Poetry Books

Book Synopsis Winner of the 2016 Goodreads Choice Award, the princess saves herself in this one is a collection of poetry about resilience. It is about writing your own ending.   From Amanda Lovelace, a poetry collection in four parts: the princess, the damsel, the queen, and you. The first three sections piece together the life of the author while the final section serves as a note to the reader. This moving book explores love, loss, grief, healing, empowerment, and inspiration.the princess saves herself in this one is the first book in the 'women are some kind of magic' series.Trade Review"It blends fairy tale lore with real-life musings for a beautiful result." (Lindsay E. Mack, Romper)"As a whole, the collection acts as a tribute to all women who have ever needed a boost of empowerment and inspiration." (Madison Breaux, V Magazine)"...Amanda Lovelace dives into the topics of modern feminism and empowerment...Read if you've ever thought about love, loss, who you are, and what you want. (So...all of us.)" (Abigail Yonker, The Everygirl)"This is the book to read if you are on the path to writing your own ending and finding yourself, even when the road to accomplishment is rocky." (Dominique Etzel, Alloy)"Similar in style—written in straightforward and uncomplicated verse, and content—grappling with themes of female power, love and loss, failure and redemption, pain and healing, poet Amanda Lovelace's The Princess Saves Herself in this One is similar to Kaur's Milk and Honey in another way as well: both books were self-published before going completely viral among readers." (E. CE Miller, Bustle)"The perfect poetry opener for any fairytale lover and feminist..." (Kerri Jarema, Bustle)"15 Books You'll Want To Read Over And Over Again" (Zoraida Córdova, Bustle)"18 Literary Quotes Every Feminist Needs to Read Right Now" #5 "the only thing / required / to be / a woman / is to / identify as one. / - period, end of story." (E. CE Miller, Bustle)"14 New Books You Definitely Need to Have on Your Radar in February [2017]" (Ryan Roschke, PopSugar)

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Book SynopsisNotable TikTok creator Michaela Angemeer explores connecting with your inner child, loving the worst parts of yourself, coming out as bisexual, and focusing on self-growth in this highly anticipated poetry collection.Please Love Me at My Worst is a collection poetry divided into four sections inspired by loneliness, unrequited love, personal growth, and not being able to let go of past relationships. Written with honesty and vulnerability, Please Love Me at My Worst reflects on what it means to yearn for people who are unavailable and how important it is to focus on self-love and healing.

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Book SynopsisThe final installment in this bestselling series completes the journey that Courtney Peppernell began with Pillow Thoughts. With 600,000 copies sold across the series, Pillow Thoughts continues to inspire all who dip into Courtney's encouraging words.Self-healing is the theme of the entire Pillow Thoughts series. While books II and III focus on healing the heart and mind, respectively, Pillow Thoughts IV offers a balm for healing the soul. Have a cup of tea and let yourself feel.

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Book SynopsisStanley Webber is visited in his boarding house by strangers, Goldberg and McCann. An innocent-seeming birthday party for Stanley turns into a nightmare.The Birthday Party was first performed in 1958 and is now a modern classic, produced and studied throughout the world.

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Book SynopsisA revised hardcover edition of the Number One Sunday Times bestseller home body by rupi kaur, author of the Number One Sunday Times bestsellers milk and honey and the sun and her flowers. Rupi's long-awaited hardcover edition debuts exclusive poems and is beautifully clothbound and foil stamped. rupi kaur constantly embraces growth, and in home body, she walks readers through a reflective and intimate journey visiting the past, the present and the potential of the self. home body is a collection of raw, honest conversations with oneself – reminding readers to fill up on love, acceptance, community, family, and embrace change. illustrated by the author, themes of nature and nurture, light and dark, rest here.   i dive into the well of my body and end up in another world everything i need already exist

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Book SynopsisA play which contains an uncompromising depiction of rape, torture and violence in a society at war with itself.Trade Review'Kane wrote simply and starkly about the world she saw around her...a mature and vividly theatrical response to the pain of living' Guardian; 'I do not think I've yet seen a play that can beat Sarah Kane's sustained onslaught on the sensibilities for sheer, unadulterated brutalism' Evening Standard

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Book SynopsisThis collection of Ovid's poems deals with the whole spectrum of sexual desire, ranging from deeply emotional declarations of eternal devotion to flippant arguments for promiscuity. In the Amores, Ovid addresses himself in a series of elegies to Corinna, his beautiful, elusive mistress. The intimate and vulnerable nature of the poet revealed in these early poems vanishes in the notorious Art of Love, in which he provides a knowing and witty guide to sexual conquest - a work whose alleged obscenity led to Ovid's banishment from Rome in AD 8. This volume also includes the Cures for Love, with instructions on how to terminate a love affair, and On Facial Treatment for Ladies, an incomplete poem on the art of cosmetics.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and discipTable of ContentsThe Erotic PoemsList of AbbreviationsPreface and AcknowledgmentsIntroductionThe AmoresThe Art of LoveCures for LoveOn Facial Treatment for LadiesNotes and ReferencesSelect Reading List

