Literary studies: poetry and poets Books
Oxford University Press Satires and Epistles
Book SynopsisHorace exposes the vices and follies of his Roman contemporaries in his Satires, and the Epistles include the famous Art of Poetry, whose advice on poetic style influenced many later writers and dramatists. John Davie's new prose translations perfectly capture the ribald style of the original.
£9.49
Oxford University Press Selected Poetry
Book SynopsisThomas Hardy (1840-1928) remains one of the best loved of the great English poets. Hardy thought of himself as a poet all his life, although his poetic career only flowered after he had retired from novel-writing in his mid-fifties. Over the next thirty years he wrote the poems that have established him as one of the great and most enduringly popular English poets of the twentieth century. His verse touches all the common themes of human existence: birth, childhood, love, marriage, ageing, death. If Hardy''s age brings anything to them, it is an old man''s ironic and elegiac sense that in life hopes are likely to be defeated and losses sustained, and that the world was not designed for human happiness. This collection is prepared by Samuel Hynes, editor of the Oxford English Texts edition of The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Hardy, and selected from the Oxford Authors critical edition. The introduction and notes illuminate Hardy''s central place in the tradition of English poetry. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.Trade Review'There is no more trusted name when it comes to the work of the great British poets than that of Oxford University Press. If you want the collected works, fully annotated and with scholarly editing then it's OUP you look to ... a series of elegant paperback volumes, each dedicated to a single poet, and with an introduction by an acknowledged expert.' David Thomas, Oxford Times'the selections are excellent, and the books real value for money' Robert Nye, The TimesTable of ContentsWessex Poems ; Poems of the Past and the Present ; Time's Laughingstocks ; Satires of Circumstance ; Moments of Vision ; Late Lyrics and Earlier ; Human Shows ; Winter Words ; Uncollected Poems
£9.49
WW Norton & Co Leaves of Grass
Book SynopsisThis new annotated edition inlcudes "Live Oak, with Moss" and prose selections from "Democratic Vistas" and "Specimen Days". The text also presents a collection of Whitman's statements about his role as a poet taken from his notebooks, letters, conversations and newspaper articles.
£16.40
WW Norton & Co Poetics
Book SynopsisThis Norton Critical Edition of the world’s first major work of literary criticism is based on James Hutton’s acclaimed translation. The text and explanatory and glossarial notes represent the work of the accomplished Hellenists James Hutton and Michelle
£15.52
University of California Press The Maximus Poems
Book SynopsisThis work brings together the three volumes of Olson's long poem (originally published in 1960, 1968 and 1975 respectively) in one book.
£36.00
HarperCollins Publishers Coleridge Darker Reflections
Book SynopsisTimely reissue of the second volume of Holmes's classic biographies of one of the greatest Romantic poets.Richard Holmes's biography of Coleridge transforms our view of the poet of Kubla Khan' forever. Holmes's Coleridge leaps out of these pages as the brilliant, animated and endlessly provoking poet of genius that he was.This second volume covers the last 30 years of Coleridge's career (1804-1834) during which he travelled restlessly through the Mediterranean, returned to his old haunts in the Lake District and the West Country, and finally settled in Highgate. It was a period of domestic and professional turmoil. His marriage broke up, his opium addiction increased, he quarrelled with Wordsworth, his own son Hartley Coleridge (a gifted poet himself) became an alcoholic. And after a desperate time of transition, Coleridge re-emerged on the literary scene as a new kind of philosophical and meditative author.Trade Review’One of the greatest biographies of the century. Pure joy to read, it is a shimmering portrait of the mature artist veering between brilliance and despair’ Financial Times ’This – and I can’t remember ever thinking this before so strongly – is a biography to grow old with’ Independent
£16.19
Faber & Faber Now All Roads Lead to France The Last Years of
Book SynopsisEdward Thomas was perhaps the most beguiling and influential of First World War poets. Now All Roads Lead to France is an account of his final five years, centred on his extraordinary friendship with Robert Frost and Thomas''s fatal decision to fight in the war.The book also evokes an astonishingly creative moment in English literature, when London was a battleground for new, ambitious kinds of writing. A generation that included W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost and Rupert Brooke were ''making it new'' - vehemently and pugnaciously. These larger-than-life characters surround a central figure, tormented by his work and his marriage. But as his friendship with Frost blossomed, Thomas wrote poem after poem, and his emotional affliction began to lift. In 1914 the two friends formed the ideas that would produce some of the most remarkable verse of the twentieth century. Their writing was far more than just war poetry, but it was World War I that put an ocean b
£12.34
Faber & Faber Selected Poems of Stephen Spender
Book SynopsisStephen Spender, the son of a journalist, was born in London in 1909. He was educated at University College, Oxford, where he met, among others, W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood and Louis MacNeice, with whom he was to develop a poetics of engagement, writing powerfully of the confusion and alarm of 1930s Europe. He visited Spain during the Civil War, in 1937, where he assisted the Republican cause with propaganda activity. His post-war memoir World within World was recognised as one of the most illuminating literary autobiographies to have come out of the 1930s and 1940s, distilling a distinctively personal, humanistic socialism. His poetry has been praised for its exploratory candour, its personal approach to the stresses of modernity, and its exact portraiture of social and political upheaval. Grey Gowrie''s new selection offers a timely and incisive revaluation of Spender''s substantial poetic corpus.
£15.29
Nine Arches Press Poetry Projects to Make and Do: Getting your
Book SynopsisPoetry Projects to Make and Do, edited by Deborah Alma, The Emergency Poet, is a ‘how to’ handbook of essays, prompts, advice, and ideas designed to help both aspiring and established poets find new ways not only to create new poetry, but to share and take it out into the world through collaboration, projects, performances – and more. With an array of real-life examples from experienced poets, Poetry Projects to Make and Do provides imaginative case-studies and inspiration for readers to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in. Each essay encourages experimentation alongside plenty of practical tips and guidance. From projects which poets can try out at home, to ones which take poetry out into the streets; from having a go at making poetry films or podcasts, to hand-crafting a poetry residency; from how to apply for funding, to working in collaboration and involving music, art or photography in your poetry. This indispensable book covers a broad range of topics to empower and encourage poetry as part of everyday creativity. Poetry Projects to Make and Do follows previous popular creative writing handbook titles for Nine Arches Press – including The Craft, Why I Write Poetry and How to be a Poet – and is edited by Deborah Alma, aka The Emergency Poet and founder of the world’s first walk-in Poetry Pharmacy, based in Bishops Castle, Shropshire. Includes 20+ essays by: Deborah Alma; Jean Atkin; Casey Bailey; Roshni Beeharry; Julia Bird; Jo Bell; Jane Burn; Lewis Buxton; Jane Commane; Jonathan Davidson; Helen Dewbery; Pat Edwards; Jasmine Gardosi; Roz Goddard; Daisy Henwood; Sophie Herxheimer; Helen Ivory; Gregory Leadbetter; Arji Manuelpillai; Caleb Parkin; Nina Mingya Powles; Jacqueline Saphra; Clare Shaw; Degna Stone and Tamar Yoseloff.
