily between the worlds of high art and popular culture, this volume can be thoroughly recommended.

Douglas J. Allen

Lecturer in Social Sciences, Motherwell College, Scotland.

Bibliography, notes, colour illustrations   240pp    Pbk    ISBN 1-86171-131-X      £15.00 / $30.00
 
 

To read extracts from Liv Tyler, click here
 

by Oliver Whitehorne

A new edition, including a new bibliography and introduction.

An incisive analysis of the 'megavisual' hyperspace that is global media. Whitehorne's wry overview takes in juicy, hypocrisy-rich topics such as censorship in the media; consensus politics and the news; the religious dimensions of advertizing; excessive consumerism; media narratives; radio voices; soap operas; pornography; adverts in print, radio and television; tabloid and broadsheet newspapers; Cosmopolitan and 'women's magazines'; violence and bad language; 'family' viewing; British radio, including a detailed study of Radio 1; the Madonna phenomenon; pop promos, MTV and pop music; feminism and the media.

Oliver Whitehorne is a freelance writer who has written extensively on the media. His previous books include TV Texts (1985), Eat the Media: Advertizing and Consumerism (1989), and Media Hell: Explorations of Radio, Television and the Press (Crescent Moon (1995).
 
 

Bibliography, illustrations, notes  ISBN 1-871846-28-5  £21.99 / $34.50
 

An exploration of how the United Kingdom would fare in a nuclear war; nuclear politics; nukespeak and 'nuclear theology'; atomic bomb tests and 'accidents'; American bases in the UK; the superpowers' military programmes and strategies; the cost of nuclear war; British civil defence; the Gulf War, 'infowar' and 'smart' technology; nuclear attack scenarios; anti-war and peace initiatives.

Jeremy Robinson's books include Glorification: Religious Abstraction in Renaissance and 20th Century Art (1990), Rimbaud (1992), Lawrence Durrell (1995) and Detonation Britain: Nuclear War in the UK (1997). He edits two magazines, Passion and Pagan America (a journal of American poetry).
 
 

Bibliography, ills, and notes  156pp  ISBN 1861711735   £14.99 / $23.50
 
 

As writers, philosophers, speakers and feminists, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray are among the most provocative, subtle and illuminating voices in contemporary culture. Their concepts and methodologies continue to excite debate and contention among feminists and cultural critics. Ives discusses their major ideas, which include: jouissance and 'explosive' sexuality; women and marginality; the 'gift'; the pre-oedipal chora and semiotic realm; labial lips that embrace; social oppression; the relations between writing, language and identity; and the politics of gender, patriarchy and motherhood. Ives studies the relation of Cixous, Irigaray and Kristeva to other feminists, and to figures such as Nietzsche, de Beauvoir, Hegel, Marx, Joyce, Derrida, Barthes, Rimbaud, Lacan and Freud.

Kelly Ives teaches women's studies and feminist theory at the University of California. Her books include Reading the Silences (1988), on writers such as Jane Austen, Emily Bronte and Virginia Woolf, Lesbian Tracks (1991), on lesbianism in pop music, and Wild Zones: Pornography, Art and Feminism (Crescent Moon, 1994).
 
 

This new edition has a new introduction and a new bibliography, and has been completely updated.
 

Full bibliography and notes  195pp  ISBN 1861711905    £15.00 / $30.00
 
 
 

And why donít you write? Write! Writing is for you, you are for you... Write, let no one hold you back, let nothing stop you.

(Hélène Cixous, from "The Laugh of the Medusa")
 

I shall term ìwriterî that ability to rebound whereby the violence of rejection, in extravagant rhythm, find its way into a multiplied signifier. It is not the reconstruction of an unwary subject, remin-iscing, in hysterical fashion, about his lacks in meaning, his plunges into an underwater body. It is rather the return of the limit-as-break, castration, and the bar separating signifier from signified, which found naming, codification, and language; they do this not in order to vanish at that point (as communal meaning would have it), but in order, lucidly and consciously, to reject and multiply them, to dissolve even their boundaries, and to use them again.

