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Literature: history & criticism
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Charles Handy may well be
Britain's only
world-class management
guru (Director Magazine)
but his thoughts about
organisations and the
role of the individual
involve thoughts beyond
pay and display. For five
years, Handy delivered a
series of Thoughts for
the Radio 4 Today
Programme which addressed
spiritual issues. These
were collected in a
volume called Waiting for
the Mountain to Move,
originally published in
1991. The distilled
essence of Handy's
meditations and advice
are published now in a
new, small Little Book
of Calm format, in two
colours and with b&w
illustrations. 'My
concern is only to point
to what I see as the
meaning in things and to
the ultimate purpose in
life in order to
encourage other people to
find their meaning and
their purpose' Charles
Handy
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The Highlands of
Scotland, and more
specifically the clans
that inhabit them, have
a romantic resonance and
mystery. Fitzroy Maclean
recounts their
extraordinary history,
from their Celtic origins
to Robert the Bruce, the
wars of independence and
Bannockburn, from
Flodden, Mary Queen of
Scots to the Jacobite
Risings of the eighteenth
century, the
nineteenth-century
Clearances and the modern
day.
Highlanders
sheds light on the
motivation and character
of the clans, bringing
vividly to life their
highly dramatic stories.
Never before has there
been such a thorough and
well-balanced view of
Highland
history.
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Distringuished as both a
great novelist and a
great poet. Thomas Hardy
(1840-1928) had a writing
career which spanned more
than sixty years,
concentrating first on
prose and then, after
publishing his last novel
in 1895, on verse. A
master of the short lyric
and the vivid narrative,
Hardy is pre-eminently
the poet of remembrance
and tender regret for
lost happiness; but he is
also an ironist whose
exquisite descriptions of
rural life are the
setting for bitingly
sharp observations of
human frailty.
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In a series of long
essays, James Wood
examines the connection
between literature and
religious belief, in a
startlingly wide group of
writers. Wood
re-appraises the writing
of such figures as Thomas
More, Jane Austen,
Herman Melville, Anton
Chekhov, Thomas Mann,
Nikolai Gogol, Gustave
Flaubert and Virginia
Woolf, vigorously
reading them against the
grain of received
opinion, and
illuminatingly relating
them to questions of
religious and
phiosophical belief
Contemporary writers,
such as Martin Amis,
Thomas Pynchon and George
Steiner, are also
discussed, with the
boldness and attention to
language that have made
Wood such an influential
and controversial figure.
Writing here about his
own childhood struggle to
believe, Wood says that
'the child of evangelism
if he does not believe,
inherits nevertheless a
suspicion of
indifference. ' Wood
brings that suspicion to
bear on literture itself.
The result is a unique
book of criticism.
Illuminating and exciting
and compelling... one
never doubts the
soundness of his
judgements... There is
wonderful writing
throughout this
collection.
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Poets of all times,
places and sensibilities
have been moved to write
about war. They have
commemorated the Battles
of Thermopylae,
Agincourt and Shilph,
and London in an air
raid. They have announced
the Charge of the Light
Brigade; witnessed Break
of Day in the Trenches;
handed down through oral
tradition, the Blackfoot
Indian Song for a Fallen
Warrior; sent a Newsreel
from Vietnam. From Horace
and Virgl to Steveie
Smith, from the
anonymous bards of
ancient China to Adam
Mickiewicz and Primo
Levi, these poets have
encompassed the entire
spectrum of feeling -
pride, compassion,
courage anger fear
excitement, anguish,
even laughter. Here. in
this anthology, are more
than one hundred of their
most memorable poems.
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With a novelist's insight
and eye for detail A S
Byatt examines the
relationship between
Wordsworth and Coleridge,
against the background
of the great changes of
their times - in society,
politics, education and
literature. As she charts
their personal lives,
traces thegrowth of their
ideas and shows how these
are reflected in their
work, we are presented
with vivid pictures, not
only of Wordsworth and
Coleridge, but of their
families, friends and
contempories - Southey,
de Quincey, Lamb,
Hazlitt, Byron and
Keats.
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Kiberd - one of Ireland's
leading critics and a
central figure in the
FIELD DAY group with
Brian Friel, Seamus
Deane and the actor
Stephen Rea - argues that
the Irish Literary
Revival of the 1890-1922
period embodied a spirit
and a revolutionary,
generous vision of
Irishness that is still
relevant to post-colonial
Ireland. This is the
perspective from which he
views Irish culture. His
history of Irish writing
covers Yeats, Lady
Gregory, Synge,
O'Casey, Joyce,
Beckett, Flann O'Brien,
Elizabeth Bowen, Heaney,
Friel and younger
writers down to Roddy
Doyle.
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The winner of a 1989
Somerset Maugham Award,
Romantic Affinities is a
kaleidoscopic series of
portraits from an era of
tumultuous change in
Europe as it was
experienced and
communicated by the
writers of the age. These
include not only the more
familiar 'Romantic'
figures, such as
Coleridge and Shelley,
Byron and Goethe, but
also Chenier, H-lderlin,
Hoffman, Madame de
Sta-l, Pushkin and many
others. Set against the
background of the initial
liberal dawning the
French Revolution seemed
to herald, the
disillusion that set in
after its descent into
terror, and the decades
of warfare that followed,
Christiansen draws on a
wealth of scholarship
ranging over many related
aspects of music,
architecture, and
politics as he presents
fresh perspectives on
poetry and prose long
defined narrowly as
Romanticism.
