Closer to the Wild Heart: Essays on Clarice Lispector
Edited by Cláudia Pazos Alonso and Claire Williams
Legenda (General Series) •1 October 2002
- ‘Given the relative paucity of work in English on Clarice Lispector, Pazo's and William's collection of English-language writing on this author is welcome, not just for its mere presence, but especially for its attention to newer critical thinking on race, gender and nation. Most especially welcome is the turn indicated in this volume toward an examination of the several kind of writing in which Lispector engaged - letters, cronicas, semi-autobiography, fiction - a turn that indicates a more comprehensive way of thinking both about her fiction and about her life-work as a whole.’ — Tace Hedrick, Luso-Brazilian Review 41:1, 2004, 203-5
- ‘From the start Clarice Lispector, despite the South American sun, lives in the clouds and in cloudiness. She was to the public a charismatic obscurity, a witch, a recluse, a mystery - the Brazilian sphinx.’ — Lorrie Moore, The New York Review of Books 26 September 2009, 2-3
Science and Literature in Italian Culture: From Dante to Calvino
Edited by Pierpaolo Antonello and Simon A. Gilson
Legenda (General Series) •1 June 2004
- ‘Legenda's elegantly produced volume is all things to all people. It does discuss literature and science, but its miscellany is all the more enjoyable for not being tightly constrained by a potentially dogmatic, even questionable, unifying theme of "L&S".’ — J. R. Woodhouse, Modern Language Review 100.3, 7 July 2005, 845-48 (full text online)
- Speculum October 2005, 1404)
The Cervantean Heritage: Reception and Influence of Cervantes in Britain
Edited by J. A. G. Ardila
Legenda (General Series) •23 December 2008
- ‘Resulta reconfortante para cualquier investigador interesado en los textos de Miguel de Cervantes comprobar que, tras la explosión de estudios surgidos en torno a las celebraciones del año 2005, cuarto centenario de la publicación del Quijote, el cervantismo está más vivo que nunca. De hecho, es precisamente ahora, tras el paso del ciclón de publicaciones que trajo consigo dicho aniversario, cuando surge la oportunidad de realizar análisis nacidos más al calor de la curiosidad real y el rigor y menos de la oportunidad o el oportunismo. Este libro supone una muy valiosa aportación para el campo de los estudios cervantinos pero también para el estudio de la literatura británica, y especialistas de ambos campos encontrarán en él material ineludible y original con el que ganar en conocimiento y sobre todo, una herramienta con la que continuar avanzando en el no siempre bien conocido ni estudiado campo de las relaciones literarias y culturales hispano-británicas.’ — Ana M. Rodríguez-Rodríguez, Iberoamericana IX.36, 2009, 189-91
- ‘Rather than emanating from the Cervantesmania that has informed most of the book-length studies on Cervantes's influence on English-speaking writers [since the 2005 anniversary year], the present volume benefits from the fact that its contributors come from among the pre-2005 generation of critics, who have drawn on their experience of digging out Cervantes's actual influence on British literature.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 47.1, January 2011
Form and Feeling in Modern Literature: Essays in Honour of Barbara Hardy
Edited by William Baker with Isobel Armstrong
Legenda (General Series) •4 March 2013
- ‘The editors are to be congratulated on putting together a volume which maintains a consistently high quality, while ranging widely over a multitude of topics.’ — Leonee Ormond, George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies 64-65, October 2013, 99-100
- ‘An excellent tribute to the work of Professor Hardy; however, the critical essays and their approach to fiction in the nineteenth century also make this collection of interest to scholars in the field who may not be as familiar with the work of Hardy.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 50.4, October 2014, 506
Confrontational Readings: Literary Neo-Avant-Gardes in Dutch and German
Edited by Inge Arteel, Lars Bernaerts and Olivier Couder
Germanic Literatures 21•28 September 2020
Textual Wanderings: The Theory and Practice of Narrative Digression
Edited by Rhian Atkin
Legenda (General Series) •6 July 2011
Myth and Legend in French Literature: Essays in Honour of A. J. Steele
Edited by Keith Aspley, David Bellos, and Peter Sharratt
Publications of the Modern Humanities Research Association 11•1 January 1982
The Strange M. Proust
Edited by André Benhaïm
Legenda (General Series) •23 December 2008
- ‘Reminding us again of the importance of close reading in Proust, Malcolm Bowie concludes that ‘it is perhaps in his handling of little local things that he is the most strange’. Certainly, in their attentiveness to detail, all of the articles in this volume provide exciting new insights into a much-studied text.’ — Sarah Tribout-Joseph, Modern Language Review 105.2, 2010, 569-70 (full text online)
- ‘The eminent Proust scholars contribiting to this volume all propose readings of the Search that tease out paradoxes, the uncanny, and the subversive hidden in Proust's text through a variety of critical perspectives. Although the theme of 'strangeness' is broad, the chapters cohere remarkably well and are of a uniformly high caliber.’ — Patrick M. Bray, French Review 85.2, 2012, 168-69
Crossing Fields in Modern Spanish Culture
Edited by Federico Bonaddio and Xon de Ros
Legenda (General Series) •1 December 2003
- ‘Federico Bonaddio and Xon de Ros have put together a very useful series of short and punchy articles which span over a hundred and fifty years of Spanish culture, from the 1860s to the present day... Without doubt this collection would make an excellent addition to any university library. The essays on canonical texts may very well prove invaluable to undergraduate students while those on lesser-known writers, artists, and cinematographers will surely fulfil the same function for postgraduates and the academic community in general.’ — Jean Andrews, Modern Language Review 101.3, July 2006, 876-77 (full text online)
Culture, Censorship and the State in Twentieth-Century Italy
Edited by Guido Bonsaver and Robert Gordon
Legenda (General Series) •13 September 2005
Italy and the USA: Cultural Change Through Language and Narrative
Edited by Guido Bonsaver, Alessandro Carlucci and Matthew Reza
Italian Perspectives 44•30 December 2019
- ‘A very holistic assessment of cultural change, even going beyond the disciplinary points of reference of language and narrative to the larger fields of politics and economics.’ — Anna Chichi, Modern Language Review 117.2, 2022, 303-04 (full text online)
Artifice and Invention in the Spanish Golden Age
Edited by Stephen Boyd and Terence O'Reilly
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 3•1 November 2014
The Art of Cervantes in Don Quixote: Critical Essays
Edited by Stephen Boyd, Trudi L. Darby and Terence O'Reilly
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 27•23 September 2019
- ‘El libro constituye pues, en mi opinión, un aporte significativo y novedoso del cervantismo británico para el estudio y la reevaluación de la obra maestra cervantina.’ — Ruth Fine, Hispanic Research Journal 21.4, 2020, 463-66 (full text online)
- ‘A welcome addition to the libraries of Cervantes scholars.’ — John T. Cull, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 98.4, 2021, 667-68
Mary Shelley and Europe: Essays in Honour of Jean de Palacio
Edited by Antonella Braida
Studies In Comparative Literature 55•28 September 2020
- ‘A wonderful selection of essays which discusses an aspect of Mary Shelley’s life that was so important to her art and yet is perhaps under-emphasised in discussing her work.’ — Jacqueline Mulhallen, Women's Writing 6 March 2022
Rethinking Juan Rulfo’s Creative World: Prose, Photography, Film
Edited by Dylan Brennan and Nuala Finnegan
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 14•1 September 2016
Speaking Out and Silencing: Culture, Society and Politics in Italy in the 1970s
Edited by Anna Cento Bull and Adalgisa Giorgio
Italian Perspectives 12•17 January 2006
- ‘An excellent analysis of the 1970s... important new insights into the anni di piombo.’ — Liz Wren-Owens, Modern Language Review 104.1, January 2009, 213-14 (full text online)
