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.

    In 'Happy Days, ' Beckett pursues his relentless search for the meaning of existence, probing the tenuous relationships that bind one person to another, and each to the universe, to time past and time present.

    This bilingual edition, a parallel text in Old French and English, is based on a reexamination of the Old French manuscript, and makes Silence available to specialists and students in various fields of literature and women's studies.     The Roman de Silence, an Arthurian romance of the thirteenth century, tells of a girl raised as a boy, equally accomplished as a minstrel and knight, whose final task, the capture of Merlin, leads to her unmasking.

    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    Each volume includes a critical introduction biography of the author, discussions of dates and sources, textual details, a bibliography and information about the staging of the plav. New Mermaids include plays by Beaumont, Behn, Boucicault, Chapman, Congreve, Dekker, Dryden, Etherege, Farquhar, Ford, Goldsmith, Hevwood, Jonson, Kyd, Marlowe, Marston, Massinger, Middleton, Peele, Rowley, Sheridan, Synge, Tourneur, Vanbrugh, Webster, Wilde, and Wvcherley.

    It addresses what is visible and invisible, seen and observed versus intuited and imagined, and what is public versus private and just versus unjust. It also concerns the meaning and importance of education, the state of the soul, the conflict between truth and beauty, animal urges versus higher aspirations, knowledge versus ignorance, and on and on...

    Niggle, the painter, is a kind hearted soul and goes out of his way to help his friends and neighbours but eventually finds that this prevents him from completing his masterpiece. He has a hard decision to make; when engrossed in his work, his neighbour asks him to fix his roof using his art supplies.

    Akira Kurosawa used this story as the basis for his award-winning movie Rashōmon."In a Grove" is an early modernist short story consisting of seven varying accounts of the murder of a samurai, Kanazawa no Takehiro, whose corpse has been found in a bamboo forest near Kyoto. Each section simultaneously clarifies and obfuscates what the reader knows about the murder, eventually creating a complex and contradictory vision of events that brings into question humanity's ability or willingness to perceive and transmit objective truth.The story is often praised as being among the greatest in Japanese literature.

    The system worked this way: When a man committed a crime important enough to interest the king, notice was given that the fate of the accused person would be decided, on a given date, in the arena of the amphitheater. When the date arrived and everyone had assembled in the galleries, the king gave a signal, a door beneath him opened, and the accused stepped out into the arena. Two doors, exactly alike and side by side, faced the accused, and it was his duty to open one of them. He could open either door he pleased. If he opened the one, a hungry tiger would spring upon him and tear him to pieces. But, if he opened the other door, a beautiful lady came out and the accused was immediately married to her, as a reward for his innocence.The king had a beautiful daughter, with whom a young man of common blood fell in love. The king's daughter was also in love with the young man. The love affair went on for some time before the king discovered its existence. Immediately, the king had the youth placed into prison and set a day for the trial in the arena. The appointed day arrived, and the galleries of the arena were filled. The signal was given, a door beneath the royal party opened, and the lover of the princess walked into the arena. The princess, through the use of her position and money, had learned behind which door stood the lady and behind which waited the tiger. The youth expected her to have learned this information, and he looked toward her for a signal. Her signal was toward the right, and the youth went to the door on the right and opened it. The story leaves it up to the reader to decide which came out of the door--the lady or the tiger. Which did the princess decide? Was it to let her lover to live and love another woman, or did she decide that if she couldn't have him no one would?

    Small, round-faced and engagingly innocent, Brown is a Roman Catholic priest from East Anglia. He also happens to be a top-notch detective, possessing that rarest of all gifts - an intuition that never fails.

    Butler’s shattering meditation on symbiosis, love, power and tough choices. It won the Hugo, Locus, Nebula and Science Fiction Chronicle awards and is widely regarded as one of her greatest works.Years ago, a group known as the Terrans left Earth in search of a life free of persecution. Now they live alongside the Tlic, an alien race who face extinction; their only chance of survival is to plant their larvae inside the bodies of the humans.When Gan, a young boy, is chosen as a carrier of Tlic eggs, he faces an impossible dilemma: can he really help the species he has grown up with, even if it means sacrificing his own life?Perfect for fans of the thrilling Arrival and the works of Ursula Le Guin.

    He died in 1989, at the age of 58. “The School,” which appeared first in the 1976 collection, Amateurs, is one of Barthelme’s more accessible stories. To describe it is to sound ridiculous: a very funny story about death and the negation of meaning, and the only story ever written, by anyone, in which a resurrected gerbil is the bringer of hope. - Steven Polansky, Author of Dating Miss Universe: Nine Stories About the Author: Donald Barthelme published seventeen books, including four novels and a prize-winning children's book. He was a longtime contributor to The New Yorker, winner of the National Book Award, a director of PEN and the Authors Guild, and a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He died in July of 1989. About the Guest Editor: Steven Polansky was born in New York City. He was educated at Wesleyan, Hollins, and Princeton. He has taught at St. Olaf College, Macalester, and the University of Minnesota. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Glimmer Train, Best American Short Stories, New England Review, and Minnesota Monthly. He has published two books: The Bradbury Report, a novel, and a book of short stories, Dating Miss Universe, which won the Sandstone Prize and the Minnesota Book Award. He has a wife, two sons, and a daughter. He lives in Wisconsin. About the Publisher: Electric Literature is an independent publisher amplifying the power of storytelling through digital innovation. Electric Literature’s weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading, invites established authors, indie presses, and literary magazines to recommended great fiction. Once a month we feature our own recommendation of original, previously unpublished fiction.

    Kathleen Drover has come back to her house in London to pick up a a few things that were left behind when she and her husband fled the bombing of London by the Germans in 1940-1941. What ensues is not what she expected from this mundane trip.

    Under the direction of Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor, the editors have reconsidered all aspects of the anthology to make it an even better teaching tool.

    A maverick English teacher at odds with the young and shrewd supply teacher. A headmaster obsessed with results; a history teacher who thinks he's a fool.In Alan Bennett's classic play, staff room rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence provoke insistent questions about history and how you teach it; about education and its purpose.The History Boys premiered at the National in May 2004.