Joseph Delaney used to be an English teacher, before becoming the best-selling author of the Spook's series, which has been published in 30 countries and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The first book, The Spook's Apprentice, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.

Joseph Delaney

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Pocket clothbound volumes from the world's greatest poets, and with a stunning range of anthologies. Each volume has an elegant jacket, full cloth sewn binding, silk ribbon marker and headbands, with gold stamping on front and spine and decorative endpapers. In size, price and presentation they make ideal gifts and are a joy to read and collect. More than eighty titles in print.

Scotland, like so many other nations, has produced poetry that is patriotic, that paints landscapes, people and situations, that speaks to personal matters, and those equally everyday matters pertaining to the mind and to the spirit. The Christian heritage of Scotland has long been played out in verse, through Celtic devotional works, Catholic works, Protestant works, and not forgetting satires on the Puritanism in Scotland's post-Reformation identity. Language and culture have been equally multifarious in the nation so that three major languages: Scots, English and Gaelic (examples of which are translated in this anthology) compete and co-exist in poetry. The fifteenth century poet, William Dunbar, joked that there was no music in hell except for the bagpipes, and there speaks something of the historic lowland attitude to the Gaidhealtachd (Gaelic speaking Scotland, principally the highlands). Hostility and eventual harmony is a marker of the Scottish highlands/lowlands divide as much as for that between Scotland and England. Historic tension is not to be dismissed but, certainly, the poetic palette of Scotland is one of multilingual richness, and shows an enduringly high quality whatever the cultural vicissitudes that play a part. The medieval Makars, most prominently Robert Henryson, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas, are often taken to represent a golden age when poetry in Scots ran the full range of mood, mode and subject matter. If this has, perhaps, never been bettered, the sixteenth century lyrics and sonnets of Alexander Montgomerie, Alexander Scott and other poets around the court of James VI, and the eighteenth century vernacular 'revival' of Allan Ramsay, Alexander Ross, Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns represent at points equally brilliant periods; and the twentieth century 'modern renaissance' of Hugh MacDiarmid, Violet Jacob and William Souter proved that Scots remained a viable poetic currency, as a living poet such as Tom Leonard continues to demonstrate. 
Poetry in Gaelic too has its tradition of peaks where the flame seems to burn more visibly at certain times than others. Alexander Macdonald (Alasdair Mac Mhaghstir Alasdair), Rob Donn (Rob Donn MacAoidh) and Duncan MacIntyre (Donnchadh Bàn Mac an t-Saoir) make the eighteenth century a high point in achievement, while Sorley Maclean, George Campbell Hay and Iain Crichton Smith do similarly for the twentieth century: the latter three, arguably, making Gaelic verse the most able variety in Scotland during the last sixty years. Historically as many successes are scored in Scottish poetry in English. James Thomson, author of The Seasons, joins James Macpherson translator/creator of the poetry of 'Ossian' in promulgating works that are seminally iconic and influential right across the artistic genres, painting and music as much as literature, in western culture. The romantic, patriotic poetic image of Scotland is sounded in English as much as in any other language, as the writing of Walter Scott or Lady Nairne attests. James (B.V.) Thomson, John Davidson, Edwin Muir, Norman MacCaig, W.S. Graham, Edwin Morgan, Liz Lochhead, Kathleen Jamie and Don Paterson are all deeply Scottish poets speaking through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the worldwide audience that exists for creative utterance that both emanates from but is never limited by the particularity of place. Scotland's story is one that is never certain, but, enduringly and importantly its poetry is.

Scottish Poems

Gerard Manley Hopkins

The greatest English religious poet of the nineteenth century, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) was a Jesuit priest and literary scholar whose life ended prematurely after his exhausting pastoral work among the slums of Liverpool and Dublin. His poems are dazzling celebrations of God's endless creative power couched in a uniquely expressive poetic diction, and all his mature poetry is her reprinted, together with illuminating fragments from journals, letters, sermons and lectures in which he expounds his literary and religious outlook.

Hopkins Poems And Prose

In forms as various as the melodramas of old Scottish ballads and the hard-boiled poems of twentieth-century noir, here are assembled the most colourful villains and victims ever to be immortalized in verse, from Cain and Abel and Bluebeard to Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden and Mafia hit-men. Browning, Hardy, Auden, Mark Doty, Thom Gunn, Simon Armitage and Stevie Smith are only a few of the wide range of poets, old and new, whose comic, chilling and occasionally profound poetic musings on murder are gathered in this uniquely - and irresistibly - heart-racing volume.

Killer Verse

Poems of Murder and Mayhem

Robert Browning

Elizabeth Browning Barrett

Celebrated in their time and still popular over a century after their deaths, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett had a unique relationship which is reflected in their work. Both were distinguished as poets before they met, and they learnt from one another without ever sacrificing their individuality. If Elizabeth recognized that Robert’s talent was the greater of the two, Robert understood that his wife’s voice was unique. All the great themes they shared are represented in this collection of their shorter poems – love, marriage, poetry, religion, England and Italy, the natural world – and the poems are accompanied by a selection from the marvellous letters they wrote to one another, especially in the years of their courtship. Among the items included are extracts from Aurora Leigh and Pauline, and the whole of Sonnets from the Portuguese, together with many lyrics and narrative poems by both poets.

