The story of a man searching for a new identity, living on a boat high and dry in the yard, in a town very much like Port Cypress, Washington.There, he becomes tied to a boatyard community of like souls. These widely divergent characters find in each other the catalyst to move on from their personal doldrums to a new sense of purpose.

Emmy's Frenzy is a novel set on the shores of Lake Erie in 1947. Emmy Brooks has given up her dream of figure skating in the Olympics after the death of her mother. She and her brother Matt run the family-owned Bohemian Cafe and Hotel while caring for their mentally incapable younger brother Paul and their emotionally distraught father, Tom.The novel is about the unpredictable flow of life and the dramatic events that have shaped their world. They live an intricate, insular existen...

In this vivid and engaging work, Eric Toensmeier entices us with his journey as an example, explaining what to do, and what mistakes to avoid, to develop our own versions of an edible urban paradise.”—Toby Hemenway, author of Gaia’s GardenWhen Eric Toensmeier and Jonathan Bates moved into a duplex in a run-down part of Holyoke, Massachusetts, the tenth-of-an-acre lot was barren ground and bad soil, peppered with broken pieces of concrete, asphalt, and bric...

An immensely pleasurable biography of two interwoven, tragic figures: John Keats and F. Scott FitzgeraldIn this radiant dual biography, Jonathan Bate explores the fascinating parallel lives of John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald, writers who worked separately—on different continents, a century apart, in distinct genres—but whose lives uncannily echoed.Not only was Fitzgerald profoundly influenced by Keats, titling Tender is the Night and other works...

On the 250th anniversary of Wordsworth's birth comes a highly imaginative and vivid portrait of a revolutionary poet who embodied the spirit of his agePublished in time for the 250th anniversary of William Wordsworth's birth, this is the biography of a great poetic genius, a revolutionary who changed the world. Wordsworth rejoiced in the French Revolution and played a central role in the cultural upheaval that we call the Romantic Revolution.He and his fellow Romantics change...

An immensely pleasurable biography of two interwoven, tragic figures: John Keats and F. Scott FitzgeraldIn this radiant dual biography, Jonathan Bate explores the fascinating parallel lives of John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald, writers who worked separately—on different continents, a century apart, in distinct genres—but whose lives uncannily echoed.Not only was Fitzgerald profoundly influenced by Keats, titling Tender is the Night and other works from the poet's lines, but ...

‘Enlightening, moving’ SIR IAN MCKELLENFrom the acclaimed and bestselling biographer Jonathan Bate, a luminous new exploration of Shakespeare and how his themes can untangle comedy and tragedy, learning and loving in our modern lives.‘The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.’How does one survive the death of a loved one, the mess of war, the experience of being schooled, of falling in love, of growing old, of losing ...

The long-awaited literary biography of the supreme "poets' poet"John Clare (1793-1864) is the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self, but until now he has never been the subject of a comprehensive literary biography.Here at last is his full story told by the light of his voluminous work: his birth in poverty, his work as an ag...

An illuminating and authoritative study of the 20th-century English poet and children's writer's life and work.Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. He was one of Britain's most important poets.With an equal gift for poetry and prose, he was also a prolific children's writer and has been hailed as the greatest English letter-writer since John Keats. His magnetic personality and insatiable appetite for friendship,...

From one of our most eminent and accessible literary critics, a groundbreaking account of how the Greek and Roman classics forged Shakespeare’s imaginationBen Jonson famously accused Shakespeare of having “small Latin and less Greek.” But he was exaggerating. Shakespeare was steeped in the classics. Shaped by his grammar school education in Roman literature, history, and rhetoric, he moved to London, a city that modeled itself on ancient Rome. He worked in a theatr...

Sweeping across two millennia and every literary genre, acclaimed scholar and biographer Jonathan Bate provides a dazzling introduction to English Literature. The focus is wide, shifting from the birth of the novel and the brilliance of English comedy to the deep Englishness of landscape poetry and the ethnic diversity of Britain's Nobel literature laureates. It goes on to provide a more in-depth analysis, with close readings from an extraordinary scene in King Lear to a war poem by Carol ...