A moving and hilarious account of a spring day in a small Welsh coastal town, Under Milk Wood is "lyrical, impassioned and funny, an Our Town given universality" (The New Statesman and Nation).

    It remains one of the world's most widely produced plays. The plot follows a love affair between two people, Doris and George, married to others, who rendezvous once a year. Twenty-five years of manners and morals are hilariously and touchingly played out by the lovers. "Delicious wit, compassion, a sense of humor and a feel for nostalgia."-The New York Times "Genuinely funny and genuinely romantic."-The New York Post

    The stories he has chosen, all written between the end of the last century and the 1950s, illustrate his meaning and demonstrate how the style and approach of these writers changed in response, not only to the demands of a developing aesthetic, but also to the social and political conditions of their day. The volume represents the finest writers of their time with their best work, revealing the variety of styles and approaches within the genre, and ranging from the folk tale to the romance, and from the symbolic to the naturalistic. It contains selections by George Moore, Somerville and Ross, Daniel Corkery, James Joyce, James Stephens, Liam O'Flaherty, L.A.G. Strong, Se�n O'Faol�in, Frank O'Connor, Eric Cross, Michael McLaverty, Bryan MacMahon, Mary Lavin, James Plunkett, and Elizabeth Bowen.

    It reflects Hemingway's conviction that bullfighting was more than mere sport and reveals a rich source of inspiration for his art. The unrivaled drama of bullfighting, with its rigorous combination of athleticism and artistry, and its requisite display of grace under pressure, ignited Hemingway's imagination. Here he describes and explains the technical aspects of this dangerous ritual and "the emotional and spiritual intensity and pure classic beauty that can be produced by a man, an animal, and a piece of scarlet serge draped on a stick." Seen through his eyes, bullfighting becomes a richly choreographed ballet, with performers who range from awkward amateurs to masters of great elegance and cunning.A fascinating look at the history and grandeur of bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon is also a deeper contemplation of the nature of cowardice and bravery, sport and tragedy, and is enlivened throughout by Hemingway's sharp commentary on life and literature.

    Martin's Press, 1994). Encyclopedic in scope, with more than 800 poems, 100 photographs, a historical chronology, index of first lines, and a bibliography. The Complete Poems will be the definitive English language collection of Akhmatova for many years to come.

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

    Amid bloody and eerie scenes, his daughter is possessed by Tera's soul, and her fate depends upon bringing Tera's mummified body to life.

    Toibin's portrayal of the intricacy and drama of ordinary lives brings to mind of the work of Alice Munro.      Set in Wexford, Ireland, and in breathtaking Ballyconnigar by the sea, Colm Toibin's tour de force eighth novel introduces the formidable, memorable Nora Webster. Widowed at 40, with four children and not enough money, Nora has lost the love of her life, Maurice, the man who rescued her from the stifling world she was born into. Wounded and self-centred from grief and the need to provide for her family, she struggles to be attentive to her children's needs and their own difficult loss. In masterfully detailing the intimate lives of one small family, Toibin has given us a vivid portrait of a time and an intricately woven tapestry of lives in a small town where everyone knows everyone's business, and where well-meaning gestures often have unforeseen consequences. Toibin has created one of contemporary fiction's most memorable female characters, one who has the strength and depth of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. In Nora Webster, Colm Toibin is writing at the height of his powers.

    Lewis Carroll was the pen name and, it could be claimed, the alter ego of the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematician, writer and photographer. His creations, especially "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There," have been translated into countless languages and are as loved now as they have ever been. His neologisms ("curiouser and curiouser") and turns of phrase have forever infiltrated and enriched our language and culture.

    Their one thought is to get to Dublin, to university and to freedom...On their first day at University College, Dublin, the inseparable pair are thrown together with fellow students Nan Mahon, beautiful but selfish, and handsome Jack Foley. But trouble is brewing for Benny and Eve's new circle of friends, and before long, they find passion, tragedy - and the independence they yearned for.

