A captivating 17th-century drama of peasants defending their honor against oppression by a feudal lord. This edition features an informative introduction with background on Spanish theater of the era as well as on the dramatist''s career and on the play itself. Features an excellent English-prose version on the pages facing the original Spanish.

Widely regarded as one of the creators of prose poems, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) was also a forerunner of the Surrealists. The works in this excellently translated collection, written by the author when he was between 15 and 20 years old, became a rallying point of the poetic avant-garde during the late nineteenth century throughout Western Europe and the United States. They have remained a source of inspiration for their youthful, rebellious spirit and unmatched verbal allure. Included among the works are the complete versions of Rimbaud's autobiographical "A Season in Hell"; his entire...

An overnight sensation upon its 1774 publication, "The Sorrows of Young Werther" became one of the first European best-sellers and secured its young author both fortune and fame. Loosely based on Goethe's personal experiences, the novel is written mostly in the form of letters in which Werther recounts his unrequited love for a married woman. Its "Sturm und Drang" style, portraying the rebellion of youthful genius against conventional standards, makes it a perennial favorite with readers of every era. Includes the original German with English translation on the facing pages.

Recipient of the 1956 Nobel Prize for Literature, Jian Ramon Jimenez (1881-1958) ranks among the foremost Spanish poets. The early influences of German Romanticism and French Symbolism led Jimenez to the development of his unique voice, and he became a leader in the vanguard known as the modernistas, who staged a Spanish literary revival at the turn of the twentieth century.
Jimenez's most popular work, Platero y yo, unfolds in his native Andalusia. A series of autobiographical prose poems about the wanderings of a young writer and his donkey, it first appeared in a shorter...

The passionate life and violent death of Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) retain an enduring fascination for readers around the world. Murdered by Nationalists at the outset of the Spanish Civil War, Lorca died at the peak of his creative powers. He remains his country's most widely translated writer, surpassed only by Cervantes in terms of critical commentary.
This selection includes 55 of the 68 poems that comprised Lorca's 1921 Libro de poemas, all of them in their entirety and in their original sequence. Imbued with the spirit and folklore of the poet's native Andalusia, these...