(Julia Kristeva, from Desire in Language)
 
 

Julia Kristeva is a highly influential French philosopher and writer whose work encompasses semiotics; linguitics; women in China; modern America; the intellectual or dissident; concepts such as the power of horror; abjection; melancholy; and the chora or 'semiotic, pre-oedipal realm'; the Madonna and maternal world; and avant garde modernists such as Artaud, Joyce, Mallarme and Beckett

Kelly Ives teaches women's studies and feminist theory at the University of California. Her books include Reading the Silences (1988), on writers such as Jane Austen, Emily Bronte and Virginia Woolf, Lesbian Tracks (1991), on lesbianism in pop music, Wild Zones: Pornography, Art and Feminism (Crescent Moon, 1994) and Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva: The Jouissance of French Feminism (Crescent Moon 1996).
 
 

European Writers Series  Bibliography and notes  132pp  ISBN 1861711107    £14.99 / $23.50
 
 
 

The other that will guide you and itself through this dissolution is a rhythm, music, and within language, a text. But what is the connection that holds you both together? Counter-desire, the negative of desire, inside-out desire, capable of questioning (or provoking) its own infinite quest. Romantic, filial, adolescent, exclusive, blind and Oedipal: it is all that, but for others. It returns to where you are, both of you, disappointed, irritated, ambitious, in love with history, critical, on the edge and even in the midst of its own identity crisis.

(Julia Kristeva, from Desire in Language)
 

Julia Kristeva, life and work

An exploration of the often controversial French thinker and feminist. Ives discusses Irigaray's relation with Nietzsche, Freud, Lacan, and other feminists. Irigaray's provocative notions include: labial lips embracing; sexual difference; the speculum; 'sexuate rights' and sexual ethics; women's language and power; angels; and female mystics.

Kelly Ives teaches women's studies and feminist theory at the University of California. Her books include Reading the Silences (1988), on writers such as Jane Austen, Emily Bronte and Virginia Woolf, Lesbian Tracks (1991), on lesbianism in pop music, Wild Zones: Pornography, Art and Feminism (Crescent Moon, 1994) and Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva: The Jouissance of French Feminism (Crescent Moon 1996).
 
 

European Writers Series  Bibliography and notes  126pp  ISBN 1861711883   £14.99 / $23.50
 
 
 

We need both space and time. And perhaps we are living in an age when time must re-deploy space. Could this be the dawning of a new world? Immanence and transcendence are being recast, notably by that threshold which has never been examined in itself: the female sex. It is a threshold unto mucosity. Beyond the classic opposites of love and hate, liquid and ice lies this perpetually half-open threshold, consisting of lips that are strangers to dichotomy. Pressed against one another, but without any possibility of suture, at least of a real kind, they do not absorb the world either into themselves or through themselves, provided they are not abused or reduced to a mere consummating or consuming structure. Instead their shape welcomes without assimilating or reducing or devouring. A sort of door unto voluptuousness, then? Not that, either: their useful function is to designate a place: the very place of uses, at least on a habitual plane. Strictly speaking, they serve neither conception nor jouissance. Is this, then, the mystery of female identity, of its self-contemplation, of that strange word of silence; both the threshold and reception of exchange, the sealed-up secret of wisdom, belief and faith in every truth?

(Luce Irigaray)

Hélène Cixous is a challenging and lyrical French feminist and writer, author of the influential esay "The Laugh of the Medusa" and (with Catherine Clément) The Newly-Born Woman. Cixous is immensely productive, writing novels, plays, essays and poetic prose. Her ideas have provoked much debate in feminism: on the body, orgasmic writing, 'feminine' texts ('écriture féminine'), essentialism and the Nietzschean 'gift'.

Kelly Ives teaches women's studies and feminist theory at the University of California. Her books include Reading the Silences (1988), on writers such as Jane Austen, Emily Brontë and Virginia Woolf, Lesbian Tracks (1991), on lesbianism in pop music, Wild Zones: Pornography, Art and Feminism (Crescent Moon, 1994) and Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva: The Jouissance of French Feminism (Crescent Moon, 1996).
 
