New Romantics

After punk, pop culture wanted to dazzle again. Fashion and style were the means and the New Romantics took them to the limit. But the New Romantic movement was more than just a reaction against the anti-glamour of punk…and the music was only part of the story. The first in-depth book about British Pop’s most flamboyant movement. The clubs and cabarets, the clothes, the glitter, the make-up, the hair, the fashion, the attitude and the style all made up The Look – and the Look was everything. The New Romantics explores the varied roots of the movement, using interviews with the stars and tracing a range of influences from David Bowie to the movie Cabaret and the Berlin of the 1930s. Includes interviews with Martin Kemp, Boy George and Steve Strange.

Through the work of 36 contemporary Australian artists who have reinvigorated this movement, New Romantics traces the influences that led them to this unlikely path. This is the first book that seeks to understand a paradigm shift that is shaping the future course of Australian art.

A New York Times Notable Book of 2022! The New York Times Bestseller and Good Morning America Book Club Pick! "I LOVED this book! ...Funny, breathtaking, hopeful, and dreamy.”—Ali Hazelwood, New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis A disillusioned millennial ghostwriter who, quite literally, has some ghosts of her own, has to find her way back home in this sparkling adult debut from national bestselling author Ashley Poston. Florence Day is the ghostwriter for one of the most prolific romance authors in the industry, and she has a problem—after a terrible breakup, she no longer believes in love. It’s as good as dead. When her new editor, a too-handsome mountain of a man, won't give her an extension on her book deadline, Florence prepares to kiss her career goodbye. But then she gets a phone call she never wanted to receive, and she must return home for the first time in a decade to help her family bury her beloved father. For ten years, she's run from the town that never understood her, and even though she misses the sound of a warm Southern night and her eccentric, loving family and their funeral parlor, she can’t bring herself to stay. Even with her father gone, it feels like nothing in this town has changed. And she hates it. Until she finds a ghost standing at the funeral parlor’s front door, just as broad and infuriatingly handsome as ever, and he’s just as confused about why he’s there as she is. Romance is most certainly dead . . . but so is her new editor, and his unfinished business will have her second-guessing everything she’s ever known about love stories. "One of the Summer's Hottest Reads"—Entertainment Weekly

From the New York Times–bestselling author of The House Girl comes a novel about our most precious and dangerous attachment: family In the spring of 1981, the young Skinner siblings—fierce Renee, dreamy Caroline, golden boy Joe and watchful Fiona—lose their father to a heart attack and their mother to a paralyzing depression, events that thrust them into a period they will later call “the Pause.” Caught between the predictable life they once led and an uncertain future that stretches before them, the siblings navigate the dangers and resentments of the Pause to emerge fiercely loyal and deeply connected. Two decades later, the Skinners find themselves again confronted with a family crisis that tests the strength of these bonds and forces them to question the life choices they’ve made and what, exactly, they will do for love. Narrated nearly a century later by the youngest sibling, the renowned poet Fiona Skinner, The Last Romantics spans a lifetime. It’s a story of sex and affection, sacrifice and selfishness, deeply held principles and dashed expectations, a lost engagement ring, a squandered baseball scholarship, unsupervised summers at the neighbourhood pond and an iconic book of love poems. But most of all it is the story of Renee, Caroline, Joe and Fiona: the ways they support each other, the ways they betray each other and the ways they knit back together bonds they have fractured. In the vein of Commonwealth, Little Fires Everywhere and The Nest, this is a panoramic, tenderly insightful novel about one devoted, imperfect family. The Last Romantics is an unforgettable exploration of the responsibilities we bear both gracefully and unwillingly, and the all-important, ever-complex definition of love.

The Romanticism that emerged after the American and French revolutions of 1776 and 1789 represented a new flowering of the imagination and the spirit, and a celebration of the soul of humanity with its capacity for love. This extraordinary collection sets the acknowledged genius of poems such as Blake's 'Tyger', Coleridge's 'Khubla Khan' and Shelley's 'Ozymandias' alongside verse from less familiar figures and women poets such as Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson. We also see familiar poets in an unaccustomed light, as Blake, Wordsworth and Shelley demonstrate their comic skills, while Coleridge, Keats and Clare explore the Gothic and surreal.

This scholarly analysis of the music of Taylor Swift identifies how and why she is one of the early 21st century's most recognizable and most popular stars. By the age of 13, singer-songwriter Taylor Swift had already inked a development deal with a major record label. This early milestone was an appropriate predictor of what accomplishments were to come. Now a superstar artist with an international fanbase of millions and several critically acclaimed and commercially successful albums, Swift has established herself as one of the most important musicians of the 21st century. This accessible book serves Taylor Swift fans as well as students of contemporary popular music and popular culture, critically examining all of this young artist's work to date. The book's organization is primarily chronological, covering Taylor Swift's album and single releases in order of release date while also documenting the elements of her music and personality that have made her popular with fans of country music and pop music across a surprisingly diverse age range of listeners. The chapters address how Swift's songs have been viewed by some fans as anthems of empowerment or messages of encouragement, particularly by members of the LGBTQ community, those who have been bullied or been seen as outsiders, and emerging artists. The final chapter places Swift's work and her public persona in the context of her times with respect to her use of and relationship with technology-for example, her use of social media and songwriting technology-and her expressions of a new type of feminism that is unlike the feminism of the 1970s.

Now in paperback, the great historian's provocative account of the rise of Romanticism. Combining his incomparable knowledge of English history with an original interpretation of British literature of the late 18th and early nineteenth century, E. P. Thompson traces the intellectual influences and societal pressures that gave rise to the English Romantic movement. Writing with great passion and literary force, Thompson examines the interaction between politics and literature at the beginning of the modern age, focusing in on the turbulent 1790s -- the time of the French and American revolutions -- through the celebrated writings of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Mary Wollstonecraft.

Claiming that the scholarship and criticism of Romanticism and its works have for too long been dominated by a Romantic ideology—by an uncritical absorption in Romanticism's own self-representations—Jerome J. McGann presents a new, critical view of the subject that calls for a radically revisionary reading of Romanticism. In the course of his study, McGann analyzes both the predominant theories of Romanticism (those deriving from Coleridge, Hegel, and Heine) and the products of its major English practitioners. Words worth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Byron are considered in greatest depth, but the entire movement is subjected to a searching critique. Arguing that poetry is produced and reproduced within concrete historical contexts and that criticism must take these contexts into account, McGann shows how the ideologies embodied in Romantic poetry and theory have shaped and distorted contemporary critical activities.

This anthology explores the full range of verse published in Britain between 1785 and 1832, one of the most fertile periods for English poetry. Selections from all the major and minor poets are included, as well as examples of the many other kinds of verse which continued to be written duringthe period: political and satirical verse, 'sentimental' verse, regional and dialect verse, and verse in translation.Organizing the book by date of first publication, Jerome J. McGann calls attention to the historical and cultural contexts in which the poetry is embedded. Old familiar poems are thrown into new relationships, and traditional views of the poetry of the period challenged.