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Henry David Thoreau spent his life as an intellectual vagrant, jumping fences, pushing boundaries, and crossing borders. How, why, and to what end are the questions asked by contributors to this new volume of essays, whose work crosses national and disciplinary borders to think about Thoreau anew.

Deliberately invoking Thoreau's commitment to “living a border life,” a life located between the world of nature and that of the polis, these varied essays explore the writer's thinking and writing as situated not merely against, but across and beyond borders and boundaries—whether geographic, temporal, or spiritual. Arguing that literary texts are governed by mediation and dialogue, lines of force becoming lines of connection that entail complex patterns and interweavings, the contributors draw on methodologies that freely combine literary and philosophical approaches with cultural and political ones—in turn moving us beyond borders.

Contributors include the volume editors as well as Kristen Case, Danielle Follett, Rochelle Johnson, John J. Kucich, Daniel S. Malachuk, Henrik Otterberg, Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, Benjamin Pickford, David M. Robinson, Christa Holm Vogelius, and Michael C. Weisenburg.

Unlocking the imagination, language, and vision that shaped C. S. Lewis's enduring legacy.

Through the Open Door: A New Look at C. S. Lewis offers a fresh and illuminating examination of one of the twentieth century's most beloved writers, scholars, and Christian thinkers. In this insightful study, Dabney Adams Hart moves beyond familiar assessments of C. S. Lewis as the creator of The Chronicles of Narnia to explore the intellectual foundations that shaped his work as a literary critic, educator, and defender of the Christian faith. Drawing on Lewis's essays, criticism, fiction, and apologetic writings, Hart reveals the central importance of imagination, language, myth, and meaning in Lewis's understanding of literature and human experience.

Rather than treating Lewis's diverse writings as separate endeavors, Hart demonstrates how they reflect a coherent and unified vision of truth, beauty, and morality. The book shows how Lewis used story and symbolism to address enduring questions about faith, reason, and the search for purpose in a modern world. Accessible to general readers while engaging for scholars, this volume provides valuable insight into the ideas that continue to make Lewis a significant figure in literary and religious studies. An important contribution to Lewis scholarship, Through the Open Door invites readers to discover anew the imagination and intellect behind one of the most influential Christian authors of the modern era.

Drawing on decades of research and interviews with Wright’s family and Wright scholars, Bruce Allen Dick uncovers the theatrical influence on Wright’s oeuvre--from his 1930s boxing journalism to his unpublished one-acts on returning Black GIs in WWII to his unproduced pageant honoring Vladimir Lenin. Wright maintained rewarding associations with playwrights, writers, and actors such as Langston Hughes, Theodore Ward, Paul Robeson, and Lillian Hellman, and took particular inspiration from French literary figures like Jean-Paul Sartre. Dick’s analysis also illuminates Wright’s direct involvement with theater and film, including the performative aspects of his travel writings; the Orson Welles-directed Native Son on Broadway; his acting debut in Native Son’s first film version; and his play “Daddy Goodness,” a satire of religious charlatans like Father Divine, in the 1930s.

Bold and original, Thunder on the Stage offers a groundbreaking reinterpretation of a major American writer.

Of Tom Slaughter, Henry Geldzahler, the first curator of twentieth-century art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, commented: "The quality of freshness, the familiar world re-seen, from the water towers of New York City to the rural pleasures of boating, is the most immediately arresting aspect of Tom Slaughter's art... Bold bright colors swiftly laid down echo with resonances: Léger and Stuart Davis, Raoul Dufy and Roy Lichtenstein." His work, with its seemingly effortless whimsy rendered with a strong sense of line, color, and rhythm, has also been compared to Matisse.

Slaughter's Pop-inflected drawings, prints, paintings, and illustrations convey his love of life as he relentlessly explored the complexities of the urban scene or the simple pleasures of boating. The Artist Book Foundation is pleased to publish Tom Slaughter, an extensive monograph of the artist's enormous body of work that celebrates his enduring optimism, personal and artistic honesty, and charming brashness in a landscape of pure joy.

Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art, reveals Slaughter as a treasured friend whose artistry was fueled by endless curiosity about life's simple pleasures, a man who made his innumerable friends and acquaintances part of his personal community. Slaughter's lifelong friend, actor and writer David Marshall Grant, remembers the artist's delight when, in a high school art class, he was introduced to the mysteries of negative space and the enigmatic power it brings to an artwork. Artist, art critic, and independent curator Andy Fabo describes his friend's vibrant art as all about pleasure. Even in the most turbulent of times, he took a celebratory approach to his art, offering his viewers a sensual and visual delight. For Jon Robin Baitz, playwright and screenwriter, the "sweetness" of Slaughter's images was insistent, a compulsive scrutinizing of the visual world of small domesticities. Marthe Jocelyn, the artist's former wife and a children's book author and illustrator, reflects on the couple's acclaimed collaboration on a series of books for the very youngest readers. Jim Kempner, gallery owner, recalls Slaughter as a man of charm and enormous artistic talent who always managed to retain a childlike innocence. Artist George Negroponte remembers Slaughter as focusing on the life around him, especially his daughters, in a unique mixture of everyday images, abstracted yet conveying popular culture. And in an interview both informative and poignant, Slaughter's friends, artists Stephen Hannock, , Robert Harms, Ray Charles White, and Scott Kilgour pay tribute to a dear friend whose prolific career, though cut short, was remarkable for a visual language that makes his art accessible to everyone.

