Emma Speare's Books

The Great Western Beach

By: Emma Smith

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______________ 'Emma Smith has written a book that should - and I hope does - endure as a classic among memoirs of childhood. I savoured every page' - Miranda Seymour, Evening Standard 'A wonderful book, full of unexpected effects, and I suspect that it will become a classic of the genre ... so sincerely compassionate that I honestly can't read it without weeping' - Lynne Truss, Sunday Times 'Evocative, witty and profoundly moving' - Daily Telegraph 'Deserves to become an overnight classic and to find a home at holiday cottage bedsides from St. Ives to Great Yarmouth' - Patrick Gale, author of Notes on an Exhibition ______________ The Great Western Beach is Emma Smith's wonderfully atmospheric memoir of a 1920s childhood in Newquay, Cornwall. She recalls the rocks, the sea, the beaches, the picnics, the teas and pasties, the bracing walks, the tennis tournaments and bathing parties, the curious residents and fascinating holiday-makers - relishing every glorious, salty detail. But above all this is a portrait of a family from the astonishingly clear-eyed perspective of a nine-year-old girl: her furious, frustrated father, perpetually on his way to becoming a world famous artist but suffering the indignity of being a lowly bank clerk; her beautiful, unperceptive mother, made for better things perhaps but at least, with three fiancés killed in the Great War, married with children at last; the twins, fearless, defiant Pam and sickly, bewildered Jim, for whom life is always an uphill climb, and baby Harvey, brought on the same winds of change that mean that life, with all its complication and wonder, cannot stay still and the Cornish playground of Emma's childhood will one day be lost forever.

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Page Count

386

Publisher

A&C Black

Published Date

ISBN 10

1408840197

ISBN 13

9781408840191

The Animal-lore of Shakspeare's Time. Including Quadrupeds, Birds, Reptiles, Fish and Insects

By: Emma Phipson

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The Animal-lore of Shakspeare's Time. Including Quadrupeds, Birds, Reptiles, Fish and Insects

By: Emma Phipson

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

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Page Count

498

Publisher

BoD – Books on Demand

Published Date

ISBN 10

3385347254

ISBN 13

9783385347250

Hard to Get

By: Emma Carlson Berne

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Hard to Get

By: Emma Carlson Berne

Val Rushford has it all: The boyfriend, the looks, the grades, the friends--she's perfect. But when she dumps her cheating boyfriend, Dave, she's bombarded with all types of advances from boys all over school! Totally overwhelmed, Val decides to swear off boys until the end of the year. She buries herself in her school work and spends all her time on a class project that has her paired up with the artsy and intellectual Adam--the unlikliest candidates to ever win Val's heart...or so she thinks. Val soon finds a connection in Adam she has never experienced before, but she's so dedicated to her promise and so unsure of her feelings that she keeps him at an awkward distance. If Val can't figure out what she truly wants, she may just lose her one chance at real love!

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Page Count

290

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1439156255

ISBN 13

9781439156254

Postdramatic Tragedies

By: Emma K. Cole

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Postdramatic Tragedies

By: Emma K. Cole

Ancient tragedy has played a well-documented role in contemporary theatre since the mid-twentieth century. In addition to the often-commented-upon watershed productions, however, is a significant but overlooked history involving classical tragedy in experimental and avant-garde theatre. Postdramatic Tragedies focuses upon such experimental reinventions and analyses receptions of Greek and Roman tragedy that come under the banner of 'postdramatic theatre', a style of performance in which the traditional components of drama, such as character and narrative, are subordinate to the immediate, affective power of more abstract elements, such as image and sound. The chapters are arranged into three parts, each of which explores classical reception within a specific strand of postdramatic theatre: text-based theatre, devised theatre, and theatre that transcends the usual boundaries of time and space, such as durational and immersive theatre. Each offers a semiotic and phenomenological analysis of a particular case study, covering both widely known and less studied productions from 1995 to 2015. Together they reveal that postdramatic theatre is related to the classics at its conceptual core, and that the study of postdramatic tragedies reveals a great deal about both the evolution of theatre in recent decades, and the status of ancient drama in modernity.

