Erica Sheen

Robert Giddings

This book critically examines the long established tradition of adapting classic novels to film or TV screen, encompassing novelists from Jane Austen to Michael Ondaatje. The early cinema ransacked literature for stories suitable for retelling in moving pictures, and as the art of the cinema matured, and cinematography, music, special effects and sound were improved, the art of dramatization began to produce high quality versions of respected novels. The authors in this book analyze a wide variety of literary dramatizations.

Adaptations of the Classic Novel

From Page To Screen

This collection of essays analyses the effects of changing technology and the attendant commercial pressures on literary styles and subject matter. Authors covered include Charles Dickens, Tobias George Smollett, Mark Twain, Dr Johnson and John le Carre.

The Author, the Book & the Reader

Alan Norman Bold

Presents the facts behind 600 characters in fiction and identifies their real-life sources.

Who was Really who in Fiction

Elizabeth Holland

The Shores of Middle-earth

J.R.R. Tolkien

Keith Selby

Chris Wensley

The book takes as its theme the relationship between literature and the contemporary means of production and distribution collectively termed 'the media' - in particular, film and television. The intention of the book is to explore and evaluate the mutual opportunities and restrictions in this relationship. In the grammar of our culture there seems to be an accepted opinion that print is superior in terms of cultural production to film, radio or television, that to read a book is somehow a 'higher' cultural activity than seeing a play on television or seeing a film. By the same token, a novel is a 'superior' work of art to film or television. The longer perspective reveals that traditionally there always is a greater respect paid to the previous mode of literary production - poetry was superior to drama, poetic drama was superior to the novel, and film attained cult and classic status initially over television.

The Theory And Practice Of Literary Dramatization

Screening The Novel

The classic serial, invented by BBC Radio Drama sixty years ago, survived and adapted itself to television, the arrival of colour and the global market in what has become a flood of classics with all channels competing for ratings and overseas sales. This richly detailed book traces these developments and analyses the genre's response to social, economic, technical and cultural changes, which have re-shaped it into the form we recognise today. The book contains considerable interview material with performers and media professionals.

Robert Giddings

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