Jonathan Bate

The long-awaited literary biography of the supreme "poets' poet" John Clare (1793-1864) is the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self, but until now he has never been the subject of a comprehensive literary biography. Here at last is his full story told by...

Who was Shakespeare? Why has his writing endured? What makes it so endlessly adaptable to different times and cultures? And how has Shakespeare come to be such a powerful symbol of genius? This title presents a biography of the life - and afterlife - of the greatest English poet.

Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. He was one of Britain's most important poets, his work infused with myth; a love of nature, conservation, and ecology; of fishing and beasts in brooding landscapes. With an equal gift for poetry and prose, and with a soul as capacious as any poet in history, he was also a prolific children's writer an...

Can you be re-lit by poetry? This little book offers everyone one of the oldest of all remedies for stress: the reading of poetry.Intended to help you endure some of your stressful moments and painful experiences, these poems tell us we are not alone. Returned again and again over the centuries by great imaginations are love and death and memory – remembrance of childhood joy, of happy days and be...