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Book SynopsisWritten in the aftermath of hostile criticism of Ghosts, Ibsen''s three plays all deal with the moral courage needed to tell the truth. They are peopled not by symbolic figures and abstract concepts, but by complex individuals pitted against, or part of, a society that Ibsen felt was morally abhorrent and claustrophobically provincial. 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.Table of ContentsAn Enemy of the People ; The Wild Duck ; Rosmersholm

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Book Synopsis‘A deep and valuable collection that you could rely upon in your time of need’ The Times Following the success of their anthology Poems That Make Grown Men Cry, father-and-son team Anthony and Ben Holden, working with Amnesty International, have asked the same revealing question of 100 remarkable women: what poem has moved you to tears? The poems chosen range from the eighth century to today, from Rumi and Shakespeare to Sylvia Plath, W. H. Auden to Carol Ann Duffy, Pablo Neruda and Derek Walcott to Imtiaz Dharker and Warsan Shire. Their themes range from love and loss, through mortality and mystery, war and peace, to the beauty and variety of nature. From Yoko Ono to Judi Dench, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Elena Ferrante, Carol Ann Duffy to Meera Syal, and Joan Baez to Olivia Colman, this unique collection delivers private insights into the minds of women whose writing, acting and tTrade Review“The Holdens remind us that you don't have to be an academic or a postgraduate in creative writing to be moved by verse…I defy anyone not to enjoy the Holdens' book: It's plain fun.” * Wall Street Journal *‘A deep and valuable collection that you could rely upon in your time of need’ * The Times *‘The art of poetry, as exemplified in this collection, transcends all gender issues, real or disputed’ * Guardian *'This anthology has given me fresh pleasure in familiar poems and introduced me to exciting new voices' -- Sebastian Faulks, from his Afterword

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Book SynopsisTony Harrison published his first pamphlet of poems in 1964 and for over fifty years has been a prominent force in modern poetry. His poetic range is truly far-reaching, from the intimate tenderness of family life and personal love, to war poems written from Bosnia and savage public outcries against politicians. In The Collected Poems, Harrison draws deeply both on classical tradition and on the vernacular of the street. Combining the private and the public in a way Harrison has made distinctly his own, and drawing on his working-class upbringing in Leeds, these are powerful poems for modern times.This is the first complete paperback collection of one of Britain''s most controversial and critically acclaimed poets.''Tony Harrison is the greatest poet of the second half of the 20th century. . . He writes brilliantly about class, love and Britain'' Daniel Radcliffe''Harrison is a masterly technician, and the most fiery and indeliTrade ReviewBrilliant, passionate, outrageous, abrasive, but also, as in the family sonnets, immeasurably tender * Harold Pinter *Harrison is a masterly technician, and the most fiery and indelible English poet of the age. This book is a vineyard on a volcano * Paul Farley *Tony Harrison changed the entire landscape of British poetry * Don Paterson *Slangy, rooted, erudite, rhythmic, Harrison is a titan among poets; a unique Yorkshire brew of Auden, Byron, Brecht and Kipling, with a slug of Roman satire * The Independent *A pessimist with a relish for life . . . whose work insists that it is speech rather than page-bound silence -- Sean O'Brien * Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry *Tony Harrison writes in a style I have all my life been waiting for; combining the uninhibitedly vernacular with a line as taut and astringent as Racine's -- Stephen Spender * Observer *The poem "v." is the most outstanding social poem of the last twenty-five years. Seldom has a British poem of such personal intensity had such universal range -- Martin BoothThe war poems are important and moving, obviously, but his personal writing made me wipe away surreptitious tears -- Alison FloodTony Harrison is a superbly accessible and talented poet * Time Out *Whatever note Harrison strikes, be it melancholy regret or boisterous high spirits, the youthful energy to be found in his verse marks him out as a towering figure in poetry * Glasgow Herald *Scatological satire suits him as much as political wit or meditation. World-wide in its topography, powerful in its effects . . . stunning! -- Douglas DunnOne of the few truly great poets writing in English. His range is exhilarating, his clarity and technical mastery a sharp pleasure -- Melvyn BraggSome of the most important poems of the present day * Poetry Review *More than any other English poet I have read in recent years, Harrison makes good Camus' claim that the function of art is 'to open the prisons and give a voice to the sorrows and joys of all -- John Lucas * New Statesman *

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Book SynopsisLemn Sissay was seventeen when he wrote his first poetry book, which he hand-sold to the miners and millworkers of Wigan. Since then his poems have become landmarks, sculpted in granite and built from concrete, recorded on era-defining albums and declaimed in over thirty countries. He has performed to thousands of football fans at the FA Cup Final, to hundreds of thousands as the poet of the London Olympics, and to millions across our TV screens and the airwaves of BBC Radio. He has become one of the nation's best-loved voices.Trade ReviewLemn Sissay is a passionate and powerful voice whose performances are humbling and exhilarating -- KAE TEMPESTHugely enjoyable, inventive, funny and touching * * Guardian * *One of the most original, challenging poets writing in Britain today, and his extraordinary, heart-breaking, courageous life story is the stuff of legend . . . The collection showcases his breadth, his passion, his anger and his humanity . . . Full of light and hope . . . A prodigious talent * * Daily Mail, Poetry of the Year * *A tremendous selection of his poetry . . . His gift as a writer - of plays, poetry, documentaries - is for turning life's base metal into gold * * Observer * *This volume of selected and new poems traces [Sissay's] path from gifted adolescent to accomplished poetic voice, railing with passion and prowess against the "quiet violence of the day-to-day" * * Financial Times * *A collection of the poet's best-loved works . . . The performative element to his poetry is evident but no vibrancy or emotion is lost on paper, where his honesty, charm and humour prevail . . . Gold from the Stone maps Sissay's development as a poet and writer but also his many personal triumphs, even when the odds were stacked against him **** * * The List * *A literary institution * * Big Issue * *A lyrical genius * * The Voice * *His name is magic, his poems are songs on the street * * Independent * *