- ‘Each of these essays confirms that terrorism is an ineluctable topic in any discussion of the long 1970s... Indeed, the two longest entries in the index to the volume are for ‘terrorism’ and for ‘Moro, Aldo’. Aldo Moro is all over the book, just as he is uncannily omnipresent in Italian culture...’ — Alan O'Leary, Modern Italy 13.3, August 2008, 361-63
Saturn's Moons: W. G. Sebald — A Handbook
Edited by Jo Catling and Richard Hibbitt
Legenda (General Series) •6 July 2011
- ‘An erudite and deeply engrossing Sebald compendium. It fits his oeuvre that in place of a formal biography we have this border-crossing miscellany in which comment may be free but facts are indeed sacred. Michael Hulse, his equally gifted translator before Anthea Bell, reprints the correspondence in which he asked Sebald to confirm that the quartet of exiles' testimonies so artfully braided into The Emigrants tell real stories about real people... The wonderful alchemy via which Sebald transmuted the found material of actual biography and history into fiction that kept faith with truth explains much of his appeal.’ — Boyd Tonkin, The Independent 2 December 2011, Books of the Week
- ‘More than two-hundred pages are dedicated to a stunning bibliographic survey of Sebald... If the reader wants to see what Sebald said about, say, Theodor Adorno, Jane Austen, Henry Ford, Jean Genet, Gruppe 47, Ernest Hemingway, Adolf Hitler, Herman Melville, Virginia Woolf, animals, butterflies and moths, depression, irony, the Treblinka trials, or countless other names or topics, the index will direct you to the appropriate interviews. Two of my favorite topics in the index were: 'surgery, fear of' and 'greatest wish: to live outside of time'. Hats off to the crew who have given us this monumental bibliographic record!’ — Terry Pitts, Vertigo 24 September 2011
- ‘Para aficionados como yo, es una Biblia.’ — William Chislett, El Imparcial 10 December 2011
- ‘Un somptueux volume collectif – une somme de près de sept cents pages, la bible (plutôt que le modeste handbook annoncé) sur Sebald.’ — Norwich: du temps et des lieux 28 September 2011)
- ‘Special mention should be made of Sheppard’s ‘index to interviews with Sebald’ and his chronology of Sebald’s life, which reconstructs in as much detail as possible the writer’s movements. As with so much of this volume (characterized by how many of its contributors knew Sebald personally), it is clear that these indexes and bibliographies are labours of love; they will stand scholarship in good stead in years to come... An invaluable resource for future research.’ — Ben Hutchinson, Modern Language Review 107.2, April 2012, 659-61 (full text online)
- ‘Saturn’s Moons is the most significant publication on W. G. (Max) Sebald in recent time. Offering a quasi-Sebaldian reading experience of that peculiarly unorthodox kind to the general reader, it is also a tome of considerable scholarship, most particularly in the provision of two remarkable bibliographies which make it a sine qua non resource for scholars of Sebald’s work... A book which will underpin further work on his writing for decades to come.’ — Deane Blackler, German Quarterly 85.2, Spring 2012, 233-34
- ‘How much to reveal about 'W. G. Sebald' is not a simple question. The degree to which he incorporated not just the texts, but also the lives of others into his fictions is greater than we can now... Although Sebald suggests that finding the solutions would be worthwhile, he is suspiciously vague about the effort involved. The Handbook's great value is that it does an immense amount of work for us without revealing too much.’ — Scott Bartsch, Journal of European Studies 42.2, June 2012, 210-11
- ‘By far the most authoritative and complete guide to the literature owned, written and inspired by Sebald, and testament to some extraordinary detective work. It should immediately become the first port of call for anyone setting out to write on Sebald.’ — J. J. Long, Journal of European Studies 42.3, 2012, 17-18
