Aesthetes and Decadents of the 1890's: An Anthology of British Poetry and Prose


Karl BecksonOlive Custance - 1966
    From Walter Pater's study, "The Renaissance to Salome, the truly decadent collaboration between Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley, Karl Beckson has chosen a full spectrum of works that chronicle the British artistic achievement of the 1890s. In this revised edition of a classic anthology, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" has been included in its entirety; the bibliography has been completely updated; Professor Beckson's notes and commentary have been expanded from the first edition published in 1966. The so-called Decadent or Aesthetic period remains one of the most interesting in the history of the arts. The poetry and prose of such writers as Yeats, Wilde, Symons, Johnson, Dowson, Barlas, Pater and others are included in this collection, along with sixteen of Aubrey Beardsley's drawings.CONTENTSJohn Barlas - Oblivion / The Memphian Temple / The Dancing Girl / Beauty's Anadems / The Cat Lady / Terrible Love / My Lady's BathAubrey Beardsley - The Ballad Of A Barber / The Story of Venus & Tannhauser (with illustrations)Max Beerbohm - A Defence of Cosmetics / A Letter To The Editor / DiminuendoOlive Custance (Lady Alfred Douglas) - Peacocks (A Mood) / The Masquerade / Hyacinthus / The White Statue / Statues / Candle-LightLord Alfred Douglas - Apologia / Two Loves / Impression De Nuit / Rejected / Ode To My Soul / The Dead PoetErnest Dowson - Nuns Of The Perpetual Adoration / Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae / O Mors! Quam Amara Est Memoria... / Villanelle Of Sunset / Extreme Unction / Exile / Benedictio Domini / Spleen Michael Field - From Baudelaire / The Poet / A Dance Of Death / La Gioconda / A Dying ViperJohn Gray - On A Picture / Poem / A Crucifix / Parsifal Imitated From The French Of Paul Verlaine / Femmes Damnees / The Barber / Le Voyage a Cythere / MishkaLionel Johnson - The Cultured Faun / The Church Of A Dream / Mystic And Cavalier / To A Passionist / In Honorem Doriani Creatorisque Eius / The Destroyer Of A Soul / The Dark Angel / Nihilism / A Decadent's LyricRichard Le Gallienne - To The Reader / The Decadent To His Soul / Beauty Accurst / Sunset In The City / A Ballad Of London / The Boom In YellowArthur Symons - The Decadent Movement In Literature / Emmy / Maquillage / Morbidezza / Prologue: Before The Curtain / Prologue: In The Stalls / To A Dancer / La Melinite: Moulin Rouge / Javanese Dancers / By The Pool At The Third Rosses / Hallucination: I / Violet: Prelude / From Stephane Mallarme: Herodiade / Being A Word On Behalf Of Patchouli / Preface To The Secons Edition Of London NightsOscar Wilde - The Decay Of Lying: An Observation / Salome / Phrases And Philosophies For The Use Of The Young / Symphony In Yellow / The Harlot's House / Impression Du Matin / Helas / The Ballad Of Reading GaolTheodore Wratislaw - Opoponax / Satiety / Frangipani / Palm Sunday / Orchids / White Lilies / Sonnet Macabre / Hothouse FlowersWilliam Butler Yeats - The Lake Isle Of Innisfree / The White Birds / Rosa Mundi / To The Rose Upon The Rood Of Time / O'Sullivan Rua To Mary Lavell / The Secret Rose / The Song Of Wandering Aengus / Aedh Wishes For The Clothes Of HeavenAPPENDIXWalter Pater - from Studies In The History Of The RennaisanceJoris-Karl Huysmans - from AGAINST THE GRAINRobert Smythe Hichens - from THE GREEN CARNATIONMostyn Piggot - The Second Coming Of Arthur (A Satire Of The Yellow Book)from Silverpoints

Shelley's Poetry and Prose


Percy Bysshe Shelley - 1977
    All headnotes are new or updated, and many footnotes have been added, replaced, or revised. Criticism reflects the recent renaissance in Shelley studies, the greatest renaissance since 1870-92. All twenty-three essays are new to the Second Edition; among them are the work of Harold Bloom, Stuart Curran, Annette Wheeler Cafarelli, Michael Ferber, James Chandler, and Susan J. Wolfson. A Chronology, an updated Selected Bibliography, and an Index of Titles and First Lines are included.

Arcadia


Tom Stoppard - 1993
    Focusing on the mysteries--romantic, scientific, literary--that engage the minds and hearts of characters whose passions and lives intersect across scientific planes and centuries, it is "Stoppard's richest, most ravishing comedy to date, a play of wit, intellect, language, brio and... emotion. It's like a dream of levitation: you're instantaneously aloft, soaring, banking, doing loop-the-loops and then, when you think you're about to plummet to earth, swooping to a gentle touchdown of not easily described sweetness and sorrow... Exhilarating" (Vincent Canby, The New York Times).

Death and Taxes


Dorothy Parker - 1931
    

The Penguin Book of French Poetry: 1820-1950; With Prose Translations


William Rees - 1991
    His fresh and beautiful prose translations will re-open many half-forgotten doors, and stimulate new enthusiasms.

