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Flora Poetica: The Chatto Book of Botanical Verse
By Sarah Maguire. 2001
This beautiful anthology brings together over 250 poems about flowers, plants and trees from eight centuries of writing in English,…
creating a rich bouquet of intriguing juxtapositions. 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. 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 celebrated poet Sarah Maguire brings her extensive horticultural knowledge to bear on all the poems, arranging them into botanical families, identifying the plants being written about and writing a fascinating introduction. Whether you are a poetry lover, a gardener, a botanist, or simply the purchaser of the occasional bunch of flowers, this unique anthology allows you to luxuriate amidst the world's flora.The Elder Edda: A Book Of Viking Lore (Legends from the Ancient North)
By Petra Borner. 2011
Part of a new series Legends from the Ancient North, The Elder Edda is one of the classic books that…
influenced JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings'So the company of men led a careless life,All was well with them: until One beganTo encompass evil, an enemy from hell.Grendel they called this cruel spirit...'J.R.R. Tolkien spent much of his life studying, translating and teaching the great epic stories of northern Europe, filled with heroes, dragons, trolls, dwarves and magic. He was hugely influential for his advocacy of Beowulf as a great work of literature and, even if he had never written The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, would be recognised today as a significant figure in the rediscovery of these extraordinary tales.Legends from the Ancient North brings together from Penguin Classics five of the key works behind Tolkien's fiction.They are startling, brutal, strange pieces of writing, with an elemental power brilliantly preserved in these translations.They plunge the reader into a world of treachery, quests, chivalry, trials of strength.They are the most ancient narratives that exist from northern Europe and bring us as near as we will ever get to the origins of the magical landscape of Middle-earth (Midgard) which Tolkien remade in the 20th century.The Elder Edda: A Book of Viking Lore
By Andy Orchard. 2011
Compiled by an unknown scribe in Iceland around 1270, and based on sources dating back centuries earlier, these mythological and…
heroic poems tell of gods and mortals from an ancient era: the giant-slaying Thor, the doomed Völsung family, the Hel-ride of Brynhild and the cruelty of Atli the Hun. Eclectic, incomplete and fragmented, these verses nevertheless retain their stark beauty and their power to enthrall, opening a window on to the thoughts, beliefs and hopes of the Vikings and their world.The Erotic Poems
By Ovid. 1982
This 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.The Epic of Gilgamesh
By Anonymous Anonymous. 2020
The ancient Sumerian poem The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest written stories in existence, translated with an…
introduction by Andrew George in Penguin Classics.Miraculously preserved on clay tablets dating back as much as four thousand years, the poem of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, is the world's oldest epic, predating Homer by many centuries. The story tells of Gilgamesh's adventures with the wild man Enkidu, and of his arduous journey to the ends of the earth in quest of the Babylonian Noah and the secret of immortality. Alongside its themes of family, friendship and the duties of kings, The Epic of Gilgamesh is, above all, about mankind's eternal struggle with the fear of death.The Babylonian version has been known for over a century, but linguists are still deciphering new fragments in Akkadian and Sumerian. Andrew George's gripping translation brilliantly combines these into a fluid narrative and will long rank as the definitive English Gilgamesh. If you enjoyed The Epic of Gilgamesh, you might like Homer's Iliad, also available in Penguin Classics.'A masterly new verse translation'The Times'Andrew George has skilfully bridged the gap between a scholarly re-edition and a popular work'London Review of BooksThe Epic of Gilgamesh
By N. K. Sandars. 1946
Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, and his companion Enkidu are the only heroes to have survived from the ancient literature of…
Babylon, immortalized in this epic poem that dates back to the 3rd millennium BC. Together they journey to the Spring of Youth, defeat the Bull of Heaven and slay the monster Humbaba. When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh's grief and fear of death are such that they lead him to undertake a quest for eternal life. A timeless tale of morality, tragedy and pure adventure, The Epic of Gilgamesh is a landmark literary exploration of man's search for immortality.The First Poems in English
By Michael Alexander. 2008
This selection of the earliest poems in English comprises works from an age in which verse was not written down,…
but recited aloud and remembered. Heroic poems celebrate courage, loyalty and strength, in excerpts from Beowulf and in The Battle of Brunanburgh, depicting King Athelstan’s defeat of his northern enemies in 937 AD, while The Wanderer and The Seafarer reflect on exile, loss and destiny. The Gnomic Verses are proverbs on the natural order of life, and the Exeter Riddles are witty linguistic puzzles. Love elegies include emotional speeches from an abandoned wife and separated lovers, and devotional poems include a vision of Christ’s cross in The Dream of the Rood, and Caedmon’s Hymn, perhaps the oldest poem in English, speaking in praise of God.Eugene Onegin
