David Glover

Scott McCracken

Popular commercial fiction emerged in the nineteenth century, with serialised novels and sensational penny dreadfuls. Today it remains a multi-million dollar industry giving pleasure to many, but it is also a field of growing interest for scholars and students of literature. This Companion covers the major developments in the history of popular fiction, with specially commissioned chapters on pulp fiction, bestsellers, and comics and graphic narratives. The volume also examines the public and personal everyday contexts within which popular texts are read, highlighting the ways in which such narratives have circulated across a variety of constantly changing media, including theatre, television, cinema and new computer-based digital forms. Case studies from key genres - crime fiction, romance and Gothic horror - as well as a full chronology and guide to further reading make this collection indispensable to all those interested in this complex and vibrant cultural field.

The Cambridge Companion to Popular Fiction

Bringing together chapters on the bestseller, detective fiction, popular romance, science fiction and horror, this text provides an account of the cultural theories that have informed the study of popular fiction.

Reading Popular Fiction

Pulp

Pulp brings together in one volume chapters on the best seller, detective fiction, popular romance, science fiction and horror. It combines a lucid and accessible account of the cultural theories that have informed the study of popular fiction with detailed readings of Jackie Collins, Jilly Cooper, Colin Dexter, William Gibson, Stephen King, Iain Banks, Terry McMillan and Walter Mosley.Scott Mc Cracken argues that popular fiction serves a vital function: it provides us with the means to construct a workable sense of self in the face of the disorientating pressures of modernity.

Peter Buse

Ken Hirschkop

Bertrand Taithe

'Benjamin's Arcades' is an innovative text for students and specialists on the intellectual and political context of Walter Benjamin's unfinished masterpiece, 'The Arcades Project'. It includes a special 'convoluted index' to aid the reader in discovering recurrent themes and ideas, both in the book itself and Benjamin's methods.

An Unguided Tour

Benjamin's Arcades

An overview of popular literature from the early nineteenth century to the present day from a historical and comparative perspective.

Scott McCracken

Books

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