This is a bold and intellectually ambitious project both in its scale but also in its agenda of bringing colour studies to the fore. Stimulating, convincing and supremely crafted…This is the culmination of many years of research, and the expertise, erudition and style on display are quite breath-taking.

Society for French Studies, 2021 Gapper Book prize awards panel

Harrow brings her field up to date with a colour turn already well underway in anthropology and film and cultural studies, thus carving a new space for literary studies within the interdisciplinary humanities.

French Studies

Colourworks: Chromatic Innovation In Modern French Poetry and Art Writing by Susan Harrow is an immersive book analyzing color in modern French poetry and art writing ... The writing is dense at times but always maintains its own poetic air.

STC Technical Communication

Colourworks is a scholarly, detailed, in-depth investigation into how color is utilized in both poetry and art writing. ... This book will be of interest to poets, literary critics, researchers and teachers.

Leonardo Reviews

Starting with Mallarmé's 'monochromes', Susan Harrow takes us on an extended exploration of the colour worlds of modern French poetry, via Valéry's greys down to the complex chromatics of Bonnefoy. Her study is a tour de force.

Christopher Prendergast FBA, Professor Emeritus of Modern French Literature and Fellow of King's College, University of Cambridge, UK

Through a series of penetrating readings, Susan Harrow sheds fascinating light on the workings of colour when it is mediated through the poet's words. The subtlety of this alchemical process finds eloquent expression in lucid analyses of Mallarmé, Valéry and Bonnefoy. Harrow's interdisciplinary study offers a wealth of insights that prompt us to think anew about the affective, cultural, sensory and theoretical ramifications of colour and the myriad ways in which its textual articulation shapes our world.

Eric Robertson, Professor of Modern French Literary and Visual Culture, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK