Gylphi

Sarah Hall: Critical Essays

Edited by Alexander Beaumont and Elke D’hoker

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Product details

10 Dec 2022

ISBN 9781780241043 (Paperback)
236 pp., Free UK Shipping

About

Sarah Hall’s fame as a writer has been rising steadily since her debut novel, Haweswater, appeared in 2002. With each succeeding novel she has broken new ground and captivated new audiences, and her fifth, The Wolf Border, received international acclaim. The essays in this collection – the first book-length study of Hall’s work to be made available to academic and non-academic readers – bear witness to her originality and versatility. They situate Hall’s work within wider intellectual and literary traditions, British and international contexts, and offer an essential guide to an essential writer.

Reviews

‘This illuminating collection offers an overdue scholarly appraisal of Sarah Hall’s fictional oeuvre to date. The essays explore questions of genre, style, national and devolutionary politics, feminism, environmentalism, and survival. Particular attention is paid to the creaturely human animals that populate Hall’s fiction and the visceral, subcutaneous vitalism that unspools settled notions of species and subjectivity in her work. Essential reading for anyone with an interest in this important contemporary British writer.’ -- Caroline Edwards, Birkbeck, University of London

‘In this wide-ranging and comprehensive collection, Beaumont and D’hoker have assembled an impressive range of critics and essays on a writer whose reputation in literary studies has been gradually building over the last two decades … Sarah Hall: Critical Essays will help to cement Hall’s place in the ranks of the best in contemporary literature and achieves what all good literary criticism should – it takes you back to the fiction with fresh eyes and new perspectives.’ -- Nick Bentley, Keele University

Foreword
Sarah Hall

Introduction
Alexander Beaumont and Elke D’hoker

Chapter 1
Real Nature
Melanie Ebdon

Chapter 2
Vital Animals in Nietzsche, Garnett and Hall
Elke D’hoker

Chapter 3
Homo Sapiens: Being Human in How to Paint a Dead Man and The Wolf Border
Natalie Riley

Chapter 4
Rewilding Welfare: Sarah Hall and the State of Nature
Pieter Vermeulen

Chapter 5
Post-British Politics and Sarah Hall’s North
Chloé Ashbridge

Chapter 6
Borderlands: Spatializing Feminist Struggle in Sarah Hall’s Fiction
Emilie Walezak

Chapter 7
La Fiaba Oscura: Narrating Italy in How to Paint a Dead Man
Francesca Pierini

Chapter 8
Sarah Hall’s Material Imagination
Alexander Beaumont

Notes on Contributors

Index