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Book SynopsisThis extraordinary debut heralds the arrival of a major new talent.In After You Were, I Am, charged moments from history collide with our own godless modern world. The book's three sections ingenious rewritings of canonical prayers, dramatic monologues from the Pendle witch trials of 1612, and the divine tragedy of the Elizabethan magus John Dee obsess over individual human characters and how our past informs (and informs on) our present. Ralphs's style is utterly distinctive; she is a modern metaphysical, tapping into a haunting, era-spanning utterance enlivened by the electric pulse of wordplay and imaginative conceit. This is poetry that in comprehending the past manages to make of it something utterly original and contemporary.Historical figures inspired two distinctive debuts: Elizabeth I's court magician John Dee is ventriloquised with dizzying wordplay in Camille Ralphs's metaphysical After You Were, I Am (Faber, 10.99)' Telegraph, Best Poetry of 2024 Ralphs's mischievous, metaphysical debut riffs on great religious poets, revisits the victims of the Pendle Witch Trials and explores the life of Elizabethan conjuror John Dee. TFS' Telegraph, The 50 Best Books of 2024 - ranked'

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Book SynopsisSturge Town is a stunning collection of poems that connects with the earliest days of Kwame Dawes’ work as a poet, from the roots of childhood in Ghana to the reflections of a man turned sixty who is witnessing his children occupying the space he once considered his own. It ranges from poems that make something special of the everyday, to poems of the most astonishing imaginative leaps. There are poems that speak most movingly of moments of acute self-reflection, family crises and losses through death, and there are the inventive poems of the dramatist drawn to create the stories of a rich variety of characters, many springing from the observation of paintings. Metrically careful and sonorous, these poems engage in a personal dialogue with the reader, serious, confessional, alarmed and sometimes teasing. They create highly visualised spaces, observed, remembered, imagined, the scenes of both outward and inner journeys. Organised in five sections, Sturge Town is a collection of finely shaped individual poems with the architecture of a densely interconnected whole, with the soaring grandeur and intimacy of a cathedral – both above and below ground. As the site of the ruined ancestral home of the Dawes, in one of the earliest post-slavery free villages in Jamaica, Sturge Town is both an actual place, a place of myth and a metaphor of the journeying that has taken Kwame Dawes from Ghana, through Jamaica, through South Carolina and now to Nebraska. It parallels a journeying through time, both personal, family and ancestral in which a keen sense of mortality makes life all the more precious.Trade ReviewA richly intelligent, deeply descriptive exploration of home and identity... this personal odyssey becomes a universal journey. * The Guardian *

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Book SynopsisDante’s dramatic journey through the circles of hell in search of redemption – and his encounter with devils, monsters and the souls of some of the greatest sinners who ever walked on earth – is one of the cornerstones of Western literature, the summit of medieval thinking and arguably the highest poetic achievement of all time. Inferno, the first part of Dante’s Comedy, is presented here in a new verse translation by acclaimed poet and prize-winning translator J.G. Nichols, together with the original text facing, extensive notes, illustrations and a critical apparatus focusing on the author’s life and works.Trade ReviewBravo for this new version of Dante... Bravo, Professor Nichols! * The Church Times *All life is written in Dante's burning pages, and Nichols has done him proud. -- Ian Thomson * The Observer *For sheer liveliness, combined with accuracy and closeness to the text, it will be hard to rival. -- A.N. WilsonThis new translation by J.G. Nichols, clearly grounded in a secure knowledge of and familiarity with Dante and in English verse which is rarely less than competently handled, is one that deserves to be taken seriously and will reward any reader who makes his first encounter with Dante through it. It is an intelligent and sophisticated piece of work. * Acumen Literary Journal *Dante is my spiritual food. -- James Joyce

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Book SynopsisThe world first publication of a previously unknown work by J.R.R. Tolkien, which tells the epic story of the Norse hero, Sigurd, the dragon-slayer, the revenge of his wife, Gudrún, and the Fall of the Nibelungs.In the Lay of the Völsungs is told the ancestry of the great hero Sigurd, the slayer of Fáfnir most celebrated of dragons, whose treasure he took for his own; of his awakening of the Valkyrie Brynhild who slept surrounded by a wall of fire, and of their betrothal; and of his coming to the court of the great princes who were named the Niflungs (or Nibelungs), with whom he entered into blood-brotherhood. In that court there sprang great love but also great hate, brought about by the power of the enchantress, mother of the Niflungs, skilled in the arts of magic, of shape-changing and potions of forgetfulness.In scenes of dramatic intensity, of confusion of identity, thwarted passion, jealousy and bitter strife, the tragedy of Sigurd and Brynhild, of Gunnar the Niflung and Gudrún hTrade Review“Will appeal strongly to readers already haunted by the deeper, more sombre musics of Middle-earth” The Times “This is the most unexpected of Tolkien’s many posthumous publications; his son’s ‘Commentary’ is a model of informed accessibility; the poems stand comparison with their Eddic models, and there is little poetry in the world like those” Times Literary Supplement “The compact verse form is ideally suited to describing impact… elsewhere it achieves a stark beauty” Telegraph