£15.29
The Armchair Traveller at the Bookhaus In Byron′s Footsteps
Book SynopsisWhen Tessa de Loo saw Albania for the first time, no foreigners were allowed to enter. Filled with a great curiosity, longing, and a sense of wonderment by this isolated land, de Loo gazed toward the mountains that stood like 'the backs of patiently waiting elephants' across the water from Corfu. Inspired by the famous Thomas Phillips portrait of Lord Byron in Albanian national costume, and enthralled by the image of Lord Byron since her teenage years, she sets about exploring not only his physical journey, but attempts to understand his inner one as well. de Loo stole her way in and found a country suffering the hardships of post-communist reality and the constant and sometimes fractious clash between tradition and modernity. In the tradition of Bruce Chatwin, de Loo, the award-winning author of "The Twins," has written a fascinating travelogue and a very personal reassessment of the a formative chapter in Lord Byron's short life.Trade Review'[One notes] the seriousness and humour with which De Loo laces her contribution to superior travel literature... She gives her report in the form of letters to Byron (My dear friend, My dearest George) alternated with chapters where she recounts Byron's journey. However euphoric De Loo's report is not too affected, it stays lively and informative... is a book of contrasts, surprises and disappointments, written cheerfully and with eye for details.' Vrij Nederland
£9.49
University of California Press The Poems of Hesiod
Book SynopsisTable of ContentsCONTENTS List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Spelling, the Pronunciation of Ancient Names, and Map References Maps General Introduction: Hesiod and His Poems Introduction to the Theogony Theogony Introduction to the Works and Days Works and Days Introducton to The Shield of Herakles The Shield of Herakles Bibliography Glossary / Index ILLUSTRATIONS Maps 1. The Mediterranean 2. The Aegean Sea 3. Central Greece Figures 1. Drunken symposiast and lyre 2. Anatolian storm god 3. Zeus throwing lightning at Typhon 4. A Muse playing the lyre 5. The birth of Aphrodite 6. Amphitritê stands before Poseidon 7. The head of Medusa 8. The Chimaira 9. The punishment of Atlas and Prometheus 10. Hades and Persephone 11. Zeus fights Typhon 12. Dawn pursues the Trojan prince Tithonos 13. Egyptian relief of Maat 14. Pandora born from the Earth 15. The Cretan princess Ariadnê and Retribution 16. A naked plowman 17. A winged North Wind (Boreas) rapes Oreithyia 18. A satyr presents a tripod with handles to Dionysos 19. The theater and reconstructed columns of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi 20. The Lapith Kaineus being destroyed by a centaur 21. A centaur tries to carry off Hippodameia 22. The Gorgons pursue Perseus 23. Zeus parts Athena and Ares Genealogical Charts 1. The primordial gods 2. The children of Earth and Sky 3. The off spring of Earth and the blood of Sky and the birth of Aphroditê 4. The descendants of Night (Nyx) and Strife (Eris) 5. The descendants Earth and Sea 6. The descendants of Phorkys and Keto 7. Other descendants of Phorkys and Keto 8. The children of Okeanos and Tethys 9. The descendants of Th eia and Hyperion and Kreios and Eurybia 10. The children of Pallas and Styx 11. The descendants of Koios and Phoibê 12. The children of Kronos and Rhea 13. The descendants of Iapetos and Klymenê 14. The off spring of Zeus and his many wives 15. The descendants of Ares and Aphrodite 16. The descendants of Helios and Perseïs 17. Other children of Kadmos and Harmonia 18. The children of Dawn (Eos) 19. The descendants of Kalypso, Circe, and Aiëtes 20. The descendants of Perseus and Andromeda
£12.34
Orion Publishing Co Dylan Thomas The Collected Letters Volume 2
Book SynopsisThe second volume of the definitive collection of Dylan Thomas's letters.Trade ReviewDylan Thomas's life and letters read like a cry of despair, interspersed with rare moments of happiness in Wales . . . A moving book. The pain is too real, the tragedy too pitiful to leave any reader untouched - Sunday TimesHis letters are as funny, and nearly as witty, as Oscar Wilde's, and sometimes almost as wise as Keats's - Sunday Telegraph
£15.00
WW Norton & Co The Fabliaux
Book SynopsisWinner • Modern Language Association’s Scaglione Prize for Translation Bawdier than The Canterbury Tales, The Fabliaux is the first major English translation of the most scandalous and irreverent poetry in Western literature.Trade Review"Like Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf,…Dubin reproduces the world and the feeling of the medieval tale…that travel joyfully from the Middle Ages to the present." -- R. Howard Bloch, from the introduction to The Fabliaux"Devilishly bawdy and irreverent…The 69 fabliaux presented here in their original French and translated into rascally, buoyant English by Nathaniel E. Dubin, are relentlessly scabrous, egregiously misogynistic, and exuberantly oppositional to ‘bourgeois respectability’ and the church…. Vivid, funny, robustly grotesque, and drolly outrageous, these satirical tales of lust, revenge, and folly feature lecherous peasants, fornicating priests, scoundrels, fools, and women wily and tough, castigated and abused…. An historic literary achievement bound to arouse vociferous discussion." -- Booklist"Pure, unadulterated fun…. A golden bough of erotic imagination and folk humor, peopled by randy wives, cuckolded husbands, fornicating priests, and priapic knights…. Ultimately, what’s so potent and profound about these risqué yarns is not their unbridled expressions of sexuality and vulgarity per se, but their unusual ability to provoke a carnivalesque laughter in all. Through denuding, debauchery, and bodily degradation, the fabliaux create a common denominator for humanity, an earthy, holistic world in which, to quote Bakhtin again, ‘he who is laughing also belongs to it.’ Flaunting unabashed obscenity in delightful verse, The Fabliaux is a book that would entertain the fans of Dr. Freud and Dr. Seuss alike." -- Yunte Huang - The Daily Beast"Fabliaux are comic tales, in verse, composed between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries…. The words used…have not been adjusted to conform to modern immodesty; the translation is literal…[This is the] first substantial collection of fabliaux, in any language, for today’s general reader." -- Joan Acocella - The New Yorker"The fabliaux, then, is a short story that is a tall story. It combines a burly blurting of dirty words with a reveling in humiliations that are good unclean fun. A popular venture that is keen to paste—épater—everybody (not just the bourgeoisie), it is the art of the single entendre. Highly staged low life, it guffaws at the pious, the prudish, and the priggish. High cockalorum versus high decorum…. The introduction here, like the translator’s note, tells well the story of the comic tales, anonymous for the most part, usually two or three hundred lines long, of which about 160 exist." -- Christopher Ricks - New York Review of Books"The fabliaux are important not only for their approach to humor, but for their focus on sex, class and wealth, and bodily functions like eating and defecating—all elements quite absent from more highbrow, courtly, or Church-sanctioned religious texts. Liveright’s edition serves as the largest and most complete collection of fabliaux, in English or French, ever published “for the general reader…" The Fabliaux is a reminder that medieval texts can remain engaging, lively, and, above all, funny." -- Charlotte Bhaskar - Zyzzyva
£22.79
Association for Scottish Literary Studies The Gaelic Poetry of Derick Thomson: (Scotnotes
Book SynopsisDerick Thomson Ruaraidh MacThòmais was one of the most prolific and influential Scottish Gaelic poets of the twentieth century. His work pushed forward the boundaries of Gaelic poetry, taking it from its traditional heartlands in the Highlands and Islands to Scotland''s Lowland cities, Glasgow in particular. He was the first poet to use free verse consistently in Gaelic, and his poems, both in terms of form and content, had a profound influence on following generations of Gaelic writers.Petra Johana Poncarová's SCOTNOTE examines Thomson's life and work, and his historical, political, cultural and personal influences. It is an ideal introduction for senior school pupils and students of all ages.
