British & Irish Books - Page 10

The Seagull Reader: Poems, Second Edition

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Editorial Review:

Less than half the price of full-length anthologies and more economical than most value editions, The Seagull Readers are a portable and inexpensive alternative to bulky anthologies. Each volume offers an inviting mix of classics and less familiar pieces, complemented by concise genre introductions, short headnotes and annotations, brief author biographies, and a glossary of terms.

Poetical Works: Tennyson (Wordsworth Poetry Library)

Alfred Tennyson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The poetry of Lord Tennyson touches my soul deeply. 5 out of 5 stars.
29 of 41 people found this review helpful.

I am a mariner, in fact a rather old one. The Tennyson poem, Crossing the Bar, as I remember it as a young man and as I read it today as an old man, has taken on new meaning and touched the center of my sensibilities.

Tennyson is a masterful poet, his verse is hypnotic 5 out of 5 stars.
18 of 20 people found this review helpful.

Of Tennyson's poems, In Memoriam A. H. H. and Maud stand out as personal favourites. In these poems he evokes a gentle blend of melancholy, connectedness with the land and countryside, and a tangible sense of the eternity of life and nature and ones personal destiny within these. His poems are mesmerizing, his rhythmic language and masterful blending of words draws a reader in, and has a hypnotic effect. He isn't trite, clumsy, or contrived. His subjects share the spirit of the Pre-Raphaelite painter's subjects, they are often brooding, forlorn, existing an empty, melancholic, roaming life in a garden of Eden. To the reader, his subjects are real, full and beautiful and are at once human and metaphysical.

Editorial Review:

Although Tennyson (1809-1892) has often been characterized as an austere, bearded patriarch and laureate of the Victorian age, his poems speak clearly to the imagination of the late 20th century. His mastery of rhyme, metre, imagery and mood communicate their dark, sensuous and sometimes morbid messages. Much given to melancholy and feelings of aching desolation, Tennyson's verse also carries clear messages of hope: 'Ring out the old, ring in the new', and 'Tis better to have loved and lost/Than never to have loved at all'.

Lyrical Ballads (Penguin Classics)

William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Penguin is nice, but could still improve. 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The layout is nice, table of contents is convenient. I would have given it 5 stars had there been numbering for the lines of the poem for easier citation.

Beautiful 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I've already read through half of it for a class and I love it. The language and the images are amazing. A classic, must read.

Editorial Review:

Twenty-three poems that transformed English poetry

Wordsworth and Coleridge composed this powerful selection of poetry during their youthful and intimate friendship. Reproducing the first edition of 1798, this edition of Lyrical Ballads allows modern readers to recapture the book’s original impact. In these poems—including Wordsworth’s "Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey" and Coleridge’s "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere"—the two poets exercised new energies and opened up new themes.

Shakespeare's Sonnets (Arden Shakespeare: Third Series)

William Shakespeare

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

'The annotation is consistently thoughtful and well judged, giving plenty of precise help with lexical and syntactical problems, and offering valuable verbal and cultural analogues from contemporary literature' 'No edition of these difficult and controversial poems will command agreement at all points, but this must now be the edition of first resort' Paul Hammond, Review of English Studies 'sharpens our focus on the documentary record of the Sonnets, and gives the best scholarly account yet of some of its words.' Alastair Fowler, Times Literary Supplement "The new edition...edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones, is the clearest, most complete and up-to-date there is. She is the first editor for general readers not to mumble when dealing with the homoerotic aspect. Under her meticulous direction, the sequence opens out like a magical garden, its beauties enhanced, its mysterious prospects illuminated." Duncan Fallowell, The Independent ‘It is Duncan-Jones’s intention as scholar and critic to confront the issue of sexuality which Kerrigan and other editors have consistently side-stepped...Hers is an edition which uniquely makes the Sonnets issue from the body’s moods as well as the mind’s.’ Tom Paulin, London Review of Books ‘This new edition, handsome, crisp in annotation, and rich in historical detail, shows that the Sonnets are effectively Shakespeare’s life’s work...Its most radical claim is not the familiar one that the poems are homosexual, but that Shakespeare authorised their publication.’ Evening Standard

Collected Poems of John Donne (Wordsworth Poetry Library)

John Donne

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Editorial Review:

John Donne (1572-1631) is a poet of concerted emotional and intellectual force, whose strenuously original approach to the subject matter, diction and form of verse re-made English poetry. Donne's poetry combines paradoxical wit, scientific and theological learning with the rhythms and diction of spoken language. Crises of love, conscience, and faith are the great concerns of his poetry which is by turns exalted or disenchanted, direct or oblique, morally profound or outrageously spiteful.

