In this collection of 23 ingeniously plotted stories, no case is too big, too small, or too bizarre for Holmes the detective. With his trusted and always admiring friend Dr Watson, at his side, they use their unique analytical gifts to confound every...

The fourth "OxfordPoets" anthology brings together the work of both new and of more established poets and introduces them to a wider readership. Like previous "OxfordPoets" anthologies, it celebrates the vitality of the new writing on the Oxford list...

The title sequence of "Making the Beds for the Dead" charts the journey of a virus in "the plague year". Come from outer space, it travels – on a fox's paw, the beak of a kite and a crow and a buzzard – into the very heart of our lives. The poet incl...

Tristan Corbiere (1845-1875) evoked the peasants and sailors of his native Brittany, the bohemians and prostitutes of Paris, in a vivid, fast-paced language that gave a new voice to French poetry and made him a pivotal figure in the development of Mo...

Asked what problems most perplexed 'young men at present' Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861) replied "a growing sense of discrepancy". His wry, wise poetry explores the tensions of a time of radical changes in the religious, political and literary landsc...

In this selection, which includes the finest of the short poems and extracts from the longer ones, there is ample evidence of the quality of Cowper's faith and of his eye and ear. There are also indications of how his life, in many ways, tragic and u...

Paul Celan (1920-1970) stands as one of the greatest post-war European poets, a writer whose painful struggle with the possibilities and limitations of German, his native language, has helped to define the response of poetry in the aftermath of the H...

"The marvellous boy, The sleepless soul that perished in his pride". Wordsworth's lines on Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) contributed to a legend that became better known than Chatterton's work itself. His story is moving: a sensitive, unhappy boy, h...

"The Wedding Spy" is in truth a double agent, written by a poet who has spent half of her life in the United States and half in the United Kingdom. She understands both countries, but belongs to neither and therefore has an outsider's perspective whe...