Poetry History category: 2770 books

Described as 'Mad, bad and dangerous to know' by one of his lovers, Lady Caroline Lamb, Lord Byron was the quintessential Romantic. Flamboyant, charismatic and brilliant, he remains almost as notorious for his life - as a political revolutionary, sexual adventurer and traveller - as he does for his...

W.H. Davies (1871–1940) was popularly though reductively known as the 'tramp-poet' due to his remarkable journey from vagrancy, in Britain and the United States, to considerable literary success. 'Discovered' in part by Edward Thomas, who admired his poetry, Davies became a prolific memoirist and...

Presented in one volume for the very first time, and updated with new archival discoveries, Early Auden, Later Auden reintroduces Edward Mendelson's acclaimed, two-part biography of W. H. Auden (1907–73), one of the greatest literary figures of the twentieth century. This book offers a detailed...

Osip Mandelstam, who died anonymously in a Siberian transit-camp in 1938, is now generally considered to be among the four or five greatest Russian poets of the twentieth century. The essays in this volume, presented in an exceptionally scrupulous and true translation, were selected because they represent...

John Donne (1572-1631) forfeited his Parliamentary seat and was briefly imprisoned when his secret marriage to Ann More was uncovered in 1601. He spent the subsequent decade in poverty, trying to rehabilitate his reputation. He entered the Church in 1615, and become Dean of St Paul's. His first volume...

The Poet's Holy Craft represents the first full-length analysis and interpretation of William Gilmore Simms's poetry. Matthew C. Brennan demonstrates the comprehensiveness of Simms's romanticism by examining Simms's poetics, his experimental sonnets, and his deep affinity to William Wordsworth, which...

Susan Howe's classic groundbreaking exploration of early American literature. In this classic, groundbreaking exploration of early American literature, Susan Howe reads our intellectual inheritance as a series of civil wars, where each text is a wilderness in which a strange lawless author...

With this book, Alan Wald launches a bold and passionate account of the U.S. Literary Left from the 1920s through the 1960s. Exiles from a Future Time, the first volume of a trilogy, focuses on the forging of a Communist-led literary tradition in the 1930s. Exploring writers' intimate lives and heartfelt...

T. S. Eliot enjoyed a profound relationship with Earth. Criticism of his work does not suggest that this exists in his poetic oeuvre. Writing into this gap, Etienne Terblanche demonstrates that Eliot presents Earth as a process in which humans immerse themselves. The Waste Land and Four Quartets in...

Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, and Adrienne Rich share nationality, gender, and an aesthetic tradition, but each expresses these experiences in the context of her own historical moment. Puritanism imposed stringent demands on Bradstreet, romanticism both inspired and restricted Dickinson, and feminism...

Illuminating the work of a writer whose achievement and influence is increasingly recognized as central to modern poetry in English, this record is a celebration of the diversity and vitality of Louis MacNeice’s writing. With contributions by fellow poets and critics—such as Neil Corcoran, Paul...

'That Montague is a significant poet does not need proving. These essays show that he is almost equally formidable as an autobiographer and critic.' - Robert Greacen, Irish Independent The Figure in the Cave selects the prose of one of Ireland's foremost contemporary poets - part autobiography, part...

Tennyson's poetry epitomizes the Victorian age, for which he became a spokesman. His finest poems are often steeped in a sensuous melancholy, as in Maud, or are chivaric, heroic and allegorical, as in The Lady of Shalot and Morte d'Arthur.

2013 marks Dannie Abse's 90th birthday. In his lifetime he has published an astonishing array of work including poetry, fiction, criticism, plays and autobiography but it is as a poet that he is best known and loved. In Speak, Old Parrot he returns to themes of loss, love, medicine and its...