Doubles: Studies in Literary History

by Karl Miller

This fascinating study explores the image of the double as it appears in literature, examining the doppelgänger, the alter ego, the second self, and the modern multiple self in a wide variety of literary settings. Focusing mainly on the Romantic period, the fin-de-siècle, and what could be called the romantic modern world, Miller considers a broad array of subjects, including the equivocal language of Romanticism, the orphan delirium of the Gothic heritage, the themes of isolation, escape, and the after-life, and the phenomena of secrecy and literary anonymity. Over twenty authors are examined in detail, including Poe, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Henry James, Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, Norman Mailer, and Saul Bellow.

Genres: Nonfiction

480 pages, Paperback

First published July 18, 1985

About the author

Karl Fergus Connor Miller FRSL was a Scottiish literary editor, critic and writer. He was educated at the Royal High School of Edinburgh and Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied English; he was a Cambridge Apostle. He became literary editor of The Spectator and the New Statesman. Miller resigned from the latter over a disagreement with the magazine's editor Paul Johnson, over the extent to which the literary pages treated difficult subjects and also Johnson's disapproval of The Beatles and their fans.

He was then editor of The Listener (1967–73) and subsequently of the London Review of Books, which he founded, from 1979 to 1992. He was also Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature and head of the English Department at University College London from 1974 to 1992.

Reviews

[Marta Irina]

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