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Book SynopsisFed up with the dreary round of life in Ballybeg, with his uncommunicative father and the humiliating job in his father''s grocery shop, with his frustrated love for Kathy Doogan who married a richer, more successful young man and with the total absence of prospect and opportunity in his life at home, Gareth O''Donnell has accepted his aunt''s invitation to come to Philadelphia. Now, on the eve of his departure, he is not happy to be leaving Ballybeg.With this play Brian Friel made his reputation and it is now an acknowledged classic of modern drama.

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Book SynopsisUnrivalled for its range and intensity, the poetry of the First World War continues to have a powerful effect on readers. This title reflects the diverse experience of those who lived through the war - bringing together the words of poets, soldiers and civilians affected by the conflict.Table of ContentsThe Penguin Book of First World War PoetryIntroductionAcknowledgementsA Note on the TextPreludeI. Your Country Needs You'Let the foul Scene proceed''Who's for the khaki suit'In Training2. Somewhere In FranceIn TrenchesBehind the LinesComrades of War3. ActionRendezvous with DeathBattleAftermath4. BlightyGoing BackThe Other WarLucky Blighters5. PeaceEveryone SangThe Dead and the Living'Have you forgotten yet?'CodaNotesA Glossary of the Western FrontBiographiesFurther ReadingPoem AcknowledgementsIndex of Titles and First Lines

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Book SynopsisThe great work of Welsh literature, translated in full for the first time in more than 100 years by two of its country's foremost poetsA Penguin ClassicTennyson portrayed him, and wrote at least one poem under his name. Robert Graves was fascinated by what he saw as his work's connection to a lost world of deeply buried folkloric memory. He is a shapeshifter; a seer; a chronicler of battles fought, by sword and with magic, between the ancient kingdoms of the British Isles; a bridge between old Welsh mythologies and the new Christian theology; a sixth-century Brythonic bard; and a legendary collective project spanning the centuries up to The Book of Taliesin's compilation in fourteenth-century North Wales. He is, above all, no single he.The figure of Taliesin is a mystery. But of the variety and quality of the poems written under his sign, of their power as exemplars of the force of ecstatic poetic imagination, and of the fascinating window they off

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Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE FORWARD PRIZE BEST FIRST COLLECTION 2014*PBS Recommendation 2014*When I became a bird, Lord, nothing could not stop me'In Black Country, Liz Berry takes flight: to Wrens Nest, Gosty Hill, Tipton-on-Cut; to the places of home. The poems move from the magic of childhood bostin fittle at Nanny's, summers before school into deeper, darker territory: sensual love, enchanted weddings, and the promise of new life. In Berry's hands, the ordinary is transformed: her characters shift shapes, her eye is unusual, her ear attuned to the sounds of the Black Country, with vowels ferrous as nails, consonants / you could lick the coal from.' Ablaze with energy and full of the rich dialect of the West Midlands, this is an incandescent debut from a poet of dazzling talent and verve.Trade ReviewBlack Country is an extraordinary debut...rooted in place. When you close the book, you can still see the Black Country in your mind's eye, as if all the poems in it were coming together to form a continuous landscape, a single yet varied view. These poems need to be studied slowly yet there is, as one reads on, a sense of gathering speed, a flightiness, a readiness to soar... She writes, in the best sense, on a wing and a prayer. What marks out this writing is its sparing but assured use of Midlands dialect. This is writing of warmth, maturity and intermittent eroticism. Liz Berry knows her own flight-path, that is for sure. -- Kate Kellaway * Observer *Superb... a sooty, soaring hymn to her native West Midlands, scattered with words of dialect that light up the lines like lamps. Expect to hear a great deal more from her in years to come. * Guardian *This is as writer I'm thrilled to discover -- someone who takes pride in the Midlands... turning ordinariness into something direct, tender and beautiful. -- Bel Mooney * Daily Mail *A singularly impressive book from a talented writer, and like all the best poetry, begs to be read aloud -- Ben Wilkinson * Guardian *Liz Berry is an extraordinary poet: passionate, precise, moving and deeply real. The voice and heat of the Black Country are here, the old tenderness and the complex strands of identity, the humour and the music. -- A.L. Kennedy

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Book SynopsisWhat happens when two sets of parents meet up to deal with the unruly behaviour of their children? A calm and rational debate between grown-ups about the need to teach ids how to behave properly? Or a hysterical night of name-calling, tantrums and tears before bedtime?Boys will be boys, but the adults are usually worse - much worse.Christopher Hampton''s translation of Yasmina Reza''s sharp-edged play God of Carnage premiered at the Gielgud Theatre, London, in March 2008. Christopher Hampton has translated five plays by Yasmina Reza: ''Art'', The Unexpected Man, Conversations after a Burial, Life x 3 and God of Carnage.Winner of three 2009 Tony Awards, including Best Play.Winner of the 2009 Olivier Award for Best Comedy.Trade Review"Reza holds the mirror up to bourgeois hypocrisy withthe savage indignation of a born satirist", Guardian. "A triumph! Brilliantly translated by Christopher Hampton", Daily Express.

