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With an Introduction by Paul Wright. ‘What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth’ So wrote the Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) in 1817. This collection contains all of his poetry: the early work, which is often undervalued even today, the poems on which his reputation rests including the ‘Odes’ and the two versions… Read More

With an Introduction, Bibliography and Glossary by Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature University of Kent at Canterbury. Thomas Hardy started composing poetry in the heyday of Tennyson and Browning. He was still writing with unimpaired power sixty years later, when Eliot and Yeats were the leading names in the field. His extraordinary stamina and… Read More

With an Introduction by Emma Hartnoll. Initially a vivacious, outgoing person, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) progressively withdrew into a reclusive existence. An undiscovered genius during her lifetime, only seven out of her total of 1,775 poems were published prior to her death. She had an immense breadth of vision and a passionate intensity and awe for… Read More

Edited with Introductions, Bibliographies, Footnotes and on-page Glossaries by Dr Lesley A. Coote, Lecturer in Medieval & Renaissance Studies, University of Hull. During his life, Geoffrey Chaucer (born c.1340) was courtier, diplomat, revenue collector, administrator, negotiator, overseer of building projects, landowner and knight of the shire.  He was servant, retainer, husband, friend and father.  Whilst he… Read More

With an Introduction, Bibliography and Glossary by Dr Paul Wright, Trinity College, Carmarthen. ‘I mean to show things really as they are, not as they ought to be’. wrote Byron (1788-1824) in his comic masterpiece Don Juan, which follows the adventures of the hero across the Europe and near East which Byron knew so well,… Read More

With an Introduction by Donald McFarlan. Robert Burns, the most celebrated of all Scottish poets, is remembered with great devotion – his birthday on 25th January provokes fervour and festivity among Scots and many others the world over. Born in 1759 into miserable rustic poverty, by the age of eighteen Burns had acquired a good… Read More

Introduction, Notes and Bibliography by Dr Bruce Woodcock, Senior Lecturer in English, University of Hull. William Blake was an engraver, painter and visionary mystic as well as one of the most revolutionary of the Romantic poets. His writing attracted the astonished admiration of authors as diverse as Wordsworth, Ruskin, W.B.Yeats, and more recently beat poet… Read More