Pablo Picasso was one of the most prodigious and revolutionary artists in the history of Western painting. Gertrude Stein was an avant-garde American writer, art collector, eccentric and self-styled genius. Her Paris home was the leading salon for ar...

In the summer of 1816, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, wrote the first draft of "Frankenstein" after she and her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley took part in a ghost writing competition at Lord Byron's villa by Lake Geneva. Returning to England in the autumn...

In the title poem of her second collection, "Salvation Jane" (a purple thistle-like weed), Stoddart suggests that in naming something we empower it to fulfil our idea of its meaning and purpose. The poem typifies, as Vernon Scannell wrote, "the way h...

Treacherous, power-hungry, untempered by moral restraint, and embittered by physical deformity, Richard, the younger brother of King Edward IV, is ablaze with ambition to take England's throne. Richard III, Shakespeare's long chronicle of Richard's m...

Not for sale in Estonia! Written in 1928 by one of the founders of the Surrealist movement, and translated the following year by William Carlos Williams (the two had been introduced in Paris by a mutual friend), "Last Nights of Paris" is related to...

At once satiric and magical, rich in philosophy and astonishing adventure, Gulliver's Travels transports children into worlds unknown. The entire voyage is seen through the eyes of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon whose amazing account begins with a...

"The Annotated Shakespeare" series enables today's readers to understand and enjoy the plays of the world's greatest dramatist. Comprehensive on-page annotations assist with vocabulary, pronunciation, prosody, and alternative readings of phrases and...

A dazzlingly various collection, "Local Honey" juggles its opposites with panache – heart and intellect, melancholy and zest, derangement and perspicacity. Beginning with early stirrings of logical thought in a Palaeolithic cave, the collection range...

In this delightful homage to the now unfashionable Neapolitan poet, two contemporary poets who share a fascination with his work present their selection of fresh versions from his best-known collection. In their introductions they explore the backgro...

By turns sensual and incantatory, "Common Prayer" offers a liturgy for a world in crisis. Meditations on the actuality of sickness and bereavement move outward through narratives of the broken body of Europe's violent twentieth century. Challenging a...