By Alexander Pushkin. 1937
This novel in verse, said to be the parent of all Russian novels, is a tragic story of innocence, love…
and friendship. Eugene Onegin, an aristocrat, much like Pushkin and his peers in his attitude and habits, is bored. He visits the countryside where the young and passionate Tatyana falls in love with him. In a touching letter she confesses her love but is cruelly rejected. Years later, it is Onegin's turn to be rejected by Tatyana.Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse
By Alexander Pushkin. 1937
Eugene Onegin is the master work of the poet whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature. Set in…
1820s Russia, Pushkin's verse novel follows the fates of three men and three women. Engaging, full of suspense, and varied in tone, it contains a large cast of characters and offers the reader many literary, philosophical, and autobiographical digressions, often in a highly satirical vein. Eugene Onegin was Pushkin's own favourite work, and this new translation by Stanley Mitchell conveys the literal sense and the poetic music of the original.English Romantic Verse
By David Wright. 1968
English Romantic poetry from its beginnings and its flowering to the first signs of its decadence. Nearly all the famous…
piéces de résistance will be found here - 'Intimations of Immortality', 'The Ancient Mariner', 'The Tyger', excerpts from 'Don Juan' - as well as some less familiar poems. As far as possible the poets are arranged in chronological order, and their poems in order of composition, beginning with eighteenth-century precursors such as Gray, Cowper, Burns and Chatterton. Naturally most space has been given over to the major Romantics - Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Clare and Keats - although their successors, poets such as Beddoes and Poe, are included too, as well as early poems by Tennyson and Browning. In an excellent introduction David Wright discusses the Romantics as a historical phenomenon, and points out their central ideals and themes.The Earliest English Poems
By Michael Alexander. 1991
Anglo-Saxon poetry was produced between 700 and 1000 AD for an audience that delighted in technical accomplishment, and the durable…
works of Old English verse spring from the source of the English language. Michael Alexander has translated the best of the Old English poetry into modern English and into a verse form that retains the qualities of Anglo-Saxon metre and alliteration. Included in this selection are the ‘heroic poems’ such as Widsith, Deor, Brunanburh and Maldon, and passages from Beowulf; some of the famous ‘riddles’ from The Exeter Book; all the ‘elegies’, including The Ruin, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Wife’s Complaint and The Husband’s Message, in which the virtu of Old English is found in its purest and most concentrated form; together with the great Christian poem The Dream of the Rood.The Eclogues
By Virgil. 1984
Haunting and enigmatic, Virgil's Eclogues combined a Greek literary form with scenes from contemporary Roman life to create a work…
that inspired a whole European tradition of pastoral poetry. For despite their rustic setting and the beauty of their phrasing, the poems in Virgil's first collection are also grounded in reality. Shepherds are overwhelmed by the torments of poetic love - but they must also endure such real-life events as the tragic consequences of Julius Caesar's murder in 44 bc and a civil war. In giving unforgettable expression to the disasters of the day through poetry, the Eclogues paved the way for the Georgics and the Aeneid, the two greatest works of Latin literature, and are also a major masterpiece in their own right.The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings: Poems, Tales, Essays, And Reviews
By Edgar Allan Poe. 2003
The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings is a collection that displays the full force of Edgar…
Allen Poe's mastery of both Gothic horror and the short story form. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by David Galloway.This selection of Poe's critical writings, short fiction and poetry demonstrates his intense interest in aesthetic issues, and the astonishing power and imagination with which he probed the darkest corners of the human mind. 'The Fall of the House of Usher' is a slow-burning Gothic horror, describing the final hours of a family tormented by tragedy and the legacy of the past. In 'The Tell-Tale Heart', a murderer's insane delusions threaten to betray him, while stories such as 'The Pit and the Pendulum', 'The Raven' and 'The Cask of Amontillado' explore extreme states of decadence, fear and hate. In his introduction David Galloway re-examines the myths surrounding Poe's life and reputation. This edition includes a new chronology and suggestions for further reading.Although dissipated in his youth and plagued by mental instability towards the end of his life, Boston-born Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) had a variety of occupations, including service in the US army and magazine editor, as well as his remarkable literary output.If you enjoyed The Fall of the House of Usher, you might like Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, also available in Penguin Classics.'The most original genius that America has produced'Alfred, Lord Tennyson'Poe has entered our popular consciousness as no other American writer'The New York Times Book ReviewThe Faerie Queene
By Edmund Spenser. 1978
The Faerie Queene was the first epic in English and one of the most influential poems in the language for…