Robert And Elizabeth Barrett Browning Poems

Rivers were the arteries of our first civilizations - the Tigris and Euphrates of Mesopotamia, India's Ganges, Egypt's Nile, the Yellow River of China - and have nourished modern cities from London to New York, so it is natural that poets have for centuries drawn essential meanings and metaphors from their endless currents. 
 
 English poets from Shakespeare and Dryden, Wordsworth and Byron to Ted Hughes, John Betjeman and Alice Oswald; Irish poets - Eavan Boland, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, to name but a few; Scottish and Welsh poets from Henry Vaughan and Robert Louis Stevenson to Robin Robertson and Gillian Clarke. A whole raft of American poets from Whitman, Emerson and Emily Dickinson to Langston Hughes, Mary Oliver, Natasha Trethewey and Grace Paley. Folk songs. African-American spirituals. Poems from ancient Egypt and Rome. From medieval China and Japan. And a truly international selection of modern poets from Europe (France, Italy, Russia, Serbia), India, Africa, Australia and South and Central America, all combining in celebration of the rivers of the world. From the Mississippi to the Limpopo. From the Dart to the Danube. 
 
 Plunge in.

River Poems

Edgar Allan Poe

Probably the most important single figure in nineteenth century American literature, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) exerted an enormous influence over later writers, especially French Symbolist poets, including Baudelaire and Mallarme, and through them he affected the entire field of modern literature from THE WASTE LAND to LOLITA. Probably best known for his macabre short stories, including THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER, and THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, Poe's influence was spread primarily through his poems and essays which are here reprinted. The current volume includes all his extant poems and extensive selections from his essays on poetry.

Poe Poems and Prose

Edwin Arlington Robinson

A best seller in his lifetime though neglected in recent years, Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) is due to be restored to his rightful place in literary history as one of the first of the great American Modernist poets. His poetry was revolutionary, though because it was written in metre and rhyme it looked deceptively conventional. He cast aside the stiff archaism and prettiness favoured by his contemporaries, employing instead everyday language with dramatic power, wit and sensitivity. His lyric poems illuminate the most unlikely subjects - ordinary people, especially the downtrodden, the bereft and the mistunderstood. In the process he created the gallery of character portraits for which he is most fondly remembered, among them Eben Flood, Aunt Imogen, Isaac and Archibald, Miniver Cheevy and Richard Cory.Scott Donaldson, editor of this volume, is the author of a forthcoming biography of Robinson, to be published in February 2007.

Edwin Arlington Robinson Poems

Hesiod (Work and Days) and Virgil’s Georgics set the scene in the early pages with their poetry about farming, while nymphs and shepherds cavort through the Arcadian landscapes of Theocritus, ushering in the pastoral genre. Appropriately the book ends with Alice Oswald, whose much admired nature poetry reflects the influence of classical poets. 
 
From Chaucer onwards English poetry is full of the countryside. Here are plenty of fine examples from major poets, including Shakespeare, Spenser and Sidney; Jonson and Milton; Pope, Gray and Blake; Tennyson, Hopkins and Housman; Robert Frost, Edward Thomas, Ivor Gurney and Dylan Thomas. Alongside them, editor Paul Quarrie has placed some delightful gems from poets less well-known – Ambrose Philips’s ‘Description of Winter’, Margaret Cavendish’s ‘A Landscape’, James Henry’s ‘The Pleasure of Pigeons’ and poems by Felicia Hemans, Charlotte Mew, John Davidson and Kim Taplin, to name but a few. A lively choice of folk songs and anonymous poems about farming life adds to the mix, as do telling extracts from longer poems penned in the 18th century - the peak period for rural poetry.

Poems of the Countryside

Robert Burns

The perfect gift for poetry lovers. A comprehensive collection of the Scottish Bard's songs and poems. 
 
The 19th-century scholar and educationalist J S Blackie summed up Burns's importance to Scotland and the Scots with the words: 
'When Scotland forgets Burns, then history will forget Scotland.' 
Today, Burns is unique in the affection and fascination that his memory inspires. The fruits of his legacy can be seen not only in Scotland but around the world - on product packaging, in advertising and on a wealth of merchandise, as well as through continued scholarship and academic study.

