The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse
The era between the accession of Henry VIII and the crisis of the English republic in 1659 formed one of the most fertile epochs in world literature. This anthology offers a broad selection of its poetry, and includes a wide range of works by the gre
| The History Boys
An unruly bunch of bright, funny sixth-form boys in pursuit of sex, sport and a place at university. A maverick English teacher at odds with the young and shrewd supply teacher. A headmaster obsessed with results; a history teacher who thinks he's a
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The History Boys
Alan Bennett's new, award-winning play as heard on BBC Radio 3 features the National Theatre cast. After a sell-out national tour and an extended stage run, Alan Bennett's phenomenally successful play transfers to BBC Radio 3. Richard Griffiths, Cliv
| The Odyssey
This epic tale of Odysseus and his ten-year journey home after the Trojan War forms one of the earliest works of Western literature. Confronted by natural and supernatural threats - shipwrecks, battles, monsters and the implacable enmity of the sea-g
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Songs of Innocence and of Experience
William Blake subtitled his "Songs of Innocence and Experience" "Shewing Two Contrary States of the Human Soul". His overall vision of the human condition is one where good and evil exist interdependently and this is an idea reflected in Blake's colo
| The Divine Comedy
Describing Dante's descent into Hell midway through his life with Virgil as a guide, Inferno depicts a cruel underworld in which desperate figures are condemned to eternal damnation for committing one or more of seven deadly sins. As he descends thro
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The Norton Anthology of English Literature
A best-seller for more than forty years, this is the survey of English literature from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century. With 274 authors, the Eighth Edition deepens its representation of essential works in all genres, ranging from Seamus
| John Betjeman Collected Poems
Collected Poems made publishing history when it first appeared, and has now sold more than two million copies, to an ever-growing readership. This newly expanded edition includes Betjeman's verse autobiography, Summoned by Bells. With a new Introduct
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Surgically Enhanced
Pam Ayres is one of our most widely-adored poets throughout the world and is nothing less than a national treasure. Her work is popular with fans of all ages, and her wry observations on the peculiarities of modern life will raise a smile from even t
| The Prophet
First published in the 1920s, this book attempts to provide the reader with an inspirational, allegorical guide to living. Gibran has his protagonist, called simply the prophet, deliver spiritual, yet practical, homilies on a wide variety of topics c
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Collected Poems
This edition of Larkin's poems presents his four published books "The North Ship", "The Less Deceived", "The Whitsun Weddings" and "High Windows" in their original sequence. The text also includes an appendix of poems that Larkin published in other p
| Rapture
The effortless virtuosity, drama and humanity of Carol Ann Duffy's verse have made her our most admired contemporary poet. "Rapture", her seventh collection, is a book-length love-poem, and a moving act of personal testimony - but what sets these poe
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District and Circle
Seamus Heaney's new collection starts 'in an age of bare hands and cast iron' and ends 'as the automatic lock/clunks shut' in the eerie new conditions of a menaced twentieth-first century. In their haunted, almost visionary clarity, the poems assay t
| Catching Life by the Throat
This book is an anthology of poems by WH Auden, TS Eliot, Philip Larkin, Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, Rudyard Kipling, Sylvia Plath and W B Yeats, introduced by Josephine Hart and accompanied by a complimentary 80 minute CD featuring a selection
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The Art of Looking Sideways
Describing himself as a "visual jackdaw", master designer Alan Fletcher has spent a lifetime collecting images, useless information, quotations and scraps that take his fancy. This work distils this collection into a quirky and entertaining feast for
| Hamlet
The "Annotated Shakespeare" series allows readers to fully understand and enjoy the rich plays of the world's greatest dramatist. One of the most frequently read and performed of all stage works, Shakespeare's "Hamlet" is unsurpassed in its complexit
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Othello
A popular soldier and newly married man, Othello seems to be in an enviable position. And yet, when his supposed friend sows doubts in his mind about his wife's fidelity, he is gradually consumed by suspicion. In this powerful tragedy, innocence is c
| As You Like it
When Rosalind is banished by her uncle, who has usurped her father's throne, she flees to the forest of Arden where her exiled father holds court. There, dressed as a boy to avoid discovery, she encounters the man she loves now a fellow exile and res
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Medea and Other Plays
Medea, in which a spurned woman takes revenge upon her lover by killing her children, is one of the most shocking and horrific of all the Greek tragedies. Dominating the play is Medea herself, a towering and powerful figure who demonstrates Euripides
| Pygmalion
Pygmalion both delighted and scandalized its first audiences in 1914. A brilliantly witty reworking of the classical tale of the sculptor Pygmalion, who falls in love with his perfect female statue, it is also a barbed attack on the British class sys
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