The Night is Darkening Round Me


Emily Brontë - 1846
    ever-present, phantom thing; My slave, my comrade, and my king' Some of Emily Brontë's most extraordinary poems 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. Emily Brontë (1818-1848). Brontë's Wuthering Heights and The Complete Poems are available in Penguin Classics

The Virgin and the Gipsy & Other Stories


D.H. Lawrence - 1930
    In struggling to escape from their thwarted lives and to achieve human 'tenderness', the characters embody and continue the major preoccupations of Lawrence's work as a whole.Love Among the Haystacks provides an early illustration of the intensity and innovation which made Lawrence one of the most distinctive and important of twentieth-century writers.

Metaphysical Poetry


Colin Burrow - 2006
    This compelling collection of the best and most enjoyable poems from the era includes tightly argued lyrics, erotic and libertine considerations of love, divine poems and elegies of lament by such great figures as John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell and John Milton, alongside pieces from many other less well known but equally fascinating poets of the age, such as Anne Bradstreet, Katherine Philips and Thomas Traherne. Widely varied in theme, all are characterized by their use of startling metaphors, imagery and language to express the uncertainty of an age, and a profound desire for originality that was to prove deeply influential on later poets and in particular poets of the Modernist movement such as T. S. Eliot.In his introduction, Colin Burrow explores the nature of Metaphysical poetry, its development across the seventeenth century and its influence on later poets and includes A Very Short History of Metaphysical Poetry from Donne to Rochester. This edition also includes detailed notes, a chronology and further reading.Colin Burrow is Reader in Renaissance and Comparative Literature at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He has edited Shakespeare's Sonnets for OUP and The Complete Works of Ben Jonson, and is working on the Elizabethan volume of the Oxford English Literary History.If you enjoyed Metaphysical Poetry, you might like John Donne's Selected Poems, also available in Penguin Classics.

The Yellow Book


Ernest LeversonAubrey Beardsley - 1897
    Yes, an adventuress, but an end-of-the-century one. She doesn't travel for profit, but for pleasure."Offering an entertaining introduction to the fin-de-siècle, this selection from the notorious magazine The Yellow Book includes stories and poems by famous writers such as Arnold Bennett and John Buchan, brilliant pieces by lesser-known writers such as Ada Leverson and Ella D'Arcy, and illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley.One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

Don Juan


Lord Byron - 1819
    The manner is what Goethe called 'a cultured comic language'-a genre which he regarded as not possible in Geman and which he felt Byron managed superbly.

Lady Audley's Secret


Mary Elizabeth Braddon - 1862
    Her over-the-top drama was one of the most popular novels of the mid-1800s and provides an interesting portrayal of both class- and gender issues as they intersect within the domestic sphere.

Ode on a Grecian Urn


John Keats - 1999
    Keats found earlier forms of poetry unsatisfactory for his purpose, and the collection represented a new development of the ode form. He was inspired to write the poem after reading two articles by English artist and writer Benjamin Haydon. Keats was aware of other works on classical Greek art, and had first-hand exposure to the Elgin Marbles, all of which reinforced his belief that classical Greek art was idealistic and captured Greek virtues, which forms the basis of the poem.

Piers Plowman


William Langland
    E. Talbot Donaldson's translation of the text has been selected for this Norton Critical Edition because of its skillful emulation of the original poem's distinct alliterative verse. Selections of the authoritative Middle English text are also included for comparative analysis. Sources and Backgrounds includes a large collection of contemporary religious and historical documents pertaining to the poem, including selections from the Douai Bible, accounts of the plague, and legal statutes. Criticism includes twenty interpretive essays by leading medievalists, among them E. Talbot Donaldson, George Kane, Jill Mann, Derek Pearsall, C. David Benson, and Elizabeth D. Kirk. A Glossary and Selected Bibliography are also included.

Best Remembered Poems


Martin Gardner - 1992
    Vincent Millay to Edward Lear's whimsical "The Owl and the Pussycat" and James Whitcomb Riley’s homespun "When the Frost Is on the Punkin." Famous poets such as Wordsworth, Tennyson, Whitman, and Frost are well-represented, as are less well-known poets such as John McCrae ("In Flanders Fields") and Ernest Thayer ("Casey at the Bat"). Includes 10 selections from the Common Core State Standards Initiative: "The Owl and the Pussycat," "Casey at the Bat," "Jabberwocky," "O Captain! My Captain!," "Paul Revere's Ride," "Ozymandias," "The Raven," "Because I Could Not Stop for Death," "Mending Wall," and "Ode on a Grecian Urn."

John Donne: Collected Poetry


John Donne - 2012
    A sensualist who composed erotic and playful love poetry in his youth, he was raised a Catholic but later became one of the most admired Protestant preachers of his time. The Collected Poetry reflects this wide diversity, and includes his youthful songs and sonnets, epigrams, elegies, letters, satires, and the profoundly moving Divine Poems composed towards the end of his life. From joyful poems such as 'The Flea', which transforms the image of a louse into something marvellous, to the intimate and intense Holy Sonnets, Donne breathed new vigour into poetry by drawing lucid and often startling metaphors from the world in which he lived. His poems remain among the most passionate, profound and spiritual in the English language.