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Book SynopsisWilliam Shakespeare was born in late April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon and died in 1616. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. Stanley Wells is Emeritus Professor of the University of Birmingham and Honorary President of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.Margaret Jane Kidnie is Professor of English at the University of Western Ontario.

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Book SynopsisIn her first collection of new poetry since 2011's acclaimed Family Values, Wendy Cope celebrates the half-forgotten stories of our lives' with compassion, wisdom and wit. Cope continues to be the most generous of authors, sharing her experience of childhood and marriage and writing poignantly about the passing of time. In several of the poems she reimagines Shakespeare in unorthodox fashion; in others she offers heartfelt tributes to friends and to public figures including Eric Morecambe and John Cage. Anecdotal Evidence demonstrates the formal brilliance and empathetic insight which have delighted readers for years, and shows why Wendy Cope is one of our best-loved poets.

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Book SynopsisThe Fleabag bites back. A rip-roaring account of some sort of female living her sort of life. Phoebe Waller-Bridge's debut play is an outrageously funny monologue for a female performer. It premiered at the 2013 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, performed by Phoebe herself, before transferring to Soho Theatre, London, for several successful runs, followed by a UK tour. It won a Fringe First Award in Edinburgh, the Most Promising New Playwright and Best Female Performance at the Off West End Theatre Awards, The Stage Award for Best Solo Performer and the Critics' Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright. It received a Special Commendation in the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and was nominated for the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre. In 2016 it was turned into a wildly successful and 'utterly riveting' (Guardian) BBC television series. This edition also features an introduction by the author.Trade Review'A remarkable portrait of a modern woman who shamelessly bares her soul' Guardian; 'Believe the hype, Waller-Bridge's raw writing... really is as good as everyone says' The Stage; 'Sucker-punch funny... I've never seen a play quite like it' Scotsman; 'Frank and sometimes brutally funny... devastatingly good' The Times; 'Blessed with a rare and compelling life force... deliciously dirty and scabrously funny' Evening Standard; 'Very funny... penetrating, pitch-black and nastily brilliant' Metro; 'Unbelievably rude, jaw-droppingly filthy... extremely funny' Time Out; 'A sharp-edged gem of a solo show' WhatsOnStage 'Bitingly funny and genuinely moving... clever and tender and true' A Younger Theatre

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Book SynopsisAbandon all hope, ye who enter herereadthe now-famous words above the gate through which Dante, the protagonist of Inferno, crosses the threshold. But that forbidding inscription applies only to those without faith; and though Dante's journey through the nine circles of Hellbegins withterror and confusion.

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Book SynopsisThis beautifully illustrated collection brings together, for the first time, Carol Ann Duffy’s much-celebrated festive poems.For a decade, while she was Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy gifted her thousands of readers an illustrated poem every Christmas, transporting them in one year to a seventeenth-century festival on the frozen Thames, in another to Western Front to witness the famous 1914 truce, then to a sweet winter’s night in the South of France with Pablo Picasso and his small dog.Christmas Poems showcases Duffy’s bold and innovative voice, alongside gorgeous artwork from Rob Ryan, David De Las Heras and Lara Hawthorne, amongst others. These ten much-loved poems are gathered together for the first time in this compendium to make a perfect gift for old friends celebrating a decade’s tradition or those experiencing the magic of Duffy’s festive verse for the first time.Trade ReviewDuffy's spellbinding verse, spiced with witty, wintry illustrations, recaptures a magic most of us left behind in childhood * Intelligent Life *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year""A masterpiece of scholarship."---Wendy Doniger, New York Review of Books

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Book SynopsisHarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.''The quality of mercy is not strain''d,It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven'Bassiano, a noble Venetian, hopes to woo the beautiful heiress Portia. However, he requires financial assistance from his friend Antonio. Antonio agrees, but he, in turn, must borrow from the Jewish moneylender Shylock. As recourse for past ills, Shylock stipulates that the forfeit on the loan must be a pound of Antonio's flesh. In the most renowned onstage law scene of all time, Portia proves herself one of Shakespeare's most cunning heroines, disguising herself as a lawyer and vanquishing Shylock's claims; meanwhile, Shylock triumphs on a humanitarian level with his plea for tolerance: Hath not a Jew eyes?'Viewed paradoxically as anti-Semitic, while at the same time powerfully liberal for its time, The Merchant of Venice is at its core a bittersweet drama, exploring the noble themes of prejudice, justice and honour

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Book SynopsisTaking its inspiration from Shakespeare's idea of the seven ages of a human life, this new anthology brings together the best-loved poems in English to inspire, comfort and delight readers for a lifetime. Beginning with babies, the book is divided into sections on childhood, growing up, making a living and making love, family life, getting older, and approaching death, ending with poems of mourning and commemoration.Ranging from Chaucer to Carol Ann Duffy, via Shakespeare, Keats, and Lemn Sissay, this book offers something for each of those moments in life whether falling in love, finding your first grey hair or saying your final goodbyes when only a poem will do.