£8.18
OUP Oxford Byrons Letters and Journals
Book SynopsisAlongside Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, and Oscar Wilde, Lord Byron possesses a star-quality unlike other classic British authors. His life as poet, philanderer, homosexual, and freedom fighter is legendary, and this new selection from his powerful letters and journals tells the story from the inside, in Byron''s own racy and passionate style. Though Byron is chiefly known as a poet, his letters and journals are one of the glories of English prose literature, and one of the greatest British acts of autobiography, alongside Pepys'' Diary and Boswell''s Journal. This new selection, taken from the authoritative and unbowdlerized edition prepared by Leslie Marchand in the 1970s, not only provides the cream of his informal prose; it amounts to a biography in Byron''s own words. No other English writer lived so remarkable an existence, from rented rooms in Aberdeen to a Nottinghamshire peerage, from European fame to English infamy, and notorious Italian exile to a glorious death in the GrTrade Review... a much-needed new collection of Byron's incomparable letters and journals... Lansdown is... a generous and sensitive appreciator of Byron's literary genius The volume as a whole presents an appropriately engrossing, moving, hilarious, and sometimes heartbreaking sampler of the coruscating brilliance of one of the greater letter writers in the English language. * Jeffery Vail, Keats-Shelley Journal *This selection, which reads like a biography in his own words, is a dramatic and volatile portrait which takes the reader from England to Greece, from fame to infamy. * Robert Tanitch, Mature Times *It is time to talk about Lord Byron again. It is also time to read him again, and I recommend Lansdowns Selected Letters and Journals as an excellent place to start. * Amit Majmuder, Able Muse *Richard Landsdown's book is a selection from Marchand's 12, with copious biographical notes. It is hard to reduce twelve to one, but Lansdown has done well, giving readers a lively sense of "this singularly magnetic individual". * Denis Donoghue, Irish Times *Lansdown does a valiant job of representing the thought processes and publishing dilemmas behind the major works * Corin Throsby, Times Literary Supplement *... it is well-judged, gives good coverage to different periods of Byron's life, and feels substantially representative ... * Keats-Shelley Review *informed, sympathetic and well-researched... deeply interesting and well-chosen selection * Tablet, Robert Carver *This new selection of Byron's proseis arranged chronologically and linked by so much informed, sympathetic and well-researched explanatory material that it amounts to a sort of biography. * The Tablet *This is a deeply interesting and well-chosen selection, unusually clearly printed on the highest-quality pure, white, thick paper, with superb binding: it resembles more a quality production from a private press than a trade publication, and it will certainly last several lifetimes. * The Tablet *splendid volume * Open Letters Monthly *The 500-odd footnoted pages Lansdown has selected are aimed not at scholars and students but at intelligent readers of literary prose. * Independent *This is Byron in the raw and can only add to his legend * Northern Echo *when you line Bryon's letters up like this, one after the other, you can't help but notice the growth of something like art...his prose is extraordinary * Sunday Telegraph, Benjamin Markovitz *Table of ContentsIntroduction Note on the Text and Short Titles A Biographical Bibliography 1: Childhood, Boyhood, Youth: January 1788-June 1809 2: The Grand Tour: June 1809-July 1811 3: Childe Harold and Caroline Lamb: July 1811-June 1813 4: The Giaour and Augusta Leigh: June 1813-July 1814 5: Marriage and Separation: August 1814-April 1816 6: Exile: April-November 1816 7: Venice and Rome: November 1816-June 1818 8: Don Juan and Teresa Guiccioli: July 1818-December 1819 9: Ravenna: December 1819-October 1821 10: Pisa: October 1821-September 1822 11: Genoa: October 1822-July 1823 12: Greece: August 1823-April 1824 Afterword Index
£15.29
Association for Scottish Literary Studies The International Companion to James Macpherson
Book SynopsisJames Macpherson''s "poems of Ossian", first published from 1760 as Fragments of Ancient Poetry, were the literary sensation of the age. Attacked by Samuel Johnson and others as "forgeries", nonetheless the poems enthralled readers around the world, attracting rapturous admiration from such figures as diverse as Goethe, Diderot, Jefferson, Bonaparte and Mendelssohn. This International Companion examines the social, political and philosophical context of the poems, their disputed origins, their impact on world literature, and the various critical afterlives of Macpherson and of "Ossian".
£22.46
Carcanet Press Ltd Selected Poems: Thomas Chatterton
Book SynopsisWordsworth's lines on Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) contributed to a legend that became better known than Chatterton's work itself. His story is moving: a sensitive, unhappy boy, he fell in love with the medieval world and escaped into it from miserable schooling and the drudgery of apprenticeship. He read and then wrote "medieval" poetry which he passed off as genuine. When the poems he wrote in his own name brought him some success, he went to London to seek his fortune as a writer. After six months' struggle, too proud to admit defeat, starving and alone, he killed himself in his attic room. He was seventeen. There is more to Chatterton than the romantic archetype. His poetry was admired by Keats, Shelley, Coleridge and Wordsworth; as Grevel Lindop says in his introduction, "Chatterton's work contains in essence the whole of Romanticism". This selection, with its detailed notes, shows the historical significance and unexpected range of Chatterton's poetry, and also enables the reader to enjoy it for its rich resonance and wonderfully memorable rhythms.
£9.45
Canongate Books Canongate Burns: The Complete Poems and Songs of
Book SynopsisA complete volume of the writer's poetry and songs includes previously unpublished pieces, draws on extensive scholarship and Burn's own letters, and offers supplemental information about his life, early hardships, political beliefs, and literary contexts.Trade ReviewA magnificent and definitive work of scholarship. A thousand pages long, it provides not only a glossary and a context for the poems, but also a textual and historical note for each poem and song. -- Colm Toibin * * The Independent * *A very fine edition, and the long introduction, which sets out to clear the tangled banks, is alone worth the cover price. -- Andrew O'Hagan * * The Scotsman * *Scholarly and comprehensive. * * Sunday Telegraph * *
£19.00
Faber & Faber The Collected Prose of T.S. Eliot Volume 2
Book SynopsisT. S. Eliot is regarded as the most important poetcritic of modern times, the twentieth century's Man of Letters' whose reputation was forged not only on the strength of his verse, but on the enduring influence of his critical writings. The Collected Prose presents those works that Eliot allowed to reach print in the order of their final revision or printing. Publishing across four volumes, the series aims to provide an authoritative and clean-text record of Eliot's approved texts and their revisions, beginning with his formative observations, written while he was at high school, and concluding in his final major opus, To Criticize the Critic, published in the months after his death.This second volume spans 19291934, a period in which Eliot's poetry was maturing into the reflective verse of Animula, Ash-Wednesday and Marina. It was also a moment that confirmed his critical reputation with the publication of Selected Essays
£40.00
Yale University Press Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles
Book SynopsisThe last book written by the most famous literary critic of his generation, on the sustaining power of poetryTrade Review“A magnificent meander through the flames and the breezes, by the waters and over the earth of those creations, intimations and thoughts that most matter. There will be few grand streams-of consciousness like this in the future.”—Stoddard Martin, Jewish Chronicle “An extraordinary testimony to a long life spent in the company of poetry and an affecting last declaration of his passionate and deeply unfashionable faith in the capacity of the imagination to make the world feel habitable”—Seamus Perry, Literary Review “Profound…Draws more deeply on [Bloom’s] scholarly expertise….Shows his readers how even literary criticism must be decoded like a dramatic poem or a novel before we can consume it.”—Eileen M. Hunt, Times Literary Supplement “In the end, only words have a chance of outliving us, and Bloom records his best guesses at the words that might endure. Until the end, Bloom was a man of incessant curiosity, with more questions than answers about an essential poetic imagination.”—Thylias Moss, Professor Emerita, University of Michigan “This book is superb, utterly convincing, and absolutely invigorating. Bloom’s final argument with mortality ultimately has a rejuvenating effect upon the reader, and is nothing short of a revelation.”—David Mikics, author of Slow Reading in a Hurried Age "I felt reading this book the way Virginia Woolf in her diary describes her feeling about reading Shakespeare: 'I never yet knew how amazing his stretch and speed . . . is, until I felt it utterly outpace and outrace my own.'"—Laura Quinney, author of William Blake on Self and Soul “Bloom helps us grasp what Dickinson calls ‘vaster attitudes,’ allowing us to take a proud flight and to disdain, for a time, our own mortality.”—William Flesch, Brandeis University "Bloom! The life, the voice, the sorrowful countenance, the Emersonian swoon, the feasting intellect, the daemonic rapture. His I is an Eye, all-seeing, a container of multitudes, a volcanic primer on the crisis of enchantment in what he dares to name ‘a universe of Death.’ And here, in this last masterwork—an impassioned meditation on the poets who made him—his living breath is indomitably felt.”—Cynthia Ozick
£19.00
Shambhala Publications Inc Complete Cold Mountain: Poems of the Legendary
Book SynopsisA fresh translation--and new envisioning--of the most accessible and beloved of all classic Chinese poetry.Welcome to the magical, windswept world of Cold Mountain. These poems from the literary riches of China have long been celebrated by cultures of both East and West—and continue to be revered as among the most inspiring and enduring works of poetry worldwide. This groundbreaking new translation presents the full corpus of poetry traditionally associated with Hanshan (“Cold Mountain”) and sheds light on its origins and authorship like never before. Kazuaki Tanahashi and Peter Levitt honor the contemplative Buddhist elements of this classic collection of poems while revealing Hanshan’s famously jubilant humor, deep love of solitude in nature, and overwhelming warmth of heart. In addition, this translation features the full Chinese text of the original poems and a wealth of fascinating supplements, including traditional historical records, an in-depth study of the Cold Mountain poets (here presented as three distinct authors), and more.
