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John Lennard

Goodreads Author

Born

in Bristol, The United Kingdom

Genre

Nonfiction, Poetry, History

Influences

IN LIFE ...

My parents and siblings.

My teachers -- Anne Pugh, Anne Bart ...more

Member Since

December 2012

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John Lennard (born 1964) read English at New College, Oxford, took an MA at Washington University in St Louis, and a DPhil. back at New College. After teaching for the Open University and the University of London, he was Fellow and Director of Studies in English at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, from 1991-8, and Professor of British and American Literature at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, from 2004-09. He is now an Associate Member and Director of Studies in English at Hughes Hall, Cambridge, and a freelance writer as well as the general editor of Humanities-Ebooks' Genre Fiction Sightlines and Monographs series.

Besides almost all books, he likes cats, cricket, mountains and forests, architecture, punctuation (and its peculiar ...more

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Popular Answered Questions

Dear sir, can you tell me where "Reading Tamora Pierce: The Immortals" is available for sale - either printed or ebook? Thank you very much in advance!

John Lennard Dear Helmut Ott,

You can get both my Tamora Pierce guides in PDF at https://humanities-ebooks.co.uk/ -- just search on my name or on hers -- and in ref…moreDear Helmut Ott,

You can get both my Tamora Pierce guides in PDF at https://humanities-ebooks.co.uk/ -- just search on my name or on hers -- and in reflowable format at Amazon Kindle stores. I hope that helps and that you enjoy the books!

Stay safe.

All best wishes,

John Lennard(less)

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Are your writings on the subject of Reginald Hill available other that via Kindle? I really enjoyed the few pages I could access from the "Beulah Heights" essay but don't have a Kindle and don't understand the "Genre Fiction Sightlines."

John Lennard Hi Robert, and that would be a yes. Both the Sightline on On Beulah Height, and the essays 'Of Serial Readers' (which has stuff on the various serial …moreHi Robert, and that would be a yes. Both the Sightline on On Beulah Height, and the essays 'Of Serial Readers' (which has stuff on the various serial killers of Mid-Yorks.) and 'Of Yorkshire and Purgatory: Dorothy L. Sayers and Reginald Hill's Divine Comedy' (both in Of Modern Dragons and Other Essays on Genre Fiction are available from Humanities-Ebooks in PDF and other formats.

Incidentally, you don't need a Kindle to read Kindle files -- there is a free app for laptops, tablets, smartphones &c.. Amazon are annoying in many ways, but they do make reading Kindle files possible pretty much anywhere and on anything.

The Genre Fiction Sightlines were an attempt (a) to get more genre fiction taught, or at least considered for teaching, by providing some useful materials, and (b) to make available to interested readers the kind of info annotated editions of classics make available. Each has four parts -- some preliminary notes, for before one reads (in the case of OBH, who Reg Hill was, the order of D&P volumes, the significance of Yorkshire and some dialect words, British police ranks, Mahler's Kindertotenlieder &c.) ; then annotations, for while you read, glossing obscure or dialect words, noting allusions &c. ; then an essay, for after you read ; and a bibliography, with whatever further reading may be available. They seem to have worked within limits for interested readers, but less so in encouraging teaching. Ah well -- I tried, and they do something to recommend the books I annotated, all of which deserve far more attention than, say, E. L. James, but don't get it.

I'm always delighted to know someone's reading Reg Hill -- he was a lovely man, kind and funny and sometimes sly, as well as a wonderful novelist, and though I didn't know him that well I miss our occasional meetings very much.

Good luck, and if anything I've said isn't clear, do please come back to me.

Ever,

John Lennard(less)

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John Lennard’s books

Average rating: 4.42 · 1,717 ratings · 55 reviews · 43 distinct works • Similar authors

	Tamora Pierce: "The Immortals" 4.68 avg rating — 1,098 ratings — published 2007 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Poetry Handbook 3.72 avg rating — 185 ratings — published 1996 — 16 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Reading Octavia Butler: "Xenogenesis" / "Lilith's Brood" 4.49 avg rating — 113 ratings — published 2007 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Walter Mosley: Devil In A Blue Dress 4.20 avg rating — 92 ratings — published 2007 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Reading Paul Scott: 'The Raj Quartet' and 'Staying On' 4.06 avg rating — 31 ratings — published 2008 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Reading Vladimir Nabokov: 'Lolita' 4.13 avg rating — 24 ratings — published 2008 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Talking Sense About 'Fifty Shades of Grey', or, Fanfiction, Feminism, and BDSM 3.79 avg rating — 24 ratings — published 2012	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Exasperating Case of David Weber, or, The Slow Death of the Honorverse liked it 3.00 avg rating — 30 ratings — published 2015	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Drama Handbook: A Guide to Reading Plays by John Lennard (Goodreads Author), Mary Luckhurst 3.35 avg rating — 17 ratings — published 2002 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Tolkien's Triumph: The Strange History of 'The Lord of the Rings' 3.50 avg rating — 16 ratings — published 2013 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by John Lennard…

24 posts
John Lennard's Blog: Reading Matters

Hero and Leander

I have today published on Kindle another of my unmodernised transcriptions of Renaissance texts -- this time Marlowe's extraordinary and erotic account of Hero and Leander, as completed by Chapman and published in 1598, five years after Marlowe's murder.

The tale of a nun dedicated to Venus, who falls in love and breaks her paradoxical vow of chastity, was perfect for Marlowe's dangerous and free-t Read more of this blog post »

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Published on April 23, 2017 07:11

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Series by John Lennard

Genre Fiction Sightlines (5 books)
by

John Lennard (Goodreads Author)

4.62 avg rating — 1,349 ratings

Literature Insights (26 books)
by

John Lennard (Goodreads Author)

3.99 avg rating — 327 ratings

Quotes by John Lennard (?)

“Punctuation is to words as cartilage is to bone, permitting articulation and bearing stress.”
― John Lennard, The Poetry Handbook

tags: punctuation, punctuation-mark

2 likes

“All plays are implicitly political by virtue of the subject-matter, form, and linguistic registers they contain, and the audience for whom they are intended; all productions are implicitly political because the resources they consume are denied to another play, company and space.”
― John Lennard, The Drama Handbook: A Guide to Reading Plays

tags: political-theater

1 likes

“There is also a running wobble between extreme precision, specious or otherwise, and approximation (“just over fifteen hundred”, “just over sixty-nine percent”), so the whole risks annoying non-geek and ultra-geek readers, garnering the worst of both worlds.”
― John Lennard, The Exasperating Case of David Weber, or, The Slow Death of the Honorverse

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John’s Quotes

“Punctuation is to words as cartilage is to bone, permitting articulation and bearing stress.”
― John Lennard, The Poetry Handbook

tags: punctuation, punctuation-mark

2 likes

“Closure is bullshit.”
― James Ellroy

tags: closure, ellroy

19 likes

“There's this to say of love and breath --
They give a man a taste for death.”
― A.E. Houseman

tags: death-houseman

4 likes

“Punctuation is the pragmatics of written language.”
― M.B. Parkes, Pause and Effect: Punctuation in the West

tags: parkes, punctuation

0 likes

“The toad beneath the harrow knows
Where every separate tooth-point goes ;
The butterfly upon the road
Preaches contentment to that toad.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Complete Verse