W A Mozart

The 1200 or so letters of Mozart and his family form the most fascinating correspondence by any artist of the eighteenth century or earlier, and Mozart himself ranks high among letter writers of any age or occupation. A vivd and amzingly detailed picture emerges of Mozart's career as performer, teacher and composer, as well as a lively account of contemporary musical politics in the courts and opera houses of Europe. The inclusion of letters from his father, a dominant but loving parent determined to supervise his son's career evern after he had grown up, highlights the problems which Mozart encountered in breaking with his provincial background, as well as providing a glimpse of the social and domestic details that tell us so much about the kind of person Mozart was and how he lived. The correspondence ends with the pathetic begging letters of his last years and the touching, adoring yet protective letters to his wife. This edition is being published in May 2006 to coincide with the 250th anniversay of Mozart's birth. The selection has been made from the classic translation by Emily Anderson.

Mozart's Letters

George Herbert

Herbert experimented brilliantly with a remarkable variety of forms, from hymns and sonnets to "pattern poems," the shape of which reveal their subjects. Such technical agility never seems ostentatious, however, for precision of language and expression of genuine feeling were the primary concerns of this poet who admonished his readers to "dare to be true." An Anglican priest who took his calling with deep seriousness, he brought to his work a religious reverence richly allied with a playful wit and with literary and musical gifts of the highest order. His best-loved poems, from "The Collar" and "Jordan" to "The Altar" and "Easter Wings," achieve a perfection of form and feeling, a rare luminosity, and a timeless metaphysical grandeur.

Herbert Poems

Edna St Vincent Millay

One of America's best-loved poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) burst onto the literary scene at a very young age and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923. Her passionate lyrics and superbly crafted sonnets have thrilled generations of readers long after the notoriously bohemian lifestyle she led in Greenwich Village in the 1920s ceased to shock them. Millay's refreshing frankness and cynicism and her ardent appetite for life still burn brightly on the page more than half a century after her death.

Poems: Edna St Vincent Millay

This is a collection of classic animal poems. The poems include: Robert Burns's &quot;To a Mouse&quot;; Ted Hughes's &quot;Hawk Roosting&quot;; Christopher Smart's &quot;My Cat Jeoffry&quot;; and e.e. cummings's grasshopper-shaped poem.

Animal Poems

This anthology of comic verse is drawn from sources which range from the Greek Anthology to the present day. Divided into thematic sections (to be determined) for case of use, it covers a wide range of forms including limericks, clerihews, ballads, sonnets and nonsense verse. The prevailing tone is light, but satire and ridicule - even passion - have not been excluded

Comic Verse

Poets from around the world give eloquent voice to the trials, hopes, rewards and losses of migration. 
Each year, millions join the ranks of intrepid migrants who have reshaped societies throughout history. Most recently, Middle Eastern and African people have risked their lives to reach safety in Europe, while central Americans have fled north seeking asylum. But whether they are refugees from war or violence, political exiles or immigrants in search of education, opportunity and freedom, these travellers share the challenge of adapting to being strangers in a strange land. 
Border Lines brings together more than a hundred poets representing more than sixty nations - Imtiaz Dharker, Ruth Padel, Bernadine Evaristo, Derek Walcott, Mahmoud Darwish, 'Dreadlock Alien', Dunya Mikhail and Hédi Kaddour, to name but a few. Their poems tell moving stories of displacement and new beginnings in the UK, France and Germany, Canada and the United States and challenge us to reexamine our own society from a new perspective.

Border Lines

Poems of Migration

Fishing has inspired a wealth of poetry-Tang Dynasty meditations; Japanese haiku; medieval rhymes; classic verses by Homer and Shakespeare; poems by Donne, Goethe, Tennyson, and Yeats. Modern masterpieces abound as well, by the likes of Federico García Lorca, Elizabeth Bishop, Ted Hughes, Robert Lowell, Raymond Carver, Margaret Atwood, Audre Lorde, Richard Hugo, and Derek Walcott. In the hands of the poets collected here, fishing with a hook and line yields reflections both sparklingly light and awe-inspiringly deep. Filled with humour, nostalgia, adventure, celebrations of the beauties of nature, and metaphors for the art of living, The Art of Angling is sure to lure anglers and lovers of poetry alike.

The Art of Angling

Poems About Fishing

Emily Dickinson

The same inimitable voice and dazzling insights that make Emily Dickinson's poems immortal can be found in the whimsical, humorous, and often deeply moving letters she wrote to her family and friends throughout her life. The selection of letters presented here provides a fuller picture of the eccentric recluse of legend, showing how immersed in life she was: we see her tending her garden; baking bread; marking the marriages, births, and deaths of those she loved; reaching out for intellectual companionship; and confessing her personal joys and sorrows. These letters, invaluable for the light they shed on their author, are, as well, a pure pleasure to read.

Letters of Emily Dickinson

Leonard Cohen

This anthology contains a cross-section covering his career, including such legendary songs as 'Suzanne', 'Sisters of Mercy', 'Bird on the Wire', 'Famous Blue Raincoat' and 'I'm Your Man' and searingly memorable poems from many collections including Flowers for Hitler, Beautiful Losers and Death of a Lady's Man. Encompassing the erotic and the melancholy, the mystical and the sardonic, this volume showcases a writer of dazzling intelligence and live-wire emotional immediacy.

Leonard Cohen Poems

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