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Described in the
Telegraph as
'Huddersfield's
Melville', Milner Place
has spent much of his
life sailing the seven
seas as a skipper of a
trading boat, while also
writing beautifully
crafted poetry. His two
pamphlet collections. The
CONFUSION OF ANGELS and
WHERE SMOKE IS, has sold
out and been reprinted,
and this (at the age of
sixty) is his first full
length collection, Simon
Armitage's first
acquisition for the
Chatto Poetry list.
Place's poems have an
international or
universal quality,
influenced by Neruda and
Rilke rather than Auden:
they are lyrical and
wise, rather
than"idian and
clever. Some of the poems
are sea-going yarns,
others are set in South
America and read like
Gabriel Garcia Marquez in
verse. There are also a
handful of characters
portraits, and a
wonderful long poem,
'Lum Street', based on a
row of terraced houses,
its tenants and their
relationships to each
other. IN A RARE TIME OF
RAIN is a powerful and
assured first collection,
and brings an unusual
new voice into British
Poetry.
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In early 1994 Marina
Warner delivered the
prestigious Reith
Lectures for the BBC. In
a series of six lectures,
she takes areas of
contemporary concern and
relates them to stories
from mythology and fairy
tale which continue to
grip the modern
imagination.
She
analyses the fury about
single mothers and the
anxiety about masculinity
in the light of ideals
about male heroism and
control; the current
despair about children
and the loss of childhood
innocence; the changing
attitude of myths about
wild men and beasts and
the undertow of racism
which is expressed in
myths about savages and
cannibals. The last
lecture, on home,
brings the themes
together to examine ideas
about who we are and
where we belong, with
reference to the British
nation and its way of
telling its own
history.
Using a
range of examples from
video games to
Turner
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In early 1994 Marina
Warner delivered the
prestigious Reith
Lectures for the BBC. In
a series of six lectures,
she takes areas of
contemporary concern and
relates them to stories
from mythology and fairy
tale which continue to
grip the modern
imagination.
She
analyses the fury about
single mothers and the
anxiety about masculinity
in the light of ideals
about male heroism and
control; the current
despair about children
and the loss of childhood
innocence; the changing
attitude of myths about
wild men and beasts and
the undertow of racism
which is expressed in
myths about savages and
cannibals. The last
lecture, on home,
brings the themes
together to examine ideas
about who we are and
where we belong, with
reference to the British
nation and its way of
telling its own
history.
Using a
range of examples from
video games to
Turner
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In a volume which follows
on from and complements
the Everyman Pocket LOVE
POEMS, we have assembled
a wide range erotic verse
from ancient India and
China to present-day
Britain. Though these are
poems of the body, and
bawdy verse is
represented by such
writers as Rochester,
the volume is in no sense
pornographic. The
emphasis is on the
tender, sensuous, witty
and passionate aspects of
erotic poetry. The poems
follow a loose narrative
sequence in which all
aspects of erotic love
are represented.
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Ruth Padel's passionate
and daring new collection
is a woman's eye view of
a love affair. Shifting
between vulnerability and
guilt, innocence and
doubt, tenderness and
frustration, teasing
reproach and the
exaltation of deep love
and sexual happiness,
Padel's extraordinarily
bold and intimate book
explores the complexity
of emotions that go with
falling in love.
Wonderfully versatile in
tone, it blends the
lyrical and the
colloquial, darkness and
light, seriousness and
wit, myth and the Spice
Girls. It includes the
poem that won the 1996
National Poetry
Competition 'Icicles
round a tree in
Dumfriesshire'.
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A Fan's Notes -
the horrible and
hilarious account of a
long failure. Our
narrator is
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Ruth Padel's passionate
and daring new collection
is a woman's eye view of
a love affair. Shifting
between vulnerability and
guilt, innocence and
doubt, tenderness and
frustration, teasing
reproach and the
exaltation of deep love
and sexual happiness,
Padel's extraordinarily
bold and intimate book
explores the complexity
of emotions that go with
falling in love.
Wonderfully versatile in
tone, it blends the
lyrical and the
colloquial, darkness and
light, seriousness and
wit, myth and the Spice
Girls. It includes the
poem that won the 1996
National Poetry
Competition 'Icicles
round a tree in
Dumfriesshire'.
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This book brings together
for the first time three
major studies from Isaiah
Berlin's central
intellectual project - to
explain the opposition to
the excessively
scientific French
Enlightenment by getting
under the skin of its
critics and giving a
sympathetic account of
their views. The
contributions of these
particular critics could
hardly be more important.
Giambattista Vico
estabished that the
humanties are and must
remain crucially
different from the
sciences: J G Herder -
sometimes called the
father of European
nationalism - originated
populism, expressionism
and pluralism (an idea
which Berlin enriched and
made powerfully his own);
and the anti-rationalist
J G Hamann lit the fuse
of romanticism, the
major movement to arise
out of the various
currents of hostility to
Enlightenment thought.
The issue between the
advocates of the
Enlightenment and these
critics is today at least
as fundamental as it was
in its beginnings. With
his customary humane
understanding, Berlin
analyses the ideas of
three deeply original but
unregarded thinkers, and
demonstrates their
disturbing relevance to
the central issues of
today's world.
