This work recounts the adventurous life of his beloved 'Cello Prieto, ' tracing its history through each of its previous owners from Stradivari in 1720 to the author himself

    His wood-engraved illustrations for John Milton's monumental epic poem Paradise Lost, recounting mankind's fall from the grace of God through the work of Satan, were among his finest and most dramatic works. This volume presents superb reproductions of all 50 plates drawn by Doré and engraved in his studios for the original edition of Paradise Lost.Artists and art lovers will find in these pages supreme examples of the illustrator's art. Among the events depicted: the expulsion of Satan from heaven, Adam and Eve in Paradise, the nine-day fall of Lucifer's legions to Hell, the Creation, the temptation of Eve, the Flood, Moses holding up the Ten Commandments, and the fearsome creatures Milton referred to as "Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire."The dreamlike, otherworldly quality Doré often brought to his work seems especially appropriate for Paradise Lost with its lofty spirit and epic events. Indeed, Doré's grand conception seems to realize perfectly Milton's own poetic version. Appropriate quotes from the text of Paradise Lost are printed alongside each illustration. A plot summary of the entire poem is also included.

    This is the only introduction to Romanticism that incorporates not only the English but the Continental movements, and notonly literature but music, art, religion, and philosophy. Balancing lively details with intriguing topics, it sheds light on such subjects as the Sensibility movement, which preceded Romanticism; the rising prestige of the poet as inspired prophet; the suffering and neglect of the poet; therather different figure of the poetess; Romanticism as a religious trend; Romantic philosophy and science; and Romantic responses to the French Revolution, the Orient, gypsies, and the condition of women. Ferber offers a definition and several general propositions about this very diverse movement, as well as a discussion of the word Romantic and where it came from. Finally, some two hundred authors or artists are cited or quoted, many at length, including Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Emerson, Hugo, Goethe, Pushkin, Beethoven, Berlioz, Chopin, and Delacroix.

    It reprints, on facing pages, the version of "The Prelude" was was completed in 1805, together with the much-revised work published after the poet's death in 1850. In addition the editors include the two-part version of the poem, composed 1798-99. Each of these poems has its distinctive qualities and values; to read them together provides an imcomparable chance to observe a great poet composing and recomposing, through a long life, his major work.

    Trains are deeply embedded in the national psyche and folklore—yet it is considered uncool to care about them. For Matthew Engel the railway system is the ultimate expression of Britishness. It represents all the nation's ingenuity, incompetence, nostalgia, corruption, humor, capacity for suffering, and even sexual repression. To uncover its mysteries, Engel has traveled the system from Penzance to Thurso, exploring its history and talking to people from politicians to platform staff. Along the way Engel finds the most charmingly bizarre train in Britain, the most beautiful branch line, the rudest railway man, and—after a quest lasting decades—an individual pot of strawberry jam. Eleven Minutes Late is both a polemic and a paean, and it is also very funny.

    Sixteen performance artists discuss human sexuality, racism, sexism, and the ways in which art can be used to break down taboos and dogma.

    In Wicked Messenger, acclaimed cultural-political commentator Mike Marqusee advances the new thesis that Dylan did not drop politics from his songs but changed the manner of his critique to address the changing political and cultural climate and, more importantly, his own evolving aesthetic. Wicked Messenger is also a riveting political history of the United States in the 1960s. Tracing the development of the decade’s political and cultural dissent movements, Marqusee shows how their twists and turns were anticipated in the poetic aesthetic—anarchic, unaccountable, contradictory, punk— of Dylan's mid-sixties albums, as well as in his recent artistic ventures in Chronicles, Vol. I and Masked and Anonymous.Dylan’s anguished, self-obsessed, prickly artistic evolution, Marqusee asserts, was a deeply creative response to a deeply disturbing situation. "He can no longer tell the story straight," Marqusee concludes, "because any story told straight is a false one."

    Kennedy has been more carefully scrutinized. Michael O’Brien, who knows as much about Kennedy as any historian now writing, here takes a comprehensive look at the feature of Camelot that remained largely under the radar during the White House years: Kennedy’s womanizing. Indeed, O’Brien writes, Kennedy’s approach to women and sex was near pathological, beyond the farthest reaches of the media’s imagination at the time. The record makes for an astonishing piece of presidential history.---Michael O’Brien was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and studied at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he received a Ph.D. in history. He is the author of the widely praised John F. Kennedy: A Biography, a full-scale study based on eleven years’ research into letters, diaries, financial papers, medical records, manuscripts, and oral histories; and a concise analytical life of the president, Rethinking Kennedy. He is now emeritus professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Fox Valley, and lives in Door County, Wisconsin.

