Prometheus Unbound


Percy Bysshe Shelley - 1820
    Inspired by the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus, Shelley's play serves as a sort of sequel, matching its Greek predecessor in stature and pure poetic power. It depicts its philanthropist hero's ultimate triumph over the superstition and bigotry of the gods. As Shelley himself stated in his Defence of Poetry, Prometheus Unbound awakens and enlarges the mind.

Ravensdene Court


J.S. Fletcher - 1922
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

The Lover


Harold Pinter - 1963
    A subtle blending of artful nuance, veiled menace and zany humor.

An Atlas of the Difficult World


Adrienne Rich - 1991
    In this, her thirteenth book of verse, the author of "The Dream of a Common Language" and "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" writes of war, oppression, the future, death, mystery, love and the magic of poetry.

The Bittermeads Mystery


E.R. Punshon - 1922
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

“A”


Louis Zukofsky - 1978
    No other poem in the English language is filled with as much daily love, light, intellect, and music. As William Carlos Williams once wrote of Zukofsky’s poetry, “I hear a new music of verse stretching out into the future.”

Riders to the Sea


J.M. Synge - 1904
    Although from a middle-class Protestant background, Synge's writings are mainly concerned with the world of the Roman Catholic peasants of rural Ireland. He is best known for his play The Playboy of the Western World, which caused riots in Dublin. His experiences on the Aran islands were to form the basis for many of his plays, including Riders to the Sea. Set in a cottage on Inishmaan, it is about a man whose body was washed up on the far away coast of Donegal, and who, by reason of certain peculiarities of dress, was suspected to be from the island.

The Illusionist


Jennifer Johnston - 1995
    At first, life is blissfully sweet, but when her first novel turns brings overnight fame, the women's life changes out of all recognition.

Breathturn


Paul Celan - 1965
    Considered by many to be one of Celan’s major writings, Breathturn brilliant reveals the “Wende” or turn of writing.

Gitanjali


Rabindranath Tagore - 1910
    Among his expansive and impressive body of work, Gitanjali is regarded as one of his greatest achievements, and has been a perennial bestseller since it was first published in 1910.

Collected Poems


Jack Gilbert - 2012
      There is no one quite like Jack Gilbert in postwar American poetry. After garnering early acclaim with Views of Jeopardy (1962), he escaped to Europe and lived apart from the literary establishment, honing his uniquely fierce, declarative style, with its surprising abundance of feeling. He reappeared in our midst with Monolithos (1982) and then went underground again until The Great Fires (1994), which was eventually followed by Refusing Heaven (2005), a prizewinning volume of surpassing joy and sorrow, and the elegiac The Dance Most of All (2009). Whether his subject is his boyhood in working-class Pittsburgh, the women he has loved throughout his life, or the bittersweet losses we all face, Gilbert is by turns subtle and majestic: he steals up on the odd moment of grace; he rises to crescendos of emotion. At every turn, he illuminates the basic joys of everyday experience.   Now, for the first time, we have all of Jack Gilbert’s work in one essential volume: testament to a stunning career and to his place at the forefront of poetic achievement in our time.

The Country Girls


Edna O'Brien - 1960
    As they leave the safety of their convent school in search of life and love in the big city, they struggle to maintain their somewhat tumultuous relationship. Kate, dreamy and romantic, yearns for true love, while Baba just wants to experience the life of a single girl. Although they set out to conquer the world together, as their lives take unexpected turns, Kate and Baba must ultimately learn to find their own way.

Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens


G.K. Chesterton - 1911
    

Collected Stories


Frank O'Connor - 1981
    From “Guests of the Nation” to “The Mad Lomasneys” to “First Confession” to “My Oedipus Complex,” these tales of Ireland have touched generations of readers the world over and placed O'Connor alongside W. B. Yeats and James Joyce as the greatest of Irish authors.Analyzing a Robert Browning poem, O'Connor once wrote: “Since a whole lifetime must be crowded into a few minutes, those minutes must be carefully chosen indeed and lit by an unearthly glow.” Each of the sixty-seven stories gathered here achieves the same incredible feat of the imagination, laying bare entire lives and histories within the space of a few pages. Dublin schoolteacher Ned Keating waves good-bye to a charming girl and to any thoughts of returning to his village home in the lyrical and melancholy “Uprooted.” A boy on an important mission is waylaid by a green-eyed temptress and seeks forgiveness in his mother’s loving arms in “The Man of the House,” a tale that draws on O'Connor’s own difficult childhood. A series of awkward encounters and humorous misunderstandings perfectly encapsulates the complicated legacy of Irish immigration in “Ghosts,” the bittersweet account of an American family’s pilgrimage to the land of their forefathers.As a writer, critic, and teacher, O'Connor elevated the short story to astonishing new heights. This career-spanning anthology, epic in scope yet brimming with the small moments and intimate details that earned him a reputation as Ireland’s Chekhov, is a testament to Frank O’Connor's magnificent storytelling and a true pleasure to read from first page to last.

Collected Poems


Philip Larkin - 1988
    Collected Poems brings together not only all his books--The North Ship, The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings, and High Windows--but also his uncollected poems from 1940 to 1984.This new edition reflects Larkin's own ordering for his poems and is the first collection to present the body of his work with the organization he preferred. Preserving everything he published in his lifetime, the new Collected Poems is an indispensable contribution to the legacy of an icon of twentieth-century poetry.