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Helen Vender calls Sharon
Olds 'pornographic, '
amd Michaael Ondaajte
says she's 'pure fire'.
Boldly searing woman's
physical desires onto the
page, Olds has become of
of the most widely read,
best-selling poets on the
contemporary scene. In
this new collection, she
seems to have literally
submerged herself in the
wellspring, where she
can por her poems on us,
poems that take us back
to the encompassing womb,
to a thrilling bur cold
sexual awakening, and
finally to the depths of
lasting love. A daughter
can remember her mother's
wedding night. A woman
traces the cells of a
stillborn back to their
origin as stars in the
sky. A mother finds her
son's old jeans and sees
the young boy who once
wore them. A woman drinks
wine with her husband at
night, in summer, and
they make love. THE
WELLSPRING is the finest
book yet by an
extraordinary poet.
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'The Weakness is one of
those very rare
collections of poems
which haunt the reader
with a sense of intrusive
wonder... I'm fascinated
by O'Donoghue's wry
vision, his infinitely
gentle manner of
displacing our more
predictable reactions to
things as they are, so
that we glimpse their
underlying tragedy. ' -
TOM PAULIN PASSIVE
SMOKING takes up where
THE WEAKNESS left off.
Many of the poems involve
O'Donoghue's Irish
background and the
collection includes
numerous pen-portraits of
family, friends and
acquaintances, some
hilarious, other very
moving. Some poems begin
in anecdote and memory
but transform into
parable and allegory.
O'Donoghue's tone of
voice is very
approachable - very
reader-friendly - he
combines an obvious
knowledge of literature
with an eye and ear for
colloquial speech and a
good yarn.
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The mysterious complicity
that exists between the
living and the dead is
the subject of this book,
in which Peter Redgrove
winds inner and outer
worlds closer and closer
together. In a number of
moving autobiographical
poems. he both recalls
and re-imagines his late
parents exploring the
vast potential of our
life now and the
possible' varieties of an
afterlife. Peter Redgrove
is working the rich seam
of his maturity, The
freshness and vigour of
his inspiration continues
unabated. Whether in
poems about violins,
waxworks, frozen
champagne or the
Waterworks at Staines,
he is always extending
his emmensely versatile
repertoire With its
ardent precision,
confirming sensuality and
ironic cordiality his
voice is indeed that of
our Visionary Emeritus.
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Born Jalal ad-Din
Mohammed Balkhi in Persia
early in the thirteenth
century, the poet known
as Rumi expressed the
deepest feelings of the
heart through his poetry.
This volume consists of
new translations edited
by Deepak Chopra to evoke
the rich mood and music
of Rumi's love poems.
Exalted yearning,
ravishing ecstasy, and
consuming desire emerge
from these poems as
powerfully today as they
did on their creation
more than 700 years ago.
'These poems reflect the
deepest longings of the
human heart as it
searches for the divine.
They celebrate love. Each
poetic whisper is urgent,
expressing the desire
that penetrates human
relationships and
inspires intimacy with
the self, silently
nurturing an affinity for
the Beloved. Both
Fereydoun Kia, the
translator, and I hope
that you will share the
experience of ravishing
ecstasy that the poems of
Rumi evoked in us. In
this volume we have
sought to capture in
English the dreams,
wishes, hopes, desires,
and feelings of a
Persian poet who
continues to amaze,
bewilder, confound, and
teach, one thousand
years after he walked on
this earth' - Deepak
Chopra
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This anthology is shaped
not by literary
chronology but by the
timeless human drama it
records: its five 'acts'
move from speculation and
COUP DE FOUDRE through
the troubled endurings of
love - its consummations,
dangers, joys,
perversions and
abdications - to
loneliness and memory. In
addition, the poems are
presented anonymously,
so that Marvell's coy
lady rubs cold shoulders
unexpectedly with
Gershwin's naughty baby;
and complex psychological
fictions are overthrown
by squibs. John Fuller
provides a provacative
introduction to this
uniquely expressive
handbook of shared
emotion.
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How much heavier was
Thackeray's brain than
Walt Whitman's? Which
novels do American
soldiers read? When did
cigarettes start making
an appearance in English
literature? And, while
we're about it, who
wrote the first Western,
is there any link between
asthma and literary
genius, and what really
happened on Dorothea's
wedding night in
Middlemarch?
In
Curiosities of
Literature, John
Sutherland contemplates
the full import of
questions such as these,
and attempts a few
answers in a series of
essays that are both
witty and eclectic. His
approach is also
unashamedly discursive.
An account of the
fast-working Mickey
Spillane, for example,
leads to a consideration
of the substances, both
legal and illegal, that
authors have employed to
boost their creative
energies. An essay on
good and bad handwriting
points out in passing
that Thackeray could
write the Lord's Prayer
on the back of a stamp.
As for Mary Shelley, a
brief recital of the
circumstances in which
she wrote Frankenstein
stops off to consider
what impact the miserable
summer weather of 1816
had on the future path of
English literature.
Of course, it is
debatable whether
knowledge of these arcane
topics adds to the wisdom
of nations, but it does
highlight the random
pleasures to be found in
reading literature and
reading about it. As John
Sutherland rightly asks,
'Why else
read?'