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Book SynopsisW.B. Yeats''s Selected Poems is edited with an introduction and notes by Timothy Webb in Penguin Modern Classics.Few have lived their ideas so passionately and nobly as W.B. Yeats in his love affairs, politics and poetry. From his youth in the 1880s, a fertile dreamer rediscovering and remaking the Irish tradition, he grew into a great and innovative poet of the twentieth century. This selection of Yeats''s work includes the final book from the unjustly neglected narrative poem The Wanderings of Oisin and a number of lyrics from Yeats''s work as poetic dramatist. This edition breaks new ground by allowing the reader to engage with a dozen poems in alternative versions; in many other cases it provides significant variants, so that Yeats''s struggle to revise his poetry can be experienced with unusual immediacy. It also includes explanatory and textual notes for each poem.W B Yeats (1865-1939) was one of the great and innovative poets of the twentieth century. Much of his most vigorous verse on love, sex, Irish and international politics, the complexities of the occult and the ''sedentary toil'' of poetry was produced in the years between his fiftieth birthday in 1915 and his death in 1939.If you enjoyed Selected Poems, you might like The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry, also available in Penguin Classics.''A compelling poetic presence ... together with Joyce, Yeats made modern Irish poetry possible''Timothy Webb

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Book SynopsisPeter Shaffer was born in Liverpool in 1926. Among his plays, The Salt Land (1954), Equus (1973) which won Shaffer the 1975 Tony Award for Best Play as well as the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, Amadeus (1979) which won the Evening Standard Drama Award and the Theatre Critics Award for the London production.

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Book SynopsisApollinaire is the most significant French poet of early modernism and the only great First World War poet from France. He coined the word 'surrealism' and was at the forefront of literary and artistic experimentalism. This new selection covers the full range of his career in facing-page translations, with some pictorial calligrams.Trade ReviewRepresentative of the poetic career as a whole. * Mark Ford, London Review of Books *Sorrell's lexical choices makes us realize how subtle the challenge to the translator really is, and how successfully that challenge has been met. * Translation and Literature *There's no doubt that reading French books will help you expand your vocabulary and general comprehension skills, but for many, the thought of getting through an entire French novel is rather daunting. An enjoyable alternative is to read poetry which offers French Prose in shorter, more manageable chunks and where better to start than with the poems of one of France's most celebrated poets, Guillaume Apollinaire? * Living France *

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Book SynopsisWith a foreword by Kat Delacorte, author of With Fire in Their BloodIt will have blood, they say: blood will have blood'On a bleak, stormy night in Scotland, three witches prophesy: Macbeth will be a lord twice-over and Macbeth will be king; but Banquo's sons will also be kings. When the witches' predictions start to come true, the ambitious Lady Macbeth vows to help her husband become King of Scotland and hold on to the throne by any means necessary. But as the pursuit of power leads them down a dark and bloody path, the Macbeths soon begin to unravel.Macbeth is Shakespeare's famously blood-soaked tale of greed and prophecy so powerful that superstitions about the curse of The Scottish Play' continue to this day.Discover STAGED, a limited collection of Shakespeare's unabridged plays that celebrates the genius of the Bard and the tropes that continue to delight YA readers to this day.Explore the rest of the STAGED collection:As You Like It With a foreword by Talia HibbertHamlet With a foreword by Faridah Àbíké-ÍyímídéA Midsummer Night's Dream With a foreword by Becky AlbertalliMuch Ado About Nothing With a foreword by Holly BourneRomeo and Juliet With a foreword by Jennifer Niven

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Book Synopsis90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Bookswe are the ones we have been waiting for'These poems of radical love, urgency and global consciousness reach across borders to break open the silence of oppression and the taboo, liberating both body and soul. Lively and enigmatic, Passion is June Jordan's most accomplished and animated collection. Her virtuosic, resolute words have inspired generations of readers and activists across the world, from Nobel Laureates to US Presidents.

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Book SynopsisPoetry in a time of upheaval Equal parts dramatic and symphonic, the poetry of Jean-Paul de Dadelsen provides acute insight into the European consciousness of the first half of the twentieth century. With energetic innovation and imaginative depth, Dadelsen extols the somber beauty of his Alsatian homeland, grapples with the elusiveness of meaning, and decries religion's futile attempts to speak to a continent ravaged by fascism and war. His is an acerbic and humane assessment of French and European identity that draws on the past and imagines the future, while remaining firmly rooted in the present. In these poems, Dadelsen modulates himself in dramatic monologue, exploring a mosaic of voices to form a composite portrait of the postwar landscape. Inhabiting such characters as King Solomon, Johann Sebastian Bach, provincial French women, and a Hungarian resistant in the 1956 uprising, the poems in this new bilingual collection offer an inside look at the shifting cultural topograpTrade Review“Written in the aftershock of World War II, Jean-Paul de Dadelsen’s robust, irreverently reverent poems—deftly translated by Marilyn Hacker—speak from the fissured heart of Europe, and are nothing short of a revelation.”—Gabriel Levin, author of Errant“Jean-Paul de Dadelsen’s poignant poems tear me out of myself and reveal the presence of new things. His landscape of plains and rivers, swept by wind at the eastern edge of France, comes into focus, along with a powerful autobiographical realism and a God who remains silent. I so admire these strange, erudite, spiritually resonant poems.”—Henri Cole“With these flawless translations by poet Marilyn Hacker, we can finally take the full measure of Dadelsen’s achievement. His work is that of a witness who has seen the worst man has to offer, but responds, as if in defiance, with praise.”—Ellen Hinsey, author of The Illegal Age“In this masterful collection, Dadelsen’s unique sacred-profane music is rendered perfectly. That Light, All at Once is a gift to us.”—Yusef Komunyakaa, author of Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth“Jean-Paul de Dadelsen’s poems spring out of a personal territory of intelligence, experience, and deep feeling, reminding us now of Brodsky, of Laforgue and Rilke, yet entirely individual. A major modern poet.”—George Szirtes, winner of the 2004 T. S. Eliot Prize for Reel

