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.

    They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure - William Wordsworth, from the Advertisment prefacing the original 1798 edition. When it was first published, Lyrical Ballads enraged the critics of the day: Wordsworth and Coleridge had given poetry a voice, one decidedly different to what had been voiced before. For Wordsworth, as he so clearly stated in his celebrated preface to the 1800 edition (also reproduced here), the important thing was the emotion aroused by the poem, and not the poem itself. This acclaimed Routledge Classics edition offers the reader the opportunity to study the poems in their original contexts as they appeared to Coleridge's and Wordsworth's contemporaries, and includes some of their most famous poems, including Coleridge's Rime of the Ancyent Marinere.

    It tells the story of the Fall of Man, a tale of immense drama and excitement, of rebellion and treachery, of innocence pitted against corruption, in which God and Satan fight a bitter battle for control of mankind's destiny. The struggle rages across three worlds - heaven, hell, and earth - as Satan and his band of rebel angels plot their revenge against God. At the center of the conflict are Adam and Eve, who are motivated by all too human temptations but whose ultimate downfall is unyielding love.Marked by Milton's characteristic erudition, Paradise Lost is a work epic both in scale and, notoriously, in ambition. For nearly 350 years, it has held generation upon generation of audiences in rapt attention, and its profound influence can be seen in almost every corner of Western culture.

    Rejected by several publishing houses, Brontë shelved the novel in order to write her masterpiece Jane Eyre (1847). After her death, The Professor was edited by Brontë's widower, Arthur Bell Nichols, who saw that the novel was published posthumously. Based on Brontë's experience as a student and teacher in Brussels--which similarly inspired her novel Villette--The Professor is an underappreciated early work from one of English literature's most important writers.After rejecting a life as a clergyman, William Crimsworth goes to work as a clerk for his brother Edward, a successful businessman. Although he excels, his brother grows jealous of his ability and intelligence, abusing and belittling him until he is forced to quit. Disappointed, he accepts a job at a boarding school in Belgium where, mentored by the kind Monsieur Pelet, William flourishes as a professor. When news of his work reaches Mademoiselle Reuter, a local headmistress at a school for girls, she offers him a position, and William joins her staff. He begins to grow suspicious, however, when he overhears Reuter speaking about him with Pelet and discovers that the pair are engaged to be married. As he begins to second-guess their kindness, he falls in love with Frances, a young teacher-in-training. Harboring her own secret affection for William, Mademoiselle Reuter decides she must dismiss Frances if she is to maintain her control of the young Englishman. Charlotte Brontë's The Professor is a novel of romance, jealousy, and gothic mystery, an early and promising work by one of Victorian England's most prominent writers.With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Charlotte Brontë's The Professor is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.

    When he remarries, a new step-sister enters Molly's quiet life – loveable, but worldly and troubling, Cynthia. The narrative traces the development of the two girls into womanhood within the gossiping and watchful society of Hollingford.Wives and Daughters is far more than a nostalgic evocation of village life; it offers an ironic critique of mid-Victorian society. 'No nineteenth-century novel contains a more devastating rejection than this of the Victorian male assumption of moral authority', writes Pam Morris in her introduction to this new edition, in which she explores the novel's main themes – the role of women, Darwinism and the concept of Englishness – and its literary and social context.

    He delves into his youth to analyze its repercussions.

    Rilke is unquestionably the most significant and compelling poet of romantic transformation, of spiritual quest, that the twentieth century has known. His poems of ecstatic identification with the world exert a seemingly endless fascination for contemporary readers.In Stephen Mitchell’s versions, many readers feel that they have discovered an English rendering that captures the lyric intensity, fluency, and reach of Rilke’s poetry more accurately and convincingly than has ever been done before.Mr. Mitchell is impeccable in his adherence to Rilke’s text, to his formal music, and to the complexity of his thoughts; at the same time, his work has authority and power as poetry in its own right. Few translators of any poet have arrived at the delicate balance of fidelity and originality that Mr. Mitchell has brought off with seeming effortlessness.Originally published: New York : Random House, 1982.

    Lawrence's frank portrayal of an extramarital affair and the explicit sexual explorations of its central characters caused this controversial book, now considered a masterpiece, to be banned as pornography until 1960.

    And few episodes in postwar literature have the legendary stature of Hughes's romance with, and marriage to, the great American poet Sylvia Plath.The poems in Birthday Letters are addressed (with just two exceptions) to Plath, and were written over a period of more than twenty-five years, the first a few years after her suicide in 1963. Some are love letters, others haunted recollections and ruminations. In them, Hughes recalls his and Plath's time together, drawing on the powerful imagery of his work--animal, vegetable, mythological--as well as on Plath's famous verse.Countless books have discussed the subject of this intense relationship from a necessary distance, but this volume--at last--offers us Hughes's own account. Moreover, it's a truly remarkable collection of poems in its own right.

    M. Forster once described The Longest Journey as the book "I am most glad to have written." An introspective novel of manners at once comic and tragic, it tells of a sensitive and intelligent young man with an intense imagination and a certain amount of literary talent. He sets out full of hope to become a writer, but gives up his aspirations for those of the conventional world, gradually sinking into a life of petty conformity and bitter disappointments.

    Mostly written on the island paradise of Capri (the idyllic setting of the Oscar-winning movie Il Postino), Love Poems embraces the seascapes surrounding the poet, and his love Matilde Urrutia, their waves and shores saturated with a new, yearning eroticism.And when you appearall the rivers soundin my body, bellsshake the sky,and a hymn fills the world.        © 1973 by Neruda & Walsh

    The longest poem covers less than two pages. Yet in theme and tone her writing reaches for the sublime as it charts the landscape of the human soul. A true innovator, Dickinson experimented freely with conventional rhythm and meter, and often used dashes, off rhymes, and unusual metaphors—techniques that strongly influenced modern poetry. Dickinson’s idiosyncratic style, along with her deep resonance of thought and her observations about life and death, love and nature, and solitude and society, have firmly established her as one of America’s true poetic geniuses.

    During her uncle's absence in Antigua, the Crawford's arrive in the neighbourhood bringing with them the glamour of London life and a reckless taste for flirtation. Mansfield Park is considered Jane Austen's first mature work and, with its quiet heroine and subtle examination of social position and moral integrity, one of her most profound.

    The aim of the present complete edition, which contains a numbered sequence of the 224 poems written after 1956 together with a further 50 poems chosen from her pre-1956 work, is to bring Sylvia Plath's poetry together in one volume, including the various uncollected and unpublished pieces, and to set everything in as true a chronological order as is possible, so that the whole progress and achievement of this unusual poet will become accessible to readers.

    It includes Emily's verse from Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, as well as 200 works collected from various manuscript sources after her death in 1848.