    Ruskin was a profoundly conservative man who looked back to the Middle Ages as a Utopia, yet his ideas had a considerable influence on the British socialist movement. And in making his powerful moral and aesthetic case against the dangers of unhindered industrialization he was strangely prophetic. This volume shows the astounding range and depth of Ruskin's work, and in an illuminating introduction the editor reveals the consistency of Ruskin's philosophy and his adamant belief that questions of economics, art and science could not be separated from questions of morality. In Ruskin's words, 'There is no Wealth but Life.'

    The Masque of Anarchy (or The Mask of Anarchy) is a British political poem written in 1819 following the Peterloo massacre of that year.

    He is also a much-loved broadcaster, presenting SATURDAY LIVE on Radio 4 and giving us regular reason to PAUSE FOR THOUGHT on Radio 2.What is life like for the parson in Britain today? For centuries the Church calendar - and the Church minister - gave character and personality to British life. Today, however, as the shape of the year has become less distinct and faith no longer as privileged or persuasive, that figure has become far more marginal.In BRINGING IN THE SHEAVES, Reverend Coles answers this question. From his ordination during the season of Petertide, through Advent and Christmas to Lent and Easter, he gives us a unique insight into his daily experience in the ministry, with all the joy, drama, difficulty and humour which life - and indeed death - serves up in varying measures.Written with extraordinary charm and erudition, BRINGING IN THE SHEAVES features a multitude of characters and events from parish life against a backdrop of the Christian calendar.

    And then enthralled. He set about trying to catch their lightning in his Nikon F2AS.That quixotic impulse became a lifelong quest. A little history got made on the way.Collected here for the first time are the fruits of his labour. A Little History is an extraordinary document, tracking Nick Cave's creative career from the apoplectic extravagance of The Birthday Party to the calmer disquiet of 2013's Push The Sky Away via snapshots, spotlit visions and sumptuous, theatrical portraits. It mixes the candid and uncanny, the spontaneous and the patiently staged, and includes eyeball encounters with Cave's baddest lieutenants, men for the most part who long since burned their own bridges down. Butcher's Nikonic eye defines moment after arresting moment in Cave's glorious, sprawling story: it's a splendid testament to two brilliant careers.

    But it wasn’t always roses for Pete. Growing up, Pete was raised an evangelical Christian, but his religion taught him that being “bad”—smoking, drinking, having doubts or premarital sex—would get him sent to an eternity in hell. So, terrified of the God he loved, Pete devoted his life to being “good,” even marrying his first girlfriend at the age of twenty-two only to discover a few years later he was being cheated on. Thanks for nothing, God.Pete’s failed attempt at a picture-perfect life forced him to reexamine his beliefs, but neither atheism, nor Christianity, nor copious bottles of Yellow Tail led him to enlightenment. Pete longed for a model of faith that served him and his newfound uncertainties about the universe, so he embarked on a soul-seeking journey that continues to this day. Through encounters with mind-altering substances, honing his craft in front of thousands of his comedy fans, and spending time with savants like Ram Dass, Pete forged a new life—both spiritually and personally.Beautifully written and often completely hilarious—imagine Dass’s Be Here Now if penned by one of the funniest people alive—Comedy Sex God reveals a man at the top of his game and a seeker in search of the deeper meanings of life, love, and comedy.

    This selection of De Quincey's writings includes the title piece - his most famous work - as well as On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth, The English Mail-Coach, and the Suspiria de Profundis.

    Now Michael Casey tells the remarkable story of this image, detailing its evolution from a casual snapshot to an omnipresent graphic—plastered on everything from T-shirts to vodka to condoms—and into a copyrighted brand. As Casey follows it across the Americas and through cyberspace, he finds governments exploiting it and their dissenters attacking it, merchants selling it and tourists buying it. We see how this image is, ultimately, a mercurial icon that still ignites passion—and a reflection of how we view ourselves.