Anthem Studies in Bibliotherapy and Well-Being offers a multi-dimensional model of literary thinking beyond the scope of medicalised interventions or self-help manuals and within the context of a radically new understanding of the uses of reading literature within the wider world. Testing the meaning and value of what is often called ‘bibliotherapy’, titles in the series span literary criticism, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, sociology, medicine and neuroscience. The series explores specific reading-acts but also proposes literary reading itself as a form of thinking more profound for mental well-being than automatic or literal processing.
Series Editor
Philip Davis – University of Liverpool, UK
Editorial Board
Richard Bentall – University of Sheffield, UK
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst – University of Oxford, UK
Chris Dowrick – University of Liverpool, UK
Arthur Jacobs – Free University of Berlin, Germany
Donald Kuiken – University of Alberta, Canada
Rick Rylance – University of London, UK
Neil Vickers – King’s College London, UK
Maryanne Wolf – Tufts University, USA
Adam Zeman – University of Exeter, UK
Arthur W. Frank – University of Calgary, Canada
Proposals
We welcome submissions of proposals for challenging and original works from emerging and established scholars that meet the criteria of our series. We make prompt editorial decisions. Our titles are published in print and e-book editions and are subject to peer review by recognized authorities in the field. Should you wish to send in a proposal for a monograph (mid-length and full-length), edited collection, handbook or companion, reference or course book, please contact us at: [email protected].

Thor Magnus Tangerås
An inquiry into readers’ experiences of life-changing encounters with works of literature, the book uncovers the relationships between life-crises, being moved by literature and transformation of the self.
Paperback
9781839985393
April 2022
£ 25.00 / $ 40.00

Kelda Green
Foreword by Michael Wood
Through a combination of literary criticism and experimental psychology, ‘Rethinking Therapeutic Reading’ reconsiders the role that serious literary reading might play in the real world, reclaiming literature as a vital tool for dealing with human troubles.
Paperback
9781839985317
April 2022
£ 25.00 / $ 40.00

Robert Piercey
This book asks why reading matters so much to so many people. Its answer is that reading is a philosophical activity: a way of working through, and taking a stand on, fundamental questions about who and what we are, how we should live, and how we relate to other things.
Paperback
9781839985430
April 2022
£ 25.00 / $ 40.00

Christopher Dowrick
This book explores how literary reading can enable people considering suicide to stay alive.
Paperback
9781839991813
March 2024
£ 19.99 / $ 24.95

Nigel Fabb
A psychological explanation of goosebumps and tears, of the epiphanic experience of seeing something ordinary in a profoundly new way, and of the overwhelming perception of the sublime. These experiences found in life and literature involve a feeling of coming to know something deeply important but impossible to describe.
Paperback
9781839994159
December 2024
£ 25.00 / $ 35.00

Arthur M. Jacobs
This book introduces a new thrilling field– neuro computational poetics, the scientific ‘marriage’ between cognitive poetics, data science and neuroscience – that aims at uncovering the secrets of verbal art reception.
Paperback
9781839996412
November 2025
£ 25.00 / $ 35.00

Daniel Whistler
An exploration of the value of the history of philosophy as a reading practice—that is, as a practice through which words from a philosophical past can give rise to wonder, can alienate, can lead to transformational breakthroughs or can animate a will to create anew.
Hardback
9781839988837
December 2027
£ 80.00 / $ 120.00