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Book SynopsisGloriously raucous rites-of-passage drama set in Romford Market ''You''ve got to talk to them son. Listen to them. Look for a way in. You''re a handsome bloke - they''ll love you. Give me a year and I''ll teach you everything I know.'' There''s an art to selling stilettos and you''d better grasp it. Learn a good wind-up, learn the pull of cash, learn drugs, learn sex, and run wild with the market monkeys. Stay sharp in the ruthless world of Essex traders. Romford Market, 1985. This boy has everything to learn. A spectacular, savage, gorgeous yarn which brings a market jungle to the vast Olivier stage; a tale about the time Mrs Thatcher said we should embrace the marketplace; a story about losing your innocence. And your cherry. Following the critical success of his new version of Ibsen''s The Wild Duck (Donmar Warehouse 2005), David Eldridge''s Market Boy premieres on the National Theatre''s Olivier stage on 25 May 2006. Trade Review"'A young dramatist with few peers when it comes to presenting deep emotion' Daily Telegraph"

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Book SynopsisOne of the greatest of Shakespeare''s tragedies, Othello tells the story of a Moorish general who earns the enmity of his ensign Iago when he passes him over for a promotion. Bleak and unsparing, this play offers a masterly portrait of an archvillain and an astute psychological study of the nature of evil. Explanatory footnotes.

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Book SynopsisAnother Time was the first volume that Auden published after his departure to America with Christopher Isherwood in January 1939. It was dedicated to Chester Kallman. The poems, some of which date from the early thirties, are about people, places and the intellectual climate of the times, and they show greater variety of tone and technique than in any previous book of Auden''s. Some of his most famous and often quoted (or misquoted) lines appear in their original form, including the text of two poems in particular - ''Spain 1937'' and ''September 1,1939'' - that he later altered or repudiated.''[He] has made himself into a kind of unofficial poet laureate. If I am bombed I hope he will write a few sapphics about me.'' Stephen Spender, 1941Trade Review"'[He] has made himself into a kind of unofficial poet laureate. If I am bombed I hope he will write a few sapphics about me.' Stephen Spender, 1941"

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Book SynopsisThe UK debut of a celebrated American poet whose work is as lyrical as it is radical.Foxglovewise is complex but inviting, profound but wry. It is firmly contemporary while also being in lively conversation with deep histories: Where do stargazers go in a city of light?' Mlinko takes us from a Scottish cemetery to a mangrove in Florida via a supercell storm in Texas. Along the way, her use of form and rhyme is as light as it is enlightening as she probes our all-too-human nature and pays careful attention to the quiet marvels to be found by looking carefully at right where we happen to be.Mlinko is rarely less than dazzling thanks to the pleasure and rigor of her phrasing. . . layered, allusive, and intelligent poems. . . . There is a moving and unignorable sense of grief and loss beneath the surface, in an expertly managed balance with the luster of the vocabulary and music of these poems.' Publishers Weekly (starred review)Mlinko delivers again on the promise of a richly rewarding smorgasbord of sound, image, feeling, and thought.' Diego Báez, BooklistImage-rich [with] densely discursive textures [...] This is a big and imposing book, worldly wise but warmly open and giving.' David Wheatley, Guardian, Best Recent Poetry

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Book SynopsisA grand saga of divine wisdom, epic battles, and the eternal quest for justice, distilled into the lives of warriors and deities across the vast expanse of ancient India

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Book SynopsisShelagh Delaney (1938 - 2011) was born in Salford, Lancashire, in 1938. She is most well-known for A Taste of Honey (1958), for which she won the Foyle's New Play Award and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. She wrote the screenplay for the film version with Tony Richardson and received the British Film Academy Award and the Robert Flaherty Award. Her other screenplays include The White Bus and Charley Bubbles, for which she won the Writers' Guild Award. She also wrote for television and radio and published a collection of short stories. She died in 2011.Hannah Simpson is Lecturer in Drama and Performance in the English Faculty at the University of Edinburgh, UK. She is the author of Samuel Beckett and the Theatre of the Witness: Pain in Post-War Francophone Drama (2022) and Samuel Beckett and Disability Performance (2022). She has edited special issues for Twentieth Century Literature, Medical Humanities and the Journal of War and Culture Studies, and is co-editor of the Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Disability book series.

