Classic and pre-20th century poetry Books

InA Bird Called Elaeus, poet and translator David Constantine presents a selection of poems fromThe Greek Anthology, a collection of around 4500 poems composed over more than 1500 years by around 300 authors.The Greek Anthologyis a marvellous salvage...

"There is no greater sorrow than to be mindful of the happy time in misery." Dante Alighieri's Inferno, the first Canticle in the epic poetic masterpiece The Divine Comedy, is now available in an exquisite hardcover edition featuring a foiled cover and...

No one captures the graces and idiosyncrasies of cats quite like the painters, printmakers, and haiku masters of Japan. From the Edo to the Showa period, many artists turned their gaze toward an unlikely subject: their small feline companions. Closely...

Comedy and rhyme permeate this longform poetry story, which rambles down long, ghosty trails from the forgotten misty-eyed trail geysers. This fantastical tale uses symbolism and thematic elements to tell the story of 2022 and the years beyond.

Horace has long been revered as the supreme lyric poet of the Augustan Age. In his perceptive introduction to this translation of Horace's Odes and Satires, Sidney Alexander engagingly spells out how the poet expresses values and traditions that remain...

Tale of Ahmedis a gripping fictional account of the dangerous journey of a teenage boy, Ahmed, who travels from Afghanistan, across the Middle East and Europe, to seek refuge in England.Author Henry Cockburn lives at one end of a long trail stretching...

I have this gem and it's looking for a beholderHafiz of Shiraz (also known as Hafez) remains the most beloved name in all of Persian literature. Indeed, his mystic, lyric poetry is cherished as one of the great achievements of world literature, on a par...

Navigating the uncertainty of a divided China wracked by warfare and corruption, Tao Yuanming's poetry-expertly translated by Red Pine-chooses the path walked by China's ancient sages, finding joy in living a simple life. The latest work in Red Pine's...

These seventy poems are masterpieces from over a thousand years of classical Chinese poetry. Beauty and simplicity meld to convey an astounding landscape with both enchanting details and breath-taking vastness. The poems constitute an anthology, given to...

Rachel Owen's hauntingly beautiful illustrations for Dante's Inferno take a radically new approach to representing the world of Dante's famous poem. The images combine the artist's deep cultural and historical understanding of 'The Divine...

This lively retelling of the myth of the voyage of St Brendan from Ireland to America is illustrated with original linocuts by American artist Kathleen Neeley. Jackson's third poetry collection is an engaging and spirited interpretation of the tale,...

In this expanded edition of his distinguished Sappho: Poems and Fragments (2002), Stanley Lombardo offers over 100 fragments not included in the original edition, as well as the new poems discovered in 2004 and 2014. His translation of this latter...

Nizami's Haft Paykar is a deep, enduring work of literature, one that can be appreciated as psychological bildungsroman, fairytale, spiritual quest, and adventure tale. Meisami is a leading scholar of the classical Persian literary...

Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) was a priest, a mystic, and nearly a heretic (he died before the Church court's verdict). In the 20th century, the Roman Catholic Church rehabilitated him and the late Pope John Paul II spoke of his work with fondness.However,...

From Madonna to Deepak Chopra, celebrities have been recording and embracing Rumi's poetry for the past two decades, creating a resurgence of interest in this 13th century Sufi mystic.Rumi's Little Book of Life is a beautiful collection of 196 poems by...

From Michael Bazzett, poet and translator ofThe Popol Vuh, a collection that explores the myth of Echo and Narcissus, offering a reboot, a remix, a reimagining."Narcissus was never one to see himself // in moving water. // He liked his image / still."...

"This is a wonderful new edition of the Poetic Edda. It captures the language, vitality, and rhythms of the original."-Jesse Byock, PhD, UCLAGods, giants, the undead, dwarves, Valkyries, heroes, kidnapping, dragons, and a giant wolf are just some of the...

"The first taste I had for books came to me from my pleasure in the fables of the Metamorphoses of Ovid. For at about seven or eight years of age I would steal away from any other pleasure to read them, inasmuch as this language was my mother tongue, and...

An attractive new alternative as both a translation and a pedagogical tool. The volume includes an excellent introduction by Dante scholar Steven Botterill (Univ. of California, Berkeley), clear and informative notes by lifelong Dantist Anthony Oldcorn,...

This edition aims to bring the poem as fully alive to a modern reader as it would have been to Milton's contemporaries. It provides a newly edited text of the 1674 edition of the poem-the last of Milton's lifetime-with carefully modernized spelling and...

Successfully integrating elegance and a close fidelity to the Greek, these new translations aim to provide Greekless students with as close a sense as possible of how the Greeks themselves thought and wrote about the world. Miller's skillful introduction...

First published by Odyssey Press in 1957, this classic edition provides Milton's poetry and major prose works, richly annotated, in a sturdy and affordable clothbound volume.

In this new translation of the Homeric Hymns, Sarah Ruden employs a melodious and flexible non-rhyming line of eleven syllables, offering a close approximation of Greek hexameter verse in natural English rhythms. The result is a Homeric Hymns marked by...