The literary critic defends the importance of Western literature from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Kafka and Beckett in this acclaimed national bestseller.NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDHarold Bloom's The Western Canon is more than a required reading list—it is a "heroically brave, formidably learned" defense of the great works of literature that comprise the traditional Western Canon. Infused with a love of learn...

A literary titan of our time, "looks to poems for clarity about the end of life" ( New York Times Book Review ).In this charming anthology, esteemed literary critic Harold Bloom collects the last poems of history's most important and celebrated poets. As with his immensely popular Best Poems of the English Language, Bloom has carefully curated and annotated the final works of one hundred poets in Till I End M...

**At last, a major American poet collected for the first time in the sixth volume of the definitive Library of Edition of her worksIn his last book, Harold Bloom presents the earthy, surprising, and lyrical poetry of Ursula K. Le Guin**Ursula K. Le Guin’s career began and ended with poetry. This sixth volume in the definitive Library of America edition of her works gathers, for the first time, her collected poems—from her earliest collection Wild Angels (1974) through her f...

An essential new selection of poems from one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century.Among A. R. Ammons’ most devout readers—and lifelong friends—was critic Harold Bloom, who declared Ammons’ Collected Poems “the most distinguished book of American verse since the publication of Wallace Stevens’ Collected Poems in 1955.” This new compendium of work by a major American poet, selected and with an introduction by one of the most promin...

More than 200 years after it was first published, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has stood the test of time as a gothic masterpiece—a classic work of horror that blurs the line between man and monster.“If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear.”For centuries, the story of Victor Frankenstein and the monster he created has held readers spellbound. On the surface, it is a novel of tense and steadily mounting dread. On a more profound level, i...

Why Shakespeare? What explains our continued fascination with his poems and plays? In Living with Shakespeare, Susannah Carson invites forty actors, directors, scholars, and writers to reflect on why his work is still such a vital part of our culture.We hear from James Earl Jones on reclaiming Othello as a tragic hero, Julie Taymor on turning Prospero into Prospera, Camille Paglia on teaching the plays to actors, F. Murray Abraham on gaining an audience’s sympathy for Shyl...

A selection of the lively letters between one of the world’s greatest literary critics and the poets, novelists, and scholars he most admiredBringing together a collection of Harold Bloom’s letters to and from eight of his favorite contemporary writers, Heather Cass White provides an intimate view of one of the most famous literary critics of the last century. In correspondence with Alvin Feinman, Northrop Frye, A. R. Ammons, John Hollander, James Merrill, John...

America's most original and controversial literary critic writes trenchantly about forty-eight masterworks spanning the Western tradition—from Don Quixote to Wuthering Heights to Invisible Man—in his first book devoted exclusively to narrative fiction.In this valedictory volume, Yale professor Harold Bloom—who for more than half a century was regarded as America's most daringly original and controversial literary critic—gives us his only ...

Every year since 1988 a major poet has selected seventy-five poems for publication in The Best American Poetry. The series has quickly grown in both sales and prestige, as poetry itself has seen a remarkable resurgence in popularity and vitality, fueled by established poets at the peak of their powers and a new generation of daring voices. As we approach the millennium, now is the opportune moment to take stock of american poetry and choose the work that will stand the tes...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND KIRKUS REVIEWSHailed as “the indispensable critic” by The New York Review of Books, Harold Bloom—New York Times bestselling writer and Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University—has for decades been sharing with readers and students his genius and passion for understanding literature and explaining why it matters. Now ...