Set in the lush jungle of Borneo in the late 1800s, it tells of the Dutch merchant Kaspar Almayer, whose dreams of riches for his beloved daughter, Nina, collapse under the weight of his own greed and prejudice. Nadine Gordimer writes in her Introduction, “Conrad’s writing is lifelong questioning . . . What was ‘Almayer’s Folly’? The pretentious house never lived in? His obsession with gold? His obsessive love for his daughter, whose progenitors, the Malay race, he despised? All three?” Conrad established in Almayer’s Folly the themes of betrayal, isolation, and colonialism that he would explore throughout the rest of his life and work.

    E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad, first published in 1896. Scholars and critics have seen in these timeless poems an elegance of taste and perfection of form and feeling comparable to the greatest of the classic. Yet their simple language, strong musical cadences and direct emotional appeal have won these works a wide audience among general readers as well.This finely produced volume, reprinted from an authoritative edition of A Shropshire Lad, contains all 63 original poems along with a new Index of First Lines and a brief new section of Notes to the Text. Here are poems that deal poignantly with the changing climate of friendship, the fading of youth, the vanity of dreams — poems that are among the most read, shared, and quoted in our language.

    Short dramatic monologue written in 1972 (20 March to 1 April) by Samuel Beckett which was premiered at the "Samuel Beckett Festival" by the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, New York (22 November 1972).

    In it, he found both a structure and a persona that gave his vision a new power and coherence. A. Alvarez wrote in the Observer, 'Each fresh encounter with despair becomes the occasion for a separate, almost funny, story in which natural forces and creatures, mythic figures, even parts of the body, act out their special roles, each endowed with its own irrepressible life. With Crow, Hughes joins the select band of survivor-poets whose work is adequate to the destructive reality we inhabit.'

    Yeats laid the foundations for an Irish literary revival, drawing inspiration from his country's folklore, the occult, and Celtic philosophy. A writer of both poems and plays, he helped found Dublin's famed Abbey Theatre. The poems here provide an example of his life's work and artistry, beginning with verses such as "The Stolen Child" from his debut collection "Crossways "(written when he was 24) through "Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad?" from "On the Boiler," published a year prior to his death.

    Gathering works from the previously published Monday or Tuesday, as well as stories published in American and British magazines, this book compiles some of the best shorter fiction of one of the most important writers of our time.

    Miraculously saved yet hideously scarred, tormented at school and at work, Matty becomes a wanderer, a seeker after some unknown redemption. Two more lost children await him: twins as exquisite as they are loveless. Toni dabbles in political violence, Sophy in sexual tyranny. As Golding weaves their destinies together, as he draws them toward a final conflagration, his book lights up both the inner and outer darknesses of our time.

    I should not be withheld but that some day Into their vastness I should steal away, Fearless of ever finding open land, Or highway where the slow wheel ours the sand. I do not see why I should e'er turn back, Or those should not set forth upon my track To overtake me, who should miss me here And long to know if still I held them dear. They would not find me changed from him they knew-Only more sure of all I thought was true.

    Edited by Holly Stevens, it includes some poems not printed in his earlier Collected Works.

    As a writer, he produced The Importance of Being Earnest, one of the finest comedies in English, and other classic plays. His one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is still widely read, as is "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," a powerful poetic indictment of the degradation and inhumanity of prison life.This carefully edited volume focuses on Wilde's poetic legacy. In addition to the title poem, readers will find twenty-three other important works: "The Sphinx," "The Grave of Keats," "Requiescat," "Impression du Matin," "Panthea," "Silentium Amoris," "The Harlot's House," "To L. L." and others. While Wilde's fame rests mainly on his achievements as a dramatist and critic, these poems offer important clues to the themes and subjects that preoccupied him in his other works.

    It was first published in the Easter supplement of Prager Tagblatt on 20 April 1924. During his final illness Kafka corrected the proofs of the story for the inclusion into collection A Hunger Artist (Ein Hungerkünstler) published by Verlag Die Schmiede after his death.

    Nicely formatted with capital letters, page break and interactive toc!At the age of 12, Henley fell victim to tuberculosis of the bone. A few years later, the disease progressed to his foot, and physicians announced that the only way to save his life was to amputate directly below the knee. It was amputated when he was 25. In 1875, he wrote the "Invictus" poem from a hospital bed. Despite his disability, he survived with one foot intact and led an active life until his death at the age of 53In the 2009 movie Invictus, produced and directed by Clint Eastwood, the poem is referenced several times. It becomes the central inspirational gift from Mandela, played by Morgan Freeman, to Springbok rugby team captain François Pienaar, played by Matt Damon, in advance of the post-apartheid Rugby World Cup hosted in 1995 by South Africa and won by the underdog Springboks.

    This edition brings together, in a form he himself sanctioned, his Collected Poems of 1928, the unexpurgated version of Pansies, and Nettles, adding to these volumes the contents of the two notebooks in which he was still writing poetry when he died in 1930.It therefore allows the reader to trace the development of Lawrence as a poet and appreciate the remarkable originality and distinctiveness of his achievement. Not all the poems reprinted here are masterpieces but there is more than enough quality to confirm Lawrence's status as one of the greatest English writers of the twentieth century.

    Criticism is divided into four sections and represents the best criticism and interpretation of Donne s writing: Donne and Metaphysical Poetry includes seven seventeenth-century views by contemporaries of Donne such as Ben Jonson, Thomas Carew, and John Dryden, among others; Satires, Elegies, and Verse Letters includes seven selections that offer social and literary context for and insights into Donne s frequently overlooked early poems; Songs and Sonnets features six analyses of Donne s love poetry; and Holy Sonnets/Divine Poems explores Donne s struggles as a Christian through four authoritative essays. A Chronology of Donne s life and work, a Selected Bibliography, and an Index of Titles and First Lines are also included.