A Babel of Bottles: Drink, Drinkers & Drinking Places in Literature

From alehouses and taverns in seventeenth-century drama to women drinkers in contemporary literature, this collection assesses the long and fertile relationship between the book and the bottle. The writers discussed include James Joyce, T.S. Eliot and Daphne du Maurier, while the themes range from Restoration drama in England to Spanish detective fiction. Drink appears in literature in all the guises which it assumes in life, and the essays collected here reflect this truth. Both alcohol and the spaces in which drinking takes place are discussed with reference to gender, nation, addiction, festivity, creativity and class. One of the tasks of this book is to provide a critical account of the sheer diversity of forms in which drink appears in literature. The essays also reflect the belief that literary representations of drinking can be both celebrated without frivolity and criticized without condemnation.