 

European Writers Series  Bibliography and notes  125pp  ISBN 1861711891    £14.99 / $23.50
 

 

For her joyous benefits she is erogenous; she is the erotogeneity of the heterogeneous: airborne swimmer, in flight, she does not cling to herself; she is dispersible, prodigious, stunning, desirous and capable of others, of the other woman that she will be, of the other woman she isn't, of him, of you.

(Hélène Cixous, from The Newly Born Woman)
 

I ask of writing what I ask of desire: that it have no relation to the logical which puts desire on the side of possession, of acquisition, or even of that consumption - consummation which, when pushed to its limits with such exultation, links (false) consciousness with death.

(Hélène Cixous)
 
 

A very powerful feminist, writer and public speaker, Dworkin is the author of the highly influential book Pornography: Men Possessing Women, of which Mary Daly wrote: 'An original, brilliant, courageous work combining massive and precise research with incisive analysis.' Cited by many feminists, often in passing, often in a negative light, Dworkin has rarely been the subject of a full-length treatment, as here. This book sympathetically and critically surveys the chief themes of Dworkin's polemical feminism, including her anti-pornography stance; the controversial bill of rights; sexual politics; and literary æsthetics. Robinson links Dworkin to French feminism, queer, gay and lesbian theory, Anglo-American feminism, and American literature.

'It's amazing for me to see my work treated with such passion and respect.' (Andrea Dworkin)

Jeremy Robinson's books include Glorification: Religious Abstraction in Renaissance and 20th Century Art (1990), Rimbaud (1992), Lawrence Durrell (1995) and Detonation Britain: Nuclear War in the UK (1997). He edits two magazines, Passion and Pagan America (a journal of American poetry).
 
 

Bibliography, notes  ISBN 1861711263   161pp    £14.99 / $23.50
 
 
 

I wrote them [the essays and speeches] to communicate and to survive: as a writer and as a woman; for me, the two are one. I wrote them because I care about fairness and justice for women. I wrote them because I believe in bearing witness, and I have seen a lot. I wrote them because people are being hurt and the injury has to stop... I wrote them because I believe in writing, in its power to right wrongs, to change how people see and think, to change how and what people know, to change how and why people act. I wrote them out of the conviction, Quaker in origin, that one must speak truth to power. This is the basic premise in my work as a feminist: activism or writing'

(Andrea Dworkin, from Letters From a War Zone)
 

by Cassidy Hughes

This new, special edition contains many new illustrations (some of which are rare), a new introduction and bibliography.

A comprehensive and detailed survey of erotic art from ancient times to the modern era. All the major erotic artists of the Western tradition are analyzed (Schiele, Bellmer, Rowlandson, Picasso, Titian, Ingres, Rops, Leonardo). Other chapters include erotica in ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt, Oriental erotic art (Taoist and Tantric art from China and India), gender and eroticism in Renaissance art, and the sensuality of sculpture. A discussion of the complex relationship between art and pornography provides the central critical axis for this challenging book.

Cassidy Hughes is a writer and photographer. His previous books include Images of India (1982), Petrarch, Dante and the Troubadours (1992) and Sex in Art (1993). His photographs have been exhibited in London, Rome, Hong Kong and New York (among others). He lives near St Just in West Penwith, Cornwall.
 
 

Bibliography, notes and illustrations. 210pp  ISBN 186171193X    £3.00 / $60.00
 
 

A perceptive and ironic exploration of the controversial debate surrounding pornography and feminism, and how it relates to art and literature. Ives discusses the key points of the many-sided discourses of censorship, the politics of representation, violence, sexuality, æsthetics and law. She discusses pornography in film, TV, painting, theatre and literature as well as in magazines. Other topics include the new 'women's pornography'; lesbian porn; and S/M, gay and queer practices. An important contribution to feminist criticism.

Kelly Ives teaches women's studies and feminist theory at the University of California. Her books include Reading the Silences (1988), on writers such as Jane Austen, Emily Bronte and Virginia Woolf, Lesbian Tracks (1991), on lesbianism in pop music, Wild Zones: Pornography, Art and Feminism (Crescent Moon, 1994) and Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva: The Jouissance of French Feminism (Crescent Moon 1996).
 