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Page Count

325

Published Date

ISBN 10

0198817681

ISBN 13

9780198817680

A Season of You

A Cloud Bay Christmas Novel

By: Emma Douglas

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A Season of You

A Cloud Bay Christmas Novel

By: Emma Douglas

It's been five years since Will Fraser first laid eyes on Mina Harper and fell in love, but she was happily married. After Mina's husband is killed by a drunk driver, Will, who owns a whiskey distillery, has kept his feelings hidden, knowing that not even a Christmas miracle would be enough to melt Mina's heart. Original.

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Page Count

304

Publisher

St. Martin's Paperbacks

Published Date

ISBN 10

1250111005

ISBN 13

9781250111005

William Shakespeare: Playwright & Poet

Playwright & Poet

By: Emma Carlson Berne

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William Shakespeare: Playwright & Poet

Playwright & Poet

By: Emma Carlson Berne

Discusses the life and achievements of William Shakespeare, discussing his childhood, education, family, and influence.

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Page Count

114

Publisher

ABDO Publishing Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

161785235X

ISBN 13

9781617852350

Virgin Whore

By: Emma Maggie Solberg

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Virgin Whore

By: Emma Maggie Solberg

In Virgin Whore, Emma Maggie Solberg uncovers a surprisingly prevalent theme in late English medieval literature and culture: the celebration of the Virgin Mary’s sexuality. Although history is narrated as a progressive loss of innocence, the Madonna has grown purer with each passing century. Looking to a period before the idea of her purity and virginity had ossified, Solberg uncovers depictions and interpretations of Mary, discernible in jokes and insults, icons and rituals, prayers and revelations, allegories and typologies—and in late medieval vernacular biblical drama. More unmistakable than any cultural artifact from late medieval England, these biblical plays do not exclusively interpret Mary and her virginity as fragile. In a collection of plays known as the N-Town manuscript, Mary is represented not only as virgin and mother but as virgin and promiscuous adulteress, dallying with the Trinity, the archangel Gabriel, and mortals in kaleidoscopic erotic combinations. Mary’s "virginity" signifies invulnerability rather than fragility, redemption rather than renunciation, and merciful license rather than ascetic discipline. Taking the ancient slander that Mary conceived Jesus in sin as cause for joyful laughter, the N-Town plays make a virtue of those accusations: through bawdy yet divine comedy, she redeems and exalts the crime. By revealing the presence of this promiscuous Virgin in early English drama and late medieval literature and culture—in dirty jokes told by Boccaccio and Chaucer, Malory’s Arthurian romances, and the double entendres of the allegorical Mystic Hunt of the Unicorn—Solberg provides a new understanding of Marian traditions.

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Page Count

290

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1501730347

ISBN 13

9781501730344

A Secret Sisterhood

The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot & Virginia Woolf

By: Emily Midorikawa,Emma Claire Sweeney

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A Secret Sisterhood

The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot & Virginia Woolf

By: Emily Midorikawa,Emma Claire Sweeney

A fascinating, inspirational look at the relationships between some of our best-loved female authors and their little-known literary collaborators and friends

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Page Count

365

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

054488373X

ISBN 13

9780544883734

Shakespeare's Rise to Cultural Prominence

Politics, Print and Alteration, 1642–1700

By: Emma Depledge

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Shakespeare's Rise to Cultural Prominence

Politics, Print and Alteration, 1642–1700

By: Emma Depledge

Shakespeare's rise to prominence was by no means inevitable. While he was popular in his lifetime, the number of new editions and revivals of his plays declined over the following decades. Emma Depledge uses the methodologies of book and theatre history to provide a re-assessment of the reputation and dissemination of Shakespeare during the Interregnum and Restoration. She demonstrates the crucial role of the Exclusion Crisis (1678–1682), a political crisis over the royal succession, as a foundational moment in Shakespeare's canonisation. The period saw a sudden surge of theatrical alterations and a significantly increased rate of new editions and stage revivals. In the wake of the Exclusion Crisis, Shakespeare's plays were made available on a scale not witnessed since the early seventeenth century, thus reversing what might otherwise have been a permanent disappearance of his drama from canonical familiarity and firmly establishing Shakespeare's work in the national cultural imagination.

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Page Count

267

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1108667341

ISBN 13

9781108667340

Forgetting the Alamo, Or, Blood Memory

A Novel

By: Emma Pérez

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Forgetting the Alamo, Or, Blood Memory

A Novel

By: Emma Pérez

This literary adventure takes place in nineteenth-century Texas and follows the story of a Tejana lesbian cowgirl after the fall of the Alamo. Micaela Campos, the central character, witnesses the violence against Mexicans, African Americans, and indigenous peoples after the infamous battles of the Alamo and of San Jacinto, both in 1836. Resisting an easy opposition between good versus evil and brown versus white characters, the novel also features Micaela's Mexican-Anglo cousin who assists and hinders her progress. Micaela's travels give us a new portrayal of the American West, populated by people of mixed races who are vexed by the collision of cultures and politics. Ultimately, Micaela's journey and her romance with a black/American Indian woman teach her that there are no easy solutions to the injustices that birthed the Texas Republic. This novel is an intervention in queer history and fiction with its love story between two women of color in mid-nineteenth-century Texas. Pérez also shows how a colonial past still haunts our nation's imagination. The battles of the Alamo and San Jacinto offered freedom and liberty to Texans, but what is often erased from the story is that common people who were Mexican, Indian, and Black did not necessarily benefit from the influx of so many Anglo immigrants to Texas. The social themes and identity issues that Pérez explores—political climate, debates over immigration, and historical revision of the American West—are current today.

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Page Count

219

Publisher

University of Texas Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0292721285

ISBN 13

9780292721289

Abraham Lincoln

By: Emma E. Haldy

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Abraham Lincoln

By: Emma E. Haldy

The My Itty-Bitty Bio series are biographies for the earliest readers. This book examines the life of Abraham Lincoln in a simple, age-appropriate way that will help children develop word recognition and reading skills. Includes a timeline and other informative backmatter.

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Publisher

Cherry Lake

Published Date

ISBN 10

163470536X

ISBN 13

9781634705363

Lucy Locket: Online Disaster

By: Emma Moss

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Lucy Locket: Online Disaster

By: Emma Moss

NEWSFLASH . . . VLOGGING IS GO! It's bad enough having to move house, school and country all at the same time, without making a fool of yourself on the first day of term. But that's just what Lucy's done - and one of her classmates has videoed the whole thing and put it online! Lucy's so stressed, her stammer's become worse than ever. So when a friend encourages her to create her own videos, she thinks it's a terrible idea - surely she's embarrassed herself enough for one lifetime! But when Lucy finally gives vlogging a try, she's amazed to find that people actually want to watch . . . Includes tips for making your own vlogs!

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Page Count

240

Publisher

Pan Macmillan

Published Date

ISBN 10

1509814922

ISBN 13

9781509814923

Coda (bk. 1)

By: Emma Trevayne

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Coda (bk. 1)

By: Emma Trevayne

Revolution sings in the air when a teenage boy plays illegal, underground music in a dystopian, Corp-controlled world.

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Page Count

322

Publisher

Running Press Kids

Published Date

ISBN 10

0762447281

ISBN 13

9780762447282

The Elizabethan Top Ten

Defining Print Popularity in Early Modern England

By: Emma Smith

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The Elizabethan Top Ten

Defining Print Popularity in Early Modern England

By: Emma Smith

Engaging with histories of the book and of reading, as well as with studies of material culture, this volume explores ’popularity’ in early modern English writings. Is ’popular’ best described as a theoretical or an empirical category in this period? How can we account for the gap between modern canonicity and early modern print popularity? How might we weight the evidence of popularity from citations, serial editions, print runs, reworkings, or extant copies? Is something that sells a lot always popular, even where the readership for print is only a small proportion of the population, or does popular need to carry something of its etymological sense of the public, the people? Four initial chapters sketch out the conceptual and evidential issues, while the second part of the book consists of ten short chapters-a ’hit parade’- in which eminent scholars take a genre or a single exemplar - play, romance, sermon, or almanac, among other categories-as a means to articulate more general issues. Throughout, the aim is to unpack and interrogate assumptions about the popular, and to decentre canonical narratives about, for example, the sermons of Donne or Andrewes over Smith, or the plays of Shakespeare over Mucedorus. Revisiting Elizabethan literary culture through the lenses of popularity, this collection allows us to view the subject from an unfamiliar angle-in which almanacs are more popular than sonnets and proclamations more numerous than plays, and in which authors familiar to us are displaced by names now often forgotten.

