UNITED KINGDOM AUTHOR · DRAMA
William Wycherley
English dramatist of the Restoration period
The Villagers said that John Redding was a queer child.
— from Complete plays, 1956
Most acclaimed
Complete plays
1956
"This landmark gathering of Zora Neale Hurston's short fiction - most of which appeared only in literary magazines during her lifetime and some of which has never been published - reveals the evolution of the talents of one of the most important African-American writers. Spanning the years from 1921, when Howard University's literary magazine published "John Redding Goes to Sea," to 1955, when Hurston was working on different versions of the story of the beheading of John the Baptist as told by Salome's mother, five years before her death, these stories attest to the author's tremendous range at the same time as they establish themes that recur in her longer fiction." "In such stories as "Spunk," "The Gilded Six-Bits," and "The Conscience of the Court," Hurston's customary use of metaphor and black dialect enriches her simple narratives and brings her characters vividly to life. Folklore, the cornerstone of Hurston's fiction, is integral to such stories as "Cock Robin Beale Street," "Book of Harlem," and "'Possum or Pig?" Biblical themes, another trademark Hurston offering, appear in "The Seventh Veil" and "The Bone of Contention." These and the other stories in this collection map, in rich language and imagery, Hurston's development and concerns as a writer and provide an invaluable reflection of the mind and imagination of the author of the acclaimed novel Their Eyes Were Watching God."--BOOK JACKET.
Plays
Miller Plays: 6 is the final volume in Methuen Drama's acclaimed series of work by Arthur Miller who, during his lifetime, was acknowledged as 'the greatest American dramatist of our age' (Evening Standard). Featuring two plays from the 1990s and his final two plays (2002 and 2004), it is the first ever publication of Miller's final play, Finishing the Picture. Inspired by his experience during the filming of The Misfits with his then wife Marilyn Monroe, the play was completed and produced at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, just months before the playwright's death in Feburary 2005. Broken Glass (1994) is set in Brooklyn in 1938 and intertwines a woman's obsession with the news from Germany that government thugs are smashing Jewish stores, with her strange relationship with her husband. Mr Peter's Connections (1998) is an unforgettable journey through one man's mind at a time of suspended consciousness, where the living and dead intermingle in his memory. Resurrection Blues is Miller's astonishing black comedy set in a South American banana republic, that satirises global politicsand the predatory nature of a media-saturated culture. The volume also features a chronology of the writer's work and an introduction by Enoch Brater, professor of English Literature at the University of Michigan.