Frank Kermode (1919–2010) was a British critic and literary theorist. Born on the Isle of Man, he taught at University College London, Cambridge, Columbia and Harvard. Adapted from a series of lectures given at Bryn Mawr College, Kermode’s Sense of An Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction remains one of the most influential works of twentieth-century literary criticism.
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A Bold New Bible
July 15, 2010
The Restored New Testament: A New Translation with Commentary, Including the Gnostic Gospels Thomas, Mary, and Judas
by Willis Barnstone
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The Dear, Dear Friend
October 22, 2009
The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth: A Life
by Frances Wilson
The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals
by Dorothy Wordsworth, edited and with an introduction and notes by Pamela Woof
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Heroic Milton: Happy Birthday
February 26, 2009
John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought
by Gordon Campbell and Thomas N. Corns
Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot
by Anna Beer
Is Milton Better Than Shakespeare?
by Nigel Smith
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Sorry
November 6, 2008
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You Can’t Take It with You
October 9, 2008
Nothing to Be Frightened Of
by Julian Barnes
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Ezra Conquers London
May 1, 2008
Ezra Pound: Poet: A Portrait of the Man and His Work, Volume 1: The Young Genius, 1885–1920
by A. David Moody
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Infallible Since When?
February 14, 2008
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Wars Over the Printed Word
December 6, 2007
Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and Its Reformation Opponents
by James Simpson
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The Sharpest Thorn
June 14, 2007
Orwell in Tribune: “As I Please” and Other Writings 1943–7
compiled and edited by Paul Anderson
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Lives of Dr. Johnson
June 22, 2006
Johnson on the English Language: The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, Volume XVIII
edited by Gwin J. Kolb and Robert Demaria Jr.
Samuel Johnson’s Unpublished Revisions to the Dictionary of the English Language: A Facsimile Edition
edited by Allen Reddick
Anniversary Essays on Johnson’s Dictionary
edited by Jack Lynch and Anne McDermott
Samuel Johnson and the Art of Sinking, 1709–1791
by Freya Johnston
Loving Dr. Johnson
by Helen Deutsch
Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary
by Henry Hitchings
The Lives of the Poets
by Samuel Johnson, edited by Roger Lonsdale
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Arguing with God
December 1, 2005
Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine
by Harold Bloom
The Life of David
by Robert Pinsky
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Translating the Bible
November 17, 2005
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A New Story of Stories
October 20, 2005
The Five Books of Moses
translated and with commentary by Robert Alter
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The King of Crit
March 24, 2005
The Power of Delight: Essays 1962–2002
by John Bayley, selected by Leo Carey
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Art Among the Ruins
July 5, 2001
Practicing New Historicism
by Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt
Shakespeare After Theory by David Scott Kastan
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But Could She Cook?
April 12, 2001
Elizabeth I: Collected Works
edited by Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose
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The Geat of Geats
July 20, 2000
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation
by Seamus Heaney
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation
by R.M. Liuzza
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The Midrash Mishmash
April 23, 1998
The Bible As It Was by James L. Kugel
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Advertisement for Himself
May 15, 1997
The Gospel According to the Son by Norman Mailer
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The World Turned Upside Down
February 6, 1997
The Dictionary of Global Culture edited by Kwame Anthony Appiah, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
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Getting Even
November 28, 1996
Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon
by John Kerrigan
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The Pleasure of the Text
September 19, 1996
Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World by David Denby
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The Wild Goose Chase
May 23, 1996
The Search for the Perfect Language by Umberto Eco
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Howl
November 16, 1995
Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth
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The Wonder of Mozart
October 19, 1995
Mozart: A Life by Maynard Solomon
Mozart and Posterity
by Gernot Gruber, translated by K.S. Furness
Mozart: Portrait of a Genius by Norbert Elias, translated by Edmund Jephcott
On Mozart edited by James M. Morris
Haydn, Mozart and the Viennese School, 17401780 by Daniel Heartz
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart
by Georg Knepler, translated by J. Bradford Robinson
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Sound and Fury
February 16, 1995
Witches & Jesuits: Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’ by Garry Wills
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The Old New Age
March 24, 1994
The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution by Christopher Hill
The Battle of the Frogs and Fairford’s Flies: Miracles and the Pulp Press During the English Revolution by Jerome Friedman
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‘Forms of Nationhood’
September 24, 1992
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The High Cost of New History
June 25, 1992
Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England by Richard Helgerson
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Obsessed with Obsession
April 25, 1985
Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes
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A Passage to Cambridge
February 14, 1985
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What Nathalie Knew
October 25, 1984
Childhood by Nathalie Sarraute, translated by Barbara Wright. in consultation with the author
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Reading Shakespeare
July 21, 1983
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Shakespeare & Co.
