Literature & Poetry

A window onto the lives of the Romantic poets through the re-creation of one legendary night in 1817.

With his richly detailed world of Middle Earth and the epic tales he told around it, J.R.R. Tolkien invented the modern fantasy novel. For readers and students getting to grips with this world for the first time, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Guide for the Perplexed is an essential guide to the author's life and ...

In this extended essay, Virginia Woolf embarks on a journey studying different educational experiences available to men and women. She explores the fact that women live in a patriarchal world and, if they are to write, must have a room of their own.

‘The stars are a free show; it don’t cost anything to use your eyes.’

In George Orwell’s first full-length work, a memoir in two parts, he recounts how he lived in two major cities as a struggling writer with very little money in his pocket.

From sleeping in bug-infested hotels to surviving ...

Over a quarter of a century ago Michael Meyer's three-volume biography provided the English-speaking world with its most comprehensive study of Ibsen's life and work. Robert Ferguson is deeply appreciative of Meyer, but he argues that Meyer, like other critics, was content to write about the public reputation ...

‘This is not a war … it is a comic opera with an occasional death.’

In this personal account of his time fighting for the POUM militia of the Republican army during the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell details his life in the trenches and the lives of the men he fought alongside.

He also ...

In this essay written during the worst of the London blitz, Orwell discusses socialism, patriotism, an English revolution and how to make the country a better place. His passionate argument about the need for class consciousness and huge political change is as relevant today as it was when the essay ...

In this perceptive essay collection, Orwell recounts a pivotal moment in his career as a police officer in Burma. He shares his experience of being treated for pneumonia in a Parisian hospital for the poor, and divulges into the absolute horrors of attending a public school for boys. Throughout, he shares ...

Shakespeare: increasingly irrelevant or lone literary genius of the Western canon?

In these vivid, real and sometimes surreal pieces, Daljit Nagra creates his own inimitable linguistic bhaji: where Shakespeare meets the Subcontinent in a range of forms from English sonnets to spectacular displays of 'bollyverse' or the tender love songs of the monsoon.

Everything anyone could possibly wonder about famous books and writers is in this collection of more than 300 lists—authors who wrote standing up, famous last words, writers who couldn’t spell, unusual work habits, sexual peccadilloes, unintended double entendres in the classics, bad reviews of future ...

A biography of one of England's greatest poets, uncovering his radical, political influence.

When the Baron decides to appoint a Lord of Misrule for Christmas, making a peasant into a King for twelve days, unruly jollity ensues.

The only truly global collection of love poetry, bringing together the most stunning and inspiring poems from all around the world

contributors write from the UK, Europe, Canada and Mexico, and reflect both on Lowry's 'voyage that never ends' and on their own journeys with and through Lowry's work.

A Vertical Art gathers the expansive and spirited public lectures delivered by Simon Armitage during his acclaimed four-year tenure as Oxford University Professor of Poetry.

Leonard Cohen made his name as a poet before he came to worldwide attention as a singer and songwriter. This collection of his poetry was written in Montreal, Mumbai and during his retirement in Mt Baldy.

Tom Paulin's first collection since The Road to Inver in 2004, Love's Bonfire sets poems about early life and marriage beside up-to-the minute and minutely registered perceptions of post-settlement Ireland.

Described by Philip Pullman as 'the most important British writer of fantasy since Tolkein', Alan Garner has been enrapturing readers with works like The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, The Owl Service, Red Shift and The Stone Book Quartet for more than half a century. Now, a group of the writers and artists ...