Complete Poemsbrings together the published and unpublished work of one of the most significant poets of the late twentieth century; thefounding editor of Standand of the Northern House imprint. As well as reprinting all the poems included in Silkin's books, (from The Portrait and Other Poemsin 1950 to Making a Republicin 2002), it includes significant poems previously unpublished or published only in a wide variety of journals, and work transcribed from...

"The marvelous and the horrific, the mythic and the mundane overlap and intermingle in this wonderfully inventive novel." — The New York TimesWinner of the E. M. Forster AwardIn a fantastic world that is and is not seventeenth-century England, a baby is found floating in the Thames. The child, Jordan, is rescued by Dog Woman and grows up to travel the globe like Gulliver—though he finds that the most curious oddities come from his ...

Upon the publication of her posthumous volume of poetry Ariel in 1965, Sylvia Plath became a household name. Readers may be surprised to learn that the draft of Ariel left behind by Plath when she died in 1963 is different from the volume of poetry eventually published to worldwide acclaim.This facsimile edition restores, for the first time, the selection and arrangement of the poems Sylvia Plath left at the point of her death. In addition to the facsimile pages o...

The original and classic The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas is available once again, now with a brilliant new preface by Paul Muldoon.The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas contains poems that Thomas personally decided best represented his work. A year before its publication Thomas died from swelling of the brain triggered by excessive drinking. (A piece of New Directions history: it was our founder James Laughlin who identified Thomas’ body at the morgue of St. Vin...

Huxley's dystopian classic is a nightmare vision of the fate of humanity in a post-nuclear world.After a devastating global catastrophe, a group of scientists arrives in a ruined future shaped by fear, ritual and violence. Humanity has survived – but at a terrible cost, and not in any form they recognise. Ape and Essence is Aldous Huxley’s bleak, satirical vision of civilisation after collapse. Fierce, strange and provocative, it confronts the destructive ...

Like Shakespeare and Joyce before him, Dylan Thomas expanded our sense of what the English language can do.Rhythmically forceful yet subtly musical and full of memorable lines, his poems are anthology favourites; his 'play for voices' Under Milk Wood a modern classic. Much loved by The Beatles and Bob Dylan, he is a cultural icon and continues to inspire artists today.This new edition, released to commemorate the centenary of Thomas's birth, collec...

Sylvia Plath is one of the defining voices in twentieth-century poetry. This classic selection of her work, made by her former husband Ted Hughes, provides the perfect introduction to this most influential of poets. The poems are taken from Sylvia Plath's four collections Ariel , The Colossus , Crossing the Water and Winter Trees, and includes many of her most-celebrated works, such as 'Daddy', 'Lady Lazarus' and 'Wuthering Heights'.

A best of R.S. Thomas's poems in a beautiful new gift editionR. S. Thomas (1913- 2000) was born in Cardiff. He studied classics, then theology and, after ordination, served six rural Welsh parishes for most of his life. His first book of poems was published in 1946. He won the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1964 and published regularly, Collected Poems 1945-90 marking his eightieth birthday.

A wonderful meditation on the English landscape in wet weather by the acclaimed novelist and nature writer, Melissa Harrison.Whenever rain falls, our countryside changes. Fields, farms, hills and hedgerows appear altered, the wildlife behaves differently, and over time the terrain itself is transformed.In Rain, Melissa Harrison explores our relationship with the weather as she follows the course of four rain showers, in four seasons, across Wicken Fen, Shropshire, ...

Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett was one of the most profoundly original writers of the 20th century. He gave expression to the anguish and isolation of the individual consciousness with a purity and minimalism that have altered the shape of world literature. A tremendously influential poet and dramatist, Beckett spoke of his prose fiction as the "important writing," the medium in which he distilled his ideas most powerfully. Here, for the first time, his short prose is gathered in a defi...

Published to mark the poet's 80th birthday, this collection confirms R. S. Thomas as our pre-eminent poet.'This is the book I've been waiting for' Ted Hughes

Writers and artists across the centuries, from Chaucer to Ian McEwan, and from the creator of the Luttrell Psalter in the 14th century to John Piper in the 20th, looking up at the same skies and walking in the same brisk air, have felt very different things and woven them into their novels, poems and paintings.Alexandra Harris's subject is not the weather itself, but the weather as it is daily recreated in the human imagination. She builds her remarkable story from small evocative ...