York Notes Advanced offer a fresh & accessible approach to English Literature This market-leading series has been completely updated to meet the needs of today's A-level & undergraduate students Written by established literature experts York Notes Advanced intorduce students to more sophisticated analysis a range of critical perspectives & wider contexts ...

With an Introduction Bibliography & Glossary by Dr Paul Wright Trinity College Carmarthen 'I mean to show things really as they are not as they ought to be' wrote Byron (1788-1824) in his comic masterpiece Don Juan which follows the adventures of the hero across the Europe & near East which Byron knew so well touching on the major political cultural & social concerns of the day This selection

Includes:: all of that poem & selections from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage & the satirical poems ' English Bards & Scotch Reviewers' & 'A Vision of Judgement' Paul Wright's detailed introductions place Byron's colourful life & work within their broader social & political contexts & demonstrate that Byron both fostered & critiqued the notorious ' Byronic myth' of heroic adventure political action & sexual scandal

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The perfect gift for Valentine's Day Selected Poems contains Neruda's resonant exploratory intensely individualistic verse rooted in the physical landscape & people of Chile Here we find sensuous songs of love tender odes to the sea melancholy lyrics of heartache fiery political statements & a frank celebration of sex This is an enticing distinctive & celebrated collection of poetry from the greatest twentieth century Latin American poet ...

Sylvia Plath is one of the defining voices in twentieth-century poetry This classic selection of her work made by her former husband Ted Hughes provides the perfect introduction to this most influential of poets The poems are taken from Sylvia Plath's four collections Ariel The Colossus Crossing the Water & Winter Trees & include many of her most celebrated works such as ' Daddy' ' Lady Lazarus' & ' Wuthering Heights' ...

Key Features Study methods Introduction to the text Summaries with critical notes Themes & techniques Textual analysis of key passages Author biography Historical & literary background Modern & historical critical approaches Chronology Glossary of literary terms ...

TS Eliot
- editor poet critic & publisher
- was the greatest poet of his generation The winner of the 1948 Nobel Prize for Literature

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This selection which was made by Eliot himself is intended as an introduction to the main body of his poetry prior to Four Quartets which is available separately in Faber Paperbacks The selection

Includes:: the whole of The Waste Land

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Thom Gunn has been described as 'one of the most singular & compelling poets in English during the past half-century' (TLS) This Selected Poems compiled by his friend Clive Wilmer & accompanied by insightful notes is the first edition to represent the full arc of Gunn's inimitable career ' The poetry of Thom Gunn was much admired in his lifetime & at the same time often misunderstood & underestimated The scale of his achievement & its uniqueness
- a masterful Elizabethan lyric poet writing in the second half of the twentieth century
- is just now becoming properly appreciated Anonymous in voice even in the service of the most intimate subject matter acute in observation particularly the urban experience with San Francisco the principal site Gunn is not merely the poet of the druggy '60s in California or the plague of the AIDS epidemic but of the deeper-running themes shared by Shakespeare Baudelaire William Carlos Williams & all his greatest exemplars of the artist's moral & imaginative engagement with the world as it actually is in the broadest possible sense not as contemporary fashion might have it be Which strikes me who knew & loved the man & poet as a kind of heroism' August Kleinzahler' Thom Gunn smuggled the lyric tradition out of post-war Britain & gave it cool gracious renaissance in California His poetry evokes the wild life of the body with madrigal-like elegance' Fiona Sampson' Gunn's work illustrates with unusual clarity some of the debates poetry in English has pursued in the twentieth century
- form versus improvisation diction versus talk the American way versus the English tradition even at times authenticity versus art To contain these contradictory impulses & to have generated a body of work which anybody wanting to understand the period & identify some of its best poems will find essential reading
- this is quite an achievement' Sean O' Brien



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Showcasing the creative power of one of the most outstanding English Metaphysical Poets the Penguin Classics edition of John Donne's Selected Poems

Includes:: an introduction & notes by Ilona Bell Regarded by many as the greatest of the Metaphysical poets John Donne was also among the most intriguing figures of the Renaissance A sensualist who composed erotic & playful love poetry in his youth he was raised a Catholic but later became one of the most admired Protestant preachers of his time The Selected Poems reflects this wide diversity &

Includes:: his youthful Songs & Sonnets epigrams elegies letters satires & the profoundly moving Divine Poems composed towards the end of his life From joyful poems such as ' The Flea' which transforms the image of a louse into something marvellous to the intimate & intense Holy Sonnets Donne breathed new vigour into poetry by drawing lucid & often startling metaphors from the world in which he lived His poems remain among the most passionate profound & spiritual in the English language Ilona Bell's introduction considers Donne's life faith & influence This edition also

Includes:: detailed notes & a further reading list John Donne (1572-1631) was born into a family of devout Catholics He studied at Oxford University travelled on the continent & then studied law at Lincoln's Inn In the early 1600s Donne became a Member of Parliament & Justice of the Peace obtaining temporary positions & patronage from a number of aristocrats who are the subjects of his poems He was ordained as an Anglican minister in 1615 & in 1621 was made Dean of St Paul's Cathedral a position he held until his death If you enjoyed Donne's Selected Poems you might enjoy John Milton's Paradise Lost also available in Penguin Classics





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Selected Poems draws on all the books Elizabeth Jennings published before Growing-Points It represents the poet's own distillation of the first two decades of her writing
- the poems which established her as one of the most passionate & precise of our writers a woman of human values religious vision & natural sympathy ' The outstanding thing about Jennings' poetry' wrote Douglas Dunn 'is its wisdom hard earned from grief & religious faith' & Peter Levi says ' She is one of the few living poets we could not do without'
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