Robert Burton's "The Anatomy of Melancholy" (1621) has cast a long, shimmering shadow, on Milton ("L'Allegro and Il Penseroso" in particular), on the wits of Queen Anne's reign and the beginning of George I's, and on Swift. Doctor Johnson praised it...

"SeaManShip" is an extraordinary and challenging poem. The "Sea" of the title is a symbol of the natural world, "Man" represents human feelings and intellect, and "Ship" signifies the artificial or man-created. By turns rhapsodic and incantatory, th...

Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) once described herself as the most famous unknown writer, and although her novel, Nightwood is celebrated, her poetry has been a well-kept secret until now. This selection, the only one currently available, contains work writ...

In this radical anthology the work of three of Ireland's most important and best-loved contemporary poets is featured. Each has, in a different way, cleared new creative space to speak and to sing. The anthology makes an essential selection of some...

"Death's Jest-Book" is Thomas Lovell Beddoes' long neglected masterwork, a revenge tragedy replete with murder, sorcery and haunting After early acclaim as a lyric poet and dramatist, Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849) began Death's Jest-Book in 1825...

William Barnes (1801-1886), "the Dorset Poet", wrote best in Dorest dialect: "I cannot help it. It is my mother tongue, and it is to my mind the only true speech of the life that I draw". His setting is a rural Dorset threatened by enclosure. Hopkins...

Aphra Behn (1640-1689) is best known for her novel "Oroonoko". Her plays have been revived, in print and on the stage, in modern times, but much of her best work, as she herself knew, is to be found in her poetry. The versatile form and content of he...

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's reputation has sometimes been overshadowed both by the achievements of her husband, Robert Browning, and by the romantic story of their elopement. This selection recovers the best work of this independent, passionate and...

"Revolutionary Sonnets" is as daring, original and inventive as the name suggest. The work explores themes of violence and love, pretensions and emotion, sex and war and is both sobering, and hysterically funny. For the first time the full range and...

While most gender-based analyses of rabbinic Judaism concentrate on the status of women in the halakhah (the rabbinic legal tradition), Judith R. Baskin turns her attention to the construction of women in the aggadic midrash, a collection of expansio...