June 16, 1983
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Shakespeare for the Eighties
April 28, 1983
Comic Women, Tragic Men: A Study of Gender and Genre in Shakespeare
by Linda Bamber
Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare by Lisa Jardine
Shakespeare the Director by Ann Pasternak Slater
The Artist and Society in Shakespeare’s England: The Collected Papers of Muriel Bradbrook, Volume I by M.C. Bradbrook
The Book Known as Q: A Consideration of Shakespeare’s Sonnets by Robert Giroux
Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare, edited by Kenneth Palmer
Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare, edited by Kenneth Muir
The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare, edited by H.J. Oliver
Henry V by William Shakespeare, edited by Gary Taylor
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Sacred Space
October 21, 1982
The New Oxford Book of Christian Verse chosen and edited by Donald Davie
The Poems of William Cowper edited by John D. Baird, edited by Charles Ryskamp
The Letters and Prose Writings of William Cowper edited by James King, edited by Charles Ryskamp
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Alien Sages
November 6, 1980
Under the Sign of Saturn by Susan Sontag
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The Flying University
January 24, 1980
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Disappointment
September 27, 1979
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‘Love and Do as You Please’
August 16, 1979
Man of Nazareth by Anthony Burgess
The Living End
by Stanley Elkin
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The Lattimore Version
July 19, 1979
The Four Gospels and the Revelation translated by Richmond Lattimore
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Down There on a Visit
June 28, 1979
Decadence: The Strange Life of an Epithet by Richard Gilman
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Under the Sheet
February 8, 1979
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Yes, Santa, There Is a Virginia
December 21, 1978
The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Two: 1920-1924 edited by Anne Olivier Bell, assisted by Andrew McNeillie
The Unknown Virginia Woolf by Roger Poole
Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf by Phyllis Rose
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In Quest of Jesus
December 21, 1978
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Jesus and Adam
December 7, 1978
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St. Mark on Broadway
November 9, 1978
St. Mark’s Gospel a solo performance by Alec McCowen
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The Quest for the Magical Jesus
October 26, 1978
Jesus the Magician by Morton Smith
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A Modern Master
August 17, 1978
Selected Stories by V.S. Pritchett
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Deciphering the Big Book
June 29, 1978
The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke by Raymond E. Brown
A Palpable God: Thirty Stories Translated from the Bible with an Essay on the Origins and Life of Narrative by Reynolds Price
The Early Versions of the New Testament
by Bruce M. Metzger
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Beethoven at Home
April 6, 1978
Beethoven by Maynard Solomon
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Sticking to the Union
June 23, 1977
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No Wonder
April 28, 1977
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Laboring Fabians
March 17, 1977
The Fabians by Norman MacKenzie, by Jeanne MacKenzie
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A Successful Alchemist
October 14, 1976
The Abyss by Marguerite Yourcenar, translated in collaboration with the author by Grace Frick
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Coming Up for Air
July 15, 1976
Sweet William by Beryl Bainbridge
Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Selected Stories by Nadine Gordimer
Jill by Philip Larkin
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Fighting Freud
April 29, 1976
Out of My System: Psychoanalysis, Ideology, and Critical Method by Frederick Crews
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Working Up Work
November 27, 1975
Work and Play: Ideas and Experience of Work and Leisure by Alasdair Clayre
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The Model of a Modern Modernist
May 1, 1975
The Making of Modern Drama by Richard Gilman
The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick by Peter Handke, translated by Michael Roloff
Short Letter, Long Farewell by Peter Handke, translated by Ralph Manheim
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams: A Life Story by Peter Handke, translated by Ralph Manheim
The Innerworld of the Outerworld of the Innerworld by Peter Handke, translated and with a postscript by Michael Roloff
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A Disagreement
February 6, 1975
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Buyers’ Market
October 31, 1974
George Gissing: The Born Exile by Gillian Tindall
Arnold Bennett: A Biography
by Margaret Drabble
Arnold Bennett: The Evening Standard Years edited with an introduction by Andrew Mylett
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Grandeur and Filth
May 30, 1974
The Victorian City: Images and Realities edited by H.J. Dyos, edited by Michael Wolff
The Victorian Working Class: Selections from the Morning Chronicle Service (Portland, Oregon) edited and introduced by P.E. Razzell, by R.W. Wainwright
The Real Foundations: Literature and Social Change by David Craig
The Victorians by the Sea edited by Howard Grey, edited by Graham Stuart
Engels, Manchester, and the Working Class by Steven Marcus
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Joyce Center
May 2, 1974
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Crisis Critic
May 17, 1973
The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language
by Michel Foucault, translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith
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Ford’s Better Idea
January 25, 1973
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Shakespeare in the Movies
May 4, 1972
Antony and Cleopatra (to be released in the United States later this year) directed by Charlton Heston
Macbeth directed by Roman Polanski
King Lear directed by Peter Brook
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A New Era in Shakespeare Criticism?
