Texts are in the original Middle English, and each has an introduction, detailed notes and a glossary. Selected titles are also available as CD recordings.

    Its appearance signaled the birth of genius who was soon to make all of Russia resound with his name. The Sun of Russian poetry, as the poet came later to be called, was rising.

    

    Tales such as 'Hansel and Gretel', 'Little Red Cape' and 'The Robber Bridegroom' depict the dangers lurking in dark forests, and others, including 'Briar-Rose' and 'Snow White' show young beauties punished by unforgiving sorceresses. Other tales include 'Thickasathumb', which portrays a childless young couple whose wish for a baby is granted in an unexpected way, while 'The Frog King' tells of a rash promise made by a haughty princess to share her bed with a frog, and a fortune is won in 'The Blue Lamp', when a soldier gains a kingdom with the help of a magic lamp.David Luke's vibrant translation is accompanied by an introduction discussing the key themes of the tales and the literary background of the Brothers Grimm. This edition also includes new further reading and a chronology, with notes and a glossary.Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859) are nowadays simply known as 'the brothers Grimm'. Both brothers were state-appointed librarians in Kassel, and later members of the Academy of Arts and Sciences in Berlin, where Frederick William IV of Prussia had invited them to settle. Two of Germany's greatest scholars, Jacob is regarded as the founder of the scientific study of the German language, and with his brother Wilhelm initiated the Deutsches Wörterbuch, a dictionary of all words in modern High German since 1450.If you enjoyed the Selected Tales of the Brothers Grimm, you might like Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales, also available in Penguin Classics.

    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.

    Over the course of almost 50 years, he created 150 poems, including nonsense verse, parodies, burlesques, acrostics, inscriptions, and more, many of them hilarious lampoons of some of the more sentimental and moralistic poems of the Victorian era. This carefully chosen collection contains 38 of Carroll's most appealing verses, including such classics as "The Walrus and the Carpenter," "The Mock Turtle's Song," and "Father William," plus such lesser-known gems as "My Fancy," "A Sea Dirge," "Brother and Sister," "Hiawatha's Photographing," "The Mad Gardener's Song," "What Tottles Meant," "Poeta Fit, non Nascitur," "The Little Man That Had a Little Gun," and many others. Filled with Carroll's special brand of imaginative whimsy and clever wordplay, this original anthology will delight fans of the author as well as other readers who relish a little laughter with their lyrics.

    Born in 1935, Inger Christensen is Denmark's best known poet. Her award-winning alphabet is based structurally on Fibonacci's sequence (a mathematical sequence in which each number is the sum of the two previous numbers), in combination with the alphabet. The gorgeous poetry herein reflects a complex philosophical background, yet has a visionary quality, discovering the metaphysical in the simple stuff of everyday life. In alphabet, Christensen creates a framework of psalm-like forms that unfold like expanding universes, while crystallizing both the beauty and the potential for destruction that permeate our times.

    Fry transforms the adventures of Zeus and the Olympians into emotionally resonant and deeply funny stories, without losing any of their original wonder.This stunning book features classical artwork inspired by the myths, as well as learned notes from the author. Each adventure is infused with Fry's distinctive wit, voice, and writing style. Connoisseurs of the Greek myths will appreciate this fresh-yet-reverential interpretation, while newcomers will feel welcome. Retellings brim with humor and emotion and offer rich cultural contextCelebrating the thrills, grandeur, and unabashed fun of the Greek myths, Mythos breathes life into ancient tales—from Pandora's box to Prometheus's fire.This gorgeous volume invites you to explore a captivating world with the brilliant storyteller Stephen Fry as your guide.

    His poems combine 'karumi', or lightness of touch, with the Zen ideal of oneness with creation. Each poem evokes the natural world - the cherry blossom, the leaping frog, the summer moon or the winter snow - suggesting the smallness of human life in comparison to the vastness and drama of nature. Basho himself enjoyed solitude and a life free from possessions, and his haiku are the work of an observant eye and a meditative mind, uncluttered by materialism and alive to the beauty of the world around him.

    Likewise, hatred must be learned and nurtured, if one wishes to become a proficient hater'This volume contains a selection of Nietzsche's brilliant and challenging aphorisms, examining the pleasures of revenge, the falsity of pity, and the incompatibility of marriage with the philosophical life.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) Nietzsche's works available in Penguin Classics are A Nietzsche Reader, Beyond Good and Evil, Ecce Homo, Human, All Too Human, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Birth of Tragedy, The Portable Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Twilight of Idols and Anti-Christ.

    In lushly evocative language, Smart recounts her love affair with the poet George Barker with an operatic grandeur that takes in the tragedy of her passion; the suffering of Barker's wife;the children the lovers conceived. Accompanied in this edition by The Assumption of the Rogues and Rascals, a short novel that may be read as its sequel, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept has been hailed by critics worldwide as a work of sheer genius.

    A vibrant and transcendent journey about growth and healing. Ancestry and honoring one’s roots. Expatriation and rising up to find a home within yourself.Divided into five chapters and illustrated by Kaur, the sun and her flowers is a journey of wilting, falling, rooting, rising, and blooming. A celebration of love in all its forms. this is the recipe of lifesaid my motheras she held me in her arms as i wept think of those flowers you plantin the garden each year they will teach youthat people toomust wiltfallrootrisein order to bloom

    / The words are purposes. / The words are maps. / I came to see the damage that was done / and the treasures that prevail." These provocative poems move with the power of Rich's distinctive voice.

    From these sparse facts, one of our most distinguished novelists has fashioned an audacious and supremely moving work of fiction.Marooned on the edge of the known world, exiled from his native tongue, Ovid depends on the kindness of barbarians who impale their dead and converse with the spirit world. But then he becomes the guardian of a still more savage creature, a feral child who has grown up among deer. What ensues is a luminous encounter between civilization and nature, as enacted by a poet who once catalogued the treacheries of love and a boy who slowly learns how to give it.

    Horace Gregory, in this modern translation, turns his poetic gifts toward a deft reconstruction of Ovid's ancient themes, using contemporary idiom to bring today's reader all the ageless drama and psychological truths vividly intact. --From the book jacket