later poets from Milton to Tennyson. Dedicating his work to Elizabeth I, Spenser brilliantly united medieval romance and renaissance epic to expound the glory of the Virgin Queen. The poem recounts the quests of knights including Sir Guyon, Knight of Constance, who resists temptation, and Artegall, Knight of Justice, whose story alludes to the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. Composed as an overt moral and political allegory, The Faerie Queene, with its dramatic episodes of chivalry, pageantry and courtly love, is also a supreme work of atmosphere, colour and sensuous description.Don't Tell the Teacher
By Gervase Phinn. 2006
Brilliantly observed as always, family, teachers, pupils and the dreaded school inspector all leap to life in this wonderfully warm…
and witty, brand new, poetry collection from bestseller Gervase Phinn. New kids, disobedient deputy heads, school reports and fireworks, daydreamers and embarrassing mums all make an appearance. And if read on you might even just discover the whereabouts of Colin's confiscated conkers...just don't tell the teacher!Drives
By Leontia Flynn. 2008
Following on from the assured day-to-day poems of her first collection, Leontia Flynn's second, Drives, is a book of restless…
journeys - real and imaginary - interspersed with a series of sonnets on writers. Beginning in Belfast, where she lives, she visits a disjointed number of cities in Europe and the States - each one the occasion for an elliptical postcard home to herself.Alongside these reports from abroad, portraits of dead writers flicker through the pages of this book - Baudelaire, Proust and Beckett; Bishop, Plath and Virginia Woolf - all revealing aspects of themselves, their frailties and their sicknesses, but also, we suspect, aspects of their ventriloquising author.What these poems share is a furious refusal of received opinion, of a language recycled and redundant; they are raw exposed and angrily aware of distance - the distance between what one needs and what one receives, between love and what is lost. In particular, the lives here are haunted by the lost idyll of childhood, while poems about the poet's own mother and ageing father bring the collection to a close. With an alert ear for fracture and disarray and a tender eye for damage, Drives is a passionate enquiry into what shapes us as individuals.Don Juan
By Lord Byron. 1973
Byron's exuberant masterpiece tells of the adventures of Don Juan, beginning with his illicit love affair at the age of…
sixteen in his native Spain and his subsequent exile to Italy. Following a dramatic shipwreck, his exploits take him to Greece, where he is sold as a slave, and to Russia, where he becomes a favourite of the Empress Catherine who sends him on to England. Written entirely in ottava rima stanza form, Byron's Don Juan blends high drama with earthy humour, outrageous satire of his contemporaries (in particular Wordsworth and Southey) and sharp mockery of Western societies, with England coming under particular attack.De Profundis and Other Prison Writings
By Oscar Wilde. 2000
De Profundis and Other Prison Writings is a new selection of Oscar Wilde's prison letters and poetry in Penguin Classics,…
edited and introduced by Colm Tóibín.At the start of 1895, Oscar Wilde was the toast of London, widely feted for his most recent stage success, An Ideal Husband. But by May of the same year, Wilde was in Reading prison sentenced to hard labour. 'De Profundis' is an epistolic account of Oscar Wilde's spiritual journey while in prison, and describes his new, shocking conviction that 'the supreme vice is shallowness'. This edition also includes further letters to his wife, his friends, the Home Secretary, newspaper editors and his lover Lord Alfred Douglas - Bosie - himself, as well as 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol', the heart-rending poem about a man sentenced to hang for the murder of the woman he loved. This Penguin edition is based on the definitive Complete Letters, edited by Wilde's grandson Merlin Holland. Colm Tóibín's introduction explores Wilde's duality in love, politics and literature. This edition also includes notes on the text and suggested further reading. Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin. His three volumes of short fiction, The Happy Prince, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and A House of Pomegranates, together with his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, won him a reputation as a writer with an original talent, a reputation enhanced by the phenomenal success of his society comedies - Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest. Colm Tóibín is the author of five novels, including The Blackwater Lightship and The Master, and a collection of stories, Mothers and Sons. His essay collection Love in a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodovar appeared in 2002. He is the editor of The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction.The Day Our Teacher Went Batty
By Gervase Phinn. 2002
Doctor Who: a 2010s story
By Doctor Who, Nikita Gill. 2023
*Part of the six books for six decades collection*A poem of tragedy and beauty . . .The Weeping Angels are…
an ancient race of terrible power.With the ability to propel their victims backwards in time, their true form is a mystery - they turn to stone on sight. So they wander the universe, cursed never to see one another.But they see everything else: the whole course of time and space - even the journey of their deadliest enemy, the Doctor.In this extraordinary, epic poem, the Weeping Angels sing the story of the years they've battled the Doctor, and everything in between, as - like a Greek Chorus - they tell the world their tragic tale.