M.R. James is probably the finest ghost-story writer England has ever produced. These tales are not only classics of their genre but are also superb examples of beautifully-paced understatement convincing background & chilling terror. As well as the preface there is a fascinating tail-piece by M.R. James ' Stories I Have Tried To Write' which accompanies these thirty tales. Among them are ' Casting the Runes' ' Oh Whistle & I'll come to you My Lad' ' The Tractate
- h' ' The Ash Tree' & ' Canon Alberic's Scrapbook'. ' There are some authors one wishes one had never read in order to have the joy of reading them for the first time. For me M.R. James is one of these'. Ruth Rendell
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Considered by many to be the most terrifying writer in English M. R. James is an unlikely producer of ghost-stories. An eminent scholar who spent his entire adult life in the academic surroundings of Eton & Cambridge his classic supernatural tales have lost none of their power to unsettle & disturb. They draw on the terrors of the everyday in which documents & objects unleash terrible forces often in closed rooms & night-time settings where imagination runs riot. Lonely country houses remote inns ancient churches or the manuscript collections of great libraries provide settings for unbearable menace from creatures seeking retribution & harm. Stories that were first read aloud in Jamess study late on Christmas Eve have the power to haunt us still. This book presents all of Jamess published ghost stories including the unforgettable Oh Whistle & Ill Come to You My Lad & Casting the Runes & an appendix of Jamess writings on the ghost story. Darryl Joness introduction & notes provide a fascinating insight into Jamess background & his mastery of the genre he made his own. ...

This revised collection gathers together Charles Causleys poetry spanning a period of more than fifty years &

Includes::

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This volume contains all the major lyric poems reflecting the diverse moods & phases of this important & inspiring poet from He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" & " The Lake Isle of Innisfree" to " Sailing to Byzantium."" ...

In gathering four decades of work Hugo Williams Collected Poems" brings back into print a vast body of material long since unavailable
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Roger Mc Gough is one of Britains best loved poets & this collection charts [his] passage from youthful exuberance to the wry reflection of his later years. What remains the same throughout the 40 years is the poets winning wit accessibility & abiding readability Independent ---------------------------------- Time has confirmed.. .that Mc Goughs talent was much more substantial than many of his long-forgotten detractors suspected. If he was a pop poet it was not in any ephemeral sense. A shy extrovert.. .he has given voice to poetry & found a voice of his own which is humourful introspective irreverent easy on the ear conversational. It is also memorable & enduring & fresh. Age has not withered [his lines] nor diminished their potency. Of how much modern poetry can you say that? Sunday Herald ...

Though sometimes classified with Owen Rosenberg & Sassoon as a war poet he was rather a poet who died tragically in the war & whose main subjects were the English countryside & its people & the solitude of the observing self. The present edition offers the complete poems together with detailed editorial apparatus in what has become acknowledged as the standard edition by R. George Thomas. It also

Includes:: Thomass remarkable prose War Diary of 1917.

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Allan Ahlbergs five poetry books written over a period of twenty-five years
- Please Mrs Butler" " Heard it in the Playground"
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The Welsh publishing house Gwasg Gomer published Gillian Clarkes first full collection of poems The Sundial in 1978. In the twenty years since then the poet has become one of the best-loved & most widely read writers of Wales well-known for her readings for her radio work & her workshops. Gillian Clarke is a severe critic of her own poems--Collected Poems

Includes:: all that she wishes to preserve of her work to date.

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This title offers a unique 15 CD box set of Seamus Heaney reading his 11 poetry collections in their entirety produced by Radio Telefis Eireann the Irish national broadcasting corporation. These include Death of a Naturalist" " Door Into The Dark" " Wintering Out" " North" " Fieldwork" " Station Island" " The Haw Lantern" " Seeing Things" " The Spirit Level" " Electric Light" & " District & Circle"." ...