Johnson himself wrote in 1782: "I know not that I have written any thing more generally commended than the Lives of the Poets." Always recognized as a major biographical and critical achievement, Samuel Johnson's last literary project is also one of his most readable and entertaining, written with characteristic eloquence and conviction, and at times with combative trenchancy.
Johnson's fifty-two biographies constitute a detailed survey of English poetry from the early seventeenth century down to his own time, with extended discussions of Cowley, Milton, Waller, Dryden, Addison, Prior,...

Johnson himself wrote in 1782: "I know not that I have written any thing more generally commended than the Lives of the Poets." Always recognized as a major biographical and critical achievement, Samuel Johnson's last literary project is also one of his most readable and entertaining, written with characteristic eloquence and conviction, and at times with combative trenchancy.
Johnson's fifty-two biographies constitute a detailed survey of English poetry from the early seventeenth century down to his own time, with extended discussions of Cowley, Milton, Waller, Dryden, Addison, Prior,...

Johnson himself wrote in 1782: "I know not that I have written any thing more generally commended than the Lives of the Poets." Always recognized as a major biographical and critical achievement, Samuel Johnson's last literary project is also one of his most readable and entertaining, written with characteristic eloquence and conviction, and at times with combative trenchancy.
Johnson's fifty-two biographies constitute a detailed survey of English poetry from the early seventeenth century down to his own time, with extended discussions of Cowley, Milton, Waller, Dryden, Addison, Prior,...

John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester (1647-80), was a leading member of the group of "court wits" surrounding Charles II and one of the wittiest and most sexually explicit poets in English. In this long-awaited edition, Harold Love, a leading scholar of seventeenth-century manuscript circulation, presents a scholarly text based on detailed examination of Wilmot's manuscripts, with full textual and explanatory notes.

Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke and sister to Sir Philip Sidney, is the most important woman writer of the Elizabethan era outside the royal family. This scholarly edition in two volumes is the first to include all her extant works: Volume I prints her three original poems, the disputed "Dolefull Lay of Clorinda," her translations from Petrarch, Mornay, and Garnier, and all her known letters. Volume II contains her metrical paraphrases of Psalms 44-150. The edition also provides a biographical introduction, discussion of her sources and methods of composition, textual annotation,...

Volume 15 in The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Browning presents poetry Browning wrote in his seventies, his last two volumes: Parleyings (1887) and Asolando (1889). The former is the poet's last sustained meditation on life and on his times, a nine-section credo covering religion, history, poetry, politics, art, and music. Asolando is a coda to his whole oeuvre, a mixture of short love lyrics, historical monologues and anecdotes, light verse, and poems which are quite sui generis, all grouped around the theme of 'fancies and fact'. Both volumes are presented here with previously unknown...

Providing the first reliable basis for a new assessment of John Clare's poetic growth, this two-volume collection presents all of Clare's early poems--many published here for the first time--and all known variants. Ranging from juvenilia to the published poems that first established Clare's reputation, this edition preserves Clare's characteristic spelling, punctuation, grammar, and vocabulary, and includes an introduction, extensive annotations, and a glossary.

Providing the first reliable basis for a new assessment of John Clare's poetic growth, this two-voume collection presents all of Clare's early poems--many published here for the first time--and all known variants. Ranging from juvenilia to the published poems that first established Clare's reputation, this edition preserves Clare's characteristic spelling, punctuation, grammar, and vocabulary, and includes an introduction, extensive annotations, and a glossary.

This volume completes the first edition of the collected works of the early modern poet and translator Sir Richard Fanshawe, and contains Fanshawe's translation of The Lusiad of Camoes, the single work which affirms his importance in the history of translation. The translation of the Baroque play Querer por solo Querer from the court of Philip IV of Spain is also given, as is Fanshawe's Latin rendering of parts of The Lusiad, printed here for the first time.

Although George Crabbe (1754-1832) was acclaimed by his contemporaries--receiving high praise from Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott, and Jane Austen, among others--there has not been a collected edition of his verse since A.W. Ward's, some eighty years ago. The present edition draws on much recently discovered manuscript material from America and Britain, including a finished manuscript (with proofs) of Tales of the Hall, and manuscripts of four unpublished tales and of a number of shorter poems. Close attention has been paid to the evolution of the text from the rough pencil drafts in Crabbe's...