    In this compelling poetic form, he sought to reveal his subjects' true natures in their own, often self-justifying, accounts of their lives and affairs. A number of these vivid monologues, including the famed "Fra Lippo Lippi," "How It Strikes a Contemporary," and "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church," are included in this selection of forty-two poems.Here, too, are the famous "My Last Duchess," dramatic lyrics such as "Memorabilia" and "Love among the Ruins," and well-known shorter works: "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," "Home-Thoughts, from Abroad," "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister," and more. Together these poems reveal Browning's rare gifts as both a lyric poet and a monologist of rare psychological insight and dramatic flair.

    The good wit of bad manners, elegantly spiced with irony and deftly controlled malice, has made Saki stories small, perfect gems of the English language. Here for the first time, are the collected writings of Saki--including all of his short stories ("Reginald", "Reginald in Russia", "The Chronicles of Clovis", "Beasts and Super-Beasts" "The Toys of Peace", and "The Square Egg"), his three novels (THE UNBEARABLE BASSINGTON, WHEN WILLIAM CAME and THE WESTMINSTER ALICE), and three plays (THE DEATHTRAP, KARL-LUDWIG'S WINDOW and THE WATCHED POT. You are invited to meet once again Clovis, Reginald, the Unbearable Bassington, and the other memorable characters etched so superbly by the pen of H.H. Munro. "In all literature, he was the first to employ successfully a wildly outrageous premise in order to make a serious point. I love that. And today the best of his stories are still better than the best of just about every other writer around."--Roald Dahl. Introduction by Noel Coward.(less)

    Part of a set containing the following volumes:[1] A treasury of the world's best loved poems.[2] The sonnets of William Shakespeare.[3] Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.[4] Sonnets from the Portuguese.

    Early posthumously published collections-some of them featuring liberally “edited” versions of the poems-did not fully and accurately represent Dickinson’s bold experiments in prosody, her tragic vision, and the range of her intellectual and emotional explorations. Not until the 1955 publication of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, a three-volume critical edition compiled by Thomas H. Johnson, were readers able for the first time to assess, understand, and appreciate the whole of Dickinson’s extraordinary poetic genius.This book, a distillation of the three-volume Complete Poems, brings together the original texts of all 1,775 poems that Emily Dickinson wrote.

    So too are his abiding themes: the madness of war, the vanity of human striving, and the social costs of technological innovation.Vonnegut’s first novel, Player Piano (1952), is the story of Dr. Paul Proteus, chief engineer at the Ilium Works, an electronics company in upstate New York. Ill at ease with himself and his changing times, Proteus must choose sides in a looming civil war that threatens the brave new world he has helped to create. A kind of postwar Metropolis, Player Piano is at once a witty satire on the culture of General Electric headquarters, where Vonnegut once worked as a publicist, and a profound meditation on the dignity and necessity of work.Set on Earth, Mars, Mercury, and the moons of Saturn, The Sirens of Titan (1959) is a vertiginous ride down a funnel in space-time with a trio of stuffed shirts spoiling for their pratfalls: Winston Niles Rumfoord, a patrician New Englander and paragon of style; his beautiful touch-me-not wife, Beatrice; and Malachi Constant, the world’s luckiest, wealthiest man. Are they really what they imagine themselves to be, the perfected products of a benevolent universe? Or does somebody up there despise them? Only Salo, the gentleman-robot from the planet Tralfamadore, knows for sure.In 1961 a German American named Howard W. Campbell, Jr.—the Tokyo Rose of the Third Reich—is discovered in Manhattan by a team of Nazi hunters and brought to Jerusalem to stand trial. Mother Night (1962) presents Campbell’s prison-cell confessions, revealing him to be a double agent who infiltrated the highest echelons of the Nazi propaganda ministry in order to broadcast intelligence to the Allies. But as he awaits his date with justice, Campbell faces an even more rigorous trial in the court of his own conscience.Rounding out the volume are six of Vonnegut’s best science fiction stories, including “Report on the Barnhouse Effect,” “EPICAC,” “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” and “Harrison Bergeron,” the fantasy that skewered “political correctness” before there was a name for it.