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The greatest English
religious poet of the
nineteenth century,
Gerard Manley Hopkins
(1844-89) was a Jesuit
priest and literary
scholar whose life ended
prematurely after his
exhausting pastoral work
among the slums of
Liverpool and Dublin. His
poems are dazzling
celebrations of God's
endless creative power
couched in a uniquely
expressive poetic
diction, and all his
mature poetry is her
reprinted, together with
illuminating fragments
from journals, letters,
sermons and lectures in
which he expounds his
literary and religious
outlook.
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* In size, price, and
elegant packaging, these
books will ideal gifts *
Beautiful 3-colour jacket
designed to give a
uniform look * Unique and
highly distinctive black
and white pattern on each
spine * Full cloth,
flexible covers * Sewn
Binders * Silk Ribbon
Markers and Headbands *
Gold Stamping on front
and spine * Decorative
patterned endpapers *
Newly designed
typographic settings in
classic typefaces *
Portable format-size 61/4
x 4 ins (15. 75 x 10. 25
cm) * Cream-wove
acid-free paper * 256pp
each volume
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-
In a series of long
essays, James Wood
examines the connection
between literature and
religious belief, in a
startlingly wide group of
writers. Wood
re-appraises the writing
of such figures as Thomas
More, Jane Austen,
Herman Melville, Anton
Chekhov, Thomas Mann,
Nikolai Gogol, Gustave
Flaubert and Virginia
Woolf, vigorously
reading them against the
grain of received
opinion, and
illuminatingly relating
them to questions of
religious and
phiosophical belief
Contemporary writers,
such as Martin Amis,
Thomas Pynchon and George
Steiner, are also
discussed, with the
boldness and attention to
language that have made
Wood such an influential
and controversial figure.
Writing here about his
own childhood struggle to
believe, Wood says that
'the child of evangelism
if he does not believe,
inherits nevertheless a
suspicion of
indifference. ' Wood
brings that suspicion to
bear on literture itself.
The result is a unique
book of criticism.
Illuminating and exciting
and compelling... one
never doubts the
soundness of his
judgements... There is
wonderful writing
throughout this
collection.
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Available
-
It often seems that the
most gifted authors of
books for children are
not like other writers:
instead, in some
essential way, they are
children themselves. E.
Nesbit devoted weeks to
building a toy town out
of kitchenware. James
Barrie spent his holidays
playing pirates and
Indians with the four
Davies boys. Laurent
deBrunhoff, who
continued his father's
Babar series, is still
climbing trees at the age
of 70. Beatrix Potter
preferred the company of
animals and pets to that
of eligible young dancing
partners at balls. In
these fascinating
studies, Alison Lurie's
subjects range from what
fairy tales teach us, to
children's games and
poetry by and for
children, from book
illustrators to enchanted
forests and secret
gardens in children's
literature.
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The major
seventeenth-century
English poet between
Shakespeare and Milton,
Donne is chiefly
celebrated as a love
poet. But he was also the
author of magnificent
satires and epistles,
and a series of religious
poems including the Holy
Sonnets. All these genres
are represented in this
volume, together with a
selection from his
prayers, letters and
sermons, presenting a
complete portrait of a
great poet an an
extraordinary man.
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-
An exciting addition to
Everyman's Library: a new
series of small,
handsome hardcover
volumes devoted to the
world's classic poets.
Our books will have twice
as many pages as
Bloomsbury Classics'
128pp and will cost 7. 99
against Bloomsbury's 9.
99. The binding, paper
and production will be
visibly superior in every
way to that of Bloomsbury
Availability: In Stock
Available
-
Born Jalal ad-Din
Mohammed Balkhi in Persia
early in the thirteenth
century, the poet known
as Rumi expressed the
deepest feelings of the
heart through his poetry.
This volume consists of
new translations edited
by Deepak Chopra to evoke
the rich mood and music
of Rumi's love poems.
Exalted yearning,
ravishing ecstasy, and
consuming desire emerge
from these poems as
powerfully today as they
did on their creation
more than 700 years ago.
'These poems reflect the
deepest longings of the
human heart as it
searches for the divine.
They celebrate love. Each
poetic whisper is urgent,
expressing the desire
that penetrates human
relationships and
inspires intimacy with
the self, silently
nurturing an affinity for
the Beloved. Both
Fereydoun Kia, the
translator, and I hope
that you will share the
experience of ravishing
ecstasy that the poems of
Rumi evoked in us. In
this volume we have
sought to capture in
English the dreams,
wishes, hopes, desires,
and feelings of a
Persian poet who
continues to amaze,
bewilder, confound, and
teach, one thousand
years after he walked on
this earth' - Deepak
Chopra
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In the long history of
English literature
William Wordsworth
(1770-1850) is the writer
who achieved the most
dramatic transformations
of the poetic scene
almost singlehanded. A
leading figure among the
Romantic generation which
included Coleridge and
Scott, he created out of
his personal communion
with nature a new poetic
which had a profound
moral and spiritual
influence on the entire
nineteenth century. The
present selection
includes all his famous
lyrics and substantial
extracts from narrative
poems including The
Prelude.