November 5, 1970
Johnson on Shakespeare edited by Arthur Sherbo, with an Introduction by Bertrand H. Bronson
Shakespearian and other Studies by F.P. Wilson, edited by Helen Gardner
Shakespeare the Craftsman by M.C. Bradbrook
Shakespeare: The Pattern in his Carpet by Francis Fergusson
The Tragic Engagement: A Study of Shakespeare’s Classical Tragedies by Judah Stampfer
The Tiger’s Heart: Eight Essays on Shakespeare by Herbert Howarth
Motiveless Malignity by Louis Auchincloss
Macbeth and the Players by Dennis Bartholomeusz
The Pillar of the World: Antony and Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s Development by Julian Markels
Iago: Some Approaches to the Illusion of his Motivation by Stanley Edgar Hyman
Reinterpretations of Elizabethan Drama edited by Norman Rabkin
An Essay on Shakespeare’s Sonnets by Stephen Booth
Shakespeare’s Verbal Art in Th’Expence of Spirit
by Roman Jakobson, by Lawrence G. Jones
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Critical List
August 13, 1970
Literature and the Sixth Sense by Philip Rahv
The Writing on the Wall
by Mary McCarthy
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The Incomparable Benjamin
December 18, 1969
Illuminations. Essays and Reflections by Walter Benjamin, edited and with an Introduction by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn
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The IBM Shakespeare
January 30, 1969
A Complete and Systematic Concordance to the Works of Shakespeare
by Marvin Spevack
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More Xenia Poems
January 2, 1969
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Xenia (1964–1966)
December 19, 1968
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Easy, Easy
May 23, 1968
The Liverpool Scene
edited by Edward Lucie-Smith
The Incredible New Liverpool Scene recorded live along the Mersey Beat, written and performed by Adrian Henri, by Roger McGough
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Free Fall
March 14, 1968
The Presence of the Word by Walter J. Ong S.J.
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Hamlet Brainwashed
December 21, 1967
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Old Modern
October 26, 1967
On Modernism: The Prospects for Literature and Freedom by Louis Kampf
New American Review, No. 1 edited by Theodore Solotaroff
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Fiedler Defense Fund
October 12, 1967
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Reading Shakespeare’s Mind
October 12, 1967
Hamlet and Revenge by Eleanor Prosser
Fools of Time: Studies in Shakespearian Tragedy by Northrop Frye
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The Viennese Muses
December 15, 1966
The Letters of Mozart and His Family
edited by Emily Anderson, Second edition prepared by A. Hyatt King, by Monica Carolan
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The Enduring Lear
May 12, 1966
King Lear in Our Time by Maynard Mack
Conceptions of Shakespeare by Alfred Harbage
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Life and Death of the Novel
October 28, 1965
Henry Fielding: Mask and Feast
by Andrew Wright
The True Patriot by Henry Fielding, edited by Miriam Austin Locke
Radical Dr. Smollett by Donald Bruce
Jane Austen: A Study of Her Artistic Development by A. Walton Litz
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One Man’s Vedanta
September 16, 1965
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The Old Amalaki
June 17, 1965
Ramakrishna and His Disciples
by Christopher Isherwood
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Deep Frye
April 22, 1965
A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance by Northrop Frye
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Time of Your Life
January 28, 1965
Man and Time
by J.B. Priestley
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The Man in the Closet
December 3, 1964
The Life of Drama
by Eric Bentley
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The Shakespearian Rag
September 24, 1964
Shakespeare Our Contemporary by Jan Kott, Translated from the Polish by Boleslaw Taborski, with an Introduction by Martin Esslin
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T V Dinner
August 20, 1964
Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan
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Lear at Lincoln Center
June 25, 1964
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Hemingway’s Last Novel
June 11, 1964
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
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The Case for William Golding
April 30, 1964
The Spire by William Golding
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Beckett Country
March 19, 1964
How it is
by Samuel Beckett
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Isadora
March 5, 1964
Isadora Duncan: Her Life, Her Art, Her Legacy by Walter Terry
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What Is Art?
February 20, 1964
Meditations on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art by E.H. Gombrich
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Yonder Shakespeare, Who Is He?
January 9, 1964
William Shakespeare by A.L. Rowse
Shakespeare by Peter Quennell
The Sonnets of Shakespeare by J. Dover Wilson
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Colette
December 12, 1963
The Blue Lantern by Colette, translated by Roger Senhouse