The Literary Detective: 100 Puzzles in Classic Fiction

The Literary Detective: 100 Puzzles in Classic Fiction
ISBN-10
019210036X
ISBN-13
9780192100368
Category
American fiction
Pages
749
Language
English
Published
2000-01-01
Publisher
Oxford University Press, USA
Author
John Sutherland

Description

The Literary Detective is an omnibus edition of John Sutherland's three best-selling collections of literary puzzles, Is Heathcliffe a Murderer?, Can Jane Eyre be Happy?, and Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet? Investigating a variety of anomalies, enigmas, and conundrums such as 'Why does Robinson Crusoe find only one footprint?' and 'Where does Fanny Hill keep her contraceptives?', Professor Sutherland explores the questions readers often ask and critics rarely discuss. His forensic skills focus on authors from Defoe and Fielding to Wells and Woolf, relishing in particular the nineteenth-century novelists, Austen, Collins, Dickens, and the Brontes. By addressing 'real world' questions John Sutherland has brought lit. crit. Down from the rarefied heights of academe and into the everyday discourse of ordinary readers, who bring their own expertise to bear on these novels. In his introduction he quotes from some of the many letters he has received, which demonstrate that we canall be astute and entertaining critics. The 'Sherlock Holmes of Literature', as he has been called, John Sutherland reminds us of the sheer pleasure and excitement that good books inspire, and of their endless ability to surprise and delight us.

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