Alma Books Selected Poetical Works Blake William

During his short and restless life, Percy Bysshe Shelley produced a great number of poems, three verse plays and numerous prose works, as well as many essays in which he propounded his philosophical views and radical political ideas. These, together with his highly unconventional itinerant life and his literary connections, make him one of the most important and intriguing figures in British Romanticism • This volume provides a generous selection of his poetry, from the sonnet ‘Ozymandias’ to famous lyrics such as ‘Ode to the West Wind’ and ‘Lines Written among the Euganean Hills’, to the longer poems of his maturity, Adonais and Epipsychidion, all thoroughly annotated and presented in chronological order

Between 1892 and 1895, Oscar Wilde’s drawing-room comedies Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest made his name as a playwright who fearlessly mocked the hypocrisy and snobbery of Victorian society and took gleeful delight in appearing to trivialize its most sacred institutions. With its premiere on Valentine’s Day 1895, The Importance of Being Earnest – a hilarious comedy of mistaken identities and coruscating language – was a phenomenal success, but its run was cut short prematurely by Wilde’s court case and subsequent incarceration, and the play was not published until 1899, after Wilde had been released from prison • Also including the powerful Salome, originally written in French and banned by the British censor, this collection displays Wilde at his provocative and witty best, and demonstrates why he was a playwright who delighted audiences and infuriated critics in equal measure

The present selection traces the development of Yeats's verse, encompassing the poet's interest in Irish folklore and national identity, his engagement with the political situation of his day and the rich symbolism that is the hallmark of his work and a reflection of his lifelong fascination with the occult. It contains some of his best-known pieces, including the elegiac 'Easter 1916', the apocalyptic 'The Second Coming' and the reflective and spiritual 'Sailing to Byzantium' • Often radical in content but always traditional in form, these poems are by turns startling and affecting, and never less than inspired. Taken together, they form an ideal introduction to the poetic career of one of Ireland's greatest literary figures • Contains notes, notes on the text and extra material

The articles which Stendhal contributed as French correspondent for the London Magazine, New Monthly Magazine and other English reviews of the 1820s are here brought together in a single volume, the only edition available in English. In them Stendhal – defying fashion and giving proof of the bold originality of his creative writing – provides an illuminating and often entertaining commentary on the politics and mores of post-Napoleonic France and Italy, and reveals his outstanding and all too rarely acknowledged gifts as a reviewer and literary critic • Together with the articles from the English reviews, this edition includes translations of articles, essays and notes on Corneille, Scott and Lord Byron, who was on terms of close acquaintance with Stendhal during his stay in Milan in 1816

Alma Classics edition of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer contains 3,000 notes and 30 pages extra material • "And specially from every shires ende • Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende, • The hooly blisful martir for to seke, • That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke." • Assembling at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, a group of pilgrims begin their journey to Canterbury Cathedral. To entertain themselves on the long road, their host suggests that they regale each other with stories, with the teller of the best tale set to earn a free supper • The pilgrims correspond to all sections of medieval society, from the crusading knight to the drunken cook, and their tales span a range of genres, including the comic ribaldry and deception of 'The Miller's Tale' and the story of chivalry and courtly romance told by the Franklin

Admired for the poetical heights of his Canti, the gentle wit of his prose dialogues and the soul-searching questionings of his Zibaldone (Notebooks), Leopardi was also an acute social commentator and a sharp dissector of the human mind • Thoughts – a collection of philosophical and critical observations put together for publication by Leopardi himself shortly before his death in 1837 – shows a more light-hearted side to Leopardi’s personality, and offers both those who are familiar with and those who are new to his works a fresh insight into the thought processes and the worldview of Italy’s last great polymath

An exponent of the theory that William Shakespeare, the modestly educated provincial man from Stratford-upon-Avon, could not have written the works – full of erudition and accurate professional jargon – which are attributed to him, Mark Twain offers an eloquent and entertaining analysis of this issue of authorship, peppered with personal recollections of his own first encounters with the Bard’s plays on a boat on the Mississippi • Balancing humour, insight and vitriol, Is Shakespeare Dead? is a provocative contribution to the tradition of Shakespeare-doubting, as well as a fine example of the great American novelist’s critical writing

Alongside his monumental Zibaldone (Notebooks) and the poems collected in Canti, which make him one of Italy's greatest and best-loved poets, Giacomo Leopardi penned a number of fictional pieces, mostly in the form of gently humorous dialogues, in which he dealt with philosophical ideas and many of the metaphysical questions that preoccupied his restless spirit • First published in 1827 and here presented in a new translation by J.G. Nichols along with Thoughts, Leopardi's own selected pearls of wisdom and gems of social observation, Moral Fables will enchant both those who are familiar with and those who are new to the works of Italy's last great polymath

Dual-Language Edition • First published in 1831, and here presented in a dual-language edition with annotations and additional reading material, Leopardi's poetical masterpiece is an unsurpassed anatomy of man's unhappiness on earth • Trapped between an admiration for the classical past and a disappointment in the impoverished present, Leopardi rejected both the easy allure of Catholic faith and the unbridled optimism proposed by science and the Enlightenment. His unflinching pessimism and existential resolve, here brilliantly rendered in verse by prize-winning translator J.G. Nichols, make him one of the most fascinating and best-loved Italian poets

When the orphaned William refuses his uncles’ proposal to become a clergyman and angrily leaves his job in the counting-house of his brother’s mill, he decides to accept a position as an English teacher at a boys’ school in Brussels. When his career leads him to take up an additional post at a girls’ school nearby, William becomes emotionally involved with the manipulative headmistress of the establishment, Mademoiselle Reuter. The tensions rise until one of his pupils and fellow teachers – for whom he has tender feelings – is suddenly dismissed and is nowhere to be found • Based on Charlotte Brontл’s own autobiographical experience in Brussels as a teacher and only published posthumously, The Professor was Charlotte Brontл’s first attempt at full-length fiction and bears all the hallmarks of her future work, with touches of genius and an unparalleled sharpness of style

As the sensitive and delicate Gertrude Morel begins to shrink from her drunken and violent husband, their marriage becomes a battleground. Gertrude turns increasingly towards her two eldest sons, William and Paul, and determines that they will not grow up to be coal miners living in poverty like their father. Yet soon William falls ill, and Paul seeks to escape his mother’s suffocating influence through a series of relationships • Closely autobiographical, and widely regarded as Lawrence’s finest achievement, Sons and Lovers is the affecting portrait of a mining family torn apart by class divisions and the conflict between filial love and the urge to follow one’s own desires

One of Tolstoy’s last published works of fiction, The Devil revolves around the young landowner Yevgeny’s irrepressible lust for Stepanida, a sensual peasant woman. Even when he gets married to a respectable upper-class lady, he finds himself unable to put an end to his encounters with Stepanida, and becomes increasingly consumed by guilt and helplessness in the face of his urges. In some ways comparable to the controversial Kreutzer Sonata, The Devil shows Tolstoy at his most salacious, and addresses the conflicts between desire, social norms and personal conscience. Also included in this volume is Family Happiness, one of Tolstoy’s earliest works, an entertaining and cynical account of marriage from the perspective of a disillusioned wife, and A Landowner’s Morning