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Book SynopsisA new sparkling and witty version by Roger McGough of Molière''s comedy published as a programme text to accompany the premiere at the Liverpool Everyman on 9 May 2008. Tartuffe is a beacon of piety and in the home of wealthy merchant Orgon he has his feet firmly under the table. But all is not as it seems and as Orgon becomes more enraptured with his new companion the whole city is chattering. Is he a friend, a fraud, a miracle or a hypocrite? The family smell a rat and amidst the frills and frivolity of seventeenth century society they hatch a cunning plan to outwit the wily deceiver before he brings their house crashing down. Molière wrote Tartuffe in 1664 but the play was banned following its first production in Paris; it wasn''t until 1669 that it was revived and became one of his greatest successes.Trade Review"McGough's adaptation is anarchic, irreverent and hysterically funny." Clare Brennan, Observer, 18.05.08 "McGough demonstrates a finely tuned ear for the rhythms of dialogue and the flavour of patois...and jargon. The result is tart but never tough...In their zest and wit, McGough's lines, sometimes deliciously set up, at other times sprung on us with a mischievous artlessness, set a cracking pace." Lynne Walker, Independent, 20.05.08

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Book SynopsisThe Wizarding World journey continues The powerful Dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald was captured in New York with the help of Newt Scamander. But, making good on his threat, Grindelwald escapes custody and sets about gathering followers, most of whom are unsuspecting of his true agenda: to raise pure-blood wizards up to rule over all non-magical beings.In an effort to thwart Grindelwald''s plans, Albus Dumbledore enlists Newt, his former Hogwarts student, who agrees to help once again, unaware of the dangers that lie ahead. Lines are drawn as love and loyalty are tested, even among the truest friends and family, in an increasingly divided wizarding world.Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is the second screenplay in a five-film series to be written by J.K. Rowling, author of the internationally bestselling Harry Potter books. Set in 1927, a few months after the events of Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, and moving from New

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Book Synopsis''Bright Dead Things buoyed me in this dismal year. I''m thankful for this collection, for its wisdom and generosity, for its insistence on holding tight to beauty even as we face disintegration and destruction.'' Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You A book of bravado and introspection, of feminist swagger and harrowing loss, Bright Dead Things considers how we build our identities out of place and human contact - tracing in intimate detail the ways the speaker''s sense of self both shifts and perseveres as she moves from New York City to rural Kentucky, loses a dear parent, ages past the capriciousness of youth and falls in love. In these extraordinary poems Ada Limón''s heart becomes a ''huge beating genius machine'' striving to embrace and understand the fullness of the present moment. ''I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying,'' the poet writes. Building on the legacies of forebears such as Frank O''Hara, Sharon OldsTrade ReviewBelongs to [...] a new poetry that is readable, heartfelt and full of vivid imagery * the Times *I am thankful for this collection, for its wisdom and generosity, for its insistence on holding tight to beauty even as we face disintegration and destruction -- Celeste NgIn Ada Limón's Bright Dead Things, there's a fierce jazz and sass ("this life is a fist / of fast wishes caught by nothing, / but the fishhook of tomorrow's tug") and there's sadness - a grappling with death and loss that forces the imagination to a deep response. The radio in her new, rural home warns "stay safe and seek shelter" and yet the heart seeks love, risk, and strangeness - and finds it everywhere. -- Gregory OrrA masterpiece. * Shondaland *Effortlessly lyrical. * New York Times *The best compliment one can give a book of poems is that the book loves the reader. Bright Dead Things doesn't just love poetry; it loves the reader. My hunch is, Reader, you'll love it too. * Huffington Post *Bright Dead Things breeds a particular mixture of wildness. The mixture is by turns melodious and tight. Limón's poems are like fires: charring the page, but leaving a smoke that remains past the close of the book. * The Millions *

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Book SynopsisThe debut collection from an electrifying new talent - a poet of philosophical depth, searching intellect, and lyric grace'A daring, ambitious pleasure to read' ROGER ROBINSON____________________________________Intimate and epic, dark and profound, interweaving hip hop beats with the mythology of the British Isles, Samatar Elmi's A Darker Light is an unforgettable debut collection about the gift and curse of diaspora. With a watchful eye on the minutiae of nature's cycles of life and death, and a profound connection to the land and language that make and unmake our histories, Elmi's poems shine with grace and blaze with defiance.

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Book SynopsisFind out what happened when King Midas was granted his wish, how Icarus flew too close to the sun, and relive the adventures of Jason and the Argonauts in these stories of love, betrayal, infatuation and punishment.Greek Myths: Heroes and Heroines is part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, cloth-bound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover.Greek myths have been part of Western culture since they were first set down by the ancients and, as there is no one definitive account, the stories have been ripe for reinterpretation through the centuries. Classicist and writer Jean Menzies has brought together fifteen retellings of famous myths from the likes of Andrew and Jean Lang, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Emilie Kip Baker, each chosen for its clarity and vivacity. The result? An enlightening and lively volume of stories and a treat for all fans of Greek mythology.Discover even more mythology with Greek Myths: Gods and Goddesses edited by Jean Menzies.

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