From 1920 until his death in 1962, consciousness and its effect on the natural world was Robinson Jeffers's obsession. Understanding and explaining the biological basis of mind is one of the towering challenges of modern science to this day, and Jeffers's poetic experiment is an important contribution to American literary history--no other twentieth-century poet attempted such a thorough engagement with a crucial scientific problem. Jeffers invented a sacramental poetics that accommodates a modern scientific account of consciousness, thereby integrating an essentially religious sensibility...

The favourable reception accorded to the previous editions of this work has not only added greatly to the pleasure attending the preparation of a new and revised edition, but has encouraged me to spare no effort within my power to render the volume as interesting and complete as possible. In making these endeavours, the bulk of the book has been necessarily increased by additional information, spread over all the sections of the work, but chiefly on those which treat of the Early History of the leading instrument, and the Italian branches of the subject.