Books in Fyfield Books series

Initially conceived as a satirical tragedy unmasking the terror of death, this book was the counterpart of Beddoe's anatomical research. This edition presents the jest book in its early form, as Beddoes intended to publish it in 1829. The center of Beddoe's achievement, this pastiche of Renaissance tragedy is replete with treachery, murder, sorcery, and haunting and is the extravagant expression of the poet's lifelong obsession with mortality and immortality.

Abraham Cowley (1618-67) was one of the most popular English poets of his time. 'He must always,' said Dryden, 'be thought a great poet.' His work was held in high esteem by Milton, Johnson (who wrote one of the greatest of his Lives about him), Pope and Wordsworth.He has been unduly neglected in our century, and this selection, with critical introduction and annotations, is designed to re-introduce Cowley to modern readers as a writer of intrinsic rather than merely historical interest. His restoration to the available canon is timely: his poetry has lessons for the latter years of this century much as Donne's had for the poets of the early twentieth century.Abraham Cowley: Selected Poems is the only affordable selection of his work currently in print, and usefully complements the multi-volume library edition being produced by the University of Delaware Press.

Edgar Allan Poe composed his famous lines about "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome" at the age of fifteen. Yet not only Poe demonstrated early signs of lyrical talent: Christopher Smart began writing verse when he was only five; Dylan Thomas produced creditable verse at the age of eleven; Alexander Pope wrote what many regard as his prettiest poem at the age of twelve. The list goes on to include the likes of Thomas Chatterton, John Milton, Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Sylvia Plath, and many more. In First Lines, Jon Stallworthy, a distinguished poet, anthologist, and critic, has collected verses written in youth--often the very first preserved poems--from George Herbert to Seamus Heaney. Responding to the questions of when, why, and how does a poet begin to write poems, Stallworthy reveals many interesting common characteristics among these poems of childhood and adolescence. Chosen for their notable imagery, form or wit, this collection of poems--written by 58 poets who later wrote many of the finest poems in the English language--proves the truth of Auden's statement that if an immature poet has any real talent he or she will display a distinctive style quite early. This anthology reveals the durability and excellence of what young writers have produced, and calls attention to the future delights these early poems would yield.