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John Milton (1608-74) was
celebrated in his time as
a public servant of the
Cromwellian regime and as
the author of brilliant
polemical pamphlets about
education religion and
freedom of speech, but
his posthumous reputation
rests principally on his
work as a poet, noteably
in PARADISE LOST. This
poem, written after the
poet was driven out of
public life by the
Restoration, and begun
when he was already
blind, is a worthy
successor to the epics of
Homer and Virgil. In
majestic blank verse it
describes Lucifer's fall
from heaven, the
creation of mankind,
Eve's temptation, and
the expulsion of Adam and
Eve from paradise. After
the Bible, this is
perhaps the greatest
masterpiece of Christian
literature. The present
volume contains extensive
selections from PARADISE
LOST, chosen to
illustrate its author's
genius for high drama,
vivid description and
savage irony. In
addition, there are
substantial extracts from
COMUS and SAMSON
AGONISTES, and many of
Milton's sonnets and
shorter poems, including
the famous LYCIDAS.
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Available
-
An exciting addition to
Everyman's Library: a new
series of small,
handsome hardcover
volumes devoted to the
world's classic poets.
Our books will have twice
as many pages as
Bloomsbury Classics '
129pp and will cost 7. 99
against Bloomsbury's 9.
99. The binding, paper
and production will be
visibly superior in every
way to that of
Bloomsbury.
Availability: In Stock
Available
-
Many cultures identify
mourning as the very
source of poetry and
music, what Elizabeth
Bishop calls the art of
losing. That might well
be the title of this
collection. Not every
poem is cornered with
death, but all are about
loss. The poems chosen
traverse a surprisingly
wide range of emotions
from despair to joy,
resignation to anger,
all articulated in
language of the greatest
power and beauty. All the
major verse forms of
mourning are represented
here: epitaph, requiem
and lament. Three great
elergies by Milton,
Whitman and Rilke are
surrounded by a wide
variety of shorter poems.
Naturally, the pathos of
death predominates, but
its comedy has not been
neglected, whether in
the savage poems of World
War I or the gentle
teasing of
seventeenth-century
satire. Poets include:
Akhmatova, Auden,
Bishop, Brodsky,
Browning, Carew, Cory,
Cowley, Dickinson,
Donne, Dryden, Dyer,
Fletcher, Graves,
Gurney, Hardy,
Harrison, Herrick,
Hopkins, Horace, King,
Leopardi, Lowell,
MacCaig, Mandelstam,
Milosz, Philips,
Propertius, Roethke,
Smith, Tennyson, Dylan
Thomas, Edward Thomas
and Wordsworth.
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An exciting addition to
Everyman's Library: a new
series of small,
handsome hardcover
volumes devoted to the
world's classic poets.
Our books will have twice
as many pages as
Bloomsbury Classic' 128
pp and will cost 7. 99
against Bloomsbury's 9.
99. The binding, paper
and production will be
visibly superior in every
way to that of Bloomsbury
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Are some of the world's
most talented writers of
children's books
essentially children
themselves? In this
engaging series of
essays, Pulitzer
prize-winning author
Alison Lurie considers
this theory, exploring
children's classics from
many eras and relating
them to the authors who
wrote them, including
Louisa May Alcott,
creator of Little Women,
and Salman Rushdie and
his Haroun and the Sea of
Stories, Dr Seuss and J.
K. Rowling. In analysing
these and many other
authors, Alison Lurie
shows how these gifted
writers have used
children's literature to
transfigure sorrow,
nostalgia and the
struggles of their own
experience.
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This collection contains
more than 80% of the
sonnets, including all
the famous ones. In
addition, there are
substantial extracts from
the longer narrative
poems Shakespeare wrote
in his youth, songs from
the plays, and
celebrated soliloquies
from HAMLET, ROMEO AND
JULIET, KING LEAR,
HENRY V, THE MERCHANT OF
VENICE, etc. Together,
these verses give a
comprehensive view of
shakespeare the poet by
assembling all the
well-known passages
together with less
familiar but equally
powerful extracts.
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Are some of the world's
most talented writers of
children's books
essentially children
themselves? In this
engaging series of
essays, Pulitzer
prize-winning author
Alison Lurie considers
this theory, exploring
children's classics from
many eras and relating
them to the authors who
wrote them, including
Louisa May Alcott,
creator of Little Women,
and Salman Rushdie and
his Haroun and the Sea of
Stories, Dr Seuss and J.
K. Rowling. In analysing
these and many other
authors, Alison Lurie
shows how these gifted
writers have used
children's literature to
transfigure sorrow,
nostalgia and the
struggles of their own
experience.
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The publication of
Robinson Crusoe in
London in 1719 marked the
arrival of a
revolutionary
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In 1978, 900 inhabitants
of the utopian community
Jonestown in Guyana were
persuaded to poison
themselves with cyanide
by the Reverend Jim
Jones. Those who refused
to do so were shot. The
people who settled in
Jonestown came to found a
radically equal new
society ; the Reverend
Jim Jones took over their
minds and destroyed their
dream. In this long
narrative poem, Fred D,
Aguiar tells the story of
Jonestown from the point
of view of a young man
who has left London to
join the community. The
poems are an exploration
of his state of mind as
his idealism dwindles and
he becomes increasingly
helpless. Against the
odds, he survives
endless rain, famine,
the seduction of the
owman he loves by the
lecherous Reverend who
deflowers all the
community's virgins,
and, finally, the
cyanide coursing through
his veins. In verse that
mixes linguistic
registers with great
innovation and moves
through an exhilarating
range of rhythms from the
repititions of biblical
language to the riffs of
popular music, D'Aguiar
looks at the nature of
religious zealotry and
the suffering and
stalwartness of one of
its victims.