The Lays of Beleriand (The History of Middle-Earth, Vol. 3)

J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Reviewer said nothing new....... Well i got news for him, everything in this is new. 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

If you are a tolkien lover, poetry lover, or both like me then you will get the awesome experience of reading some of the origins of turin, beren, etc. There are not a lot of poems and they are all unfinished. But there are things in this book which you will treasure forever like the hate filled words spoken to eachother by morgoth and hurin. Just like tolkiens original writings in book 1 and 2, # 3 will show you more of the origins of where his silmarillion derived from. Christopher explains later in the series of these books on how he used the lost tales, lays, and annals to finish the silmarillion for his father. Let me explain that the lost tales came 1st, lays 2nd, and then the annals. Since these are all different versions of ALL the tales Christopher would be the judge of what parts of what tale or lay would be published in the silmarillion. So essentially just to use turin as an example, Christopher is telling one tale, but basically trying to put a puzzle together mxing AND matching different parts of different versions of the tale. It sounds like an extremely difficult process.


Everybody gives credit to tolkien for making the lord of the rings his lifes work, but his son seeds to be equally credited for putting the time in to analyze and even try to think for his father, adn since Christopher was the main reviewer of the pre-published lord, I am very, very appreciative of the fact that he decided to make this his lifes work.

Again thank you Christopher tolkien for making all of your father's works available.

Editorial Review:

"The power of Tolkien's central characters . . . shines through." Library Journal.
A treasure trove of lore for old and new friends of Middle-earth. Enter now, reader, and learn of the hero of the Lay of Leithian. Hear as well of the early years of Turin the Tall, as he journeys through darkness on his quest to find his father. Read of his rescue by Beleg the Brave, and of the dark destiny that haunts their friendship! Only the genius of Tolkien could create a fantasy more real than reality, a reality more fantastic than fantasy!

The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)

Alexander Pope

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Great stuff! 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Opinions differ, with regard to Alexander Pope, but then again it's hard to find any subject at all where opinions do NOT differ!

I think that Pope was one of the most clever and skilled man who ever wrote verse in English, and that his verse rises pretty frequently to the level of poetry. His translation of "The Iliad" is probably immortal. I was surprised to learn that he farmed out the translation of "The Odyssey" to lesser lights: half of the books in the "Pope" translation of "The Odyssey" were, in fact, ghost-written!

If you have never read anything by Pope and want an introduction, then find yourself an easy chair, pour yourself something cordial to drink, and read the "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot." I never get tired of this minor masterpiece! ("Why break a butterfly upon the wheel?" is just one example. But I could cite the whole thing!)

Highest recommendation!

Editorial Review:

Alexander Pope has often been termed the first true professional poet in English, whose dealings with the book trade helped to produce the literary marketplace of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this representative selection of Pope's most important work, the texts are presented in chronological sequence so that the Moral Essays and Imitations of Horace are restored to their original position in his career.
This edition represents the single most comprehensive anthology of Pope's works. The Duncaid, The Rape of the Lock, and Imitations of Horace are presented in full, together with a characteristic sample of Pope's prose, including satires, pamphlets, and periodical writing. This edition also includes a further reading list, an invaluable biographical index as well as indexes of titles, first lines, and correspondences.

The Canterbury Tales: Complete

Geoffrey Chaucer, Larry Benson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Travelling mercies... 5 out of 5 stars.
16 of 18 people found this review helpful.

In Chaucer's work, 'The Canterbury Tales', perhaps the greatest of English literary works from the period of the language known as Middle English, there is one particular piece that have always stood out for me.

'A Clerk ther was of Oxenford also,'

This is perhaps my favourite character, as when I first read it, it seemed to epitomise what I hoped for in my own life.

'That unto logik hadde longe y-go.
....
For him was lever have at his beddes heed
Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed,

Of Aristotle and his philosophye,
Than robes riche, of fithele, or gay sautrye,
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre,
But al that he mighte of his freendes hente,
On bokes and on lerninge he it spente,
and bisily gan for the soules preye
Of hem that yaf him wherwith to scoleye.
....
...gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.'

Every now and then I cannot help but re-read this part of the Prologue, for a reminder of what I'm aiming for in my own life.

Chaucer was son of a wine merchant, something near and dear to my heart. Chaucer was well-read, well-phrased, well-mannered, industrious in literary and legal/administrative pursuits, as I trust I will become, if not already so qualified.

As one can see from the above examples, English has changed much over the past 600 years, but not so much as to make these passages unrecognisable. Compare for yourself with a modern translation, and see how much you can decipher.

Chaucer is one of the first great English authors of name; most (but not all) literary output in English prior to this time was anonymous. Living in the 1300s, he held administrative posts of importance under Kings from the time of Edward III to Henry IV. Never one to shrink from spending too much money (he had to reapply for pensions and ask for advances several times in his life) or shying away from controversy (he fell out of and came back into favour several times). When he died, he was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, in a section on the south side that has since become Poet's Corner, largely due to Chaucer, the first great English poet, having been buried there.

In addition to his magnus opus, 'The Canterbury Tales', a collection of stories with prologue told by pilgrims on their journey to Canterbury (car radios and in-flight movies were rare in those days), Chaucer wrote minor poems to suit various occasions (his first record as poet comes from having written a poem as elegy on the death of John of Gaunt's first wife, Blanche, in 1369), and the major work for which he was noted for 'Troilus and Criseyde', which showed his sense of humour, power of observation and attention to detail, and keen dramatic skills in language. This work is often compared to Dante and Boccaccio, perhaps the most famous poets of the day. 'The Canterbury Tales' is actually intended to be much longer - 120 tales told by 30 pilgrims (two each on the way to Canterbury, and two each returning). As it is, there are only 24 tales plus a prologue - had it been completed, it would be by far the longest poem in the English language.

There is a strong, practical side to Chaucer's writing, sophisticated yet not aloof and removed from the affairs of the world, cultured yet in tune with the better (and more interesting) aspects of the common people, too.

This edition by Larry Benson is designed for those who only want the Canterbury Tales, not the other writings of Chaucer, but want a set of the complete tales and prologue from standard texts. This comes from the Riverside Chaucer, with introductory notes explaining plot, versification, and various issues that might arise in the translation of the tales. The indexes include one for proper names. There is also a timeline showing Chaucer's life that is handy for students.

For those who want the Canterbury Tales in good form, this is a good volume to get.

Editorial Review:

Based on the definitive Riverside Chaucer, this edition of The Canterbury Tales contains the complete text of all 24 Tales, thoroughly updated scholarship from the past 20 years, and extensive editorial support. This volume is ideal for instructors who want to assign only the Tales and have no need for the complete Chaucer.

An overview briefly outlines the basic plot and main idea of each Tale, while a section on language and versification helps students with pronunciation. Explanatory notes provide information on sources, problematic passages, and critical interpretations. Additional pedagogy includes a glossary, a section on Chaucer's life which traces the author from childhood to his final years, an index of proper names, a general bibliography, and a list of abbreviations.

The Waste Land and Other Writings (Modern Library Classics)

T.S. Eliot

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

First published in 1922, "The Waste Land" is T.S. Eliot's masterpiece, and is not only one of the key works of modernism but also one of the greatest poetic achievements of the twentieth century. A richly allusive pilgrimage of spiritual and psychological torment and redemption, Eliot's poem exerted a revolutionary influence on his contemporaries, summoning forth a rich new poetic language, breaking decisively with Romantic and Victorian poetic traditions. Kenneth Rexroth was not alone in calling Eliot "the representative poet of the time, for the same reason that Shakespeare and Pope were of theirs. He articulated the mind of an epoch in words that seemed its most natural expression."

As influential as his verse, T.S. Eliot's criticism also exerted a transformative effect on twentieth-century letter, and this new edition of The Waste Land and Other Writings includes a selection of Eliot's most important essays.

In her new Introduction, Mary Karr dispels some of the myths of the great poem's inaccessibility and sheds fresh light on the ways in which "The Waste Land" illuminates contemporary experience.

Complete Sonnets (Dover Thrift Editions)

William Shakespeare

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Left me lost - till I got a better edition 2 out of 5 stars.
17 of 18 people found this review helpful.

My English major friends kept raving about the sonnets, so I finally decided to spend a buck to get this least expensive edition. It was kind of interesting. I could tell that Shakespeare was really intense about his issues - but I was lost as to why everybody was so crazy about them. I also did not like having paper that was so thin that my highlighting and notes went right through to ruin the other side of the page :(

Finally I spent another buck to get an (almost as inexpensive) edition (used) - the Signet edition edited by Burto. That helped a lot - with definitions of terms and hints about lots of secret relationships possibly there for those who would dig further. At last I'm starting to figure out why this guy is considered so awesome. To really get an appreciation of Shake's heart and mind, beginners like me really need more than just the poems.

Now I'm borrowing an English major's copy of Dr. Vendler's edition (Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets). It's pretty heady, so I'm just trying to read her introduction. Whew! I haven't tested out all her theories, but is so much incredible care and complexity going on behind the scenes in these poems - it's no wonder people are still boggled after 400 years.

Truly amazing - but unless you're an English major I wouldn't recommend bothering with this doubtful dollar deed. Getting a copy of the Signet or Folger Library editions will make beginners much happier.

Editorial Review:

Over 150 exquisite poems deal with love, friendship, the tyranny of time, beauty’s evanescence, death and other themes in language unsurpassed in passion, precision, originality and beauty. This inexpensive Dover edition enables any lover of poetry or fine literature to have this remarkable verse in his or her library. A brief glossary illuminates a number of archaic terms.