The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Quotations (Oxford Quick Reference) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198609523 ISBN 13: 9780198609520

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2004

Synopsis

This newly expanded edition of the acclaimed Oxford Dictionary of Literary Quotations illuminates the world of the writer, from Shakespeare to Stephen King, from the quill to the PC. Covering all aspects of literary life, this edition is now enriched with new themes and memorable quotations from recent favorites such as Jonathan Franzen, J.K. Rowling, and Donna Tartt.
Celebrating over 3,000 years of writing, the dictionary's 4,000 quotations are arranged thematically and chronologically by author within each topic. Full keyword and author indexes ensure that a favorite quotation or author can be located quickly. From "Tools of the Trade" to "Writer's Block", from "Fables and Fairy Tales" to "Earning a Living," The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Quotations brings us the wittiest, most profound, most surprising, and most memorable words of the world's greatest writers on all aspects of their lives and work.

About this title

About the Author

Peter Kemp is Fiction Editor of the Sunday Times, a Visiting Fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford, and a Visiting Professor at Kingston University. His previous publications include Muriel Spark and H.G. Wells and the Culminating Age.

From Publishers Weekly

What is literature? Depending on whom one asks, it's "a drug" (George Borrow); "the question minus the answer" (Roland Barthes); "the orchestration of platitudes" (Thornton Wilder); or "a splendid mistress, but a bad wife" (Rudyard Kipling). These bon mots and over 4,400 others (one-fifth of them new to this edition) are gathered here by Kemp, the fiction editor of the (London) Sunday Times. The quotes, as before, are organized by theme, which include Writer's Block, Morality and Tools of the Trade; Collaboration, Graffiti and Epitaphs are among several themes also new to this edition. An author index makes it easy to find out what Nabokov said about art ("Beauty plus pity-that is the closest we can get to a definition of art") or what Barbara Pym thought of poetry anthologies ("What a bad sign it is to get the Oxford Book of Victorian Verse out of the library"). All in all, this is an edifying and highly diverting resource for any student of writing and language.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0198609523
• ISBN 13: 9780198609520
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 510
• Editor: Kemp Peter