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This collection of
speeches by the
Australian Nobel
prize-winning author have
provoked extreme
reactions in Australia.
While members of the
establishment and parts
of the media have
dismissed him as a bitter
old man, the young and
needy have responded to
him with something close
to adulation.
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The Elizabethans took
from the Middle Ages the
modified view of the
universe which, Platonic
and biblical in origin,
radically differed from
our own. For them all
creation was ranged in an
unalterable order from
the angels down to man -
for whom the world
existed - and thence to
the beasts and plants. In
this short study Dr
Tillyard not only
elucidates such fairly
familiar - though often
mystifying - concepts as
the four elements, the
celestial harmony of
'nine enfolded Sphears',
or macrocosm and
microcosm; he also shows
how this world picture
was variously regarded as
a chain of being, a
network of
correspondences, and a
cosmic dance. Such
concepts were commonplace
to the Elizabethans. By
expounding them the
author has rendered
plain, and not merely
picturesque, the
literature and thinking
of an age.
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An entirely new edition
of Herbert's collected
poems with nots,
chronology and
introduction by the
distinguised scholar Anne
Pasternak Slater, this
volume is designed to
complement the editions
of Marvell, Donne and
Milton already published
by the Everyman's
Library. This volume is
ideal for students and
offers the best text
available.
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The appreciation of Zen
philosophy and art has
become universal, and
Zen poetry, with its
simple expression of
direct, intuitive
insight and sudden
enlightenment, appeals
to lovers of poetry,
spirituality, and beauty
everywhere. This
collection of
translations of the
classical Zen poets of
China, Japan and Korea
includes the work of Zen
practioners and monks as
well as scholars,
artists, travellers and
recluses, and covers
fifteen centuries of
Oriental literature with
poets ranging from Xie
Lingyun (5th century)
through Wang Wei and
Hanshan (8th century) and
Yang Wan-li (12th
century) to Shinkei
(15th) Basho (17th) and
Ryokan (19th).
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Probably the most
important single figure
in nineteenth century
American literature,
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49)
exerted an enormous
influence over later
writers, especially
French Symbolist poets,
including Baudelaire and
Mallarme, and through
them he affected the
entire field of modern
literature from THE WASTE
LAND to LOLITA. Probably
best known for his
macabre short stories,
including THE FALL OF THE
HOUSE OF USHER, and THE
PIT AND THE PENDULUM,
Poe's influence was
spread primarily through
his poems and essays
which are here reprinted.
The current volume
includes all his extant
poems and extensive
selections from his
essays on poetry.
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A few magical poems by
Coleridge remain among
the most celebrated works
in the language: KUBLA
KHAN, CHRISTABEL and -
above all -THE ANCIENT
MARINER. All are included
in this volume, together
with many other superb
but lesser-known poems
and a selected prose
extracts from the
BIOGRAPHIA LITERIA and
the NOTEBOOKS which show
that Coleridge was not
only a major poet but
also a great critic and
prose writer.
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A leader of the
twentieth-century Irish
nationalist movement,
who eventually became one
of the Free States's
senators, William Butler
Yeats (1865-1939) is also
the greatest poet that
nation has yet produced.
The present selection
includes poetry from
every period in life,
dealing with all the
topics closest to his
heart: love, death, old
age, ambition, the
poet's craft, and of
course the history and
destiny of Ireland.
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Blake's explosive lyrical
genius is here
represented by the full
text of 'Songs of
Innocence' and 'Songs of
Experience', plus a wide
range of marvellous short
poems unpublished in his
lifetime. In addition
there is a selection from
the Prophetic Books in
which the poet develops
his own story of creation
- alternately crazy and
magnificent and from his
dramatic and didactic
poems and prose writings
which reveal Blake as a
major poet of the
Romantic movement.
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* In size, price, and
elegant packaging, these
books will make ideal
gifts * Beautiful
3-colour jacket designed
to give a uniform look *
Unique and highly
distinctive
black-and-white pattern
on each spine *
Full-cloth, flexible
covers * Sewn bindings *
Silk ribbon markers and
headbands * Gold stamping
on front and spine *
Decorative patterned
endpapers * Newly
designed typographic
settings in classic
typefaces * Portable
format-size 6 1/4 x 4 ins
(15. 75 x 10. 25 cm) *
Cream wove acid free
paper * 256pp each volume
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How much heavier was
Thackeray's brain than
Walt Whitman's? Which
novels do American
soldiers read? When did
cigarettes start making
an appearance in English
literature? And, while
we're about it, who
wrote the first Western,
is there any link between
asthma and literary
genius, and what really
happened on Dorothea's
wedding night in
Middlemarch?
In
Curiosities of
Literature, John
Sutherland contemplates
the full import of
questions such as these,
and attempts a few
answers in a series of
essays that are both
witty and eclectic. His
approach is also
unashamedly discursive.
An account of the
fast-working Mickey
Spillane, for example,
leads to a consideration
of the substances, both
legal and illegal, that
authors have employed to
boost their creative
energies. An essay on
good and bad handwriting
points out in passing
that Thackeray could
write the Lord's Prayer
on the back of a stamp.
As for Mary Shelley, a
brief recital of the
circumstances in which
she wrote Frankenstein
stops off to consider
what impact the miserable
summer weather of 1816
had on the future path of
English literature.
