'Any acquaintance with a work so sublime must needs be better than none. A shadow may win the gaze of some who never looked upon the substance.' In this scholarly introduction to the Divine Comedy, Maria Francesca Rossetti (1827 76) urges readers not to be put off by Dante's difficult language and befuddling cosmology. Deploying prose summaries alongside translated extracts of the poem, she takes the reader on a tour through Dante's world, from the first shadowy appearance of Virgil to the pilgrimage through Paradise. Rossetti also illuminates many aspects of the poem usually considered...

Highly educated and accustomed to intellectual society, the writer and woman of letters Hester Lynch Piozzi (1741 1821) became a close friend of Samuel Johnson through her first husband, the brewer Henry Thrale. Her second marriage, to the Italian musician Gabriel Mario Piozzi in 1784, estranged her from Johnson, but following his death she published her groundbreaking Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, anticipating Boswell's biography. As well as her letters, poetry, essays, memoirs and travel diaries (several of which are also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection), she was one of...

First published in 1908, this two-volume collection was prepared by journalist, critic and Bronte enthusiast Clement King Shorter (1857 1926), following the appearance of Charlotte Bronte and her Circle (1896) and Charlotte Bronte and her Sisters (1905). Building on the research of Elizabeth Gaskell, the volumes document through correspondence the remarkable lives and literary careers of Charlotte (1816 55), Emily (1818 48) and Anne (1820 49). The use of previously unpublished manuscripts and letters served to broaden significantly the scope of the work. Volume 1 covers the family's...

Determined not to write a biography about his friend Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) in the usual dry style, Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) instead produced a novel. As a result, some biographical facts are given less emphasis than others, in particular the acrimony which later blighted relations between the two men. But the work is distinguished by its liveliness and by a wealth of vivid detail. Ford describes Conrad's remarkably long-eared horse, his haphazard use of adverbs and their fraught collaboration over their second joint novel, Romance, during which Ford's carefully unexciting style...

From his funerary monument in Stratford-upon-Avon to the engraving by Droeshout in the First Folio, the depictions of William Shakespeare (1564 1616) have long been the subject of scrutiny. Equally, the mystery surrounding the identity of 'W. H.', the dedicatee of Shakespeare's sonnets, continues to capture the imagination. This volume brings together three works that were originally published separately: two pieces on the portraits and one on the sonnets. A playwright turned theatrical biographer, James Boaden (1762 1839) cultivated a lifelong interest in Shakespeare. His illustrated 1824...

'To the poet, if to any man, it must be justly conceded to be estimated by what he has written rather than by what he has done, and to be judged by the productions of his genius rather than by the circumstances of his outward life.' At the time of his death, John Keats (1795 1821) was often unfavourably appraised, not only with regard to his poetry, but also his character. In this 1848 collection of his letters, the first of its kind, editor Richard Monckton Milnes (1809 85) sets out to show the poet's true colours through his personal correspondence. Adding insightful commentary and context,...

'To the poet, if to any man, it must be justly conceded to be estimated by what he has written rather than by what he has done, and to be judged by the productions of his genius rather than by the circumstances of his outward life.' At the time of his death, John Keats (1795-1821) was often unfavourably appraised, not only with regard to his poetry, but also his character. In this 1848 collection of his letters, the first of its kind, editor Richard Monckton Milnes (1809-85) sets out to show the poet's true colours through his personal correspondence. Adding insightful commentary and context,...

Diplomat, philosopher and friend of John Donne and Ben Jonson, Edward Herbert (1582? 1648), first Baron Herbert of Cherbury, is best known for his philosophical treatise De veritate, examining the nature of truth. After Oxford and a period at court, he served as ambassador to France from 1619 to 1624. A reluctant Royalist, he surrendered the family seat, Montgomery Castle, to Parliament in 1644. His lively and amusing account of his adventures up to 1624 was first published by Horace Walpole in 1764 in an edition of only 200 copies. From the narrative we learn of Herbert's social triumphs in...

This work by Edmund Gosse (1849 1928) was commissioned by Macmillan as the third volume in a series of literary histories, and published in 1889, when literary criticism was still a relatively new field of academic study. His earlier work had led to his appointment as Lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1884 and to a hugely popular American lecture tour that same year. An established poet, author and critic, Gosse had a loyal following within the literary establishment of Cambridge and London, despite lacking formal academic qualifications. His approach to analysis was through personal...

Since its first appearance in 1808, this collection of extracts from Elizabethan and Jacobean drama has been highly acclaimed; the twentieth-century critic Edmund Blunden considered it 'the most striking anthology perhaps ever made from English literature'. In compiling the work, the critic and essayist Charles Lamb (1775 1834) aimed to achieve two goals: to illustrate the greatness of Shakespeare's often forgotten contemporaries, and to explore the way in which sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Englishmen experienced emotion. He includes only those scenes which he judges to show the best...