£18.90
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC The Rubiyt of Omar Khayyam A New Translation from
Book SynopsisOmar Khayyam (1048 - 1131) was a Persian astronomer and mathematician born in Nishapur in northeastern Iran who lived and worked at the courts of the Seljuk dynasty. Modern scholars agree that there is very little (if any) of the collected work of poetry know as the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam that can be certainly attributed to the historical figure. A tradition of attribution grew up in the centuries after Khayyam's death which culminated in Edward Fitzgerald's translation in the 19th Century.Juan Cole is a public intellectual, prominent blogger and essayist, and the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, USA. He is the translator of Broken Wings and The Vision by Khalil Gibran.Trade ReviewWith this new translation of Khayyam and his insightful essays on the historical context, Cole offers a splendid piece of work which offers an alternative to FitzGerald’s epochmaking adaptation of the Rubáiyát, to be placed in the canon of nineteenth-century English poetry, finding imitations in a large number of languages. Perhaps even more important than the poetic nature and message of these quatrains is how Cole successfully brings to the fore the secular faction of Persian culture, of which quatrains attributed to Khayyam are living evidence. * Bibliotheca Orientalis *‘To read Juan Cole’s deft, plain-spoken translation of the Rubáiyát is to find companionship, to rejoin a thousand-year human conversation about how to endure, enjoy, and find a fleeting beauty in everlastingly dire times. The lucid, cogent and mind-opening Epilogue is a kind of grace, a gift freely given, from one of our most astonishing and generous intellects.’ * Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Moonglow (2017) *‘Omar Khayyam is a Persian treasure and Juan Cole’s new translation brings him anew to Western audiences who for centuries have been both delighted and educated by this medieval sage! Reading The Rubáiyát is a thrill – you feel the echoes of the 12th century seamlessly into our 21st, as this is a holy book of wisdom and magic. In another perilous era for Iranians, it’s wonderful to see this enchanting volume make its way through the world yet again!’ * Porochista Khakpour, novelist, essayist and author of Brown Album (2020) *Table of ContentsPreface Note on the Translation Introduction The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Epilogue Notes
£22.79
Faber & Faber The Letters of T. S. Eliot Volume 9
Book SynopsisAuden, George Barker, William Empson, Geoffrey Faber, John Hayward, James Laughlin, Hope Mirrlees, Mervyn Peake, Ezra Pound, Michael Roberts, Stephen Spender, Tambimuttu, Allen Tate, Michael Tippett, Charles Williams and Virginia Woolf.
£45.00
HarperCollins Publishers I Never Know How Poems Start
Book SynopsisBuild your child's reading confidence at home with books at the right levelInspiration for poetry can come from anywhere a memory, an insight and even broccoli! Former Children's Laureate Michael Rosen explains the inspiration behind a selection of his own quirky poems, highlighting that ideas can come from many different places.White/Band 10 books have more complex sentences and figurative language.Text type: A poetry bookPages 22 and 23 summarise some of the inspirations and resulting poems, allowing children to discuss and explore the ideas from the book.Curriculum links: Literacy: Really Looking; Language play.This book has been quizzed for Accelerated Reader.
£10.23
HarperCollins Publishers September 1 1939 W. H. Auden and the Afterlife of
Book SynopsisThis is a book about a poet, about a poem, about a city, and about a world at a point of change. More than a work of literary criticism or literary biography, it is a record of why and how we create and respond to great poetry.This is a book about a poet W. H. Auden, a wunderkind, a victim-beneficiary of a literary cult of personality who became a scapegoat and a poet-expatriate largely excluded from British literary history because he left.About a poem September 1, 1939', his most famous and celebrated, yet one which he tried to rewrite and disown and which has enjoyed or been condemned to a tragic and unexpected afterlife.About a city New York, an island, an emblem of the Future, magnificent, provisional, seamy, and in 1939 about to emerge as the defining twentieth-century cosmopolis, the capital of the world.And about a world at a point of change about 1939, and about our own Age of Anxiety, about the aftermath of September 11, when many American newspapers reprinted Auden's pTrade ReviewPraise for September 1, 1939: ‘Sansom has given us a book in which all serious readers of Auden will find something to value. He has chosen exactly the right poem for our times to anchor his thoughts on this man who came to define a generation’ Literary Review ‘Richly entertaining … explores what goes on in the poem and why it has had such an impact. Shandyesque and magpie-like, scholarly yet frolicsome, the book makes room for all manner of diverse material, to great effect’ Blake Morrison, Guardian Praise for Paper: ‘Engaging and dynamic’ Andrew Martin, Financial Times ‘Wonderfully diverting…Splendidly dense with fact and thought’ Steven Poole, Times Literary Supplement ‘Sansom’s scholarship is prodigious; his enthusiasm inexhaustible…He can make one laugh out loud by his placing of a single word’ Daily Telegraph ‘A collection of ever so erudite, witty, chucklesome essays, rich with digressions and asides, on paper, in many of its guises, that seeks to refute – and does refute – the idea that we are moving towards a paperless world’ Bookmunch
£10.44
HarperCollins Publishers Ted Hughes The Unauthorised Life
Book SynopsisSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZEGripping and at times ineffably sad, this book would be poetic even without the poetry. It will be the standard biography of Ted Hughes for a long time to come' Sunday TimesSeldom has the life of a writer rattled along with such furious activity A moving, fascinating biography' The TimesTed Hughes, Poet Laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. He is one of Britain's most important poets, a poet of claws and cages: Jaguar, Hawk and Crow. Event and animal are turned to myth in his work. Yet he is also a poet of deep tenderness, of restorative memory steeped in the English literary tradition. A poet of motion and force, of rivers, light and redemption, of beasts in brooding landscapes.With an equal gift for poetry and prose, and with a soul as capacious as any poet who has lived, he was also a prolific children's writer and has been hailed as the greatest English letter-writer since John Keats. With his magnetic persTrade Review‘Remarkable … one of the very best biographies in years’ Joyce Carol Oates ‘I found it as spirited and sympathetic as it is scorching’ Bel Mooney, Books of the Year, Daily Mail ‘A work of head-spinning revelations … Bate offers a complete picture of Hughes: the man, the work and the restless mythologies that prowled his imagination … A moving, fascinating biography’ The Times ‘Comprehensive and definitive … Bate's relaxed prose keeps everything moving anecdotally … underpinning it all is a vast command of archival material … He is also a sure guide to the genesis and reception of each of Hughes's major books’ Daily Telegraph ‘Bate captures the great poet in all his wild complexity … A powerful and clarifying study, richly layered and compelling’ Melyn Bragg, Observer ‘[An] important … ultimately triumphant biography … Bate is obviously suited as a biographer and critic. His standing in his academic profession is eminent’ Financial Times ‘Magisterial … Bate writes with sympathy and perception about Hughes and his poetry. This fine book tells readers as much as they need to know for now’ Economist ‘Bate has read this huge mass of material with a scholar’s ability to date and arrange it … This scrupulous and lucid biography makes it all seem like muddle and self-deception, tormenting to himself and the many who loved him’ Guardian ‘Fascinating’ John Preston, Spectator, Books of the Year ‘Elegantly retells the myth and, occasionally, violence of the story and gives it new flesh’, Philip Hoare, Spectator, Books of the Year ‘The most controversial biography of the year’, Gaby Wood, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year ‘Epic in both scale and voice’ Independent, Books of the Year ‘Manages to illuminate the poet’s lowering literary presence’ Financial Times, Books of the Year ‘A great present idea for the literary fan in your life. Bate’s fascinating biography is a painstaking exploration of Hughes’ Mail on Sunday
£17.09
HarperCollins Publishers Inc Rumis Secret