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Page Count

284

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1317034457

ISBN 13

9781317034452

Shakespeare's First Folio

Four Centuries of an Iconic Book

By: Emma Smith

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Shakespeare's First Folio

Four Centuries of an Iconic Book

By: Emma Smith

This is a biography of a book: the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays printed in 1623 and known as the First Folio. It begins with the story of its first purchaser in London in December 1623, and goes on to explore the ways people have interacted with this iconic book over the four hundred years of its history. Throughout the stress is on what we can learn from individual copies now spread around the world about their eventful lives. From ink blots to pet paws, from annotations to wineglass rings, First Folios teem with evidence of its place in different contexts with different priorities. This study offers new ways to understand Shakespeare's reception and the history of the book. Unlike previous scholarly investigations of the First Folio, it is not concerned with the discussions of how the book came into being, the provenance of its texts, or the technicalities of its production. Instead, it reanimates, in narrative style, the histories of this book, paying close attention to the details of individual copies now located around the world - their bindings, marginalia, general condition, sales history, and location - to discuss five major themes: owning, reading, decoding, performing, and perfecting. This is a history of the book that consolidated Shakespeare's posthumous reputation: a reception history and a study of interactions between owners, readers, forgers, collectors, actors, scholars, booksellers, and the book through which we understand and recognise Shakespeare.

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Page Count

344

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0191069280

ISBN 13

9780191069284

Incarnation

By: Emma Cornwall

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Incarnation

By: Emma Cornwall

In the steampunk world of Victorian London, a beautiful vampire seeks out the author of Dracula–to set the record straight . . . If one is to believe Bram Stoker’s legendary vampire tale, Lucy Weston is Dracula’s most wanton creation, a sexual creature of the night who preys on innocent boys. But the real-life Lucy is nothing like her fictional counterpart—and she demands to know why the Victorian author deliberately lied. With Stoker’s reluctant help, she’s determined to track down the very fiend who transformed her—from the sensual underworld where humans vie to become vampires, to a hidden cell beneath a temple to madness, and finally into the glittering Crystal Palace where death reigns supreme. Haunted by fragmentary memories of her lost life and love, Lucy must battle her thirst for blood as she struggles to stop a catastrophic war that will doom vampires and humans alike. Ultimately, she must make a choice that illuminates for her—and for us—what it means to be human.

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Page Count

339

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1439190402

ISBN 13

9781439190401

Book's by Emma Speare

The Great Western Beach

The Great Western Beach

The Animal-lore of Shakspeare's Time. Including Quadrupeds, Birds, Reptiles, Fish and Insects

The Animal-lore of Shakspeare's Time. Including Quadrupeds, Birds, Reptiles, Fish and Insects

Hard to Get

Hard to Get

Postdramatic Tragedies

Postdramatic Tragedies

A Season of You

A Season of You

William Shakespeare: Playwright & Poet

William Shakespeare: Playwright & Poet

Virgin Whore

Virgin Whore

A Secret Sisterhood

A Secret Sisterhood

Shakespeare's Rise to Cultural Prominence

Shakespeare's Rise to Cultural Prominence

Forgetting the Alamo, Or, Blood Memory

Forgetting the Alamo, Or, Blood Memory

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Lucy Locket: Online Disaster

Lucy Locket: Online Disaster

Coda (bk. 1)

Coda (bk. 1)

The Elizabethan Top Ten

The Elizabethan Top Ten

Shakespeare's First Folio

Shakespeare's First Folio

Incarnation

Incarnation

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