From blake to wordsworth to robert browning and dylan thomas- a compact anthology of two centuries of poetry by 23 great british poets.

    The owls, hen, larks, and their nests in his beard, are among the fey fauna and peculiar persons inhabiting the uniquely inspired nonsense rhymes and drawings of Lear (20th child of a London stockbroker), whose Book of Nonsense, first published in 1846, stands alone as the ultimate and most loved expression in English of freewheeling, benign, and unconstricted merriment.

    Arnold seeks to find out what culture really is, what good it can do, and if it is really necessary. He contrasts culture, which he calls the study of perfection, with anarchy, the mood of unrest and uncertainty that pervaded mid-Victorian England. This edition reproduces the original book version, revealing the immediate historical context and controversy of the piece. The introduction and notes broaden out the interpretative approach to Arnold's text, elaborating on the complexities of the religious context. The book also reinforces the continued importance of Arnold's ideas its influences in the face of the challenges of multi-culturalism and post-modernism.

    What we have here in this big fat volume is a cockeyed chrestomathy of 37 Algren pieces... with his hallmark stamped on every link." —The New York Times Book Review"The range of the book is satisfying—rich, will titillate even the most fastidious dilettante or culture vulture... also contains pieces that will make you laugh your head off. Once you begin reading it, you will not be able to put it aside." —The Chicago Tribune"Essential Algren." —The Washington Post"Very good, fast, funny and tough... Algren, where have you been hiding?" —The San Francisco ChronicleHere again is Algren's rich output from the 1960s and '70s, tough, streetwise stories and travelogues from around the world: accounts of brothels in Vietnam and Mexico, stories of the boxing ring, and reminiscences of his beloved Chicago White Sox, among other subjects.

    Heine's protagonist is Atta Troll, the revolutionary dancing bear, who embodies all that Heine finds worthy of ridicule. The other poems in the collection are likewise chosen to highlight Heine's gift for lampooning social, political and artistic pomposity, while fighting for his own vision of a just world.

    The anthology offers more poetry by women (40 new poets), with special attention to early women poets. The book also includes a greater diversity of American poetry, with double the number of poems by African American, Hispanic, native American and Asian American poets. There are 26 new poets representing the Commonwealth literature tradition: now included are more than 37 poets from Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Caribbean, South Africa and India.

     But, what happens if there was an alternative source that spoke of these events? George Smith, a pioneering English Assyriologist, discovered a number of ancient tablets in the lands surrounding Nineveh, situated in what was previously the infamous civilization of Babylonia. Written in the long-forgotten script of cuneiform, Smith was able to discover some remarkable finds upon their surfaces. The Chaldean Account of Genesis explores these discoveries and explains how the tablets provide an alternative account to the accounts of the Jewish bible. These tablets also throw remarkable light on the myths and legends of Babylon, from the epic of Gilgamesh to the adventures of Ishtar. This work is a remarkable study that should be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the stories of Old Testament as well as the ancient civilization of Babylon. George Smith, was a pioneering English Assyriologist who first discovered and translated the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest-known written works of literature. His The Chaldean Account of Genesis was first published in 1876. Smith also passed away of dysentery that year during an expedition to excavate the rest of the Library of Ashurbanipal.

    Abrams has given us a remarkable study, admirably conceived and executed, a book of quite exceptional and no doubt lasting significance for a number of fields - for the history of ideas and comparative literature as well as for English literary history, criticism and aesthetics.

    The authors of the essays on recent criticism and productions are Heather DuBrow, University of Wisconsin at Madison, and William Liston, Ball State University, respectively.

    In the bustling, cluttered arcades, street and interior merge and historical time is broken up into kaleidoscopic distractions and displays of ephemera. Here, at a distance from what is normally meant by "progress," Benjamin finds the lost time(s) embedded in the spaces of things.

    Scottish novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott (1771 - 1832), a literary hero of his native land, turned to writing only when his law practice and printing business foundered. Among his most beloved works are Rob Roy (1818), and Ivanhoe (1820). American writer William Vaughn Moody (1869 - 1910) served as co-editor of the Harvard Monthly and assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago. He authored several verse plays, books of poetry, and histories and criticisms of English literature.

    Includes "There's a certain slant of light," "Because I could not stop for death," "It was not death for I stood up."

    Out of this rare collaboration has come a dramatic work that is eminently readable and at the same time suitable for staging.

    The Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories triumphantly demonstrates the development of the short story in Ireland--from the early folk tales of the oral tradition (here translated from the Irish) to the writing of Oliver Goldsmith, Oscar Wilde, and James Joyce. William Trevor, himself a distinguished short story writer, brings a special sensibility and awareness to his role as editor as he presents stories by Maria Edgeworth, Elizabeth Bowen, Liam O'Flaherty and such modern rising stars as Edna O'Brian, Desmond Hogan, and Joyce Cary. This wide-ranging collection of forty-five stories will certainly serve to entertain and enrich our understanding of this unique literary genre.

    Author Daniel Pool provides countless intriguing details (did you know that the "plums" in Christmas plum pudding were actually raisins?) on the Church of England, sex, Parliament, dinner parties, country house visiting, and a host of other aspects of nineteenth-century English life—both "upstairs" and "downstairs."An illuminating glossary gives at a glance the meaning and significance of terms ranging from "ague" to "wainscoting," the specifics of the currency system, and a lively host of other details and curiosities of the day.