'He had become the dandy of the unpredictable.' A quest for new sensations, and an avowed desire to shock possessed the Decadent writers of fin-de-siècle Paris. The years 1880-1900 saw an extraordinary, hothouse flowering of talent, that produced some of the most exotic, stylized, and cerebral literature in the French language. While 'Decadence' was a European movement, its epicentre was the French capital. On the eve of Freud's early discoveries, writers such as Gourmont, Lorrain, Maupass...

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to some of the greatest poets of our literature.Robert Herrick was born in London in 1591 and went to St. John's College, Cambridge. He became a Cavalier poet before being ordained in 1623. Charles...

In Memoriam A.H.H. is a long poem by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, completed in 1849. It is a requiem for the poet's Cambridge friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage in Vienna in 1833, but it is also much more. Written over a period of 17 years, it can be seen as reflective of Victorian society at the time, and the poem discusses many of the issues that were beginning to be questioned. It is the work in which Tennyson reaches his highest musical pe...

Sartre's greatest novel — and existentialism's key text — now introduced by James Wood.Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation. His thoughts culminate in a pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which “spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our time — the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it...

Sonnets from the Portuguese, written ca. 1845-1846 and first published in 1850, is a collection of forty-four love sonnets written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The poems largely chronicle the period leading up to her 1846 marriage to Robert Browning. The collection was acclaimed and popular even in the poet's lifetime and it remains so today. Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

MEET THE REAL AEMILIA BASSANO LANYER: ENGLAND'S FIRST FEMALE POET…AND THE WOMAN WHO IS BELIEVED TO HAVE BEEN THE DARK LADY OF SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS.The real Aemilia Basano Lanyer was Renaissance woman, centuries ahead of her time. England's first professionally-published female poet, she is also suspected to have inspired the poetry of one our greatest and most beloved writers, William Shakespeare—and she continues to inspire writers to this day.With Dark Aemilia, ...

NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR • One of the most widely read novels of all time—from one of the best-known writers of all time—about a lawyer from Paris who brilliantly illuminates the human condition.Elegantly styled, Camus' profoundly disturbing novel of a Parisian lawyer's confessions is a searing study of modern amorality.

The first volume of one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, in Lydia Davis's award-winning translationMarcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar translation there has been no completely new version in English. Now, Penguin Classics brings Proust’s masterpiece to new audiences throughout the world...

Edited by Philip Thody, translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy."Here now, for the first time in a complete English translation, we have Camus' three little volumes of essays, plus a selection of his critical comments on literature and his own place in it. As might be expected, the main interest of these writings is that they illuminate new facets of his usual subject matter."--The New York Times Book Review"...a new single work for American readers that stands among th...

Troilus and Criseyde (circa 1380-87) is Geoffrey Chaucer's poem in rhyme royal (rime royale) re-telling the tragic love story of Troilus, a Trojan prince, and Criseyde. Scholarly consensus is that Chaucer completed Troilus and Criseyde by the mid 1380's. Many Chaucer scholars regard this as his best work, even including the better known but incomplete Canterbury Tales.Troilus and Criseyde is an example of a courtly romance, and although it does contain many common features of the genre, ge...

In "The Discovery of Witches," Matthew Hopkins, known as the self-proclaimed Witchfinder General, presents a chilling account of witch trials during the English Civil War. Written in a polemical style, the book integrates first-person narratives, legal treatises, and theological arguments to justify the persecution of alleged witches. Through detailed testimony and fervent rhetoric, Hopkins argues for the legitimacy of witch hunting, reflecting the societal anxieties of a nation torn by co...

From the groundbreaking author of The Second Sex "a book that will leave no one indifferent, and no one affected in quite the same way" ( New York Times ).A superb memoir by one of the great literary figures of the twentieth century, Simone de Beauvoir's Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter offers an intimate picture of growing up in a bourgeois French family, rebelling as an ...