By Muriel Spark
Spark chooses Rome, "the motherland of sensation," for the atmosphere of her tale approximately celebrity Annabel Christopher (known to her adoring lovers as "The English Lady-Tiger"), who has made the deadly mistake of believing in her public snapshot. this mistake and her embittered husband, and unsuccessful actor, meet up with her. Her ultimate act is barely the 1st surprising climax—further surprises anticipate. smartly savaging our megastar tradition, Spark rejoices in a single of her favourite subjects—the conflict among sham and actual identity—and presents Annabel with an unforeseen triumph.
Read Online or Download The Public Image PDF
Similar british literature books
The History of King Lear (Oxford World's Classics)
Editor notice: Edited via Stanley Wells at the foundation of a textual content ready by way of Gary Taylor
-----------------
The Oxford Shakespeare bargains authoritative texts from top students in variations designed to interpret and remove darkness from the performs for contemporary readers
• a brand new, modern-spelling textual content, in keeping with the 4to textual content of 1608
• on-page observation and notes clarify which means, staging, allusions and lots more and plenty else
• specific creation considers composition, assets, performances and altering severe attitudes to the play
• illustrated with creation images and similar art
• contains 'The Ballad of King Lear' and similar offshoots
• complete index to creation and commentary
• sturdy sewn binding for lasting use
'Not easily a greater textual content yet a brand new notion of Shakespeare. this can be a significant success of twentieth-century scholarship. occasions Literary Supplement
King Lear (HarperPerennial Classics)
King Lear is pushed to the edge of insanity by means of his personal activities while he disinherits his youngest daughter, the stunning Cordelia, due to her lack of ability to specific her love for him. Having divided his realm among his ultimate daughters, Goneril and Regan, Lear is betrayed by way of his silly and deceitful little ones, and is left to wander the heath with basically his idiot, his servant Caius, and the madman Tom O’Bedlam for corporation.
Girl Chatterley's Lover was once encouraged through the long-standing affair among Frieda, Lawrence's aristocratic German spouse, and an Italian peasant who finally turned her 3rd husband; Lawrence's fight with sexual impotence; and the situations of his and Frieda's courtship and the early years in their marriage.
The Adventure of the Dancing Men and Other Sherlock Holmes Stories
4 awesome tales that includes the peerless sleuth and his devoted sidekick, Dr. Watson: "The event of the Dancing Men," "The experience of the death Detective," "The Musgrave Ritual" and "The event of the Bruce-Partington Plans. " superb advent to Holmes corpus; pocket-size deal with for any secret lover.
- CliffsNotes on Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales
- Troilus and Cressida (HarperPerennial Classics)
- El espejo de un hombre: Vida, obra y época de William Shakespeare
- Jude the Obscure
Extra resources for The Public Image
Sample text
5 Keenly aware of the charges levelled against their works, authors of fashionable novels defend them with spirit. ‘Novels,—especially such as affect to treat fashionable life,—are born to such an inheritance of shame’, writes Mrs Gore, who interrupts the plot of Pin Money to complain of the critics, ‘[I]t is so much the custom of dull or silly people of all ages and sexes to reprobate them with a sentence of contempt as the most frivolous, flighty, useless, and condemnable productions of the press … that it becomes necessary from time to time to throw a heavy lump of marl on the surface’, something dull and tedious, ‘in order to deceive the dunces into a belief that some mysterious process of improvement is carrying on for their advantage’ (ii, 53–4).
61 Moreover, Mr Lloyd himself is the author of that ‘book in his window’, A Treatise on Hats, with twenty-four engravings and ‘now in its fourth edition’, so we have two advertisements in one. Lloyd’s customers, explains Real Life in London, ‘have only to refer to the engravings in Mr. Lloyd’s work, where every possible variety [of hat] is clearly defined, and to order such as may suit the rank in life they either possess or wish to assume’ [emphasis added] (i, 18). In short, in the daily papers and in Mr Lloyd’s book ‘dedicated to the head’, ‘all the senses are tantalized with profusion, and the eye is dazzled with temptation, for no other reason’, says the author, ‘than because it is the constant business of a fashionable life—not to live in, but out of self’ (i, 104).
Similarly, the reader looks for clues in Lady Birmingham’s scene and finds them on the lady’s richly furnished desk. It is from this power base that the parvenue Lady Birmingham commands the reluctant, grumbling deference of London exclusives, bidding them to attend the grand opening of her richly furnished new Regent Street house – which they most certainly do. The reader’s subjectivity, captured by this carefully managed display, is not misled. Lady Birmingham’s self-confident social power comes exactly ‘as advertised’.