What do literary texts tell us about growing old? The essays in this volume introduce and
explore representations of ageing and old age in canonical works of English and postcolonial
literature. The contributors examine texts by William Shakespeare Daniel Defoe Julian Barnes
Thomas Kinsella Seamus Heaney J.M. Coetzee Alice Munro Witi Ihimaera and Patricia Grace and
together with a medical study they suggest solutions to the challenges arising from the
current demographic change brought about by ageing Western populations.