Book SynopsisThe acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Smash Cut, Flannery, and City Poet delivers the first popular biography of Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet revered by contemporary Western readers.Ecstatic love poems of Rumi, a Persian poet and Sufi mystic born over eight centuries ago, are beloved by millions of readers in America as well as around the world. He has been compared to Shakespeare for his outpouring of creativity and to Saint Francis of Assisi for his spiritual wisdom. Yet his life has long remained the stuff of legend rather than intimate knowledge. In this breakthrough biography, Brad Gooch brilliantly brings to life the man and puts a face to the name Rumi, vividly coloring in his time and place—a world as rife with conflict as our own. The map of Rumi’s life stretched over 2,500 miles. Gooch traces this epic journey from Central Asia, where Rumi was born in 1207, traveling with his family, displaced bTrade Review“A dazzling feat of scholarship…the book restores Rumi to the glories and hardships of his momentous age.” — Washington Post “Profound, important….flows with the ease of good fiction….Rumi’s Secret offers an expanded view of the 13th – century poet.” — Christian Science Monitor “Gooch’s biography brings the political and intellectual tumult of the early medieval era to life, producing vivid characters and memorable portraits of urban experience…a sensitive and passionate introduction.” — New York Times Book Review “A biography that is painstaking enough to withstand scholarly scrutiny without losing the compelling storyline.” — Lion’s Roar “Their friendship transformed Rumi’s life, and transports this biography into an exquisite, joyous realm.” — New Yorker “Brad Gooch brilliantly pins both the life of the spirit and the magic of the poet to the page in this intimate, entrancing, sumptuous biography. Flutes play, goldsmiths hammer, silver bells jingle in camel ears -- and Rumi’s lush music washes over the reader. “Everyone is born once. I have been born many times,” wrote the Persian poet. Never before like this.” — Stacy Schiff, Author of The Witches and Cleopatra “Extraordinary… Brad Gooch’s fine, searching biography, “Rumi’s Secret,” will fascinate his subject’s many admirers. We will never fully know Rumi, but thanks to Mr. Gooch, we know him better.” — The Wall Street Journal “An excellent and accessible introduction to the profound and generous mystical vision of Rumi that will give Western readers a much needed insight into the true spirituality of Islam.” — Karen Armstrong, Author of A History of God and Muhammad “Rumi’s life in this telling is as compelling as his poetry. Rumi’s Secret is a beautiful and relevant book.” — Reza Aslan, author of No god but God and Zealot “…a wondrous groundbreaking book….Never have we known Rumi this intimately or understood the life behind the verse so well. Brad Gooch moves elegantly between storytelling, the psychologies of relationships, and evocative criticism….His graceful prose is charged with luminous details: the sounds, the sights, the very feel of these worlds, and how they generated Rumi’s ecstatic yet practical verse. With Rumi’s Secret, Gooch has not only set another high-water mark in literary biography, he has given the fullness of Rumi to us at a moment when we need him more than ever.” — Harvard Review “Brad Gooch unfolds the secret of Rumi’s art, mapping the transformation of Rumi’s life-experiences into his poems. Friendship, poetry, and spirituality intertwine into a felt experience for readers. Before we know it, Rumi has caught us up in his own experience and we are changed.” — Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, chairman of The Cordoba Initiative “This is a monumental book, an illumination, an achievement worthy of Rumi’s remarkable journey and lasting influence. May it dance its way to a wide audience, changing lives and bridging cultures, as Mevlana himself did.” — Eboo Patel, author of Acts of Faith “Suffice it to say, it’s Brad Gooch who holds the key to Rumi’s Secret.” — Vanity Fair: Hot Type “In these deeply divisive times, it matters more than ever to deepen our understanding of the roots of sacred Islam, and this deeply researched and highly literary biography of Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic, is at once prescriptive and enlivening.” — Chicago Tribune
£11.69
Vintage Publishing Darwin
Book SynopsisIn these extraordinary poems, using multiple viewpoints - from Darwin himself, to his beloved wife Emma, and even, at one point, the orangutang at London Zoo - Ruth Padel illuminates the development of Darwin''s thought, the drama of the discovery of evolution, and the fluctuating emotions of Darwin the husband, the naturalist and the tender father, in a powerful tribute to her famous ancestor.Shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Poetry Award.Trade ReviewExquisite, precise and moving poems... Once I started reading I could not put it down until I had reached the end, and then I turned back for the pleasure of reading again -- Claire TomalinA fascinating, very rich book... With sympathy and grace, Padel moves deftly between between science, love and family; between the vast processes of evolution and a personal life -- Sean O'BrienDaring and exciting, brilliant and subtle, stunning and deeply impressive... a lesson to biographers and poets alike -- Colm ToibinAmbitious... shows her extraordinary talent * Observer *Moments of Darwin's life captured with an economy and fluency that prosaic biographers might envy * Spectator *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing An African Elegy
Book SynopsisDreams are the currency of Okri''s writing, particularly in this first book of poems, An African Elegy, but also in his books of short stories and prize-winning novel The Famished Road. Okri''s dreams are made on the stuff of Africa''s colossal economic and political problems, and reading the poems is to experience a constant succession of metaphors of resolution in both senses of the word. Virtually every poem contains an exhortation to climb out of the African miasma, and virtually every poem harvests the dream of itself with an upbeat restorative ending'' - Giles Foden, Times Literary SupplementTrade ReviewAuthenticity shines out of these poems in the way it does from some East European and Russian poets * Times Literary Supplement *Accessible and affecting... Born of a big spirit that one cannot ignore -- Gillian Ferguson * Scotland on Sunday *A kaleidoscope of tersely condensed implications, with pregnant shifts of mood, tone and meaning brought to bear in the space of each line break... Most of Okri's writing is best understood as poetry, even when not laid out in broken lines -- Michael Horovitz
£12.34
Penguin Books Ltd An Introduction to English Poetry
Book SynopsisJames Fenton''s An Introduction to English Poetry offers a master class for both the reader and writer of poetry. Simply and elegantly written and discussing the work of poets as wide ranging as W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, Tennyson, Kipling, Milton and Blake, it covers all varieties of poetic practice in English.''It is hard to imagine a beginner who could not learn from [this book]. If you know a young poet, give them this'' The Times Literary SupplementTrade Review'It is hard to imagine a beginner who could not learn from [this book]. If you know a young poet, give them this' The Times Literary SupplementTable of ContentsThe history and scope of English poetry; where music and poetry divide; the training of the poet; the sense of form; the iambic pentameter; variations in the line; patterns of stress; mysteries of the trochee; the genius of the trochee; the shorter lines; the iambic tetrameter; the longer lines; the shorter stanza; the longer stanza; the sonnet; minor forms; rhyme; syllabics; free verse; writing for the eye; poetic drama and opera.
£9.99
Penguin Books Ltd The Penguin Book of English Song
Book SynopsisPoetry and music have been associated with each other from the very beginning. The Penguin Book of English Song draws together a great variety of English poetry (including Irish, Scots and Welsh writers) that has reached a wider audience through the magic of music. Richard Stokes''s rich anthology of verse stretches from the fourteenth century to the twentieth, collecting poems that have inspired musical settings by one hundred English poets, along with a treasure trove of illuminating notes and marginalia about their lives, work and, often, their approach to music.Stokes gathers together in a single volume a huge amount of information about English song that will assist musicians in performing these works, and enlighten all those enthusiasts who delight in the fusion of words and music that has produced countless moments of incandescent magic.