Of course, it is
debatable whether
knowledge of these arcane
topics adds to the wisdom
of nations, but it does
highlight the random
pleasures to be found in
reading literature and
reading about it. As John
Sutherland rightly asks,
'Why else
read?'
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A landmark in the history
of criticism, Seven
Types of Ambiguity was
published in 1930, when
Empson was only
twenty-four, and was
immediately hailed as a
masterpiece. Although
critics had previously
noted the indeterminate
and playful aspect of
'ambiguity' in literary
language, the term
itself only entered into
the critical lexicon
after the publication of
Empson's landmark study.
In his enjoyable readings
of ambiguity, puns and
paradox, Empson draws on
a variety of authors from
Chaucer to Eliot,
illuminating the
strategies of individual
writers and creating a
brilliant general theory
of poetic practice:
wide-ranging, witty and
still controversial
today.
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In this influential
study, Ian Watt traves
the genesis and
development of the most
popluar of all literay
forms, the novel. In his
penerating and original
readings of Daniel Defoe,
Samuel Richardson and
Henry Fielding, he
investigates the reasons
why the three main
eighteenth-century
novelist wrote in the way
they did - a way
resulting ultimately in
the modern novel of the
present day. The rise of
the middle classes and of
economic individualism,
the philosophical
innovations of the
seventeeth century,
complex changes in the
social position of women:
these are some of the
factors underlying an age
which produced the
authors of ROBINSON
CRUSOE, PAMELA and TOM
JONES.
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In recent years many
novelists have become
increasingly interested
in history as fiction and
fiction as history. In
her powerful opening
essays - 'Fathers',
'Forefathers' and
'Ancestors' - A.S. Byatt
considers the renaissance
of the historical novel.
She discusses
particularly the novel of
wartime experience; the
surprising variety of
distant pasts that
British writers have
invented; and the new
'Darwinian novel',
stimulated in part by the
discovery of DNA. These
afford new readings of
writers from Elizabeth
Bowen and Henry Green to
Anthony Burgess, William
Golding and Muriel Spark,
and other contemporary
authors, including
Penelope Fitzgerald,
Julian Barnes, Martin
Amis, John Fuller,
Hilary Mantel and pat
Barker.Byatt also offers
a fascinating insight
into her own translation
of historical fact into
fiction in the two
novellas which make up
Angles and Insects,
while in 'Old Stories,
New Forms' she explores
the recent European
revival of interest in
myth, folktale and
fairytale. Finally, two
short pieces look in
detail at the perennial
appeal of particular
stories: The Arabian
Nights, 'the greatest
story ever told', and a
cluster of tales of ice,
snow and glass, from
'Snow White' and 'The
Snow Queen' to the
mysterious, 'stony'
women of Shakespeare and
George Eliot.
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Poetry of the Second
World War brings to light
a neglected chapter in
world literature. In its
chorus of haunting poetic
voices, over a hundred
of the most articulate
minds of their generation
record the true
experience of the 1939-45
conflict, and its
unending consequences. In
keeping with its subject,
it has an international
scope, with poems from
over twenty countries,
including Japan,
Australia, Europe,
America and Russia; poems
in which human responses
echo each other across
boundaries of culture and
state. Auden, Brecht,
Stevie Smith, Primo
Levi, Zbigniew Herbert
and Anna Akhmatova are
set alongside the
eloquence of unknown
poets. The anthology has
been arranged to bring
out the chronological and
cumulative human
experience of the war:
pre-war fears, air
raids, the boredom,
fear and camaraderie of
military life; battle,
occupation and
resistance; surviving and
the aftermath. Here at
last, are the poems of
the Holocaust, the
Blitz, Hiroshima; of
soldiers, refugees and
disrupted lives. What
emerges is a poetry
capable of conveying the
vast and terrible sweep
of war.
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'This new anthology is as
entrancing as the lost
gardens of Heligan - I
cannot imagine an
anthology anyone would
enjoy more.' Ruth Padel,
The IndependentThis
beautifully compiled and
designed anthology brings
together over 250 poems
about flowers, plants
and trees from eight
centuries of writing in
English.
Fourteenth-century lyrics
sit next to poems of the
twenty-first century;
celebrations of plants
native to the English
soil share the volume
with more exotic plant
poetry from further
afield, creating a
cornucopia of intriguing
juxtapositions. There are
thirty poems about roses,
by poets as diverse as
Shakespeare, Dorothy
Parker and the South
African, Seitlhamo
Motsapi; but there are
also sections devoted to
more unusual plants such
as the mandrake, the
starapple and the
tamarind. An ex-gardener,
the poet Sarah Maguire
brings her extensive
botanical knowledge to
bear on all the poems,
arranging them into
botanical families,
identifying the plants
being written about and
writing a fascinating
introduction about how
the history of flowers
goes hand in hand with
the history of English
poetry. Whether you are a
poetry lover, a
gardener, a botanist,
or simply the purchase of
an occasional bouquet,
this unique anthology
allows you to luxuriate
amidst the world's flora.