 

Bibliography, notes, illustrations 142pp  ISBN 1861711603   £14.99 / $23.50
 
 
 

[The body's] form, capacities, behaviour, gestures, movements, potential are primary objects of political contestation. As a political object, the body is not inert or fixed. It is pliable and plastical material, which is capable of being formed and organized in other, quite different ways or according to different classifactory schema than our binarised models.

(Elizabeth Grosz)

by Susan Quinnell

The power of sculpture, form, volume and space is sensitively explored in this wide-ranging study. Featuring discussions of many famous sculptors: Michelangelo, Canova, Rodin, Brancusi, Picasso, Hepworth and Bernini. Many contemporary artists are discussed, including installation and performance artists (Catherine Elwes, Karen Finley, Carolee Schneemann), and women sculptors such as Alice Aycock, Mary Miss, Rebecca Horn, Nancy Graves, Eva Hesse, Kathe Kollwitz and Judy Chicago.
 
 

A new special edition, with many new ilustrations, including colour, a new introduction and bibliography.

260 pages

PBK  ISBN 1-86171-069-0  £20.00 / $50.00

HDBK  ISBN 1-86171-174-3  £50.00 / $100.00
 
 

There are surprisingly few feminist analyses of Hardy, and most do not get beyond vague notions of sexism and misogynism, in the Kate Millett manner. Elvy's book, however, uses up-to-date research in the fields of cultural studies, feminist poetics, gay, lesbian and queer theory. This new, postmodern and incisive exploration of Hardy offers an exciting and radical reappraisal of the discourses of gender, desire, class, economy, socialization, identity and patriarchy in his fiction and poetry.

Margaret Elvy recently taught at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. She has written books on George Eliot, Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison. She has three books on Thomas Hardy from Crescent Moon (Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Sexing Hardy: Thomas Hardy and Feminism).
 

This new edition has been updated, and includes a new introduction and a new bibliography.
 

Thomas Hardy Studies     Extensive bibliography and notes  190pp  ISBN 1-86171-065-8  £15.00 / $30.00
 
 

...there is nothing perverted or depraved in Sue's nature. The abnormalism consists in disproportion, not in inversion, her sexual instinct being healthy as far as it goes, but unusually weak and fastidious. Her sensibilities remain painfully alert notwith-standing, as they do in nature with such women. One point illustrating this I could not dwell upon: that, though she has children, her intimacies with Jude have never been more than occasional, even when they were living together. (I mention that they occupy separate rooms, except towards the end), and one of her reasons for fearing the marriage ceremony is that she fears it would be breaking faith with Jude to withhold herself at pleasure, or altogether, after it; though while uncontracted she feels at liberty to yield herself as seldom as she chooses. This has tended to keep his passion as lust at the end as at the beginning, and helps to break his heart. He has never really possessed her as freely as he desired.

(Thomas Hardy, writing to Edmund Gosse about Jude the Obscure)
 

To read an extract from Sexing Hardy, click here

Fashion, image-making, sexism, gender, identity, materialism, feminism, commodity capitalism in the 'women's magazine' market. Ranging from the monthly 'glossies' (Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Elle and Vogue) to the 'homely' weeklies (Bella, Best and Woman's Own), through the 'style press' (Arena, GQ, i-D, The Face) to 'teenage' magazines (Jackie, Smash Hits, Mizz and Just Seventeen), this is one of the very few full-length analyses of the cultural products that sell in their millions.

Oliver Whitehorne is a freelance writer who has written extensively on the media. His previous books include TV Texts (1985), Eat the Media: Advertizing and Consumerism (1989), and Media Hell: Explorations of Radio, Television and the Press (Crescent Moon (1995).
 
 

Bibliography, illustrations, notes, 125pp  ISBN 1-86171-128-X    £14.99 / $23.50
 
 

A survey of female pop artists and their place in the largely male-dominated rock industry, featuring studies of women in punk (The Slits, Poly Styrene, Siouxsie Sue), the Riot Grrrl 'movement' (Courtney Love, Hole, Bikini Kill, L7, and others), bhangra, indie/ alternative pop, rap and hip-hop, and sexism in pop music. There are chapters on musicians and singers such as Kate Bush, Sinead O'Connor, Joan Armatrading, P.J. Harvey, and Madonna. 'Whatever I did was sabotaged by the fact that I had tits.' (Caroline Coon, on managing The Clash)

Helen Challis has written for many music magazines, including Spin, Q, Vox, Rolling Stone and the New Musical Express. Her books include The Madonna Cult (1991).
 