£14.24
Penguin Books Ltd Pessoa
Book SynopsisFINALIST: 2022 PULITZER PRIZE IN BIOGRAPHYA NEW STATESMAN AND SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021''A revelation. Such a revolutionary literary discovery seems unlikely to be on offer again. It''s that good'' Sunday Times ''A masterpiece of literary biography. Zenith has produced a work in some ways as astonishing as those of Pessoa himself'' John Gray, New StatesmanFor many thousands of readers Fernando Pessoa''s The Book of Disquiet is almost a way of life. Ironic, haunting and melancholy, this completely unclassifiable work is the masterpiece of one of the twentieth century''s most enigmatic writers. Richard Zenith''s Pessoa at last allows us to understand this extraordinary figure. Some eighty-five years after his premature death in Lisbon, where he left over 25,000 manuscript sheets in a wooden trunk, Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) can now be celebrated as one of the great modTrade ReviewA masterpiece of literary biography ... a tour de force of cultural history. Zenith's achievement is extraordinary. By illuminating this elusive figure Zenith has produced a work in some ways as astonishing as those of Pessoa himself. -- John Gray * New Statesman *Mammoth, definitive and sublime. Zenith has written the only kind of biography truly permissible, an account of a life that plucks at the very borders and burdens of the notion of a self. * New York Times *A completely superb and magisterial life of Fernando Pessoa. Finally, this extraordinary poet gets the great biography he deserves. Unsurpassable. -- William BoydEven now, Fernando Pessoa remains one of the lesser-known of the truly great writers of the 20th century. This immense, magnificent biography is going to change that... here is a revelation: a modern master to rank alongside Joyce, Kafka, Beckett, say. Such a revolutionary literary discovery seems unlikely to be on offer again. It's that good. -- David Sexton * Sunday Times *Monumental ... To do justice to the magnitude and complexities of Pessoa Zenith, a translator and literary critic, spent more than a decade collating material. The result is a tour de force. -- Cláudia Pazos Alonso * Times Literary Supplement *Erudite, sensitive and entertaining, this multi-faceted portrait pays its giant homage to a man who wasn't there. -- Boyd Tonkin * Financial Times *Monumental ... Zenith brought to the task a depth of scholarship gained through more than 30 years of publishing, translating and promoting his subject's work; Pessoa, who had few intimates in life, is lucky to have found this posthumous friend ... Pessoa really did build an entire city. It was a city that needed a guide. Thanks to Zenith, it has one at last. -- Benjamin Moser * New York Times *A portrait with bags of personality ... Richard Zenith's massive biography of the Portuguese writer who constructed numerous identities captures his tragicomic oddity. -- Peter Conrad * Observer *A truly comprehensive representation of any one person is almost impossible. That very impossibility is largely what makes Richard Zenith's biography of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa so remarkable. -- Alberto Manguel * Literary Review *Ingenious ... with flashes of charm and wit. -- Stuart Kelly * The Spectator *A gloriously labyrinthine biography ... Zenith's dynamic prose, deep erudition, and incisive readings of Pessoa's poetry make for a meticulous portrait of one artist's brilliant and bewildering inner world. * Publishers Weekly *Finally! A brilliant biography that places Pessoa where he should have always belonged, with Joyce, Proust, and Musil - true giants, none of whom were Nobel laureates. -- André Aciman, author of CALL ME BY YOUR NAMEPessoa is a triumph of scholarship and verve that one cannot easily put down. -- Antonio Damasio, author of DESCARTES' ERRORRichard Zenith is his genius biographer who has given [Pessoa] fresh life. No one on earth knows more about Pessoa. With its historical sweep and novelistic execution, this biography will never be bested. -- William Giraldi, author of AMERICAN AUDACITYWhen you consider the fantastically vivid details of Fernando Pessoa's curious life contained in this biography, and the energetic and elegant quality of the writing, you might wonder if this book is actually a just discovered autobiography, written by one of Pessoa's heteronyms, 'Richard Zenith.' No one, it seems, could know so much or relate it so marvelously unless they had lived inside Pessoa's head. Zenith's Pessoa is magnificent. -- Forrest Gander, author of BE WITH
£17.09
Oxford University Press American Poetry
Book SynopsisA leading critic explains what makes American poetry--a vast genre covering diverse styles, techniques, and form--distinctive. In this short and engaging volume, David Caplan proposes a new theory of American poetry. With lively writing and illuminating examples, Caplan argues that two characteristics mark the vast, contentious literature. On the one hand, several of America''s major poets and critics claim that America needs a poetry equal to the country''s distinctiveness. They advocate for novelty and for a break with what is perceived to be outmoded and foreign. On the other hand, American poetry welcomes techniques, styles, and traditions that originate from far beyond its borders. The force of these two competing characteristics, American poetry''s emphasis on its uniqueness and its transnationalism, drives both individual accomplishment and the broader field. These two characteristic features energize American poetry, quickening its development into a great national literature that continues to inspire poets in the contemporary moment.American Poetry: A Very Short Introduction moves through history and honors the poets'' artistry by paying close attention to the verse forms, meters, and styles they employ. Examples range from Anne Bradstreet, writing a century before the United States was founded, to the poets of the Black Lives Matter movement. Individual chapters consider how other major figures such as T.S. Eliot, Phillis Wheatley, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, W.H. Auden, and Langston Hughes emphasize convention or idiosyncrasy, and turn to American English as an important artistic resource. This concise examination of American poetry enriches our understanding of both the literature''s distinctive achievement and the place of its most important writers within it.
