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"Midlands (England) Fiction."
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Middle England
\"From the acclaimed author of The Rotters' Club and The Closed Circle comes the novel for our strange contemporary times. Beginning nine years ago on the outskirts of Birmingham, where car factories have been replaced by chain retail, and London, where both frenzied riots and Olympic fever plague the streets, Middle England tracks a brilliantly vivid cast of characters through the transformation of their society. There are newlyweds Ian and Sophie, who disagree about England's future and, possibly, their relationship; Doug, the political commentator who writes impassioned columns about austerity from his Chelsea townhouse while his radical, teenage daughter undertakes a relentless quest for universal justice; Benjamin Trotter, who embarks on an apparently doomed new career in middle age, and his father Colin, whose last wish is to vote LEAVE in the Brexit referendum. Through all these lives we see this very tentatively united kingdom itself: a place of nostalgia and delusion, bewilderment and barely suppressed rage. As acutely alert to the absurdity of the political classes as it is compassionate about those left behind by elites of all sorts, this is a novel only Jonathan Coe could have written\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Provincial readers in eighteenth-century England
Many scholars have written about 18th-century English novels, but no one really knows who read them. This study provides historical data on the provincial reading publics for various forms of fiction — novels, plays, chapbooks, children's books, and magazines. Archival records of Midland booksellers based in five market towns and selling printed matter to over thirty-three hundred customers between 1744 and 1807 form the basis for new information about who actually bought and borrowed different kinds of fiction in 18th-century provincial England. This book thus offers the first solid demographic information about actual readership in 18th-century provincial England, not only about the class, profession, age, and sex of readers but also about the market of available fiction from which they made their choices — and some speculation about why they made the choices they did. Contrary to received ideas, men in the provinces were the principal customers for 18th-century novels, including those written by women. Provincial customers preferred to buy rather than borrow fiction, and women preferred plays and novels written by women — women's works would have done better had women been the principal consumers. That is, demand for fiction (written by both men and women) was about equal for the first five years, but afterward the demand for women's works declined. Both men and women preferred novels with identifiable authors to anonymous ones, however, and both boys and men were able to cross gender lines in their reading. These and other findings will alter the way scholars look at the fiction of the period, the questions asked, and the histories told of it.
eBook
The lost girl
\"Journey of a woman caught between two worlds and two lives - one mired in dreary, industrial England and a life of convention, the other set in the vibrant Italian landscape holding the promise of sensual liberation\"--CD Container.
Book