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Pushkin was the first
Russian writer of
European stature, and he
is among the very few
artists - such as Homer
and Shakespeare - to have
shaped the consciousness
and history of an entire
nation and its language,
thereby affecting the
world at large. Eugene
Onegin is not merely the
greatest poem in the
Russian language by its
most influential poet: it
is a global culture,
social and political icon
of the highest order. The
historical power of this
work - a novel in verse -
is made all the more
extraordinary by the
simplicity of its
subject. Eugene Onegin is
a story of disappointed
love. Tatyana falls for
the handsome Eugene to
whom she daringly makes
advances. He cooly
rejects her, then flirts
with her sister, Olga.
When challenged by Olga's
fiance, Lensky kills him
in a duel, seemingly
indifferrent to the grief
he causes. (Ironically,
Puskhin himself was to be
killed in similar
circumstances in 1937,
some seven years after he
completed the work).
Onegin leaves the
district. When he returns
four years later,
Tatyana has married
another man and it is her
turn to reject his
advances. But it turns
out that Onegin's hauteur
is affected: he has
always loved her
passionately. She loves
him too and both reflect
painfully on what might
have been.
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The British invented the
novel, with the
publication of
Robinson Crusoe in
1719 marking
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-
'This new anthology is as
entrancing as the lost
gardens of Heligan - I
cannot imagine an
anthology anyone would
enjoy more.' Ruth Padel,
The IndependentThis
beautifully compiled and
designed anthology brings
together over 250 poems
about flowers, plants
and trees from eight
centuries of writing in
English.
Fourteenth-century lyrics
sit next to poems of the
twenty-first century;
celebrations of plants
native to the English
soil share the volume
with more exotic plant
poetry from further
afield, creating a
cornucopia of intriguing
juxtapositions. There are
thirty poems about roses,
by poets as diverse as
Shakespeare, Dorothy
Parker and the South
African, Seitlhamo
Motsapi; but there are
also sections devoted to
more unusual plants such
as the mandrake, the
starapple and the
tamarind. An ex-gardener,
the poet Sarah Maguire
brings her extensive
botanical knowledge to
bear on all the poems,
arranging them into
botanical families,
identifying the plants
being written about and
writing a fascinating
introduction about how
the history of flowers
goes hand in hand with
the history of English
poetry. Whether you are a
poetry lover, a
gardener, a botanist,
or simply the purchase of
an occasional bouquet,
this unique anthology
allows you to luxuriate
amidst the world's flora.
Availability: In Stock
£11.26
Available
-
Helen Vender calls Sharon
Olds 'pornographic, '
amd Michaael Ondaajte
says she's 'pure fire'.
Boldly searing woman's
physical desires onto the
page, Olds has become of
of the most widely read,
best-selling poets on the
contemporary scene. In
this new collection, she
seems to have literally
submerged herself in the
wellspring, where she
can por her poems on us,
poems that take us back
to the encompassing womb,
to a thrilling bur cold
sexual awakening, and
finally to the depths of
lasting love. A daughter
can remember her mother's
wedding night. A woman
traces the cells of a
stillborn back to their
origin as stars in the
sky. A mother finds her
son's old jeans and sees
the young boy who once
wore them. A woman drinks
wine with her husband at
night, in summer, and
they make love. THE
WELLSPRING is the finest
book yet by an
extraordinary poet.
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This brilliant and timely
study looks beyond the
Freudian interpretation
of fairy tales, to the
tellers of the tales,
and to the social and
cutural contexts in which
the tales are told and
re-told through the
centuries, from the
ancient sibyls to the
eighteenth-century
SALONIERES, from Angela
Carter to Disney. The
value and enduring
popularity of folk and
fairy tales derives not
only from their mythic
significance but,
crucially, from the fact
that their concerns are
rooted in the material
world. Lively,
provocative and
ground-breaking, FROM
THE BEAST TO THE BLONDE
is Marina Warner's first
major work of non-fiction
since the acclaimed
MONUMENTS AND MAIDENS.
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First published in 1965,
A.S. Byatt's Degrees
of Freedom examined
the first eight novels
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Though as yet little
known in English-speaking
countries, Rainer Maria
Rilke (1875-1926) is the
finest German poet of
this century and one of
the greatest lyrical
writers in the history of
Western literature. A
major figure in the
modernist movement, with
some affinities to Yeats,
Rilke had a profound
influence on other 20th
century poets such as
Pasternak and Akhmatova.
He is a master of vivid
and breathtakingly
original imagery in which
difficult ideas are made
directly apprehensible to
the reader and new worlds
of experience are opened
up. This selection
includes poems from all
stages of his career,
beginning with the
delicate works of his
early years, through the
extraordinary poems he
wrote in French (which he
used like a first
language) and concluding
with his mature
masterpieces: the SONNETS
TO ORPHEUS and the DUINO
ELEGIES. Also included
are Rilke's prose LETTERS
TO A YOUNG POET in which
he counsels a younger
colleague and expounds
his own literary ideal.
This is by far the most
comprehensive selection
from this poet in English
and forms an ideal
introduction to this
work.
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What she produced is an
eccentric and unofficial
literary and social
history from the
fourteenth to the
twentieth century, with
an excursion to ancient
Greece thrown in. she
investigates medieval
England, tsarist Russia,
Elizabethan playwrights,
Victorian novelists and
modern essayists. When
she published this book
Woolf's fame as a
novelist was already
established: now she was
hailed as a brilliant
interpretative critic.
Here, she addresses her
'common reader' in the
remarkable prose and with
all the imagination and
gaiety that are the stamp
of her genius.
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