- ‘Besides essays in which Michael Hulse and Anthea Bell address the subject of translating Sebald's work and of collaborations between author and translator, readers of this journal should be intrigued by a hitherto unpublished interview conducted by Jon Cook... [Sebald] reflects on his decision to write in German rather than English.’ — Iain Galbraith, Translation and Literature 22.1 (Spring 2013), 137-42
- ‘Und dennoch ist es nicht nur ein Buch von Freunden über einen verstorbenen Autor, sondern ein Handbuch im besten Sinne des Wortes. Auf höchstem Niveau gibt es Auskunft über Sebalds Kindheit im Allgäu und seinen akademischen Werdegang; über seine Arbeitsweise als Universitätslehrer und die polemische Stoßrichtung seiner wissenschaftlichen Veröffentlichungen; über Sebalds Umgang mit Photographien, die einen integralen Teil seines Werkes bilden; es bietet einen profunden Einblick in seine private Bibliothek und den Stellenwert, den bestimmte Autoren in ihr halten; führt in den Nachlass ein, der in Marbach liegt und verschwiegen ist wie Sebald selbst es war; gibt Schriftstellern und Dichtern das Wort, die Texte über Sebald geschrieben haben; druckt unveröffentlichte Stücke aus Sebalds Nachlass ab; enthält Bibliographien zu seinem Gesamtwerk und der dazu erschienenen internationalen Sekundärliteratur, die bis ins Jahr 2011 Anspruch auf Vollständigkeit erheben dürfen und 170 große, dichtbedruckte Se’ — Jakob Hessing, Arbitrium 34.2, 2016, 246-50
- ‘The volume offers an abundance of previously unpublished textual and visual material — much of it from Sebald's literary estate but also photographs, letters, syllabi, and personal testimonies provided by friends and others — to offer glimpses into the author's personal and professional life and to contextualize and historicize further his work as a writer, teacher, academic, and critic.’ — Markus Zisselsberger, Monatshefte 104.4, 2012, 685-88
Edoardo Sanguineti: Literature, Ideology and the Avant-Garde
Edited by Paolo Chirumbolo and John Picchione
Italian Perspectives 26•28 May 2013
- ‘Chirumbolo and Picchione’s impressive volume represents a significant and timely addition to the field, which scholars of Sanguineti will want to follow and explore in the future.’ — Florian Mussgnug, Modern Language Review 111.1, January 2016, 268-70 (full text online)
- ‘This dense but lucid collection makes a timely and valuable contribution to studies of Sanguineti's works and influence. The combination of critical and personal essays will make this volume particularly compelling to scholars interested in Sanguineti's legacy.’ — Mary Migliozzi, Forum Italicum 250-53
- ‘A tre anni dalla scomparsa di Edoardo Sanguineti, Paolo Chirumbolo e John Picchione propongono questo interessantissimo volume dedicato al poeta genovese. I due curatori sono da annoverare fra i più prolifici ed attenti critici letterari sulla neoavanguardia italiana in Nord America... Un’autentica perla, un volume essenziale per chi volesse non solo occuparsi di uno dei guru dello sperimentalismo italiano, ma anche per chi intendesse affrontare il variegato mondo della neoavanguardia italiana con più ampio respiro.’ — Beppe Cavatorta, Annali d'Italianistica 32, 2014, 670-72
Death Sentences: Literature and State Killing
Edited by Birte Christ and Ève Morisi
Studies In Comparative Literature 49•23 April 2019
Phrase and Subject: Studies in Literature and Music
Edited by Delia da Sousa Correa
Legenda (General Series) •5 September 2006
- ‘Largely devoted to questions of narrativity, a disputed area within musicology... An interesting but uneven collection.’ — Julian Rushton, Modern Language Review 103.3, July 2008, 810-11 (full text online)
- ‘Well-structured and coherent... Building on the important, innovative work of one of the volume’s contributors, Lawrence Kramer, the excellent studies collected here represent a vital overview of fruitful lines of inquiry within a vibrant emerging discipline.’ — Forum for Modern Language Studies April 2009, 220)
Freedom and the Subject of Theory: Essays in Honour of Christina Howells
Edited by Oliver Davis and Colin Davis
Legenda (General Series) •14 May 2019
The Modern Spanish Canon: Visibility, Cultural Capital and the Academy
Edited by Stuart Davis and Maite Usoz de la Fuente
