Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble ClassicsNew introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholarsBiographies of the authorsChronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural eventsFootnotes and endnotesSelective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the workComments by other famous authorsStudy questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectationsBibliographies for further readingIndices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences--biographical, historical, and literary--to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. When Leaves of Grass was first published in 1855 as a slim tract of twelve untitled poems, Walt Whitman was still an unknown. But his self-published volume soon became a landmark of poetry, introducing the world to a new and uniquely American form. The "father of free verse," Whitman drew upon the cadence of simple, even idiomatic speech to "sing" such themes as democracy, sexuality, and frank autobiography.Throughout his prolific writing career, Whitman continually revised his work and expanded Leaves of Grass, which went through nine, substantively different editions, culminating in the final, authoritative "Death-bed Edition." Now the original 1855 version and the "Death-bed Edition" of 1892 have been brought together in a single volume, allowing the reader to experience the total scope of Whitman's genius, which produced love lyrics, visionary musings, glimpses of nightmare and ecstasy, celebrations of the human body and spirit, and poems of loneliness, loss, and mourning.Alive with the mythical strength and vitality that epitomized the American experience in the nineteenth century, Leaves of Grass continues to inspire, uplift, and unite those who read it. Karen Karbiener received a Ph.D. from Columbia University and currently teaches at New York University. She also wrote the introduction and notes for the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Frankenstein.

    Proposing models of hybridity, each of the book's major sequences develops a unique subject, rhythm, and form. Bringing to light the molten potential at the core of personality, the poems illuminate ways that language, as history read by anthropologists, discourse between lovers, gestures between parent and child, graffiti in temples, or even language as an event in itself (the very experience of words at play), incarnates presence. Addressing father and son relationships, and venerating erotic love, Gander's poems surge with vitality: the energy of active discovery.

    Ramanan is dramatic pastoral elegy and it is beautifully illustrated by Artist Madanan.

     At the beginning of the first novel, French Legionnaires find one of their fortresses manned by dead men. Who could have done it? A flashback unravels the mystery of the three English Geste brothers. A classic, rip-roaring tale of adventure... This volume also contains 36 short stories of the Foreign Legion, grouped in four well known collection (now in one volume!): STEPSONS OF FRANCE Ten Little Legionaries A la Ninon de L'Enclos An Officer and--a Liar The Deserter Five Minutes "Here are Ladies" The MacSnorrt "Belzébuth" The Quest Moonshine The Coward of the Legion Mahdev Rao The Merry Liars GOOD GESTES What's in a Name A Gentleman of Colour David and His Incredible Jonathan The McSnorrt Reminiscent Buried Treasure If Wishes were Horses The Devil and Digby Geste The Mule Presentiments Dreams Come True PORT O' MISSING MEN The Return of Odo Klemens The Betrayal of Odo Klemens The Life of Odo Klemens Moon-rise Moon-shadows Moon-set FLAWED BLADES No. 187017 Bombs Mastic--and Drastic The Death Post E Tenebris Nemesis The Hunting of Henri

    The book presented a new and urgent poetry of dream-life, mystery and music, sexual obsession and the consolations of drink - all delivered with great formal skill and imaginative daring.'One of the finest first books of poems I've read for ages.' Paul Muldoon'If you are wondering whether great poems are still being written, you ought to read Don Paterson's.' Charles Simic'One of the most ferociously talented of all British poets.' Catherine Lockerbie

    Here is the green and carefree world of a boy who delights in the possibilities of each day, of a child who wrings from every moment a feeling as intensely magical as it is profoundly innocent.

    Fleeing from pirates, Robinson Crusoe is swept ashore in a storm possessing only a knife, a box of tobacco, a pipe-and the will to survive. His is the saga of a man alone: a man who overcomes self-pity and despair to reconstruct his life; who painstakingly teaches himself how to fashion a pot, bake bread, build a canoe; and who, after twenty-four agonizing years of solitude, discovers a human footprint in the sand... Consistently popular since its first publication in 1719, Daniel Defoe's story of human endurance in an exotic, faraway land exerts a timeless appeal.

    It features eight great poets, with brief, accessible essays concerning their life and work and a selection of their poems, and it is accompanied by an 80-minute CD recorded live at the British Library: Ralph Fiennes reading Auden, Edward Fox reading Eliot, Roger Moore reading Kipling, Harold Pinter reading Larkin, and more.Whether you believe (like Robert Frost, who inspired the title) that poetry is a way of taking life by the throat or (like T. S. Eliot) that it is one person talking to another, nobody does it better than the poets featured in this book. For a novice discovering the rich heritage of English-language verse or a seasoned poetry reader, Catching Life by the Throat is an extraordinary introduction to eight iconic poets.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    

    'All for Love' is a collection of brief quotations by many hands, chosen and illustrated with exquisite wit by Laura Stoddart.Here the raptures of love are counter-balanced by the rueful, comic, and often rather crisply cynical observations of men and women who have been there before. Divided into sections on the nature of love, the pursuit of love, love and marriage and the love affair, the book ranges from the passionate to the severely practical. We can smile at the silliness of those blinded by love (Shakespeare), feel a pang of heartache for jilted lovers (Dorothy Parker) reflect with Byron that there is little to be said about a happy marriage, and take note of P G Wodehouse advising girls that chumps make the best husbands, while relishing snatches of great poetry about great loves, from Sappho, Marlowe, Wordsworth, John Clare and Thomas Hardy.'All for Love' is a rare treat for everyone who is in love, contemplating marriage, has a broken heart, or has put the whole business behind them, and wants to be cheered up by some brilliant insights and by Laura Stoddart's enchanting visual comments on them.

    Wessex was the "partly-real, partly-dream" county that formed the backdrop for most of Hardy's writings—named after an Anglo-Saxon kingdom and modeled on the real counties of Berkshire, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Somerset, and Wiltshire. The poems deal with classic Hardy themes of disappointment in love and life, and the struggle to live a meaningful life in an indifferent world. Although Hardy's poetry was not as well received as his fiction, he continued to publish collections until his death, and thanks in part to the influence of Philip Larkin, he is increasingly realized as a poet of great stature.

    Selections, with English translations, from the author's "El oro de los tigres" and "La rosa profunda".

    Jekyll and Mr. Hyde --The Suicide Club --The bottle imp --The body-snatcher --Olalla.

    Ranging from the 19th to the 20th centuries, writers include James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, Richard Edward Connell, Henri Nathaniel Hawthorne, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Jack London, Henri Ringgold Wilmer Lardner, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant and Edgar Allan Poe.