 

Bibliography,  notes, ill.  114pp  ISBN 1-86171-130-1   £14.99 / $23.50
 

Maurice Sendak is the widely acclaimed American children's book author and illustrator. This critical study focusses on his famous trilogy, Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen and Outside Over There, as well as the early works and Sendak's superb depictions of Grimm's fairy tales in The Juniper Tree. Poole begins with a chapter on children's book illustration, in particular the treatment of fairy tales. Sendak's work is situated within the history of children's book illustration, and he is compared with many contemporary authors.

This new, special edition includes a new introduction, a new bibliography and many more illustrations.
 
 

Bibliography, notes, illustrations    260pp
 

PAPERBACK

ISBN 1-86171-061-5    £15.00 / $30.00
 

HARDBACK

ISBN 1-86171-191-3    £50.00 / $100.00
 

by L.M. Poole

Just about the best childrenís book author and illustrator of recent times, if not the most significant, Maurice Sendak ranks alongside Dr Seuss (Theodore Geisel) as one of Americaís biggest talents in the world of childrenís picture books. Now heís having the Hollywood blockbuster treatment, with the release of Where the Wild Are, itís a good time to reappraise the art of this astonishingly inventive book artist.
And itís not only Maurice Sendak that Hollywood is turning to in its hunt for more childrenís fantasy literature: two huge recent movies, The Grinch and The Cat in the Hat, are based on Dr Seuss ? and thereís Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, of course (with C.S. Lewisís Narnia series on the way).
 
 

Art in Close-up Series   Bibliography, notes, illustrations   132pp  ISBN 1-86171-076-3  £19.99 / $32.00   forthcoming
 

The garden, even the smallest and most modest of front lawns, can be a miniature version of Paradise. This book relates gardens to sacred places, such as churches, temples, stone circles, mosques and mythic gardens. The nostalgic myth of a 'Golden Age', Arcadia or Paradise lies at the heart of this study of the history of gardens.
 
 

With notes and photographs  35pp  ISBN 1-871846-86-2    £7.99 / $12.50
 
 

New, unpublished pieces on reader theory; Tom Jones; fictionalizing; and cultural studies, among others. Iser is a leading exponent of 'reception theory'.

Wolfgang Iser's books include The Implied Reader (1974), The Act of Reading (1978), Prospecting (1989) and The Fictive and the Imaginary (1993). He has written books on Laurence Sterne (1988) and Walter Pater (1987). He is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Constance in Germany.
 
 

75pp  ISBN 1-86171-168-9    £7.99 / $12.50
 

Interview with Wolfgang Iser
 
 

American ex-pat writer Paul Bowles and New Wave Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci collaborated on the 1990 film The Sheltering Sky, based on Bowles' 1949 novel. Hughes looks at Bowles' fiction, which is concerned with exile, alienation, violence and social collapse, often in a vividly portrayed North African setting. Next, Hughes analyzes Bertolucci's provocative cinema, which ranges from the New Wave and politically-conscious art movies The Conformist and Last Tango in Paris to the more 'mainstream' Hollywood epic treatments of The Last Emperor and Little Buddha.

Cassidy Hughes is a writer and photographer. His previous books include Images of India (1982), Petrarch, Dante and the Troubadours (1992) and Sex in Art (1993). His photographs have been exhibited in London, Rome, Hong Kong and New York (among others). He lives near St Just in West Penwith, Cornwall.
 
