A woman about to lose her job as a professor of literature and history delivers a passionate, witty and word-mad monologue in this inventive novel, which was called "brilliant" (The Listener), "dazzling" (The Guardian), "elegant, rueful and witty" (T...

Ballads are memorable. This book was finished when the poet was fifty, with too much to remember: the shadows of the greater world, the bulldozers down the street tearing through a Victorian school, the generosity of its founders, its green graceful...

A striking performer of her own poems, Ros Barber has the gift of recreating her voice – and the voices of others – on the page. The poems in this debut collection demonstrate her wide range in form and subject and her skill in highlighting the extra...

Robert Burton's "The Anatomy of Melancholy" (1621) has cast a long, shimmering shadow, on Milton ("L'Allegro and Il Penseroso" in particular), on the wits of Queen Anne's reign and the beginning of George I's, and on Swift. Doctor Johnson praised it...

"SeaManShip" is an extraordinary and challenging poem. The "Sea" of the title is a symbol of the natural world, "Man" represents human feelings and intellect, and "Ship" signifies the artificial or man-created. By turns rhapsodic and incantatory, th...

Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) once described herself as the most famous unknown writer, and although her novel, Nightwood is celebrated, her poetry has been a well-kept secret until now. This selection, the only one currently available, contains work writ...

In this radical anthology the work of three of Ireland's most important and best-loved contemporary poets is featured. Each has, in a different way, cleared new creative space to speak and to sing. The anthology makes an essential selection of some...

"Death's Jest-Book" is Thomas Lovell Beddoes' long neglected masterwork, a revenge tragedy replete with murder, sorcery and haunting After early acclaim as a lyric poet and dramatist, Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849) began Death's Jest-Book in 1825...

William Barnes (1801-1886), "the Dorset Poet", wrote best in Dorest dialect: "I cannot help it. It is my mother tongue, and it is to my mind the only true speech of the life that I draw". His setting is a rural Dorset threatened by enclosure. Hopkins...

Aphra Behn (1640-1689) is best known for her novel "Oroonoko". Her plays have been revived, in print and on the stage, in modern times, but much of her best work, as she herself knew, is to be found in her poetry. The versatile form and content of he...