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 28•22 August 2018
- ‘This volume showcases the work of early-career scholars working in modern peninsular Spanish studies as they seek a breakthrough into the institutional realm of the contemporary academy. It comprises ten essays ordered and presented by the editors, who, in a spirited Introduction, identify fundamental questions and issues ranging from nomenclature (Spanish Studies? Iberian Studies?) and the politics of the discipline, to ownership and the constitution of the canon.’ — Robin Fiddian, Hispanic Research Journal 20.4, 2019, 416-17 (full text online)
- ‘A welcome and handsome contribution to debates on the limits, possibilities and opportunities for current and future research on the modern Spanish cultural canon... An excellent vision of the vibrant health of early-career Hispanism and a thought-provoking challenge to established critical paradigms... this volume is testament to a very bright and innovative future for our discipline.’ — Alison Ribeiro de Menezes, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 96.9, 2019, 1557-58
Yiddish in the Contemporary World: Papers of the First Mendel Friedman International Conference on Yiddish
Edited by Gennady Estraikh and Mikhail Krutikov
Studies In Yiddish 1•1 July 1999
Yiddish in Weimar Berlin: At the Crossroads of Diaspora Politics and Culture
Edited by Gennady Estraikh and Mikhail Krutikov
Studies In Yiddish 8•12 April 2010
- ‘In the 1920s, Yiddish was more than just a lingua franca for East European Jewish émigrés; it was also a language of high culture, as demonstrated by a brilliant new book, Yiddish in Weimar Berlin: At the Crossroads of Diaspora Politics and Culture.’ — Benjamin Ivry, The Arty Semite online
- ‘To be commended for keeping alive the names, literary output, and civilization of a Yiddish world that is lost forever.’ — Ellen Share, Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews February/March 2011, 15
- ‘There are many interesting articles in this volume. It is clear that in this brief period of flourishing Yiddish cultural activity there is much to disentangle. Berlin is a cultural and political hub in the Weimar period. An influx of multilingual Jews... enter a German Jewish world within a German world. Each of these ‘migrants’ arrives with existing cultural attachments into a war-time/post-war landscape which is signalling all kinds of modernisms. Some Yiddish writers in Berlin acknowledge the city in their literary work, others do not or only minimally. Berlin often emerges later once writers have moved elsewhere and begin to ‘recreate their past’.’ — Helen Beer, Slavonic and East European Review 90.2, April 2012, 332-34 (full text online)
Three Cities of Yiddish: St Petersburg, Warsaw and Moscow
Edited by Gennady Estraikh and Mikhail Krutikov
Studies In Yiddish 15•3 April 2017
- ‘The British book series “Studies in Yiddish,” published by Legenda (and known among academics as “the Legenda series”), is in my estimation the most important venue for contemporary research on Yiddish literature and culture in the world today... Krutikov deals with the travelogue Hoyptshtet (Capital Cities) of 1934, written by Der Nister (“The Hidden One”), one of the greatest Soviet-Yiddish writers. The German professor Sabine Koller also contributes an essay dedicated to Der Nister’s book, which records his impressions of Leningrad, Moscow, and Kharkov during the 1920s. It’s a real delight to see so much attention is devoted to this book, which has been relatively unappreciated in previous considerations of Der Nister.’ — Marc Caplan, Forward 2 August 2017
- ‘In “Moscow Threefold: Olgin, Bergelson, Benjamin,” Murav elegantly analyzes depictions of Moscow in the mid-1920s by three writers. Emphasizing Moscow as a Jewish “space of contiguity,” Murav addresses no less the relating of Moscow to time... If Olgin’s Moscow “has achieved ... its future,” the works of Benjamin and Bergelson show more ambivalence, and Murav is especially vivid on Bergelson’s vision of destruction likely to precede any possible redemption, which may end up permanently deferred.’ — Jeffrey A. Grossman, Slavic Review Spring 2019, 293-95