 

Filmography and bibliography, notes. 76pp  ISBN 1-871846-66-8  £8.99 / $13.50
 

The 'cinema of poetry' studied here includes filmmakers such as Welles, Ozu, Bresson, Cocteau, Tarkovsky, Bergman, Kurosawa, Godard, Bertolucci, Pasolini and Mizoguchi. Though the (mainly European) art film is the chief field of Madden's enquiry, his analysis takes in the whole of the history of cinema, from the Lumiere brothers, through the silent era and golden age of Hollywood to avant garde filmmakers such as Anger, Snow and Brakhage. Madden reappraises the æsthetics of cinema and its affinities with poetry, mythology, religion, magic and narrative art.
 
 

Bibliography, illustrations, notes  87pp  ISBN 1-871846-52-8  £10.99 / $17.00
 
 

A scathing review of the BBC's output in television and radio.

Oliver Whitehorne is a freelance writer who has written extensively on the media. His previous books include TV Texts (1985), Eat the Media: Advertizing and Consumerism (1989), and Media Hell: Explorations of Radio, Television and the Press (Crescent Moon, 1995).
 
 

With notes. 30pp  ISBN 1-898283-00-1  £3.99 / $6.00
 

A survey of contemporary feminism, and its relation to literature's 'god'. The author employs up-to-date research in gay, lesbian and feminist approaches to the Renaissance world and literary texts.
 
 

With extended notes 30pp  ISBN 1-898283-01-X  £3.99 / $6.00
 

This book offers an unflinching critical analysis of 'the most famous woman in the world'. Though featuring prominently in the popular press, TV, radio, magazines and so on, 'the Diana phenomenon' has been largely neglected by serious academic criticism. Topics studied include: the Princess of Wales as a Goddess-type and icon; Diana and the tabloids; Diana in women's magazines; Diana in the media; Diana, the monarchy, politics and the constitution; Diana and charity; gender, sexuality, romance and fantasy in the world of the Princess; Diana, image-making and her public persona; the Princess in the arts (in fiction, painting, pop music, etc); the media's portrayal of her personal life; the Princess in TV news and documentaries; Diana as media star and the cult of celebrity; the 'national mourning' of Diana; and how feminism has treated the Princess.
 
 

Bibliography, notes, illustrations  180pp   ISBN 1-86171-044-5   £14.99 / $23.50  forthcoming
 
 

 

Harry Potter: The Books, The FIlms, The Cultural Phenomenon

J.R.R. Tolkien

The Sacred Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky

Media Hell: Explorations of Radio, Television and the Press

Detonation Britain: Nuclear War in the UK

Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva: The Jouissance of French Feminism

Julia Kristeva: Art, Love, Melancholy, Philosophy, Semiotics and Psychoanalysis

Luce Irigaray: Lips, Kissing, and the Politics of Sexual Difference

Helene Cixous I Love You: The Jouissance of Writing

Andrea Dworkin

Sex in Art: Pornography and Pleasure in Painting and Sculpture

Wild Zones: Pornography, Art and Feminism

The Erotic Object: Sexuality in Sculpture From Prehistory to the Present Day

Sexing Hardy: Thomas Hardy and Feminism

'Cosmo Woman': The World of Women's Magazines

Women in Pop Music

Maurice Sendak and the Art of Children's Book Illustration

Maurice Sendak in Close-Up

Sacred Gardens: The Garden in Myth, Religion & Art

Stepping Forward: Essays, Lectures and Interviews

Paul Bowles and Bernardo Bertolucci: Under Two Sheltering Skies

The Poetry of Cinema

An Open Letter to the BBC

Feminism and Shakespeare

Princess Diana in Culture, Media, Society, Feminism and the Arts

• Harry Potter
• J.R.R. Tolkien
• Andy Goldsworthy
• Art
• Art in Close-Up Series
• Sculpture
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• Renaissance Painters
• Renaissance Writers
• Media, Cinema, Culture, Feminism
• Cinema
• Feminism and Gender Studies
• Literature
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• Contemporary Poetry
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• 19th Century and Romantic Culture
• European Writers
• British Poets
• Shakespeare Studies
• Arthur Rimbaud Studies
• D.H. Lawrence Studies
• John Cowper Powys Studies
• Thomas Hardy Studies
• Journals
• Alchemy Records
• Index of Titles, ISBNs, Dates and Prices
• New Titles and Forthcoming Books

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