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...

"England and the English" is Ford Madox Ford's three-volume exploration of what it means to be English, here published in a single volume for the first time in the United Kingdom. Starting with the brilliantly impressionistic evocations of the chaoti...

Charles Tomlinson's "Some Americans" was an unusual book, combining memoir and the detailed and intimate critical reading of poets he admires. He writes as a poet reading poets and learns less by analysis than by empathy. Thus William Carlos Williams...

There have been many dictionaries explaining to laymen the technical terms of sailing. None of them, until now, has systematically set out to explore their etymology and evolution. "The Language of Sailing" demonstrates how many of the English and Am...

Annals of the Five Senses (1923) was the first book to be published by C. M. Grieve, the man who became known as Hugh MacDiarmid. It is a collection of intense psychological studies which put us in mind of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground. Written...

"The Language of the Field" is an extensive, witty and authoritative dictionary. It provides etymology, definition and examples of words associated with the fauna (chased and chasers), the country lore and the implements of Field Sports – words which...

To mark National Poetry Day 1997, Nick Rennison, who compiled the "Waterstone's Guide to Poetry", and Michael Schmidt, editorial director of Carcanet, invited a number of contemporary poets to select work by poets of the past, beginning in the late f...

These volumes contain the previously uncollected essays, journalism and interviews of Hugh MacDiarmid, as part of Carcanet's "MacDiarmid 2000" programme. Other titles in the series include "Complete Poems", "Lucky Poet", "Contemporary Scottish Studie...

Substantial pieces on Scottish themes are assembled in this volume, from "Albyn" (1927) to "A Political Speech" delivered at Glasgow University in 1972. The editor has focused on MacDiarmid's view of powerful figures in Scottish culture, notably Davi...

Irish literature exists in two languages. A dual approach is necessary if the tradition, with its historical, political and semantic tensions, is to be understood-indeed, if some of its features are to be appreciated at all. Separate Gaelic and Anglo...