£9.49
Oxford University Press Jerusalem Blake Parry and the Fight for
Book SynopsisA reception history of William Blake's 'Jerusalem' that traces the hymn's increasing associations with national identity and explores how different social and political factions, both left and right, have sought to impose their own meaning on building Jerusalem.Trade ReviewThis book is fascinating ... Blake the revolutionary was never more relevant * Michael Church *Jerusalem is a wonderfully researched, enjoyable work about a cultural phenomenon of the utmost familiarity, and it performs its task very successfully...Whittaker proves an excellent, lucid guide to realms of almost unimagined obscurity. * Philip Hensher, The Spectator *Whittaker produces fascinating and surprising insights. His analysis of the different ways that "Jerusalem" has been decontextualized and recontextualized serves as a comprehensive case study in reception history and highlights the complexities of national identity. * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Arrows of Desire 1: And Did Those Feet? Blake and Milton, 1800-1827 2: Our Clouded Hills: Before 'Jerusalem', 1827-1915 3: Mental Fight: Parry, the Great War and its Aftermath, 1916-1922 4: Dark Satanic Mills: Peace and War, 1923-1945 5: Bring Me My Bow: Empire's End, 1945-1976 6: Chariot of Fire: Thatcher's Britain and the End of the Cold War, 1977-1996 7: Green and Pleasant Land: From Blair to Brexit, 1997-2016 Epilogue: Albion
£27.54
Oxford University Press Selected Poems Oxford Worlds Classics
Book SynopsisFrom the gritty realism and resentment of Du Bellay to the lyric grace and frank eroticism of Ronsard, the poems of this volume testify to the many-faceted achievement of the two poets who, as leaders of the famous 'Pléiade' group, were crucial to the creation of a new national literature.Trade ReviewThis is an essential poetry collection for all humans' home libraries, as well as public and university libraries. This collection is also a great choice for French or world literature classes. * Pennsylvania Literary Journal *Table of ContentsIntroduction Note on the Texts Select Bibliography A Chronology of Joachim Du Bellay A Chronology of Pierre de Ronsard Selected Poems Manifestos Explanatory Notes Glossary of Names and Places Index of French First Lines
£8.54
Oxford University Press The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Early Modern
Book SynopsisIn this study, Michael Ullyot makes two new arguments about the rhetoric of exemplarity in late Elizabethan and Jacobean culture: first, that exemplarity is a recursive cycle driven by rhetoricians'' words and readers'' actions; and second, that positive moral examples are not replicable, but rather aspirational models of readers'' posthumous biographies. For example, Alexander the Great envied Achilles less for his exemplary life than for Homer''s account of it. Ullyot defines the three types of decorum on which exemplary rhetoric and imitation rely, and charts their operations through Philip Sidney''s poetics, Edmund Spenser''s poetry, and the dedications, sermons, elegies, biographies, and other occasional texts about Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex, and Henry, Prince of Wales. Ullyot expands the definition of occasional texts to include those that criticize their circumstances to demand better ones, and historicizes moral exemplarity in the contexts of sixteenth-century Prote
£76.00
Oxford University Press The New Oxford Book of War Poetry
Book SynopsisThere can be no area of human experience that has generated a wider range of powerful feelings than war. Jon Stallworthy''s classic and celebrated anthology spans centuries of human experience of war, from Homer''s Iliad, through the First and Second World Wars, the Vietnam War, and the wars fought since. This new edition, published to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, includes a new introduction additonal poems from David Harsent and Peter Wyton amongst others. The new selection provides improved coverage of the two World Wars and the Vietnam War, and new coverage of the wars of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.Trade ReviewReview from previous edition Review from previous edition quite simply the most rewardingly catholic anthology of battle verse I know. Homer, Byron, Macauley, Hardy - and more recently, Keyes, Reed, Lewis, Douglas and Prince - they're all here, plus an excellent brief essay of introduction. * Times Educational Supplement *a marvellous collection of old favourites and many surprises. * The Star *This collection is of exceptionally high quality. * Washington Post *full of good things...many old favourites and quite a few genuine surprises. * Vernon Scannell, The Guardian *This is an anthology that works in a way that the work of no single poet could. * The Observer *
£11.69
Oxford University Press Scottish Poetry 17301830 Oxford Worlds Classics
Book SynopsisFeaturing 218 poems and songs in Scots, English, and Gaelic, this collection places Robert Burns, Walter Scott, and other major writers of the period alongside lesser known or even entirely forgotten figures. A significant number of important long poems are given in full, and many of the shorter works feature for the first time in a modern edition.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction Note on the Texts Select Bibliography Chronology Poems List of Poets Explanatory notes
£11.69
Oxford University Press Whitman in Washington Becoming the National Poet
Book SynopsisThis book analyses Whitman's integrated life, writings, and government work in his urban context to reevaluate the writer and the nation's capital in a time of transformation.Trade ReviewThe virtue of Whitman in Washington is that it keeps tensions in place, and plumbs paradox, palpably wrestling with the legacy of Whitman in the moment and calling us to our own reckoning of him and his work for the future. * Tyler Hoffman, American Literary History *Price works to untangle Whitman's complex, often contradictory, racial attitudes, showing through close readings and rich culture and aesthetic contextualization how his views of African Americans during slavery changed once emancipation occurred... The virtue of Whitman in Washington is that it keeps tensions in place, and plumbs paradox, palpably wrestling with the legacy of Whitman in the moment and calling us to our own reckoning with him and his work for the future. * Tyler Hoffman, American Literary History *No other book has done so much to trace the contradictions inherent in the poet's work for the government and analyze the role it may have played in his poetry and politics. * Martin T. Buinicki, Valparaiso University *Written with clarity and impressively researched, this study offers a remarkable picture of a key period in Whitman's life. * J. W. Miller, CHOICE *Table of ContentsPreface 1: Whitman, Washington, and the Convulsiveness of Civil War 2: Whitman as a Paradoxical 'Missionary to the Wounded' 3: Strayed Cattle: Anti-Pastoralism in Whitman's War Writings 4: Social Calamity, Personal Perturbations, and Office Decorum: How Leaves of Grass Grew Pensive 5: Multi-racial Democracy and Black Democratic Vistas Works Cited
£30.87
Oxford University Press The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Womens
Book SynopsisThe Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women''s Writing in English, 1540-1700 brings together new work by scholars across the globe, from some of the founding figures in early modern women''s writing to those early in their careers and defining the field now. It investigates how and where women gained access to education, how they developed their literary voice through varied genres including poetry, drama, and letters, and how women cultivated domestic and technical forms of knowledge from recipes and needlework to medicines and secret codes. Chapters investigate the ways in which women''s writing was an integral part of the intellectual culture of the period, engaging with male writers and traditions, while also revealing the ways in which women''s lives and writings were often distinctly different, from women prophetesses to queens, widows, and servants. It explores the intersections of women writing in English with those writing in French, Spanish, Latin, and Greek, in Europe and in New England, and argues for an archipelagic understanding of women''s writing in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and England. Finally, it reflects on--and challenges--the methodologies which have developed in, and with, the field: book and manuscript history, editing, digital analysis, premodern critical race studies, network theory, queer theory, and feminist theory. The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women''s Writing in English, 1540-1700 captures the most innovative work on early modern women''s writing in English at present.Trade ReviewThis handbook offers a thorough overview of scholarly work on women's writing from 1540 to 1700. Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. * Choice *
£157.50
Oxford University Press Emotion and the History of Rhetoric in the Middle
Book SynopsisRhetoric is an engine of social discourse and the art charged with generating and swaying emotion. The history of rhetoric provides a continuous structure by which we can measure how emotions were understood, articulated, and mobilized under various historical circumstances and social contracts. This book is about how rhetoric in the West, from Late Antiquity to the later Middle Ages, represented the role of emotion in shaping persuasions. It is the first book-length study of medieval rhetoric and the emotions, coloring that rhetorical history between about 600 CE and the cusp of early modernity. Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, as in other periods, constituted the gateway training for anyone engaged in emotionally persuasive writing. Medieval rhetorical thought on emotion has multiple strands of influence and sedimentations of practice. The earliest and most persistent tradition treated emotional persuasion as a property of surface stylistic effect, which can be seen in the medieval rhetoTrade ReviewAs with Copeland's other major studies, Emotion and the History of Rhetoric in the Middle Ages synthesizes multiple research fields to serve multiple audiences ... indispensable.' * Jonathan Newman, Studies in the Age of Chaucer *Copeland has given us a convincing and conceptually rich account of Western medieval rhetoric that will also serve as an invaluable resource more broadly for historians of literature, culture, and thought. * Jonathan Morton, Medium Aevum *Professor Copeland's text is a surprisingly readable history that builds upon itself logically, engaging the reader even as it carries them through dense lines of arguments and swaths of narrative ... Emotion and the History of Rhetoric in the Middle Ages is truly a life's work, and it is sure to become an essential text for scholars of the Middle Ages across the disciplines of literature, history, philosophy, and theology, as well as all kinds of scholars interested in a more broadly conceived history of emotions. * Shea Mccollough, English, Washington University in St. Louis, Comitatus *Copeland is generous with citations from primary sources and is always ready to explore the byways as well as the highways of her terrain ... Readers will thus find much to learn from this book. * Ad Putter, Review of English Studies *In this rich and wide-ranging study,...Emotion and the History of Rhetoric in the Middle Ages synthesizes multiple research fields to serve multiple audiences. * Studies in the Age of Chaucer *In this rich and wide-ranging study, Rita Copeland pursues two concepts of the relationship between rhetoric and emotion from Antiquity to the end of the medieval period...The volume can serve as a history of medieval rhetoric. * Jonathan Newman, Studies in the Age of Chaucer *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1: Before the Middle Ages: Emotion from Invention to Style 2: Christian and Literary Rhetorics of the Early Middle Ages: Emotion as the Property of Style 3: Emotion in the Rhetorical Arts and Literary Culture c. 1070-c.1400 4: Aristotle's Rhetoric in the Latin West: The Fortunes of the Path? 5: De regimine principum: Emotion, Persuasion, and Political Thought 6: Political Poetics and the Aristotelian Turn: Dante, Chaucer, and Hoccleve 7: Preaching, Emotion, and the Aristotelian Turn Epilogue: Mixed Rhetorics
£35.00
Oxford University Press The Poetry Handbook
Book SynopsisThe Poetry Handbook is a lucid and entertaining guide to the poet''s craft, and an invaluable introduction to practical criticism for students. Chapters on each element of poetry, from metre to gender, offer a wide-ranging general account, and end by looking at two or three poems from a small group (including works by Donne, Elizabeth Bishop, Geoffrey Hill, and Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott), to build up sustained analytical readings.Thorough and compact, with notes and quotations supplemented by detailed reference to the Norton Anthology of Poetry and a companion website with texts, links, and further discussion, The Poetry Handbook is indispensable for all school and undergraduate students of English. A final chapter addresses examinations of all kinds, and sample essays by undergraduates are posted on the website. Critical and scholarly terms are italicised and clearly explained, both in the text and in a complete glossary; the volume also includes suggestions for further reading.The first edition, widely praised by teachers and students, showed how the pleasures of poetry are heightened by rigorous understanding and made that understanding readily available. This second edition -- revised, expanded, updated, and supported by a new companion website - confirm The Poetry Handbook as the best guide to poetry available in English.Trade ReviewLennard succeeds in being as exhaustive as he can possibly be... * Caroline Bertoneche, Universite de Provence *Very readable... gives and excellent overview of poetry in English and will explain rhythm, metre and style. * The Observer, February 2006 *Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION
£35.99
Oxford University Press John Donne The Major Works
Book SynopsisThis authoritative edition was formerly published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Donne''s poetry and prose - all the major poems, complemented by rarely published letters and extracts from Donne''s sermons - to give the essence of his work and thinking. John Donne (1572-1631) is today celebrated as one of the greatest of the metaphysical poets, whose verse was daringly original and whose use of imagery and conceits marked a new, intellectual approach to poetry. His Satires, Elegies, and Songs and Sonnets, which contain his most famous love poems, were complemented by his religious writing, both verse and prose. He was one of the most renowned preachers of his day, and this volume does equal justice to the full range of his work. In addition to nearly all his English poetry this volume includes over 130 extracts from Donne''s sermons, as well as the full text of his last sermon, ''Death''s Table of Contents* INTRODUCTION * TEXTUAL NOTE * BIBLIOGRAPHY * CHRONOLOGY * EXPLANATORY NOTES *INDEX
£10.44
Oxford University Press Selected Poetry Oxford Worlds Classics
Book SynopsisA new selection of John Donne's verse, prepared by the editor of The Oxford Authors edition, with full notes and a useful introduction. John Donne is perhaps the most important poet of the seventeenth century, and has often been referred to as the founder of the metaphysical genre.
£8.54
Oxford University Press The Satires
Book SynopsisJuvenal, writing between AD 110 and 130, was one of the greatest satirists of Imperial Rome. His powerful and witty attacks on the vices, abuses, and follies of the big city have been admired and used by many English writers, including Ben Jonson, Dryden, and most notably, Dr Johnson, who described his writing as `a mixture of gaiety and statelines, of pointed sentences and declamatory grandeur''. Juvenal has been seen as a stern moralist and, more recently, as an extravagant wit, and is acclaimed for his vivid description of the scenes which aroused his anger. He coined the famous phrase designating people `eager and anxious for two things; bread and races'' (panem et circenses''). Niall Rudd''s translation reproduces the original style and metrical effect of Juvenal''s hexameters. William Barr''s Introduction and Notes provide literary and historical background to the sixteen satires. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.Trade Review`scholarly and disciplined' Sunday Telegraph'The translation itself goes a long way towards catching J.'s mixture of rhetoric and wit. It is lively and taut ... translation is excellent, not only the best available in English but also good to read, no bad thing as most of its readers will be Latinless.' F. Jones, University of Liverpool, The Classical Review, Vol. XLII, 1992
£9.49
Vintage Publishing Intimates
Book SynopsisHelen Farish has won the Forward Poetry Prize for best first collection and been shortlisted for the T.S.Eliot Prize. She lives in Cumbria and was Poet-in-Residence at the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere in 2004.Trade ReviewCan there have been a more arresting opening to a debut collection than Helen Farish's 'Look at These'? Between this and her beautiful closing walk along the Coffin Path, we're treated to a whip-smart, tough lyricism, which is always alloyed by her sense of shape and economy. It's been ages since I've read a first book of poems as bold, carried off with such élan -- Paul FarleyThe intimacy of Helen Farish's poems is of an extraordinary kind: at once close to and distant from family and body and thought. The poems are bodily and disembodied, emotionally engaged and detached, passionate and reasoned. Nobody writes with quite this variety of intelligence. Intimates is a stunning debut -- Bernard O'DonoghueThis is a brave book: it faces up to life at every turn. It celebrates, it laments, it answers back. Helen Farish writes with extraordinary candour, wittily, movingly, with sensuous intelligence -- David ConstantineHer seemingly throwaway lines let the pain come through because of the subtle expressiveness of her pauses -- Derwent May * Times Weekend Review *Farish is a sensitive explorer of the nuances of relationships... Intimates is full of evocative atmospheres -- Stephen Knight * Independent on Sunday *
£9.50
Vintage Publishing The Book of Blood
Book SynopsisSplit between dark and light, this book records the dichotomy of human experience with unflinching force and clarity. It deals with break-up, depression, illness and death. But it also reveals an intense involvement with nature and a capacity for healing and love. There are intimate personal poems reflecting on relationships with people and creatures; poems which enter the lives of real and imaginary characters, Keats and Medea and Blodeuwedd, for example; and also poems which engage with paintings and political events.Set in a territory which connects child with adult, myth with reality, the personal with the universal, the book shows a poet fully open to the richness and possibilities of the world but also aware of its violence and pain, not as a remote observer but as someone who is a part of it.Trade ReviewEveryday subjects resonate with truth and humour, but beneath the beautiful words are deep, dark and shocking truths * The Herald *Violence stalks the book -- Colin Waters * Sunday Herald *Vicki Feaver's poems always come back to contemporary relationships - not so much domestic as domestic gothic, where the women are sensual and murderous. These are powerfully distinctive poems, women's poems that don't shut out men -- Matthew SweeneyFeaver’s best poems offer a disquietingly direct apprehension of the powers by which we are made and driven -- Sean O'brein * The Independent *
£11.69
Vintage Publishing Gift Songs
Book SynopsisJohn Burnside was among the most acclaimed writers of his generation. His novels, short stories, poetry and memoirs won numerous awards, including the Geoffrey Faber Memorial, Saltire Scottish Book of the Year and, in 2023, he received the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in literature. In 2011 Black Cat Bone won both the Forward and the T.S. Eliot Prizes for poetry.Trade ReviewIf genius is operating anywhere in English poetry at present, I feel it is here, in Burnside's singular music -- Adam Thorpe * Observer *I love the way John Burnside looks at the world. He doesn't just look: he watches. He sees into secret spaces that lie somewhere between the hidden and the revealed... [He] crafts a poetry as precise in its detail, as subtle in its perceptions, as respectful in its attentions as the blade of a brain surgeon's scalpel -- Rachel Campbell-Johnston * The Times *A stunningly good writer of poetry and fiction -- Christina Patterson * Independent *The new appearance of a collection of John Burnside's poems is now an event... His has become a voice we rely on; he is a shaman-cum-seer who finds a lucid magic in the ordinary, a life of implication in passing moments, an X-ray truth, an inner light in our daily lives -- Tom Adair * Scotland on Sunday *Burnside has a stillness and emotional restraint, a respect for the observer and observed alike which is serious, exemplary and rare * Times Literary Supplement *
£11.40