Of Tom Slaughter, Henry Geldzahler, the first curator of twentieth-century art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, commented: "The quality of freshness, the familiar world re-seen, from the water towers of New York City to the rural pleasures of boating, is the most immediately arresting aspect of Tom Slaughter's art... Bold bright colors swiftly laid down echo with resonances: Léger and Stuart Davis, Raoul Dufy and Roy Lichtenstein." His work, with its seemingly effortless whimsy rendered with a strong sense of line, color, and rhythm, has also been compared to Matisse.

Slaughter's Pop-inflected drawings, prints, paintings, and illustrations convey his love of life as he relentlessly explored the complexities of the urban scene or the simple pleasures of boating. The Artist Book Foundation is pleased to publish Tom Slaughter, an extensive monograph of the artist's enormous body of work that celebrates his enduring optimism, personal and artistic honesty, and charming brashness in a landscape of pure joy.

Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art, reveals Slaughter as a treasured friend whose artistry was fueled by endless curiosity about life's simple pleasures, a man who made his innumerable friends and acquaintances part of his personal community. Slaughter's lifelong friend, actor and writer David Marshall Grant, remembers the artist's delight when, in a high school art class, he was introduced to the mysteries of negative space and the enigmatic power it brings to an artwork. Artist, art critic, and independent curator Andy Fabo describes his friend's vibrant art as all about pleasure. Even in the most turbulent of times, he took a celebratory approach to his art, offering his viewers a sensual and visual delight. For Jon Robin Baitz, playwright and screenwriter, the "sweetness" of Slaughter's images was insistent, a compulsive scrutinizing of the visual world of small domesticities. Marthe Jocelyn, the artist's former wife and a children's book author and illustrator, reflects on the couple's acclaimed collaboration on a series of books for the very youngest readers. Jim Kempner, gallery owner, recalls Slaughter as a man of charm and enormous artistic talent who always managed to retain a childlike innocence. Artist George Negroponte remembers Slaughter as focusing on the life around him, especially his daughters, in a unique mixture of everyday images, abstracted yet conveying popular culture. And in an interview both informative and poignant, Slaughter's friends, artists Stephen Hannock, , Robert Harms, Ray Charles White, and Scott Kilgour pay tribute to a dear friend whose prolific career, though cut short, was remarkable for a visual language that makes his art accessible to everyone.

An in-depth, perceptive account of the unconventional life of the Moomins’ beloved creator, now available in the United States

Tove Jansson achieved fame as the creator of the Moomins, beloved by generations of readers around the world. Remarkably, the Moomins were only part of the prodigious creative output of this Finnish-Swedish writer and artist. Jansson’s work also includes short stories and five novels for adults, as well as paintings, murals, and book illustrations. In this acclaimed biography, Boel Westin relies on numerous conversations with Jansson and unprecedented access to her journals, letters, and personal archives to present an engrossing and comprehensive review of the life and world of Scandinavia’s best-loved author.

As Westin’s meticulous research makes clear, Jansson’s artistic and literary works reflected what was most important to her: the love of family and nature and the desire to pursue her art. Guided by her personal motto, “Love and work,” Jansson seized both with uncompromising joy. And while her romantic relationships with men proved unfulfilling, she found those with women—especially with her longtime partner, the artist Tuulikki Pietilä—both grounding and inspiring.

Westin weaves together the many threads of Jansson’s rich, complex life: an education interrupted to help her family; the bleak war years and her emergence as a painter; the decades of Moominmania across books, newspaper comic strips, merchandise, and adaptations; her later fictions, including her popular The Summer Book; and her time with Pietilä on the solitary island of Klovharu. Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words offers fans and admirers around the world the most complete portrait of the writer Philip Pullman described as “a genius, a woman of profound wisdom and great artistry.”

Journalist, editor, critic, translator, and women’s rights advocate, Margaret Fuller was America’s first major female intellectual. Throughout much of the late-19th and 20th centuries, however, critics and scholars largely saw her as a minor figure in the transcendentalist movement with which she is associated, and her work was considered secondary to that of male figures like Emerson and Hawthorne. While her biography—including her marriage to an Italian noble and her dramatic death in a shipwreck—was often the focus, her skill as a writer was generally overlooked, and her intellectual development largely ignored. 

In the early 1980s, David M. Robinson was one of the first scholars to publish an article that focused on Fuller’s mind and art. Now Transcendent Woman completes and extends this early work. Outlining the development of her philosophy, which Robinson defines as a “purpose-oriented form of thinking, tailored to the commitment and assets of each individual,” he traces Fuller’s intellectual journey, first in relation to her family and the people around her in New England and later in her travels in the midwestern United States and, more importantly, through Europe and her residency in Italy. He focuses first and foremost on what Fuller was reading (Goethe was key), what she was thinking as revealed in her letters and journals, and what she was writing, including seminal works such as Summer on the Lakes and Woman in the Nineteenth Century as well as lesser-known essays, translations, and short stories. Drawing extensively on primary sources, Robinson charts Fuller’s development and achievement as an original thinker and fearless advocate of democracy. 

Tsvetaeva’s Orphic Journeys in the Worlds of the Word explores the rich theme of the myth of Orpheus as master narrative for poetic inspiration and creative survival in the life and work of Marina Tsvetaeva. Olga Peters Hasty establishes the basic themes of the Orphic Complex—the poet’s longing to mediate between the embodied physical world and an “elsewhere,” the poet’s inability to do so, the primacy of the voice over the visual world, the insistence on concrete imagery, the costs of the poet’s gift—and orders her arguments in the tragic shape of the Orpheus myth as it worked itself out organically in Tsvetaeva’s own life. Hasty delineates the connections between the Orpheus myth and other key mythological and literary figures in the poet’s life—including Alexander Blok, Anna Akhmatova, Alexander Pushkin, and Rainer Maria Rilke—to make an important and original critical contribution.